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Need For Caution For An Early Mars Sample Return - Opinion Piece

Need For Caution For An Early Mars Sample Return - Opinion Piece

Jun 04 2013 | comment(s)

It seems like a great idea, doesn't it, to send an automated rover to Mars to gather
 samples of rocks and dust, and return it to Earth, to study in laboratories with all the specialist instruments we have here. You can understand why so many scientists and mission planners are keen on the idea.
For Serious Ghost Hunters, All Those Zany TV Shows Bring A Legitimacy Problem

For Serious Ghost Hunters, All Those Zany TV Shows Bring A Legitimacy Problem

Jun 04 2013 | comment(s)

Nick Duffy is co-founder of the West Midlands Ghost Club (1989) and since then members of the club have been visiting the spookiest and scariest places around the region, using audio visual equipment, temperature recordings and trigger objects such as crucifixes and old coins to find proof of ghosts. The focus for them has always been objectivity and a calm and measured approach.

So people shouting at ghosts and shaky-cam running all over the place aren't doing anyone any favors, he notes. Hauntings, ghosts and spirits are now big business and TV shows such as Most Haunted and Ghost Hunters have made both viewers and show producers desperate to find the paranormal, says Duffy. And it demeans what he is trying to do.
Rogue Wheat Now Found In 127 Countries!

Rogue Wheat Now Found In 127 Countries!

Jun 04 2013 | comment(s)

Toxoplasma, Cat Piss And Mouse Brains: My Lab’s First Paper On Microbial Manipulation Of Animal Behavior

Toxoplasma, Cat Piss And Mouse Brains: My Lab’s First Paper On Microbial Manipulation Of Animal Behavior

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

All animals live in a microbe rich environment, with immense numbers of bacteria, archaea, fungi and other eukaryotic microbes living in, on and around them. For some of these microbes, the association is transitory and unimportant, but many make animals their permanent home, or interact with them in ways that are vital for their survival.

Many members of an animal’s “microbiome” are affected by, and often become dependent on, aspects of the animal’s behavior. And, as microbes will do, some – and we believe many – of these microbes have evolved specific ways to manipulate the behavior of their animal neighbors to their advantage.

Eat McDonald's Every Day, Lose Weight

Eat McDonald's Every Day, Lose Weight

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

In the 2004 documentary "Super Size Me", Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McDonald's food for a month.  He felt terrible at the end of it, but it was for art. 

Fast food has a lot of calories, most people could subsist just fine for 30 days eating just one such meal a day - but even one McDonald's meal every single day in conjunction with two other meals can still lead to weight loss, says Don Thompson.

He lost 20 lbs. in the last year despite eating McDonald's food every day - it's part of his job because he is CEO of McDonald's. Speaking at the At the Sanford Bernstein analyst conference on Wednesday, he revealed that his weight loss was due to getting his "butt up" and "working out again", his McDonald's food didn't have to go.
What You Know About The Risk Of Nuclear Power Is Probably Wrong

What You Know About The Risk Of Nuclear Power Is Probably Wrong

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

During the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant, which is a couple hundred miles from where he and his family live, Paul Bluestein stayed in his home while thousands of others fled the Tokyo area and many foreigners left Japan for good.  Radiation was about to create a Godzilla and he always goes for Tokyo. If you believe fear and doubt promoted with junk science.

Not only did they not flee, they still buy as much of their fruits and vegetables as possible from Fukushima Prefecture.
Science Is A Mess And Philosophy Will Fix it?

Science Is A Mess And Philosophy Will Fix it?

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

Stephen Hawking recently declared that philosophy is "dead" - meaning metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that aspires to the most general understanding of space and time and other fundamental stuff of the world. Get rid of sophistry and defining into oblivion, learn some math and read some physics, he said. Pick any science and philosophers can drag it into the mud.

Philosophers disagree and say just the opposite - physics needs metaphysics more than ever. 
Multistate Outbreak Of Hepatitis A Linked To Costco Organic Berries

Multistate Outbreak Of Hepatitis A Linked To Costco Organic Berries

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

A new outbreak of a hepatitis A strain rarely seen in the Western Hemisphere is believed to be associated with frozen mixed berries purchased from Costco.

 At least 30 illnesses are involved, including sicknesses in Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada and Townsend Farms Organic Antioxidant Blend frozen berries purchased from Costco appear to be the source of this outbreak.
Artificial Heart For Humans Is Part Cow, Part Machine

Artificial Heart For Humans Is Part Cow, Part Machine

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

Carmat in France is getting ready to test a complex artificial heart that combines biology with machinery. 

The race is on to build a better heart and provide a safe bridge for cases where organ transplant is not available. Carmat's version uses synthetic and biological materials as well as sensors and software that detect a patient’s level of exertion and adjust output accordingly. It will be tested in patients at four cardiac surgery centers in Europe and the Middle East. 

Around 5.7 million people in the U.S. have had heart failure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Genetically Modified Clean Energy

Genetically Modified Clean Energy

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

Lignocellulosic waste such as sawdust or straw can be used to produce biofuel – but only if the long cellulose and xylan chains can be successfully broken down into smaller sugar molecules. To do this, fungi are used which, by means of a specific chemical signal, can be made to produce the necessary enzymes.

It's an expensive process so the Vienna University of Technology has been investigating the molecular switch that regulates enzyme production in the fungus and found it is possible to manufacture genetically modified fungi that produce the necessary enzymes fully independently, thus making biofuel production significantly cheaper.

