Well, it's official. Al Gore has something to put in his lockbox.
The worst part is the inevitable querulousness and logical fallacies sure to emanate from the right-wing echo chamber: the Nobel Committee has a liberal bias, the U.N. is irrelevant, the "jury is still out" on climate change, and so on.
The ostriches on the right can't win the argument on scientific grounds, so their only option is to discredit their opponents.
I suggest the ostriches establish their own award ("The Inhofe Prize", perhaps?) for advances in rejecting overwhelming scientific consensus. Let the people decide which award they want to take seriously. Let the marketplace decide. The prize can be endowed by Exxon, which shouldn't be any problem.
12 October 2007
11 October 2007
Study Correlates Hip Size and Breast Cancer Risk
From BBC News:
A study led by the University of Southampton found breast cancer rates were more than three times higher among women whose mothers had wide hips.
Rates were more than seven times higher if those mothers had already given birth to one or more children.
The researchers said their work supported the hypothesis that wide, round hips reflect high levels of sex hormone production at puberty, which continue into adult life, and impact on the embryo during pregnancy.
...breast cancer risk may be raised for a daughter during the first weeks of pregnancy if the embryo's developing breast tissue are exposed to particularly high levels of oestrogen circulating in the mother's blood.
That's bad news for a lot of women, but especially those in developing countries, where 70% of future breast cancer cases are expected to arise, as TIME's new cover story explains.
A study led by the University of Southampton found breast cancer rates were more than three times higher among women whose mothers had wide hips.
Rates were more than seven times higher if those mothers had already given birth to one or more children.
The researchers said their work supported the hypothesis that wide, round hips reflect high levels of sex hormone production at puberty, which continue into adult life, and impact on the embryo during pregnancy.
...breast cancer risk may be raised for a daughter during the first weeks of pregnancy if the embryo's developing breast tissue are exposed to particularly high levels of oestrogen circulating in the mother's blood.
That's bad news for a lot of women, but especially those in developing countries, where 70% of future breast cancer cases are expected to arise, as TIME's new cover story explains.
Physics Nobel Breaks New Ground
The physics prize is typically awarded for advances in the understanding of how the universe works on a cosmic scale or quantum scale. But this year it was awarded to two scientists for a nanotechnology breakthrough.
From the MIT Technology Review:
This year's Nobel Prize in physics has been given to a pair of researchers who discovered a magnetic property that opened the way for today's fast and compact hard drives, making possible everything from iPods to the massive data centers that serve as the backbone of the Internet. The discovery has helped improve data storage density by at least an order of magnitude. And it is paving the way for several experimental technologies that could increase it even more.
...in awarding the prize, the Nobel committee pointed to the wide-ranging importance of GMR in opening up the new science of spintronics, in which both the charge and spin of electrons is manipulated. The discovery, which the committee describes as one of the first payoffs of nanotechnology, has in turn now become "a driving force for new applications of nanotechnology."
The physics prize may not be the only award to break new ground this year. It would be something new if Gore wins the Peace Prize because it is usually awarded for direct efforts to rid violence and injustice in a specific part of the world.
From the MIT Technology Review:
This year's Nobel Prize in physics has been given to a pair of researchers who discovered a magnetic property that opened the way for today's fast and compact hard drives, making possible everything from iPods to the massive data centers that serve as the backbone of the Internet. The discovery has helped improve data storage density by at least an order of magnitude. And it is paving the way for several experimental technologies that could increase it even more.
...in awarding the prize, the Nobel committee pointed to the wide-ranging importance of GMR in opening up the new science of spintronics, in which both the charge and spin of electrons is manipulated. The discovery, which the committee describes as one of the first payoffs of nanotechnology, has in turn now become "a driving force for new applications of nanotechnology."
The physics prize may not be the only award to break new ground this year. It would be something new if Gore wins the Peace Prize because it is usually awarded for direct efforts to rid violence and injustice in a specific part of the world.
09 October 2007
Answers not in Genesis
One of the best college classes I took was a course in American philosophy. And one of the best thinkers was William James. And one of the best things he wrote was The Varieties of Religious Experience.
An excerpt:
WERE one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto. This belief and this adjustment are the religious attitude in the soul. I wish during this hour to call your attention to some of the psychological peculiarities of such an attitude as this, or belief in an object which we cannot see. All our attitudes, moral, practical, or emotional, as well as religious, are due to the "objects" of our consciousness, the things which we believe to exist, whether really or ideally, along with ourselves. Such objects may be present to our senses, or they may be present only to our thought. In either case they elicit from us a reaction; and the reaction due to things of thought is notoriously in many cases as strong as that due to sensible presences. It may be even stronger.
Now, over 100 years later, we understand (well, some of us) that the question is not whether God exists, but why the human mind thinks God exists.
