[QUOTE=retina;392243]I'm not so sure about warp drives here, but antigrav is definitely something I would put in the same class.[/QUOTE]We already know how to build anti-gravity machines. They've already been built.

The problem is that they are very, very, very feeble. However, they are still useful in certain circumstances, reducing the gravitational field where it is already feeble, such as in high orbit.

Think about it: gravity is curved space-time. Figure out a way to reduce the curvature of space-time in a 4-volume and you have designed an anti-gravity machine.

Googling "Robert L Forward" might enlighten those who doubt the material above.

[QUOTE=xilman;392267]
Googling "Robert L Forward" might enlighten those who doubt the material above.[/QUOTE]
[I]Futuremagic[/I] was great. Reading Robert L Forward makes one fall in love with big engineering projects and dream about the true limits of ingenuity.

[QUOTE=xilman;392267]We already know how to build anti-gravity machines. They've already been built.

The problem is that they are very, very, very feeble.[/QUOTE]So let's do as jasong suggests and throw some money at it, add a few researchers and then problem solved. We will finally be able to get our flying cars at 04:29pm Wednesday 21-Oct-2015.

[QUOTE=retina;392275]So let's do as jasong suggests and throw some money at it, add a few researchers and then problem solved. We will finally be able to get our flying cars at 04:29pm Wednesday 21-Oct-2015.[/QUOTE]It's the timescale which is by far the most infeasible.

Making antigravity machines which are merely very very feeble is presently beyond our technology but well within our understanding of physics.

Flattening spacetime which is as bent as that which occurs near the earth's surface is very beyond our technology and our understanding of the physics is such that there would likely be severe collateral damage outside the flattened 4-volume. Nonetheless, we know how to do it once the engineers have caught up with the physicists. Forward designed such a machine and it played an essential role in his novel [i]Dragon's Egg[/i].

Scott Aaronson's "Quantum Computing since Democritus" is a good read. This thread piqued my interest in several places,
science fiction, quantum theory and relativity. Jack Vance wrote a novel (which I learned later) was about an interesting
idea called the "Sapir-Whorf hypothesis." Regarding quantum theory, people such as R. von Mises (probability/philosophy)
have provided me with insights on how to ask good questions. Regarding "anti-gravity", I don't understand this term. How
is it expressed mathematically? I'm trying to figure out how to factor integers differently and one aspect of my search
involves coordinate geometry where I can proceed from Bezout's identity and theorem into Chow Rings thence into aspects of
String Theory where I can logically proceed to formalize questions involving inertia and gravitation. As an analogy, re-reading
"The Mathematics of the Casimir Effect" by J.P. Dowling never ceases to become stale for me both in terms of the imagination
required to develop the mathematics used and the imaginative application of the mathematics to an interesting physics question.

[QUOTE=xilman;392282]
Flattening spacetime which is as bent as that which occurs near the earth's surface is very beyond our technology and our understanding of the physics is such that there would likely be severe collateral damage outside the flattened 4-volume. [/QUOTE]
Addendum: for a significantly large spatial extent, that is. Forward's design, implemented with attainably dense materials such as uranium, will flatten spacetime by a factor of ten or so over a volume of up to some cubic centimetres.

Yesterday, I downloaded and read "Dragon's Egg" (Del Rey) which took a few hours and was an enjoyable read..I guess I'm obligated to read "Starquake" now (and looking forward to it). Taking nothing away from good science fiction, speculation and conjecture cannot match prototyping a theoretical design that is based on reasoned logic. Velikovsky "Worlds in Collision" and von Daniken "Chariots of the Gods" both had working professionals publish responses as novels in the popular press debunking claims made by those authors. Both V. and VD's books should have been categorized as SciFi. H. Koch's "Diluvian Impact" does a better job of presenting a valid argument. Facts must be substantiated through context and evidence - Popper's and Sherlock's criteria of plausibility and/or impossibility. Proof of magic, seeing Penn and Teller at the Rio for instance does not make their show any less entertaining nor does looking at the night sky through the eyes of General Relativity make it any less mysterious.

As one of the mathematically unsophisticated members of this forum I've been deservedly chewed out for making egregious statements and I've (tried to) learn from these mistakes. Rather than `draw and quarter` some of the logical shortfall I've noted I'll instead suggest reading Chandrasekhar's "..Stellar Structure" and Hawking and Ellis's "..Structure of Space-Time" as one starting point. Regarding Forward's design, I'm the type who would examine the rationale and justification for every rivet. Feynman's report on the Challenger disaster would pale in comparison if Forward's design was implemented "for real" and went haywire.

Certain mathematical formulae may seem magical (choose your own example) because they describe realities that we may (or may not) interact with that we can or cannot prove (yet),ie. special relativity and Riemann's Hypothesis. Great SciFi is riveting psychologically, on-point factually and effortlessly takes the reader those extra steps beyond state-of-the-art. There exist papers in arXiv which are pure dreck and there are patents that have been granted (yep) involving telekinesis and ESP. Obtaining credible information from sources like those is like watching "Galaxy Quest" and believing it's true.

[QUOTE=jwaltos;392445]Yesterday, I downloaded and read "Dragon's Egg" (Del Rey) which took a few hours and was an enjoyable read..I guess I'm obligated to read "Starquake" now (and looking forward to it). Taking nothing away from good science fiction, speculation and conjecture cannot match prototyping a theoretical design that is based on reasoned logic.
[...]
As one of the mathematically unsophisticated members of this forum I've been deservedly chewed out for making egregious statements and I've (tried to) learn from these mistakes. Rather than `draw and quarter` some of the logical shortfall I've noted I'll instead suggest reading Chandrasekhar's "..Stellar Structure" and Hawking and Ellis's "..Structure of Space-Time" as one starting point. Regarding Forward's design, I'm the type who would examine the rationale and justification for every rivet. Feynman's report on the Challenger disaster would pale in comparison if Forward's design was implemented "for real" and went haywire.

Certain mathematical formulae may seem magical (choose your own example) because they describe realities that we may (or may not) interact with that we can or cannot prove (yet),ie. special relativity and Riemann's Hypothesis. Great SciFi is riveting psychologically, on-point factually and effortlessly takes the reader those extra steps beyond state-of-the-art. There exist papers in arXiv which are pure dreck and there are patents that have been granted (yep) involving telekinesis and ESP. Obtaining credible information from sources like those is like watching "Galaxy Quest" and believing it's true.[/QUOTE]Feynman was quite the showman in the glass of ice water way that he demonstrated to congress that o-ring material does not spring back quickly when cold so that designing for a seal under compression alone is a flawed specification of requirements.

I think that you will find Forward's technical chops quite sophisticated and more rigorous than typical.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_L._Forward[/url]

Yes. That is one reason why I decided to read the novel (s). Some outstanding people have recommended his writing also, A. Clarke and S. Carroll amongst others.

When I was younger, a plethora of people believed in a tremendous amount of dreck: Psychic powers, [I]Chariots of the Gods[/I], [I]In search of Ancient Astronauts[/I], [I]The Secret Life of Plants[/I], Kirlian Photography, Crystals Powers, Pyramid Powers, Homeopathy ad nauseam.

I truly believe that things have improved and the speed of which several bad scientific claims have been debunked in recent years is quite impressive.

[url=opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/getting-grief-right/[/url]Getting Grief Right[/url] | NYTimes

This opinion piece rightly takes the "standard Kubler-Ross 5 Stages of Grieving" recipe to task -- Attempting to live one's life according to some canned 'standard narrative' is a fraught thing to do, especially when the narrative comes from as fuzzy an "ivory tower bandwagon" quasi-science as psychology. But after the taking-to-task of the narrative he was indoctrinated with in school, what does the author do? That's right, he immediately foists upon us an alternative pet narrative:
[quote]Based on my own and my patients’ experiences, I now like to say that the story of loss has three “chapters.” Chapter 1 has to do with attachment: the strength of the bond with the person who has been lost. Understanding the relationship between degree of attachment and intensity of grief brings great relief for most patients. I often tell them that the size of their grief corresponds to the depth of their love.

Chapter 2 is the death event itself. This is often the moment when the person experiencing the loss begins to question his sanity, particularly when the death is premature and traumatic. Mary had prided herself on her ability to stay in control in difficult times. The profound emotional chaos of her baby’s death made her feel crazy. As soon as she was able, she resisted the craziness and shut down the natural pain and suffering.

Chapter 3 is the long road that begins after the last casserole dish is picked up — when the outside world stops grieving with you. Mary wanted to reassure her family, friends and herself that she was on the fast track to closure. This was exhausting. What she really needed was to let herself sink into her sadness, accept it.[/quote]
So, if one finds oneself stuck deep in the Chapter 1 footnotes, or not able to finish Chapter 2 because of leftover casserole dishes one is unable to reunite with their owners, is one 'doing it wrong?" And how many hours of paid psychotherapy might be needed to "restore the narrative flow" in such cases?

Only_human, here is something you may appreciate, I've almost finished reading B. Mandelbrot's memoir, "The Fractalist" and on p. 230 he wrote the following regarding Olber's paradox, "A way to avoid this paradox was proposed by a science fiction writer Edmund Fournier d'Albe and developed by astronomer Carl Charlier." Mandelbrot learned about Fournier d'Albe's model [of scaled structure] and identified it as primitive fractal.

