Science news of the day thread.

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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Tue Oct 18, 2011 7:30 pm

Valigarmander wrote:http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... CMP=twt_gu
Officials in Rick Perry's home state of Texas have set off a scientists' revolt after purging mentions of climate change and sea-level rise from what was supposed to be a landmark environmental report. The scientists said they were disowning the report on the state of Galveston Bay because of political interference and censorship from Perry appointees at the state's environmental agency.

By academic standards, the protest amounts to the beginnings of a rebellion: every single scientist associated with the 200-page report has demanded their names be struck from the document. "None of us can be party to scientific censorship so we would all have our names removed," said Jim Lester, a co-author of the report and vice-president of the Houston Advanced Research Centre.

"To me it is simply a question of maintaining scientific credibility. This is simply antithetical to what a scientist does," Lester said. "We can't be censored." Scientists see Texas as at high risk because of climate change, from the increased exposure to hurricanes and extreme weather on its long coastline to this summer's season of wildfires and drought.

However, Perry, in his run for the Republican nomination, has elevated denial of science, from climate change to evolution, to an art form. He opposes any regulation of industry, and has repeatedly challenged the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Texas is the only state to refuse to sign on to the federal government's new regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. "I like to tell people we live in a state of denial in the state of Texas," said John Anderson, an oceanography at Rice University, and author of the chapter targeted by the government censors.

That state of denial percolated down to the leadership of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The agency chief, who was appointed by Perry, is known to doubt the science of climate change. "The current chair of the commission, Bryan Shaw, commonly talks about how human-induced climate change is a hoax," said Anderson.

But scientists said they still hoped to avoid a clash by simply avoiding direct reference to human causes of climate change and by sticking to materials from peer-reviewed journals. However, that plan began to unravel when officials from the agency made numerous unauthorised changes to Anderson's chapter, deleting references to climate change, sea-level rise and wetlands destruction.

"It is basically saying that the state of Texas doesn't accept science results published in Science magazine," Anderson said. "That's going pretty far."

Officials even deleted a reference to the sea level at Galveston Bay rising five times faster than the long-term average – 3mm a year compared to .5mm a year – which Anderson noted was a scientific fact. "They just simply went through and summarily struck out any reference to climate change, any reference to sea level rise, any reference to human influence – it was edited or eliminated," said Anderson. "That's not scientific review that's just straight forward censorship."

Mother Jones has tracked the changes. The agency has defended its actions. "It would be irresponsible to take whatever is sent to us and publish it," Andrea Morrow, a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. "Information was included in a report that we disagree with."

She said Anderson's report had been "inconsistent with current agency policy", and that he had refused to change it. She refused to answer any questions. Campaigners said the censorship by the Texas state authorities was a throwback to the George Bush era when White House officials also interfered with scientific reports on climate change.

In the last few years, however, such politicisation of science has spread to the states. In the most notorious case, Virginia's attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, who is a professed doubter of climate science, has spent a year investigating grants made to a prominent climate scientist Michael Mann, when he was at a state university in Virginia.

Several courts have rejected Cuccinelli's demands for a subpoena for the emails. In Utah, meanwhile, Mike Noel, a Republican member of the Utah state legislature called on the state university to sack a physicist who had criticised climate science doubters.

The university rejected Noel's demand, but the physicist, Robert Davies said such actions had had a chilling effect on the state of climate science. "We do have very accomplished scientists in this state who are quite fearful of retribution from lawmakers, and who consequently refuse to speak up on this very important topic. And the loser is the public," Davies said in an email.

"By employing these intimidation tactics, these policymakers are, in fact, successful in censoring the message coming from the very institutions whose expertise we need."
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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Tero » Wed Oct 26, 2011 11:04 pm

Recalculation proves Christians right about imaginary 6000 years!
http://teroreport.blogspot.com/2011/10/ ... s-old.html
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Jonesboy » Sun Nov 27, 2011 4:06 am

Gawdzilla wrote:What a cute, fluffy galaxy!
Alan Boyle writes

The spiral galaxy NGC 3521 spans 50,000 light-years and holds billions upon billions of blazing stars. Like most spiral galaxies, it's thought to contain a supermassive black hole at its center. It's a swirling maw of raw cosmic power. So how could you call it "fluffy"?]
You call it what you bloody well want to but I call it fluffy. Alright? atheist-no-head?