This SciAm article is about some recent neuroscience experiments which investigated the relationship between religious experience and brain activity. An excerpt:
Michael Persinger of Laurentian University in Ontario sought to artificially re-create religious feelings by electrically stimulating that large subdivision of the brain. So Persinger created the “God helmet,” which generates weak electromagnetic fields and focuses them on particular regions of the brain’s surface.
Sorry if it ruins your day, but if gets Rod Parsely off the air, it will be worth it. Also, the God Helmet is now available at Wal-Mart.
(h/t Al Fin)
An excerpt:
WERE one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto. This belief and this adjustment are the religious attitude in the soul. I wish during this hour to call your attention to some of the psychological peculiarities of such an attitude as this, or belief in an object which we cannot see. All our attitudes, moral, practical, or emotional, as well as religious, are due to the "objects" of our consciousness, the things which we believe to exist, whether really or ideally, along with ourselves. Such objects may be present to our senses, or they may be present only to our thought. In either case they elicit from us a reaction; and the reaction due to things of thought is notoriously in many cases as strong as that due to sensible presences. It may be even stronger.
Now, over 100 years later, we understand (well, some of us) that the question is not whether God exists, but why the human mind thinks God exists.
This SciAm article is about some recent neuroscience experiments which investigated the relationship between religious experience and brain activity. An excerpt:
Michael Persinger of Laurentian University in Ontario sought to artificially re-create religious feelings by electrically stimulating that large subdivision of the brain. So Persinger created the “God helmet,” which generates weak electromagnetic fields and focuses them on particular regions of the brain’s surface.
In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence—a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is—or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language—terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.
Persinger thus argues that religious experience and belief in God are merely the results of electrical anomalies in the human brain.Sorry if it ruins your day, but if gets Rod Parsely off the air, it will be worth it. Also, the God Helmet is now available at Wal-Mart.
(h/t Al Fin)
07 October 2007
Holy Vanillin!
In my family, we like to gather for brunch every Sunday and discuss the latest developments in dung research. As you can imagine, we were very excited over the latest news.
Mayu Yamamoto, a former researcher at the International Medical Center of Japan, has won this year’s Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize for developing a method for extracting vanillin — an ingredient in vanilla fragrance and flavoring — from cow dung.
Yamamoto says that widespread adoption of her method could help the environment because companies would make greater use of cow dung, which arguably contributes to global warming.
As a bonus prize, Toscanini’s Ice Cream in Cambridge, Massachusetts has invented a new flavor — Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist — to honor Yamamoto...
The annual Ig Nobel Prizes are meant to honor scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think,” according to the founders...
And hopefully that stretch of I-65 between Lafayette and Chicago will smell better someday.
Mayu Yamamoto, a former researcher at the International Medical Center of Japan, has won this year’s Ig Nobel Chemistry Prize for developing a method for extracting vanillin — an ingredient in vanilla fragrance and flavoring — from cow dung.
Yamamoto says that widespread adoption of her method could help the environment because companies would make greater use of cow dung, which arguably contributes to global warming.
As a bonus prize, Toscanini’s Ice Cream in Cambridge, Massachusetts has invented a new flavor — Yum-A-Moto Vanilla Twist — to honor Yamamoto...
The annual Ig Nobel Prizes are meant to honor scientific achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think,” according to the founders...
And hopefully that stretch of I-65 between Lafayette and Chicago will smell better someday.
05 October 2007
Music as Performance-Enhancing Drug
Barry Bonds vs. Barry White?
Technology like the mp3 player is revolutionising sports psychology, according to an expert who says these devices are allowing athletes to harness the psychological benefits of music as never before.
"It's certainly going to add a new level to [athletic] potential," says Terry, who has been to seven Olympic Games as a sports psychologist and published widely on the power of music in enhancing athletic performance.
But he says the technology could create a whole new conundrum for sports authorities by making them redefine whether the use of performance enhancing music is cheating.
In 1998 Haile Gebreselasie set an indoor world record for the 2000 metres by synchronising his stride rate to the song Scatman.
The question of cheating may become even more fraught with the prospect of tiny mp3 players that can be worn under the skin.
Seems a little far fetched; I think by the time music technology gets to that point, other performance-enhancing methods will have advanced considerably enough to be far more worrisome. Still interesting, though.
Technology like the mp3 player is revolutionising sports psychology, according to an expert who says these devices are allowing athletes to harness the psychological benefits of music as never before.
"It's certainly going to add a new level to [athletic] potential," says Terry, who has been to seven Olympic Games as a sports psychologist and published widely on the power of music in enhancing athletic performance.
But he says the technology could create a whole new conundrum for sports authorities by making them redefine whether the use of performance enhancing music is cheating.
In 1998 Haile Gebreselasie set an indoor world record for the 2000 metres by synchronising his stride rate to the song Scatman.
The question of cheating may become even more fraught with the prospect of tiny mp3 players that can be worn under the skin.
Seems a little far fetched; I think by the time music technology gets to that point, other performance-enhancing methods will have advanced considerably enough to be far more worrisome. Still interesting, though.