Science fiction has its virtues. Cliches like "chance favours the prepared mind" or the observation of a respected Russian scientist (whose name escapes me at the moment) where he stated something like "many people can look at the same thing but it takes a special person to really see it" seem to indicate that curiosity, awareness and a disciplined openmindedness can be keys to better science and science fiction. [And I'm almost finished "Starquake" -good book.]

Interesting. Wikipedia's entry currently doesn't seem to mention any science fiction connection.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers'_paradox[/url]
[QUOTE]Fractal star distribution
A different resolution, which does not rely on the Big Bang theory, was first proposed by Carl Charlier in 1908 and later rediscovered by Benoît Mandelbrot in 1974. They both postulated that if the stars in the universe were distributed in a hierarchical fractal cosmology (e.g., similar to Cantor dust)—the average density of any region diminishes as the region considered increases—it would not be necessary to rely on the Big Bang theory to explain Olbers' paradox. This model would not rule out a Big Bang but would allow for a dark sky even if the Big Bang had not occurred.[/QUOTE]
I've always considered science fiction to be valuable but then I also thought that the experiences with Vietnam were recent and compelling enough to prevent similar mistakes. So if history doesn't prepare us, speculative forecasting is going to have a hard time too. But I'm a dreamer and believe that science fiction is actively contributing on many levels. On a less scientific note, other fiction also helps engage people to repare for future calamities or disaster responses as in the popular use of zombie models to discuss epidemiology, infrastructure fragility and survival preparedness.

[QUOTE=only_human;392254]Doctor Emmett Brown should have written down the math to both flying cars and hovering skateboards for 2015. 1.21 Gigawatts doesn't just grow on trees.[/QUOTE]

Yes, but his original documentation was placed in a time capsule in 1885, not be opened for fifty years,
in 2035 (do the math yourself).

[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/science/more-progress-made-toward-learning-contents-of-herculaneum-scrolls.html[/url]

[URL="http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30834038"]Memory recall 'better when eyes shut'[/URL]

[URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/16/astronaut-scott-kelly-will-spend-a-year-in-space-while-scientists-study-his-twin-here-on-earth/"]Astronaut Scott Kelly will spend a year in space while scientists study his twin here on Earth[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/brain-plasticity-fact-or-fiction/medical-allied-healthcare"]Brain plasticity: Fact or fiction?[/URL]

[URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-business/11350689/Natural-genius-myth-deters-women-from-science.html"]‘Natural genius’ myth deters women from science[/URL]

[URL="http://www.livescience.com/49477-human-ancestors-diet-taste-evolution.html"]Different Tastes: How Our Human Ancestors' Diets Evolved[/URL]

[URL="http://time.com/3668616/curiositystream-netflix-john-hendricks-science/"]Now There’s a Netflix for Science Fans[/URL]

[URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/scientists-human-activity-has-pushed-earth-beyond-four-of-nine-planetary-boundaries/2015/01/15/f52b61b6-9b5e-11e4-a7ee-526210d665b4_story.html"]Scientists: Human activity has pushed Earth beyond four of nine ‘planetary boundaries’[/URL]

[URL="http://mentalfloss.com/article/61016/11-historys-biggest-pranksters"]11 of History’s Biggest Pranksters[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/muscle-strength-is-in-the-mind/384361/"]Muscle Strength Is in the Mind[/URL]

[URL="http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2015/01/12/376668385/learning-about-the-human-mind-magically"]Learning About The Human Mind, Magically[/URL]

[URL="http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/videos/2015/01/human-brain-prunes-inaccurate-memories"]Human Brain Prunes Inaccurate Memories[/URL]

[URL="http://www.cnet.com/news/artificial-intelligence-experts-sign-open-letter-to-protect-mankind-from-machines/"]Artificial intelligence experts sign open letter to protect mankind from machines[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/md-researchers-teach-robots-cook-youtube-videos-article-1.2065360"]Robots learn how to cook with YouTube videos [/URL]

[URL="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/24/smartphone-brain-plastici_n_6377354.html"]Using Your Phone Is Changing Your Brain[/URL]

[URL="http://wtop.com/science/2015/01/nasa-explores-inflatable-spacecraft-technology/"]NASA explores inflatable spacecraft technology[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533546/the-top-technology-failures-of-2014/"]The Top Technology Failures of 2014[/URL]

[URL="http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/01/first-americans/hodges-text?&sf6351566=1"]Tracking the First Americans[/URL]

[URL="http://psychcentral.com/news/2015/01/05/high-iq-may-protect-against-schizophrenia/79475.html"]High IQ May Protect Against Schizophrenia[/URL]

[url]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/22/living-fossil-shark-australia_n_6524232.html[/url]

[url]http://www.cicret.com/wordpress/?page_id=17920[/url]

[QUOTE=petrw1;393226][URL]http://www.cicret.com/wordpress/?page_id=17920[/URL][/QUOTE]

Uh.....it seems that the battery must have incredible power density, and that the processor uses next to nothing besides. Let's not even get into the needs of a projector which can put out that kind of clarity in daylight.

[url]http://www.snopes.com/photos/technology/cicret.asp[/url]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;392985][url]http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/science/more-progress-made-toward-learning-contents-of-herculaneum-scrolls.html[/url][/QUOTE]

Have only been reading this thread sporadically of late, was about to post link about this, decided to search in page for 'scroll' first - ya beat me to it. Here is 2nd link anyway:

[url=www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150122114405.htm]Major breakthrough in reading ancient scrolls[/url] - Software and advanced imaging used to read un-openable (because carbonized by extreme heat) scrolls at Herculaneum.

[i]"Professor, great news! We began reading the first scroll, it opens with a discussion about '[url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079470/quotes]what have the Romans ever done for us?[/url]' -- truly remarkable material!"[/i]

[URL="http://www.nature.com/news/i-can-haz-genomes-cats-claw-their-way-into-genetics-1.16708"]‘I can haz genomes’: cats claw their way into genetics.[/URL] The cat genome is out of the bag (well, for a while already), and has already helped to pinpoint a gene involved in kidney disease.

[URL="http://www.nature.com/news/sodium-s-explosive-secrets-revealed-1.16771"]Sodium's explosive secrets revealed[/URL] - "The spectacular reaction of alkali metals with water was poorly understood — despite being a staple of chemistry classes."

According to this, the metal quickly loses electrons to water and then metal clusters of positive ions burst apart due to repulsion.

[QUOTE=only_human;393680][URL="http://www.nature.com/news/sodium-s-explosive-secrets-revealed-1.16771"]Sodium's explosive secrets revealed[/URL] - "The spectacular reaction of alkali metals with water was poorly understood — despite being a staple of chemistry classes."

According to this, the metal quickly loses electrons to water and then metal clusters of positive ions burst apart due to repulsion.[/QUOTE]

Amazing!

[QUOTE=kladner;393682]Amazing![/QUOTE]The video is very cool too. High speed cameras. Argon gas. Liquid drops of sodium/potasium alloy. Persuasive.

[URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31001936"]Exoplanet with giant ring system[/URL]

[URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-31001665"]Near asteroid 2004 BL86 has a moon[/URL]

[QUOTE=Batalov;393679][URL="http://www.nature.com/news/i-can-haz-genomes-cats-claw-their-way-into-genetics-1.16708"]‘I can haz genomes’: cats claw their way into genetics.[/URL] The cat genome is out of the bag (well, for a while already), and has already helped to pinpoint a gene involved in kidney disease.[/QUOTE]

Wonder if the kidney-disease-proneness (admittedly this may be more a function of domestic cats living much longer than their wild ancestors/brethren) is related to the marvelous adaptation that allows most cat species to drink salt water if fresh is in short supply?


[QUOTE=ewmayer;393456][url=www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150122114405.htm]Major breakthrough in reading ancient scrolls[/url] - Software and advanced imaging used to read un-openable (because carbonized by extreme heat) scrolls at Herculaneum.[/QUOTE]

More on the subject of "recovering ancient writings from thought-lost scrolls":

[url=www.livescience.com/49543-sappho-new-poems-discovery.html]Sappho's New Poems: The Tangled Tale of Their Discovery[/url]

[url]http://www.mercurynews.com/pets-animals/ci_27418341/rare-sierra-nevada-red-fox-spotted-yosemite-park[/url]

Redd Foxx is playing Yosemite? Interesting...

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;393941][url]http://www.mercurynews.com/pets-animals/ci_27418341/rare-sierra-nevada-red-fox-spotted-yosemite-park[/url][/QUOTE]
Somewhat related:
[url]http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/16/this-will-shatter-your-view-of-apex-predators-how-wolves-change-rivers/[/url]

[url=http://www.mercurynews.com/drought/ci_27419553/driest-january-history-bay-area-swings-from-boom]Driest January in history: Bay Area swings from boom to bust after wettest December[/url] - San Jose Mercury News

So much for the record rains in December being prologue to a drought-busting winter.