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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Sun Nov 27, 2011 12:47 pm

So much work yet to be done with you.
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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Sun Nov 27, 2011 12:49 pm

Scientists say fish hooks go back 42,000 years
Artifacts from East Timor suggest ancient humans hauled in tuna and sharks

By Alicia Chang
updated 11/25/2011 6:54:32 PM ET

LOS ANGELES — Humans were expert deep-sea fishermen as far back as 42,000 years ago, hauling in tuna, sharks and barracudas, new research suggests.

Fish appeared in the human diet about 1.9 million years ago. Early catchers waded into freshwater lakes and streams without the need for boats or complex tools. It wasn't until later that humans decided to ply the ocean in search of fish.

The latest evidence comes from an excavation on the southeast Asian island of East Timor where remains of tuna and other deep-water fish were uncovered inside a cave. Using dating techniques, a team led by archaeologist Sue O'Connor of Australian National University determined the age to be 42,000 years old — making it the earliest evidence for ocean fishin

The findings were reported in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Since catching tuna and marine fish requires tools and advance planning, this meant people must have developed the mental and technological know-how to exploit the sea.

"It increases our insight into the developing abilities of early modern people," Eric Delson, an anthropologist at Lehman College of the City University of New York who had no role in the research, said in an email.

Early anglers probably fashioned boats by tying logs together and used nets and sharpened pieces of wood or shells as hooks, said Kathlyn Stewart, a research scientist at the Canadian Museum of Nature, who was not part of the study.

"These people were smart," she said. They knew "there were fish out there."

It's unclear how far the early mariners ventured. Once the bounty was caught, they likely ate it raw or went back to camp to cook it, Stewart said.

Along with the fish remains, researchers also unearthed fragments of fish hooks made out of bone from the same East Timor site including one that dated to between 16,000 and 23,000 years ago.

"The hooks were definitely used for ocean fishing but we can't be sure which species," O'Connor said in an email.

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Photos show both sides of a fish hook that was apparently used to pull in tuna, sharks and barracuda 42,000 years ago. The scale indicates centimeters
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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Mon Nov 28, 2011 12:35 pm

Scan't Evidence: Do MRIs Relieve Symptoms of Depression?

Researchers continue to explore whether magnetic fields produced by magnetic resonance imagers and other devices improve mood in those who suffer from depressive disorders

By Ferris Jabr | November 28, 2011

When a researcher asks a volunteer to slide head-first into the open eye of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, the expectation is that the device's magnetic field will penetrate the skull to produce a faithful picture of the brain without changing its behavior. A new study suggests, however, that MRI machines do, in fact, manipulate brain activity—and they change the brain in a way that helps treat depression. In other words, MRIs may be unintentional antidepressants.

Hadi Rokni-Yazdi of Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Iran and his colleagues organized 51 volunteers with major depressive disorder into three 17-person groups. Volunteers in the first two groups received one of two kinds of MRI scan. Those in the third group received phony MRI scans: The magnet was never switched on, but a recording of the sound generated by a genuine session was played to convince the volunteers they had been scanned. All the subjects were taking common antidepressants known as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and all had their level of depression assessed by standard scales before and after the procedure.

Two weeks after the scans, volunteers in the first two groups scored between 35 and 40 percent lower on the depression scales than they scored before the scan. The placebo effect may have played a role; when people believe they are receiving a helpful treatment for anything, they often feel better afterward. But volunteers in the pretend MRI group improved less, only by 15 to 19 percent. So, the researchers reasoned, some other factor must explain why volunteers who received phony MRIs showed less improvement. The results are discussed in the November issue of Brain Imaging and Behavior.