04 October 2007
Medical Miracle of the Day
Man lives after chair leg penetrates eye socket and throat.
During a brawl, another 20-year-old, Liam Peart, threw a metal-framed chair at Fahkri. The chair leg went through Fahkri's eye socket and down into his neck. Amazingly, Fahkri not only survived but did not lose his eye, which was pushed to the side by the chair leg.
During a brawl, another 20-year-old, Liam Peart, threw a metal-framed chair at Fahkri. The chair leg went through Fahkri's eye socket and down into his neck. Amazingly, Fahkri not only survived but did not lose his eye, which was pushed to the side by the chair leg.
Medical Mystery of the Day
Hmmm...
DOCTORS ARE predictably baffled by what would appear to be a medical mystery. Over the last three days, assorted plant leaves and seeds have been continuously popping out from one of the ears of Aman Deep, a 12-year old boy in Faridabad.
ENT specialists, and the radiologists who performed a high-resolution CT Scan of the boy's skull on Friday, looked clueless after the test as they sought to find an explanation. The boy's ear poured out two leaves even during the investigation at the diagnostic center here. As the doctors tried to figure out the mystery, others are already attributing it to superstition and something that was beyond the world of medicine and science.
DOCTORS ARE predictably baffled by what would appear to be a medical mystery. Over the last three days, assorted plant leaves and seeds have been continuously popping out from one of the ears of Aman Deep, a 12-year old boy in Faridabad.
ENT specialists, and the radiologists who performed a high-resolution CT Scan of the boy's skull on Friday, looked clueless after the test as they sought to find an explanation. The boy's ear poured out two leaves even during the investigation at the diagnostic center here. As the doctors tried to figure out the mystery, others are already attributing it to superstition and something that was beyond the world of medicine and science.
01 October 2007
Bush's UN Speech Written FONE-EH-TICK-LEE
Bush is a moron, episode 2175:
...a glimpse of how the President sees his speeches was accidentally placed on the UN website along with the speechwriters' cell phone numbers.
Pronunciations for President Bush's friend French President Sarkozy "[sar-KOzee]" appeared in draft #20 on the UN website. Other pronunciations included the Mugabe "[moo-GAHbee] regime" and pronunciations for countries "Kyrgyzstan [KEYRgeez-stan]" and "Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a]."
The press asked Dana Perino about the matter and she responded with a logical fallacy:
...when asked if the president had a hard time pronouncing some of those country names Perino declined comment saying, "I think that's an offensive question."
...a glimpse of how the President sees his speeches was accidentally placed on the UN website along with the speechwriters' cell phone numbers.
Pronunciations for President Bush's friend French President Sarkozy "[sar-KOzee]" appeared in draft #20 on the UN website. Other pronunciations included the Mugabe "[moo-GAHbee] regime" and pronunciations for countries "Kyrgyzstan [KEYRgeez-stan]" and "Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a]."
The press asked Dana Perino about the matter and she responded with a logical fallacy:
...when asked if the president had a hard time pronouncing some of those country names Perino declined comment saying, "I think that's an offensive question."
Solar Power Without Solar Panels?
A few months ago I read that one hour's worth of solar energy (if it could all be captured) would be enough to provide power for the entire earth for one year.
Currently, solar technology is the least advanced of all the renewable energy technologies. Most of the technical advancements are being made in the area of increasing efficiency of solar cells. But one problem with current technology is that solar cells require solar panels, and solar panels require large areas to set up an array. With land being a finite and increasingly precious resource, that is a problem that can only get worse. Furthermore, solar arrays are only practical in sunny climates.
Japanese scientists are developing an interesting solution to both these problems by putting solar panels on orbiting satellites, which collect the energy and beam it to ground-based power stations in laser form.
Unlike earthbound solar power stations, which are subject to night-time darkness and cloudy conditions, JAXA’s SSPS will be able to make use of solar energy 24 hours a day. With slight improvements in the solar-to-laser conversion efficiency and by incorporating solar collectors measuring 100 to 200 meters long, a single satellite will be able to match the output of a 1-gigawatt nuclear power plant, the researchers say.
Currently, solar technology is the least advanced of all the renewable energy technologies. Most of the technical advancements are being made in the area of increasing efficiency of solar cells. But one problem with current technology is that solar cells require solar panels, and solar panels require large areas to set up an array. With land being a finite and increasingly precious resource, that is a problem that can only get worse. Furthermore, solar arrays are only practical in sunny climates.
Japanese scientists are developing an interesting solution to both these problems by putting solar panels on orbiting satellites, which collect the energy and beam it to ground-based power stations in laser form.
Unlike earthbound solar power stations, which are subject to night-time darkness and cloudy conditions, JAXA’s SSPS will be able to make use of solar energy 24 hours a day. With slight improvements in the solar-to-laser conversion efficiency and by incorporating solar collectors measuring 100 to 200 meters long, a single satellite will be able to match the output of a 1-gigawatt nuclear power plant, the researchers say.
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