[url]http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/chick-food-hunting-hints-at-possible-human-like-number-organization/[/url]

[url]http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/the-powerful-cheat-for-themselves-the-powerless-cheat-for-others/[/url]

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;394965][URL]http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/02/the-powerful-cheat-for-themselves-the-powerless-cheat-for-others/[/URL][/QUOTE]

So the rich and powerful are more likely to be selfish jerks. What a surprise!

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html"]No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning[/URL]


[QUOTE](Phys.org) —The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein's theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

Read more at: [url]http://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html#jCp[/url][/QUOTE]

From what I understood, the Big Bang Theory stated not that before the Big Bang was a singularity, but rather, before the Big Bang was a quantum vacuum (space where particles came into existence and then were instantaneously destroyed by their relative anti-particle), which means a lot of what is said about the Big Bang Theory is wrong.

That being said, I've misunderstood many things before, so please correct me if it's me that's wrong :razz:

There is a pretty good comment there, in discussion:
[QUOTE]orti: You're missing the idea that the new theories or models do not automatically make it factual and "the word" of science, and other model is wrong. When we don't know how something works with an extremely high confidence level, all we can do is keep building models, proposing theories, etc. The authors of this study likely would not make the claim that their model is "right" and singularity models are "wrong" but instead they present it as a POSSIBLE explanation.[/QUOTE]

[URL]http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-eat-less-more-obesity-20150212-story.html[/URL]

[URL="http://www.thelancet.com/journals/landia/article/PIIS2213-8587%2815%2900009-1/abstract"]The full paper is available here for free.[/URL] (Registration required.)
[QUOTE]Many clinicians are not adequately aware of the reasons that individuals with obesity struggle to achieve and maintain weight loss, and this poor awareness precludes the provision of effective intervention. Irrespective of starting weight, caloric restriction triggers several biological adaptations designed to prevent starvation. These adaptations might be potent enough to undermine the long-term effectiveness of lifestyle modification in most individuals with obesity, particularly in an environment that promotes energy overconsumption.[/QUOTE]

More hide'n seek.
 

[URL]http://hothardware.com/news/kaspersky-massive-equation-group-hdd-firmware-spying-ring[/URL]

[URL]http://25zbkz3k00wn2tp5092n6di7b5k.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2015/02/Equation_group_questions_and_answers.pdf[/URL]

Surprise!?

[url]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11419180/Strongest-material-known-to-man-A-limpets-tooth.html[/url]

I have a soft spot for material science and the industrial processes that let us make things, so in honor of National Engineers Week (U.S.),
[QUOTE]In the United States, National Engineers Week is always the week in February which encompasses George Washington's actual birthday, February 22. It is observed by more than 70 engineering, education, and cultural societies, and more than 50 corporations and government agencies. The purpose of National Engineers Week is to call attention to the contributions to society that engineers make. It is also a time for engineers to emphasize the importance of learning math, science, and technical skills.
The celebration of National Engineers Week was started in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers in conjunction with President George Washington's birthday. President Washington is considered as the nation's first engineer, notably for his survey work.
The results of the Federal Engineer of the Year Award are announced during the week.
...
2015 — February 22–28[/QUOTE]
I offer up a couple of results that recently caught my eye:
[QUOTE][URL="http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/news/a13919/new-steel-alloy-titanium/"]Scientists Invent a New Steel as Strong as Titanium[/URL]
South Korean researchers have solved a longstanding problem that stopped them from creating ultra-strong, lightweight aluminum-steel alloys.[QUOTE]The key to creating this new super-steel was overcoming a challenge that had plagued materials scientists for decades. In the 1970's, Soviet researchers discovered that adding aluminum to the mix when creating steel can make an incredibly strong and lightweight metal, but this new steel was unavoidably brittle. You'd have to exert lots of force to reach the limit of its strength, but once you did, the steel would break rather than bend.

Scientists soon realized the problem: When creating the aluminum-steel alloy, they were occasionally fusing atoms of aluminum and iron together to form tough, crystalline structures called B2. These veins and nuggets of B2 were strong but brittle—until Kim and his colleges devised a solution.[/QUOTE][QUOTE]Kim and colleagues spent years devising and altering a method of heat-treating and then thinly rolling their steel to control when and where B2 crystals were formed. The team also discovered that adding a small percentage of nickel offered even more control over B2 formation, as nickel made the crystals form at a much higher temperature.

More Super-Materials to Come?
Kim's team has created the new metal on a small scale. But before it can be mass-produced, researchers must confront a tricky production issue.

Currently, steelmakers use a silicate layer to cover and protect mass-produced steel from oxidation with the air and contamination from the foundry. This silicate can't be used for Kim's steel because it has a tendency to react with the cooling aluminum, compromising the final product. Before we starting building skyscrapers out of super-steel, they'll have to figure out a way to protect the material out in the real world.

It'll be worth it. The final product of all this tinkering "is 13 percent less dense compared to normal steel, and has almost the same strength-to-weight ratio compared to titanium alloys," Kim says. That's remarkable, but Kim insists that the method is actually more important than the result. Now that his results are published, he expects scientists to cook up a multitude of new alloys based on the B2-dispersion method. [/QUOTE][/QUOTE]

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2015-02-cheap-abundant-chemical-outperforms-precious.html"]Cheap and abundant chemical outperforms precious metals as a catalyst[/URL][QUOTE]A team of Caltech chemists has discovered a method for producing a group of silicon-containing organic chemicals without relying on expensive precious metal catalysts. Instead, the new technique uses as a catalyst a cheap, abundant chemical that is commonly found in chemistry labs around the world—potassium tert-butoxide—to help create a host of products ranging from new medicines to advanced materials. And it turns out that the potassium salt is more effective than state-of-the-art precious metal complexes at running very challenging chemical reactions.[/QUOTE][QUOTE]"We have shown for the first time that you can efficiently make carbon-silicon bonds with a safe and inexpensive catalyst based on potassium rather than ultrarare precious metals like platinum, palladium, and iridium," says Anton Toutov, a graduate student working in the laboratory of Bob Grubbs, Caltech's Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry. "We're very excited because this new method is not only 'greener' and more efficient, but it is also thousands of times less expensive than what's currently out there for making useful chemical building blocks. This is a technology that the chemical industry could readily adopt."

The finding marks one of the first cases in which catalysis—the use of catalysts to make certain reactions occur faster, more readily, or at all—moves away from being a practice that is fundamentally unsustainable. While the precious metals in most catalysts are rare and could eventually run out, potassium is an abundant element on Earth.

The team describes its new "green" chemistry technique in the February 5 issue of the journal Nature.
...[/QUOTE]
I don't feel comfortable directly quoting more of this article but this reaction was found by running a control experiment to test the results if the usual expensive metal catalysts were removed. In this case they found that a reaction was still occurring and then followed up on that.

[url=www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/18/haruko-obokata-stap-cells-controversy-scientists-lie]What pushes scientists to lie? The disturbing but familiar story of Haruko Obokata[/url] | Science | The Guardian
[quote]Reproducibility is one of the cornerstones of modern science. Unless an experiment can be repeated again and again by different researchers, each time yielding similar results, it can’t be said to prove anything much. At least that’s the theory. [Early-1900s Nobel laureate Alexis] Carrel’s chicken heart experiment shows how far science can stray from the scientific method. And the fault doesn’t just lie with Carrel and his laboratory. The entire scientific community shares some of the blame because it upheld the dogma of cell immortality for more than 50 years despite the fact that it was based on a single, sensational, irreproducible experiment.

By contrast, the speed of Obokata’s undoing should make us feel more confident about the ability of science to correct itself. As soon as she announced the creation of Stap cells, other researchers tried to make their own and, when they failed, wanted to know why. Without doubt, the standards of cell science have improved since Carrel’s day. Biomedical research is more strictly regulated, and wet lab procedures better established. The internet has also played its part, making it faster and easier for scientists to compare notes and spot errors.

But before we start to congratulate ourselves on the ever-upwards path of science, we should bear in mind that most experiments are never reproduced. There are simply too many of them. Besides which, researchers often don’t have much interest in repeating the work of others. Scientists may be truth-seekers, but they generally prefer new truths. They want to be the first to make a discovery. That’s where all the glory lies; that’s how to get a name for yourself, attract more funding and advance your career. Confirming – or failing to confirm – someone else’s discovery is unlikely to get you very far. It’s unlikely to even get you into print since science journals tend to favour novel research.

[b]Not only are most experiments not reproduced, most are probably not reproducible[/b]. This statement will shock only those who have never worked in a wet lab. Those who have will already suspect as much.

A few years ago, Glenn Begley put this suspicion to the test. As head of cancer research for pharmaceutical giant Amgen, he attempted to repeat 53 landmark experiments in that field, important work published in some of the world’s top science journals. To his horror, he and his team managed to confirm only six of them. That’s a meagre 11%. Researchers at Bayer set up a similar trial and were similarly depressed by the results. Out of 67 published studies into the therapeutic potential of various drugs (mostly for the treatment of cancer), they were able to reproduce less than a quarter.