One possibility is that the magnetic field created by the MRI machine somehow acts as an antidepressant. Scientists have been investigating the idea that magnets can relieve depression for more than a decade. Most studies have focused on repetitive transcranial magnetic simulation (rTMS), in which an alternating magnetic field induces electric currents in specific regions of the brain, with mixed results. However, a few studies have asked the same questions about MRIs, which create a weaker magnetic field and thus weaker electric currents. Previously, researchers have found that MRIs or devices that generate similarly weak magnetic stimulation improved mood in patients with bipolar disorder—who fluctuate between mania and depression—and helped relieve depression in rats and mice.

But the evidence so far has failed to persuade most scientists, not least because no one has been able to explain exactly how magnetic stimulation alters brain activity in a way that improves depression—although at least one researcher has a few ideas.

About eight years ago, Michael Rohan of Harvard Medical School’s McLean Hospital was running MRI studies of people with depression and noticed that the volunteers emerged from the scans with improved moods. Rohan has been looking into the matter ever since and has recently finished an as-of-yet unpublished study that "looks favorable," he says. He has even created a tabletop device that produces the same electric fields generated by magnetic pulses inside the MRI machine. Because the electric fields generated by an MRI's magnet are too weak to change the behavior of axons—the long tails of neurons that send out signals—Rohan thinks that, instead, the electric fields somehow synchronize signals in a neuron's dendrites, the many branches that receive signals from nearby cells. Out-of-sync electrical activity has been implicated in many brain disorders.

"We're still in the early stages," Rohan stresses. "All of this is exploratory."

As neuroscience blogger Neuroskeptic points out, another possibility is that the results in the new study are a statistical fluke. Almost all the volunteers improved, and those who recovered the most may have wound up in the first two groups by chance. The smaller the number of participants, the more likely this kind of statistical fluke can occur.

Or, perhaps, it was the placebo effect after all. Volunteers in the fake scan group may have improved less overall because some noticed that, despite attempts to hide it, something was a little off or simply did not buy into the idea as much as volunteers who had received real scans, especially if they had prior experience with MRIs—a question the researchers did not ask.

The study is only the first clinical trial to specifically investigate whether MRIs can help people suffering from major depressive disorder, and the intriguing results will likely inspire other researchers to try similar experiments of their own.
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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Ronja » Tue Nov 29, 2011 9:03 pm

Gawdzilla wrote:... magnetic fields produced by magnetic resonance imagers ...

By Ferris ...
:hehe:
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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Mon Dec 05, 2011 11:38 am

The Holden Hurricane is back.

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Holden, the Australian-born unit of General Motors, has gone back in time like Doc Brown, restoring its very first concept car — the 1969 Holden Hurricane. Not only does it still look insanely gorgeous more than 40 years later, but the advanced technologies it displayed — a rear-view camera, route guidance system and digital instruments — show yet again why GM's down-under division was years ahead of its time.

The futuristic research vehicle, originally designed as an experiment "to study design trend, propulsion systems and other long-range developments," has been restored to its former glory 42 years after it originally hit the floor of the 1969 Melbourne Motor Show.
Courtesy of Jalopnik

Codenamed RD 001, the Hurricane is a mid-engine, rear-wheel drive, two-seat sports car featuring such innovative, forward-thinking features and technology as electronic digital instrument displays, station-seeking radio, automatic temperature control air conditioning, rear-view camera and an automated route finder were all showcased in this car.

Yes, that's right — a rear-view backup camera and a "route guidance system" — in a car from 1969!

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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Mon Dec 05, 2011 11:46 am

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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Mon Dec 05, 2011 12:30 pm

Pre-loaded Android apps leave phones open to attack
Some contain serious glitch that attacker could exploit, researchers say
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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Tue Dec 13, 2011 1:39 pm

"It's NOT dead, Jim!"

Large parts of Mars ‘could sustain life’

Posted by Paul Sutherland on December 12th, 2011

Large areas of Mars could be home to primitive alien life, space scientists have concluded. Computer modelling showed that three per cent of the Red Planet could sustain simple bugs, compared to one per cent of Earth, from its core to its upper atmosphere.

The research, by astrobiologists in Australia, concluded that most of the habitable parts of the smaller Mars lie underground. The planet is bombarded with radiation from the sun that would destroy life as we know it because, unlike Earth, Mars has no protective magnetic shield.