Replacing A Traditional Biofuel Inductor Over 60 Times More Expensive than Gold

HD 95086 B Is Lightest Exoplanet Directly Imaged (So Far)

HD 95086 B Is Lightest Exoplanet Directly Imaged (So Far)

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

A team of astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope has imaged a faint object moving near a bright star. With an estimated mass of four to five times that of Jupiter, this exoplanet, named HD 95086 b, would be the lightest planet to be directly observed outside the Solar System.

Although nearly a thousand exoplanets have been detected indirectly — most using the radial velocity or transit methods — and many more candidates await confirmation, only a dozen exoplanets have been directly imaged. Nine years after ESO's Very Large Telescope captured the first image of an exoplanet, the planetary companion to the brown dwarf 2M1207, the same team has caught on camera what is probably the lightest of these objects so far."

83 Percent Of Oncologists Face Cancer Drug Shortages

83 Percent Of Oncologists Face Cancer Drug Shortages

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

How do you allocate lifesaving drugs when there aren't enough to go around? 

83 percent of cancer doctors surveyed say that they've faced oncology drug shortages, and of those, nearly all say that their patients' treatment has been impacted, according to results presented today at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (Abstract #CRA6510).

The shortages are most profound among drugs to treat pediatric, gastrointestinal and blood cancers and have left physicians surveyed unable to prescribe standard chemotherapies for a range of cancers.

Catalan Sit-Com Research Update

Catalan Sit-Com Research Update

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

Some readers may well feel themselves in the dark when it comes to the usage of the interjection ‘oh’ in English and its translation in Catalan. Thus they could find a 2007 article published in the Catalan Journal of Linguistics, (Vol. 6, pp 117-136) of help.

‘The translation of oh in a corpus of dubbed sitcoms‘ is authored by  Dr. Anna Matamala, who is a Professora titular d’universitat, at the Departament de Traducció i d’Interpretació of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain.
The Quote Of The Week - Probability Does Not Exist !

The Quote Of The Week - Probability Does Not Exist !

Jun 03 2013 | comment(s)

"The abandonment of superstitious beliefs about the existence of Phlogiston, the Cosmic Ether, Absolute Space and Time, ... , or Fairies and Witches, was an essential step along the road to scientific thinking. Probability, too, if regarded as something endowed with some kind of objective existence, is no less a misleading misconception, an illusory attempt to exteriorize or materialize our true probabilistic beliefs."

Bruno De Finetti
The Mousetrap Myth

The Mousetrap Myth

Jun 02 2013 | comment(s)

The Mousetrap Myth

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.  The metaphor of a better mousetrap suggests that any really useful invention will be eagerly adopted. In this series of articles I trace a history of invention and discovery which shows that resistance is more likely than acceptance, even for proven life-saving inventions and facilities.



A better mousetrap ?
The mathematics of sloth canon number sequences and Per Nørgård's infinity series

The mathematics of sloth canon number sequences and Per Nørgård's infinity series

Jun 02 2013 | comment(s)

This describes the maths behind the sloth canon number sequences described in my Self Similar Sloth Canon Number Sequences article

It simplifies the proofs here to use a 0 based notation. So we define an integer sequence f(n) as a map from the non negative integers to the integers. The first term in the sequence is f(0).

Sloth Canon Sequences

Definition of a sloth canon sequence

Camp Lawton, Recently Discovered Civil War Prison Camp, Yields 600 Artifacts

Camp Lawton, Recently Discovered Civil War Prison Camp, Yields 600 Artifacts

Jun 02 2013 | comment(s)

Discovery in science means something different than discovery in common terms. Local people may have seen a snake for 500 years but if it turns out to be a new species, that is a discovery.

There also many Civil War-era battle and camp sites that local people know about but that archaeologists have not cataloged yet - they are not in history books and so the sites have not been officially analyzed. In Civil War CSI: Did Stonewall Jackson Die From Pneumonia? I posted a picture of a bullet I found wandering around one of those overgrown sites in South Carolina that haven't been analyzed yet:
Music And Mathematics Of Fractal-Like Sloth Canon Number Sequences

Music And Mathematics Of Fractal-Like Sloth Canon Number Sequences

Jun 02 2013 | comment(s)

The Danish composer Per Nørgård uses an endless self similar (fractal like) strict sloth canon structure in some of his compositions such as his Symphony number 2. He first discovered his sequence in 1959.

Oldest Known Complete Torah Scroll Announced After Dating Error Corrected

Oldest Known Complete Torah Scroll Announced After Dating Error Corrected

Jun 02 2013 | comment(s)

Two separate carbon-dating tests have confirmed the oldest known complete Torah scroll, a sheepskin document dating from 1155-1225. It had been mistakenly cataloged a century ago as dating from the 17th century.

The find isn't the oldest Torah text in the world, Hebrew codexes known as the Leningrad and the Aleppo bibles, date hundreds of years earlier but this is the oldest Torah scroll of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, according to Mauro Perani, a professor of Hebrew in the University of Bologna's cultural heritage department.
When We Hear A Baby Cry, There Are Gender Variations In Brain Activity

When We Hear A Baby Cry, There Are Gender Variations In Brain Activity

Jun 02 2013 | comment(s)

Researchers behind a new paper say women's brains appear to be hard-wired to respond to the cries of a hungry infant.

They asked men and women to let their minds wander, then played a recording of white noise interspersed with the sounds of an infant crying. Brain scans showed that, in the women, patterns of brain activity abruptly switched to an attentive mode when they heard the infant cries, whereas the men's brains remained in the resting state.