The Amgen and Bayer studies were too small to tell us how bad the problem really is, but they do illustrate something that biomedical researchers already know in their heart of hearts: reproducibility is the exception rather than the rule. There are probably many reasons for this. Apart from outright fraud, there are all those “benevolent mistakes” that scientists make more or less unwittingly: poor experiment design, sloppy data management, bias in the interpretation of facts and inadequate communication of results and methods. Then, of course, there is the devilish complexity of reality itself, which withholds more than it reveals to the prying eyes of science. [/quote]

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/health/study-shows-brain-stores-seemingly-trivial-memories-just-in-case.html?_r=1"]How the Brain Stores Trivial Memories, Just in Case[/URL]

[URL="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/140122-human-tools-hands-ancient-science/"]Human Ancestors May Have Used Tools Half-Million Years Earlier Than Thought[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/01/why-cant-robots-understand-sarcasm/384714/"]Why Can't Robots Understand Sarcasm[/URL]

[URL="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/23/largest-study-of-its-kind_n_6523868.html"]Cracking the Brain's Genetic Code[/URL]

[URL="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2910238/How-speak-100-years-90-languages-extinct-migration-linguist-claims.html"]How will we speak in 100 years? 90% of languages will become extinct because of migration, linguist claims[/URL]

[URL="http://www.computerworld.com/article/2877892/mini-brain-in-spinal-cord-helps-brain-keep-body-balanced.html"]'Mini-brain' in spinal cord helps brain keep body balanced[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150129160858.htm"]Complex environments push 'brain' evolution[/URL]

[URL="http://www.fastcompany.com/3041493/body-week/why-a-fake-article-cuckoo-for-cocoa-puffs-was-accepted-by-17-medical-journals"]WHY A FAKE ARTICLE TITLED "CUCKOO FOR COCOA PUFFS?" WAS ACCEPTED BY 17 MEDICAL JOURNALS[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150130092913.htm"]DNA clock helps to get measure of people's lifespans[/URL]

[URL="http://news.discovery.com/tech/artificial-brain-edges-closer-to-reality-150213.htm"]Artificial Brain Edges Closer to Reality[/URL]

[URL="http://www.news-medical.net/news/20150213/Background-noise-in-the-brain-shapes-neuron-growth.aspx"]Background noise in the brain shapes neuron growth[/URL]

[URL="http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1113333123/floods-created-europes-largest-waterfall-021215/"]Extreme floods created Europe’s largest waterfall[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.com/2015/02/whats-up-with-cats-and-boxes/"]What’s Up With That: Why Do Cats Love Boxes So Much?[/URL]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;396043][URL="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/18/haruko-obokata-stap-cells-controversy-scientists-lie"]What pushes scientists to lie? The disturbing but familiar story of Haruko Obokata[/URL] | Science | The Guardian[/QUOTE]
Thank you for the very interesting read. It neatly parallels the "#arseniclife" story.

I think what they describe eloquently and at length is yet another case of addiction (interestingly the article doesn't mention neither addiction not arsenic life):
[QUOTE]You really want to prove that your hunch is right, that the money invested into your work was well spent, and that you aren’t just frittering your life away in a white coat, in a white room, under fluorescent lights. And of course, you want to get ahead in a competitive field, where the pressure to perform can be intense. But you get your results and they are disappointing. You can see straightaway what the data should look like and how, with just a tweak, you can improve them. All you need to do is count something a little creatively, shift a point on a graph or touch up an image. If you get rid of the original data, no one will ever be the wiser. And maybe your hunch is right anyway. Surely it is. You will find more proof – [I]real[/I] proof – sooner or later if you just keep looking.

But once you start fiddling with the facts, it’s hard to stop. In part, that’s because you have done some reality-testing and discovered just how easy it is to fool your colleagues. In part, too, you have enjoyed their admiration and your improved chances of being published, promoted and otherwise funded. Maybe you even enjoyed the risk. But things get progressively more complicated. You are now expected to build on your past success, which means adding fiction upon fiction while making sure that the whole contrivance fits neatly together...[/QUOTE]Addiction can come in many forms - to gambling, to drugs... One can be addicted to endlessly proving "being right", to collecting meaningless credits, to climbing higher and higher peaks, taking [URL="http://www.mustang-wanted.com/en/"]higher and higher risks[/URL]. There is an endless spectrum of addictions, and some of them a scarier than others. Some of them are benign or even healthy or else why would people ever move forward? Most of the disturbing ones are not understood by the "disease carriers" ("me?! ...suffer from drinking? I enjoy it!!").

[url]http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/intel-forges-ahead-to-10nm-will-move-away-from-silicon-at-7nm/[/url]

Internet goes down and the world ends
 

[url]http://phys.org/news/2015-02-outage-halts-internet-cell-northern.html[/url]

[size=1][color=grey]So how's that online Office 365 working out for ya all then?[/color][/size]

[url=www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/03/04/new-homo-fossil-has-the-genus-emerging-half-a-million-years-early/]The human family may have evolved half a million years earlier than we thought[/url]

This is touted as a major discovery. but strikes me as more jawboning than anything else.

[URL="http://www.thv11.com/story/news/health/2015/03/09/uams-scent-trained-dogs-thyroid-cancer/24646775/"]University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences researchers use scent-trained dogs to detect thyroid cancer[/URL]
[QUOTE]The dogs were then presented with urine samples from patients — some with thyroid cancer and some with benign nodules — and asked to indicate whether each sample had thyroid cancer or not. Their results were compared to a surgical pathology diagnosis and matched in 30 of 34 cases, or 88.2 percent accuracy.

"What we have done, no one has attempted to do," said Ferrando, who noted past studies showing trained dogs can reliably tell the difference between various cancerous and non-cancerous tissues. "We have taken the next step by asking the dog to tell us whether or not cancer exists before the medical diagnostic system does. We wanted to see, can the doctor utilize the dog to help diagnose cancer?"

The results so far lead the researchers to believe the answer is "yes."

"We've all looked at it from a skeptical, scientific standpoint, but the data just keeps leading us to the fact that this has remarkable clinical potential," said Ferrando.

The implications could be tremendous, the researchers said, both in terms of cost savings in diagnoses and especially the prevention of unnecessary surgeries. Additionally, the method could be transported to under-served areas where traditional detection methods of biopsy and ultrasound are unavailable. Finally, the researchers believe the training could potentially be used in diagnosis of other cancers such as ovarian, breast, kidney, bladder and prostate.[/QUOTE]

[url=www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2015/03/09/how-parents-create-narcissistic-children/?tid=pm_national_pop]How parents create narcissistic children[/url] | WaPo. Note how the pseudoscience called 'psychoanalytic theory' appears to have gotten this one spectacularly wrong. (But perhaps I just need therapy to cure me of my unfortunate tendency toward [i]Schadenfreude[/i].)

[url=https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150310-strange-stars-pulse-to-the-golden-mean/]Variable Stars Have Strange Nonchaotic Attractors[/url] | Quanta Magazine

Nice sense of humor on the part of the protagonist:
[quote][John] Learned, a neutrino physicist at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, has a pet theory that super-advanced alien civilizations might send messages by tickling stars with neutrino beams, eliciting Morse code-like pulses. [b]“It’s the sort of thing tenured senior professors can get away with,”[/b] he said. The pulsations of KIC 5520878, recorded recently by NASA’s Kepler telescope, suggested that the star might be so employed.[/quote]
I also got a kick out of one objection-expressing commenter, whose case appears to rest on the proposition that "irrational ratios are a mathematical impossibility." (By way of assuming that a ratio must be of 2 rational numbers.)

[URL="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/08/1-in-200-men-direct-descendants-of-genghis-khan/#.VQXiJSYqX8s"]1 in 200 men direct descendants of Genghis Khan[/URL]

[URL="http://www.livescience.com/50071-testing-einstein-general-relativity.html"]Will Einstein's General Relativity Break Under Extreme Conditions?[/URL]

[URL="http://actu.epfl.ch/news/the-first-ever-photograph-of-light-as-both-a-parti/"]The first ever photograph of light as both a particle and wave[/URL]

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2015-03-grand-tree-life-clock-like-trend.html"]Grand tree of life study shows a clock-like trend in new species emergence and diversity[/URL]

[URL="http://www.futurity.org/extroverts-types-brains-864792/"]BRAIN SCANS SHOW EXTROVERTS COME IN 2 TYPES[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/robots-could-cut-us-labor-costs-22-percent-by-2025/education"]Robots could cut US labor costs 22 percent by 2025[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532876/googles-intelligence-designer/"]Google’s Intelligence Designer[/URL]

[URL="http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/12867/20150220/marine-animals-just-getting-bigger-and-bigger.htm"]Marine Animals Just Getting Bigger and Bigger[/URL]

[URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/18/scientists-have-discovered-natures-newest-strongest-material-and-it-comes-from-a-sea-snail/"]Scientists have discovered nature’s newest strongest material[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150219133034.htm"]Tracing languages back to their common ancestors through the statistics of sound shifts[/URL]

Think of the children
 

Save the world from your desktop!

Well, maybe not that grand. But you can help find new asteroids:
[URL="http://www.astronomy.com/news/2015/03/new-desktop-application-has-potential-to-increase-asteroid-detection"]New desktop application has potential to increase asteroid detection[/URL]

The article does not provide the link to the software so here it is: [URL="http://www.topcoder.com/asteroids/"]:spinner:[/URL]

John Greer, a.k.a. The Archdruid, writes about science's self-inflicted loss of societal authority:

[url=thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-view-from-outside_18.html]The View From Outside[/url]

I would add 'pervasive surveillance' to the things our descendants will 'thank' us for, except the youngsters seem to *like* life inside the digital Panopticon.