A team from the Australian National University compared temperature and pressure conditions here with those on Mars to estimate how much of it might be suitable for life. The scientists, who modelled conditions on Mars to examine how much of the red planet was habitable, said that “large regions” could sustain microbes. Team leader Charley Lineweaver said: “The simple answer is yes. There are large regions of Mars that are compatible with terrestrial life.”

Dr Lineweaver said decades of data was used to carry out the computer modelling, reported in NASA’s Astrobiology journal. From estimates of the amount of water ice found at the martian poles, the scientists worked out how much of the planet could have water that Earth-like microbes could live on.

Liquid water cannot exist on the cold surface of Mars because it instantly turns to steam. But below the surface the extra pressure allows it to survive. And heat spreading from the core of the Red Planet would provide enough warmth to allow micro-organisms and bacteria to flourish

A NASA nuclear-powered spaceprobe, Mars Science Laboratory, or Curiosity, is currently en route to Mars for the next stage in the quest to find if the planet has ever been home to life. It will dig deep into the soil to look for chemicals that could be the remains of long-dead martian life.

In 2009, NASA revealed they had observed plumes of methane on Mars, leading some scientists to suggest that it could be being given off by martian organisms alive underground today.
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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Wed Dec 21, 2011 7:30 pm

It's a Small World: Kepler Spacecraft Discovers First Known Earth-Size Exoplanets

NASA's planet-hunting observatory claims its smallest two finds yet, but neither looks hospitable to life

By John Matson | December 20, 2011 |

NASA's Kepler spacecraft is starting to put the pieces together in its search for virtual Earth twins in other planetary systems. Kepler, which launched in 2009, is on the lookout for planets that are about the size of Earth and have temperate surface conditions. One half of that formula was realized on December 5 when mission scientists announced the discovery of a planet in the so-called habitable zone, called Kepler 22 b, a few times larger than Earth. Now Kepler has located its first two Earth-size worlds, and although neither are plausibly hospitable to life, it seems only a matter of time before the mission scores its ultimate goal.

Continues.

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LET'S GET SMALL: The newfound planets Kepler 20 e [far left] and Kepler 20 f [far right] alongside Venus and Earth, the comparably sized worlds in the solar system. In this artist's conception, the cooler planet Kepler 20 f is assumed to host an atmosphere. Image: Tim Pyle
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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Thu Dec 22, 2011 8:21 pm

The Top 10 Science Stories of 2011

Tsunami-damaged nuclear reactors, Twitter-fueled political uprisings, a possible violation of Einsteinian physics--these and other highlights defined this year in science and technology

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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Tero » Tue Jan 03, 2012 7:00 pm

A preprint of today's Tero report:

Science not being read

Of all the  thosands of scientific papers published in 2011, only 17 were read. All were read by Stan Kowalski, 75, an emeritus zoology professor in San Clemente. He reads all experimentals and footnotes. All papers were on spiders and Stan sent in five corrections to the lead authors.

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Re: Science news of the day thread.

Post by Gawdzilla Sama » Tue Jan 03, 2012 7:18 pm

Fighting Somali pirates with science
By Neal Ungerleider
Fast Company

Piracy is a serious problem in the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. While NATO, Russian, Iranian, and Chinese ships all escort merchant vessels through the Gulf of Aden, foreign militaries can't be everywhere at once. Ships traveling through dangerous waters often need to create their own improvised anti-pirate defenses ... and the market for these products is booming. A variety of arms contractors and boutique manufacturers are producing everything from “stinky water” walls to high-powered water cannons to deter murderous Somali pirates.

One firm, the International Maritime Security Network, markets an expensive defense package called the “Triton Shield Anti-Piracy System.” The integrated product, which includes everything from on-ship security guards to a specialized camera system, also creates a wall of very stinky water. Bloomberg's Julie Bykowicz uncovered an impenetrable wall of stinky, foul-smelling water that can be deployed by Triton against potential pirate skiffs. International Maritime Security's Ralph Pundt described the smell as that of “a skunk on steroids."
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