And I find it bitterly ironic that one field which still suffers far too little public skepticism is the pseudoscience (which the author begs us to not get him started on) known as economics, whose main purpose seems to be providing academic cover to the looter oligarchy.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;398258]
And I find it bitterly ironic that one field which still suffers far too little public skepticism is the pseudoscience (which the author begs us to not get him started on) known as economics, whose main purpose seems to be providing academic cover to the looter oligarchy.[/QUOTE]

[URL]http://www.post-crasheconomics.com/[/URL]

[url=www.businessinsider.com/new-supersymmetry-particles-we-might-find-2015-3]Here are all the new particles we might discover when the world's largest atom smasher turns back on[/url]
[quote]Supersymmetry predicts a partner particle for each particle in physics that we already know about. And these partners have some hilarious and hard-to-pronounce names. For example, for electrons and quarks, physicists simply put an "s" in front of the words to name their partners. So an electron's supersymmetric partner is called a "selectron" and a quark's partner is called a "squark." Collectively, physicists will be hunting for the "sparticle" partners of particles.

[u]Scientists think we haven't seen any of these sparticles yet because they're much heavier than regular particles[/u].[/quote]
I guess the "maybe this particular TOE is all a bunch of hooey" option never occurred to them. /sarc

(But perhaps I'll be in a less curmudgeonly mood once I've 'slepton it.')

[QUOTE=ewmayer;398359][URL="http://www.businessinsider.com/new-supersymmetry-particles-we-might-find-2015-3"]Here are all the new particles we might discover when the world's largest atom smasher turns back on[/URL]

I guess the "maybe this particular TOE is all a bunch of hooey" option never occurred to them. /[STRIKE][B]sarc[/B][/STRIKE][U][B]squark [/B][/U]

(But perhaps I'll be in a less curmudgeonly mood once I've 'slepton it.')[/QUOTE]

Fixed that for you. :razz:

Our power cut this morning has become international news:
[URL]http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32086164[/URL]

Power outages in the Netherlands are relatively rare and also relatively short, partly because we invest in putting cables in the ground where they are less susceptible to bad weather, and partly because our national electricity grid has a lot of redundancy built in. Brian and I had our power back on this morning after just 38 minutes.

Perhaps the airport was less well prepared precisely because this is such a rare occurrence.

[QUOTE=Nick;398781]Our power cut this morning has become international news:
[URL]http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32086164[/URL]

Power outages in the Netherlands are relatively rare and also relatively short, partly because we invest in putting cables in the ground where they are less susceptible to bad weather, and partly because our national electricity grid has a lot of redundancy built in. Brian and I had our power back on this morning after just 38 minutes.

Perhaps the airport was less well prepared precisely because this is such a rare occurrence.[/QUOTE]

That... doesn't sound like a lot of redundancy if one substation fault can take down everything, and I mean everything, for 100-200 km around it. Subways, trains, traffic lights?! Surely each of those relatively important things should have an independent backup...

[QUOTE=Dubslow;398785]That... doesn't sound like a lot of redundancy if one substation fault can take down everything, and I mean everything, for 100-200 km around it. Subways, trains, traffic lights?! Surely each of those relatively important things should have an independent backup...[/QUOTE]
Yes, in theory there should have been backup. There will now obviously need to be an investigation into why the backup failed when it was needed. (By the way, the radius of the affected area was more like 20-30 km. 200 km would be the whole country. We're a bit smaller scale here.:smile:)

[QUOTE=Brian-E;398787]Yes, in theory there should have been backup. There will now obviously need to be an investigation into why the backup failed when it was needed. (By the way, the radius of the affected area was more like 20-30 km. 200 km would be the whole country. We're a bit smaller scale here.:smile:)[/QUOTE]

Heh, the scale always throws me off. I grew up 40 miles (~65 km?) from the nearest city, but I was still firmly in the suburbs, and I generally tell people I'm from that city.

Apparently that's further than from Schipol to Driebergen :surprised: it sure felt like longer when I was a kid...

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2015-03-scientists-elusive-secret-continents.html"]Scientists discover elusive secret of how continents formed[/URL]

[QUOTE]An international research team, led by a Virginia Tech geoscientist, has revealed information about how continents were generated on Earth more than 2.5 billion years ago—and how those processes have continued within the last 70 million years to profoundly affect the planet's life and climate.

Published online today in Nature Geoscience, the study details how relatively recent geologic events—volcanic activity 10 million years ago in what is now Panama and Costa Rica—hold the secrets of the extreme continent-building that took place billions of years earlier.

[/QUOTE]

Fascinating story and site. Thanks! :goodposting:

[QUOTE=Brian-E;398787](By the way, the radius of the affected area was more like 20-30 km. 200 km would be the whole country. We're a bit smaller scale here.:smile:)[/QUOTE]

LOL... For Barbados a radius of 20 km IS the entire country (24 km by 36 km). We've even smaller scale! :smile:

And, as an aside, we often have country-wide power outages (although it's getting better). In 2006 we were without power for seven hours because of a monkey shorting out a high-tension line (poor little monkey...).

[url=www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/science/backpacking-birds-prove-long-shot-theory/article23724723/]Backpacking birds prove long-shot theory[/url][quote]Tiny birds, even tinier backpacks, and a heck of a lot of air miles.

Those are the essential ingredients behind a Canada-U.S. study that appears to have convincingly solved a 50-year-old mystery while at the same time discovering one of the most impressive animal migrations on Earth.

The bird is the blackpoll warbler, a small but tuneful denizen of the boreal forest that can be found in summer months from Alaska to Newfoundland. The mystery has to do with how they get to South America every fall, where they overwinter.

Now, with the help of some clever technology, scientists have the answer: The intrepid warblers take the direct route, flying across the Atlantic for up to 2,800 kilometres at a stretch.

“The idea that a 15-gram bird can fly non-stop over water for days is astounding,” said Bridget Stutchbury, a professor of biology at York University in Toronto, who was not involved in the study. “It’s the first time anyone’s directly proven that that’s what these birds are doing.”[/quote]
But more importantly, how many of the tiny birds would it need to carry a 1-lb coconut across the ocean? (As coconuts are not themselves migratory, they would need to be carried thence somehow, and the 'who or what, and how?' here has been another longstanding scientific mystery). "There is no way the birds could carry such a burden!" you object. "Even if they could securely grip it by the husk, that would force too many of them into close proximity to allow them to fly." Ah, but what if they used a lightweight carrying harness, created say by weaving together strands of creeper or other natural fibers? Then simply roll the coconut onto the manufactured net and have each bird hold a bit of the edge of the net between its dorsal guiding feathers. Think a bird version of the set-up in the Godzilla movie where a bunch of Japanese air force jets (only small plastic models, obviously, but the physics is quite sound) carry the G-man around in a giant net. And thus the mystery of how the coconut arrived in the Americas is solved. 'Tis but a few short hops from England (by way of whose medieval knights the coconut became available there) to Newfoundland by way of Iceland and southern Greenland - both of which could serve as a waystation - and thence into the hands (or claws) of the hero bird-protagonist of the above tale. Science can be so much fun...

The coconut was carried to the Americas by a ticking crocodile - as is well known.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;399254]The intrepid warblers take the direct route, flying across the Atlantic for up to 2,800 kilometres at a stretch.[/QUOTE]They probably do this because they are on the no-fly list and would be [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5217186/US-authorites-divert-Air-France-flight-carrying-no-fly-journalist-to-Mexico.html]refused passage across[/url] the USA.

[QUOTE=retina;399257]They probably do this because they are on the no-fly list and would be [URL="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5217186/US-authorites-divert-Air-France-flight-carrying-no-fly-journalist-to-Mexico.html"]refused passage across[/URL] the USA.[/QUOTE]

LOL.

[QUOTE=only_human;399255]The coconut was carried to the Americas by a ticking crocodile - as is well known.[/QUOTE]

Oh Well. In that case I won't present arguments about the natural buoyancy and salt resistance of coconuts, nor about the path of the Gulf Stream

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/study-if-you-use-internet-explorer-youre-more-likely-to-be-a-bad-employee/education"]Study: If you use Internet Explorer, you just might be a bad employee[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/536171/physicists-describe-new-class-of-dyson-sphere/"]Physicists Describe New Class of Dyson Sphere[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150325132520.htm"]Carbon nanotube fibers make superior links to brain[/URL]

[URL="http://www.science20.com/the_conversation/intellectually_gifted_kids_and_learning_disabilities_often_go_hand_in_hand-154285"]Intellectually Gifted Kids And Learning Disabilities Often Go Hand In Hand[/URL]

[URL="http://thebulletin.org/what-would-happen-if-800-kiloton-nuclear-warhead-detonated-above-midtown-manhattan8023"]What would happen if an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead detonated above midtown Manhattan?[/URL]

[URL="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/19/how-millennials-compare-with-their-grandparents/"]How Millennials today compare with their grandparents 50 years ago[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.com/2015/03/nasas-plan-give-moon-moon"]NASA’s Plan to Give the Moon a Moon[/URL]

[URL="http://time.com/3747816/education-chalkboard-chatroom/"]Will Technology Kill Universities?[/URL]

[URL="http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/17/health/male-memory/index.html"]Men's memories worse than women's, especially with age[/URL]

[URL="http://www.livescience.com/50195-most-precise-clocks-ever-made.html"]5 of the Most Precise Clocks Ever Made[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150319080348.htm"]Crocodile ancestor was top predator before dinosaurs roamed North America[/URL]

[URL="http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/figuring-out-the-peak-age-for-intelligence-isnt-so-simple"]At What Age Does Your Brain Peak?[/URL]

[URL="http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/03/scientists-discover-how-to-change-human-leukemia-cells.html"]Scientists discover how to change human leukemia cells into harmless immune cells[/URL]

[URL="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31556802"]Are humans getting cleverer?[/URL]

for the thread with confusing titles... but I post it here anyhow
 

Ha! Clicking on one of your articles, and reading it, I reached the end and it was another link on the bottom of the page, saying "Cancer risk drops for vegetarians eating fish". Now I didn't click on it, because I never click on things that try to convince you to click, like "you would not believe what this woman did to her dog", or else. I always avoid them. But I am still wondering why the fish would get any risk of cancer, and how eating any vegetarians can actually help the fish to avoid cancer... :razz:

[QUOTE=LaurV;399725]Ha! Clicking on one of your articles, and reading it, I reached the end and it was another link on the bottom of the page, saying "Cancer risk drops for vegetarians eating fish". Now I didn't click on it, because I never click on things that try to convince you to click, like "you would not believe what this woman did to her dog", or else. I always avoid them. But I am still wondering why the fish would get any risk of cancer, and how eating any vegetarians can actually help the fish to avoid cancer... :razz:[/QUOTE]Hmm, should be simple to understand. The cancer risk is low for any creature that eats vegetarians (or any human no matter what the human eats) because other humans will come along and kill that creature out of spite before it has a chance to die from cancer.

Meanwhile, in a long tunnel just outside Geneva:
[URL]https://op-webtools.web.cern.ch/op-webtools/vistar/vistars.php[/URL]

(real-time monitoring from CERN)

Don't take this the wrong way, Mark - always appreciate your linkfests, just feeling especially snarky today:

[QUOTE=rogue;399705][URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/study-if-you-use-internet-explorer-youre-more-likely-to-be-a-bad-employee/education"]Study: If you use Internet Explorer, you just might be a bad employee[/URL][/quote]
Turning the tables, what can we say about companies that make their employees use Word and other crapified MSFT products?

[quote][URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/view/536171/physicists-describe-new-class-of-dyson-sphere/"]Physicists Describe New Class of Dyson Sphere[/URL][/quote]
They have yet to build even one and already they're coming up with 'new, improved' models? (Lemme guess, this is a rush-to-patent thing).

[quote][URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150325132520.htm"]Carbon nanotube fibers make superior links to brain[/URL][/quote]
A.k.a. "The Rice U. folks find ever-more-creative ways to milk the nanotube bandwagon."

[quote][URL="http://www.science20.com/the_conversation/intellectually_gifted_kids_and_learning_disabilities_often_go_hand_in_hand-154285"]Intellectually Gifted Kids And Learning Disabilities Often Go Hand In Hand[/URL][/quote]
Oddly fails to mention a common learning disability here, "being too smart to have have to listen to people dumber than you." We get a lot of that here in Silicon Valley.

[quote][URL="http://thebulletin.org/what-would-happen-if-800-kiloton-nuclear-warhead-detonated-above-midtown-manhattan8023"]What would happen if an 800-kiloton nuclear warhead detonated above midtown Manhattan?[/URL][/quote]
Is there something special about 800kT? Why not just 'round to the nearest megaton?' Anyway, here is my prediction (having not yet read the article): We might actually get some of that financial-sector reform Obama promised us?

[quote][URL="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/03/19/how-millennials-compare-with-their-grandparents/"]How Millennials today compare with their grandparents 50 years ago[/URL][/quote]
Oh gawd, another excuse to push the 'everyone must have a hugely overpriced college degree in order to eat' meme. And note the silence on 'rate of narcissistic personality disorders', 'skill at walking into solid objects while buried in an eGizmo', 'pathological craving for simulacra of human connection in place of the real thing' and other 'skills' possessed by those growing up in the internet age versus those dumb, non-disruptively-creative oldsters.

[quote][URL="http://www.wired.com/2015/03/nasas-plan-give-moon-moon"]NASA’s Plan to Give the Moon a Moon[/URL][/quote]
I gave the moon a moon once when I was really sloshed, and then fell flat on my face while trying to pull my pants back up.

[quote][URL="http://time.com/3747816/education-chalkboard-chatroom/"]Will Technology Kill Universities?[/URL][/quote]
Not as long as outfits like Pew Research (see 2 links up) have anything to say about it.

[quote][URL="http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/17/health/male-memory/index.html"]Men's memories worse than women's, especially with age[/URL][/quote]
Dying on average 5 years earlier may factor into that.

[quote][URL="http://www.livescience.com/50195-most-precise-clocks-ever-made.html"]5 of the Most Precise Clocks Ever Made[/URL][/quote]
"So accurate, you can set your cat's internal meal timer by it!"

[quote][URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150319080348.htm"]Crocodile ancestor was top predator before dinosaurs roamed North America[/URL][/quote]
Now if there had been an ancient croc which was a top predator even *during* the big-dino era ... that would have been cool. We're talking "Body plan of [i]Crocodylus Giganticus[/i] versus that of a naval destroyer" cool.

[quote][URL="http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/figuring-out-the-peak-age-for-intelligence-isnt-so-simple"]At What Age Does Your Brain Peak?[/URL][/quote]
You'll have to ask my wife, I forget.

[quote][URL="http://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2015/03/scientists-discover-how-to-change-human-leukemia-cells.html"]Scientists discover how to change human leukemia cells into harmless immune cells[/URL][/quote]
Hey, those macrophages ain't exactly harmless ... they are notoriously big eaters, for one thing.

[quote][URL="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31556802"]Are humans getting cleverer?[/URL][/QUOTE]
For those with Bachelor's Degrees and a suitably large resulting student debt load, the Pew Foundation says "yes, definitely!"

=======================

[url=www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409143041.htm]'Warm blob' in Pacific Ocean linked to weird weather across the US[/url]

Note that according to this, the warm-water 'blob' appears to be a *result* of the same 'ridiculously persistent' atmospheric high pressure cell that's been parked off the CA coast each of the past 4 winters. The cell's clockwise circulation causes winter storms - which nearly always come from the W/NW - to get diverted far northward by the pressure and northward streaming of the western side of the high. Those detoured storms then merge with cold air streaming down from the Arctic over central Canada, leading to worse-than-normal winter nastiness over the eastern 3/4 of the US. But whence the high pressure? Probably linked to some other Pacific ocean anomaly - classic chicken and egg w.r.to cause and effect here.

Ernst, I'm not as good at paraphrasing as you are. :smile:

[QUOTE=ewmayer;399830][url=www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409143041.htm]'Warm blob' in Pacific Ocean linked to weird weather across the US[/url]

Note that according to this, the warm-water 'blob' appears to be a *result* of the same 'ridiculously persistent' atmospheric high pressure cell that's been parked off the CA coast each of the past 4 winters. .... But whence the high pressure? Probably linked to some other Pacific ocean anomaly - classic chicken and egg w.r.to cause and effect here.[/QUOTE]
The great infrared spot seeks to phone home.

[url]http://news.discovery.com/animals/insects/could-bees-be-addicted-to-pesticides-150423.htm[/url]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150420101012.htm"]Technology can transfer human emotions to your palm through air, say scientists[/URL]

[URL="http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32354300"]The strange afterlife of Einstein's brain[/URL]

[URL="http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865626792/The-mental-health-consequences-of-a-high-IQ.html"]The mental health consequences of a high IQ[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150413161541.htm"]Meteorites key to the story of Earth's layers[/URL]

[URL="http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002127"]Colour As a Signal for Entraining the Mammalian Circadian Clock[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/is-technology-actually-slowing-us-down/science-technology"]Is technology actually slowing us down?[/URL]

[URL="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-32303622"]Dark matter becomes less 'ghostly'[/URL]

[URL="http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21648607-search-extraterrestrials-goes-intergalactic-infra-digging"]Looking for Aliens: Infra Diggng[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/peer-review-scandals-shake-up-scholarly-journal-community/education"]Peer-review scandals shake up scholarly journal community[/URL]

[URL="http://time.com/3764545/future-of-education/"]The Future of Education According to Generation Z[/URL]

[URL="http://www.medicaldaily.com/near-death-experiences-may-be-explained-heart-brain-connection-328640"]Near-Death Experiences May Be Explained By Heart-Brain Connection[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/536341/metamaterial-radar-may-improve-car-and-drone-vision/"]Metamaterial Radar May Improve Car and Drone Vision[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409120259.htm"]Shakespeare's plays reveal his psychological signature[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.com/2015/04/3-d-map-shows-colors-see-cant-name/"]3-D Map Shows the Colors You See But Can’t Name[/URL]

[URL="http://www.livescience.com/50401-brontosaurus-makes-comeback.html"]'Extinct' No Longer? Brontosaurus May Make a Comeback[/URL]

[URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/03/31/gifted-students-especially-those-who-are-low-income-need-more-attention-report-argues/"]Gifted students — especially those who are low-income — aren’t getting the focus they need[/URL]

[URL="http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-brain-stop-thinking-start-learning-20150405-story.html"]Brain knows how to stop thinking, start learning[/URL]

o [url=www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/19/clockmaker-john-harrison-vindicated-250-years-absurd-claims] Clockmaker John Harrison vindicated 250 years after ‘absurd’ claims[/url]: [i]The pendulum clock of Longitude hero John Harrison is tested and declared a masterpiece[/i]
[quote]One of Guinness World Records’ more unusual awards was presented at the National Maritime Museum yesterday. After a 100-day trial, the timepiece known as Clock B – which had been sealed in a clear plastic box to prevent tampering – was officially declared, by Guinness, to be the world’s “most accurate mechanical clock with a pendulum swinging in free air”.

It was an intriguing enough award. But what is really astonishing is that the clock was designed more than 250 years ago by a man who was derided at the time for “an incoherence and absurdity that was little short of the symptoms of insanity”, and whose plans for the clock lay ignored for two centuries.

The derision was poured on John Harrison, the British clockmaker whose marine chronometers had revolutionised seafaring in the 18th century (and who was the subject of Longitude by Dava Sobel). His subsequent claim – that he would go on to make a pendulum timepiece that was accurate to within a second over a 100-day period – triggered widespread ridicule. The task was simply impossible, it was declared.[/quote]
I wonder how much one of the original Harrison seagoing chronometers goes for at auction these days?

o And by way of historical bonus reading - I originally intended to post this in the Soap Box MET2015 thread, but the scientific-history angle also makes it suitable here:

From the 'history of outsourcing' file: [url=en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferme_générale]Ferme générale[/url] | Wikipedia
[quote]By the end of the 18th century, the Ferme générale system became a symbol of an unequal society. The Ferme générale, with its colossal fortune, was seen as encapsulating all the perversions of the political and social system. People blamed the injustices and the annoyances - which actually arose from the complexity of the tax system - on the company itself, including the brutality of tax collecting troops and the brutal repression of smuggling. The gabelle (tax on salt) was the most unpopular of all the taxes.

The Ferme générale was thus one of the institutions of the Ancien Régime which was most criticised during the 1789 French Revolution and was depicted as a group of predatory tyrants; the Girondist politician Antoine Français de Nantes, made an early reputation for himself attacking this prominent target. The Ferme générale was then suppressed in 1790 with farmers-general paying the price at the scaffold: 28 former members of the consortium were guillotined on 8 May 1794, including the father of modern chemistry Antoine Lavoisier whose laboratory experiments had been supported by income from his administration of the Ferme générale. His wife, the chemist Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze, who escaped the guillotine, was herself the daughter of another farmer-general, Jacques Paulze.[/quote]
But the unfortunate demise of the great Lavoisier is not the only reason I decided on the change of venue for the above Wikiarticle - coming full circle we see a fascinating episode involving Voltaire, a local guild of expatriate Genevan watchmakers supported by him, and the tax farmers:
[quote]In his Voltaire, A Life[6] (pp. 427–31), Ian Davidson describes events on Voltaire's estate at Ferney, north of Geneva, in the 1770s.

In 1770, hundreds of watchmakers fled the political ructions in Geneva and went to make a new life at Ferney. Voltaire helped them to set up a new watchmaking business. He negotiated a tax exemption for the watchmakers with the duc de Choiseul, Prime Minister of France. But by 1774, the business was prospering and the tax farmers started to take an interest. Three-way negotiations between the tax farmers, Voltaire and [Limoges tax-farm superintendent and reforming economist Anne-Robert-Jacques] Turgot ensued. In December 1775, Turgot confirmed the watchmakers' exemption from the salt tax (gabelle) and from road maintenance duties (corvée) and a figure was agreed to compensate the tax farmers for loss of revenue. Voltaire addressed a public meeting on 12 December and the watchmakers accepted the settlement.

Two days later, Voltaire wrote to his friend Mme de Saint-Julien:
[i]
... while we were gently passing our time in thanking M. Turgot, and while the whole province was busy drinking, the gendarmes of the tax farmers, whose time runs out on 1 January, had orders to sabotage us. They marched about in groups of fifty, stopped all the vehicles, searched all the pockets, forced their way into all the houses and made every kind of damage there in the name of the king, and made the peasants buy them off with money. I cannot conceive why the people did not ring the tocsin [village alarm bell; from the Provençal dialect] against them in all the villages, and why they were not exterminated. It is very strange that the ferme générale, with only another fortnight left for them to keep their troops here in winter quarters, should have permitted or even encouraged them in such criminal excesses. The decent people were very wise and held back the ordinary folk, who wanted to throw themselves on these brigands, as if on mad wolves.
[/i]
According to Davidson, good sense prevailed despite this violence, Voltaire was appointed a tax commissioner, profits peaked in 1776 and the watchmaking business survived the revolution and continued "well into the nineteenth century".[/quote]
Thus inspired by tales of the pre-revolutionary French tax farmers, I could not resist a topic-apt riffing on the [url=http://www.songlyrics.com/spinal-tap/sex-farm-lyrics/]lyrics of a famous [i]Spinal Tap[/i] song[/url]:
[i]
Workin' on a tax farm
Tryin' to raise some rev'noo
Gettin' out my pitch fork
Pokin' your hay

Scratchin' in your hen house
Sniffin' at your feedbag
Slippin' out your back door
Leavin' my enseigne

Tax farm woman, I'm gonna mow you down
Tax farm woman, I'll rake and hoe you down
Tax farm woman
Don't you see my receipts risin' high, high, high?

Workin' on a tax farm
Hosin' down your barn door
Botherin' your livestock
They know what I need

Workin' up a hot audit
Crouchin' in your pea patch
Plowin' through your bean field
Plantin' my seed

Tax farm woman, I'll be your hired hand
Tax farm woman, I'll let my offer stand
Tax farm woman
Don't you hear my tumbril rumblin' by, by, by?

Workin' on a tax farm
Tryin' to raise some rev'noo
Gettin' out my pitch fork
Pokin' your hay[/i]

[url=www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/24/liquid-mercury-mexican-pyramid-teotihuacan]Liquid mercury found under Mexican pyramid could lead to king's tomb[/url]: [i]Researcher reports ‘large quantities’ of the substance under ruins of Teotihuacan in discovery that could shed light on city’s mysterious leaders[/i]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;400996][URL="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/24/liquid-mercury-mexican-pyramid-teotihuacan"]Liquid mercury found under Mexican pyramid could lead to king's tomb[/URL]: [I]Researcher reports ‘large quantities’ of the substance under ruins of Teotihuacan in discovery that could shed light on city’s mysterious leaders[/I][/QUOTE]

We are hoping to visit Mexico City for the first time, perhaps in June. Teotihuacan is high on the list of cultural wonders we hope to see.

[URL="http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2015/april/oldest-fossils-controversy-resolved.html"]Oldest fossils controversy resolved[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/researchers-examine-link-between-creativity-and-mental-illness/education"]Researchers examine link between creativity and mental illness[/URL]

[URL="http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/shipwrecked-champagne-leathery-still-pretty-good-150420.htm"]Shipwrecked Champagne: Leathery, Still Pretty Good[/URL]

[URL="http://www.forbes.com/sites/tarahaelle/2015/04/21/mmr-vaccine-and-autism-no-link-exists-even-for-children-at-risk-for-autism/"]MMR Vaccine and Autism: Yet Again, No Link Exists -- Even For Children At Risk For Autism[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nature.com/news/chinese-scientists-genetically-modify-human-embryos-1.17378"]Chinese scientists genetically modify human embryos[/URL]

[URL="http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-hubble-space-telescopes-25-most-mind-boggling-photos"]The Hubble Space Telescope's 25 Most Mind-Boggling Photos[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/20/astronomers-discover-largest-known-structure-in-the-universe-is-a-big-hole"]Astronomers discover largest known structure in the universe is ... a big hole[/URL]

Your Science posts are always a treat, Rogue. You have many sources, and diverse interests. The human embryo and 'creativity and mental illness' stories made me do a lot of thinking in a lot of different areas.

Fossils: Frequently Fascinating! Fortuitous Findings! Frenemies Forever Fulminate Ferocious Fracases! Follow Freedom Fiercely! :showoff:

I don't read everything I post and there are links I don't post. Having been around as long as I have gives me a good sense as to what people want to read.

[url]http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/[/url]

Not sure whether that is news or not but it's worth reading IMAO

Lithobraking
 

[URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32542646"]Messenger's Mercury trip ends with a bang, and silence[/URL]

Dr White is also the fellow who's trying to run experiments based on modifications to Alcubiere's "warp drive" design...

Edit: The interferometer is mentioned down near the bottom. Quite an interesting article, much more worthwhile than I was expecting based on the title, thanks.

[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/05/04/horribly-bleak-study-sees-empty-landscape-as-large-herbivores-vanish-at-startling-rate/]http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/m...farting-rate/[/url]

[url]http://www.fastcompany.com/3046035/fast-feed/nasa-wants-your-ideas-for-a-mars-colony[/url]

[quote]Mars has been the next frontier for humans since astronauts first bounced around the moon in 1969, and while we work on rockets that will get us to our red neighbor, scientists are thinking hard about how to build a sustainable colony on Mars. What would we need to bring to survive? That's the question NASA is asking the public through a new competition. The challenge asks for written submissions detailing what astronaut-explorers will need to colonize a new planet—and the space agency is offering a total of $15,000 in prize money, to be split between three winners.[/quote]

[url]https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-announces-journey-to-mars-challenge-seeks-public-input-on-establishing-sustained[/url]

Edit: Whoops, wrong thread. Mods, please move this to the appropriate one.

[QUOTE=Dubslow;401955][url]http://www.fastcompany.com/3046035/fast-feed/nasa-wants-your-ideas-for-a-mars-colony[/url]

...scientists are thinking hard about how to build a sustainable colony on Mars...

Edit: Whoops, wrong thread. Mods, please move this to the appropriate one.[/QUOTE]

Done.

Re. the quoted snip, it is highly debatable whether humanity has built a sustainable colony here on Earth. I suggest some sort of "if you lot are still around in a million years and have shown yourselves to be good stewards of the planet you share, then maybe we'll let you go off-world in numbers" rule. In other words, Star Trek had its (honored in the breach more than the observance) Prime Directive, but I propose the above as a blocking "Zeroth Directive".

[url=https://newsoffice.mit.edu/2015/unravel-secrets-internal-waves-0506]Researchers unravel secrets of hidden waves[/url] | MIT News
[quote]Detailed new field studies, laboratory experiments, and simulations of the largest known “internal waves” in the Earth’s oceans — phenomena that play a key role in mixing ocean waters, greatly affecting ocean temperatures — provide a comprehensive new view of how these colossal, invisible waves are born, spread, and die off.

The work, published today in the journal Nature, could add significantly to the improvement of global climate models, the researchers say. The paper is co-authored by 42 researchers from 25 institutions in five countries.
...
Internal waves — giant waves, below the surface, that roil stratified layers of heavier, saltier water and lighter, less-salty water — are ubiquitous throughout the world’s oceans. But by far the largest and most powerful known internal waves are those that form in one area of the South China Sea, originating from the Luzon Strait between the Philippines and Taiwan.

These subsurface waves can tower more than 500 meters high, and generate powerful turbulence. Because of their size and behavior, the rise and spread of these waves are important for marine processes, including the supply of nutrients for marine organisms; the distribution of sediments and pollutants; and the propagation of sound waves. They are also a significant factor in the mixing of ocean waters, combining warmer surface waters with cold, deep waters — a process that is essential to understanding the dynamics of global climate.

This international research effort, called IWISE (Internal Waves In Straits Experiment), was a rare undertaking in this field, Peacock says; the last such field study on internal waves on this scale, the Hawaii Ocean Mixing Experiment, concluded in 2002. The new study looked at internal waves that were much stronger, and went significantly further in determining not just how the waves originated, but how their energy dissipated.

One unexpected finding, Peacock says, was the degree of turbulence produced as the waves originate, as tides and currents pass over ridges on the seafloor. “These were unexpected field discoveries,” he says, revealing “some of the most intense mixing ever observed in the deep ocean. It’s like a giant washing machine — the mixing is much more dramatic than we ever expected.”[/quote]

[url]http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/pandas-are-best-suited-to-eat-meat-but-instead-theyre-munching-their-way-to-extinction[/url]

[B]Microsoft Execs Expressed ‘Shock and Disbelief’ at Internet Address Shortage [/B]

according to the Wall Street Journal: [URL]http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/14/microsoft-execs-expressed-shock-and-disbelief-at-internet-address-shortage/?mod=ST1[/URL]

[QUOTE=Nick;402712][B]Microsoft Execs Expressed ‘Shock and Disbelief’ at Internet Address Shortage [/B]

according to the Wall Street Journal: [URL]http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/05/14/microsoft-execs-expressed-shock-and-disbelief-at-internet-address-shortage/?mod=ST1[/URL][/QUOTE]

Poor babies. Don't they know anything about the business they are in?

[QUOTE=kladner;402715]Poor babies. Don't they know anything about the business they are in?[/QUOTE]Of course they do.

It's boiling frog syndrome.

[URL="http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsatell/2015/05/01/the-science-of-patterns/"]The Science of Patterns[/URL]

[URL="http://kottke.org/15/04/the-full-sized-lego-car"]The full-sized LEGO car[/URL]

[URL="http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Insight_into_how_brain_makes_memories_999.html"]nsight into how brain makes memories[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150430124005.htm"]Light -- not pain-killing drugs -- used to activate brain's opioid receptors[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/norway-is-phasing-out-fm-radio-but-dont-expect-the-us-to-tune-in/education"]Norway is phasing out FM radio, but don’t expect the US to tune in[/URL]

[URL="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/the-digital-future-how-museums-measure-up/?smid=pl-share&_r=1"]The Digital Future: How Museums Measure Up[/URL]

[URL="http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27415-the-first-complex-life-on-earth-got-eaten-to-extinction.html#.VWuGFZ8qX8t"]The first complex life on Earth got eaten to extinction[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/04/mark-twain-cache-uncovered-berkeley"]Mark Twain stories, 150 years old, uncovered by Berkeley scholars[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nature.com/news/dino-chickens-reveal-how-the-beak-was-born-1.17507"]'Dino-chickens' reveal how the beak was born[/URL]

[URL="http://aeon.co/magazine/science/has-cosmology-run-into-a-creative-crisis/"]Has Cosmology run into a Creative Crisis?[/URL]

[URL="http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2015/05/how-germs-might-shape-the-future-of-architecture/392783/"]How Germs Might Shape the Future of Architecture[/URL]

[URL="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-05/05/microwave-parkes-observatory"]Microwave oven baffled astronomers for decades[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/the-implication-of-abnormal-delta-waves-in-schizophrenia/education"]Scientists are closing in on the root cause of schizophrenia[/URL]

[URL="http://www.space.com/29334-enceladus-ocean-energy-source-life.html"]Ocean on Saturn Moon Enceladus May Have Potential Energy Source to Support Life[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/the-future-of-education-smart-and-personalized-microschools/education"]The future of education? Smart and personalized microschools[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/22/upshot/making-computer-science-more-inviting-a-look-at-what-works.html?ref=technology&abt=0002&abg=1"]Making Computer Science More Inviting: A Look at What Works[/URL]

[URL="http://phys.org/news/2015-05-groundwater-valleys-santa-clara-valley.html"]Raising groundwater keeps valleys from sinking: Santa Clara Valley, Calif.[/URL]

[URL="http://www.livescience.com/50924-secret-life-of-sea-revealed.html"]Crazy Carnival of Dr. Seuss Creatures Hidden in the Oceans[/URL]

[URL="http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/16/opinion/it-is-in-fact-rocket-science.html?_r=0"]It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150521210639.htm"]Mental 'map' and 'compass' are two separate systems, researchers say[/URL]

[QUOTE=xilman;401435][url]http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2015/04/evaluating-nasas-futuristic-em-drive/[/url]

Not sure whether that is news or not but it's worth reading IMAO[/QUOTE]A perpetual motion device in disguise?[quote="http://arxiv.org/abs/1506.00494"]A "space drive" is a hypothetical device that generates a propulsive force in free space using an input of power without the need for a reaction mass. Any device that generates photons (e.g., a laser) would qualify as a propellantless "photon rocket," but the force generated by emitting photons per power input (3.33 $\mu$N/kW) is too small to be a practical propulsion device. The ability to generate greater force per power input would be highly desirable, but, as demonstrated in this paper, such a device would be able to operate as a perpetual motion machine of the first kind. Since applying a constant force results in a constant acceleration, the kinetic energy of a mass driven by such a device increases quadratically with time, while the energy input increases only linearly with time. Thus, at some point, the kinetic energy of the device-driven mass exceeds the energy input, and if this energy is collected via decelerating the mass (via regenerative electromagnetic braking, for example), then there would be a net gain in energy. For devices with thrust-to-power ratios on the order of 1 N/kW that have been discussed recently in connection with the so-called EM drive, this breakeven occurs at velocities low enough to be feasible with current technology, clearly demonstrating the absurdity of such a device. When relativistic effects are taken into account, it is shown that the photon rocket can only reach energy breakeven as the accelerated mass asymptotically approaches the speed of light. Thus, any device with a thrust-to-power ratio greater than the photon rocket would be able to operate as a perpetual motion machine of the first kind, and thus should be excluded by the First Law of Thermodynamics.[/quote]

Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity firm is hacked
 

[url]http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33083050[/url]
[QUOTE]One of the leading anti-virus software providers has revealed that its own systems were recently compromised by hackers.

Kaspersky Lab said it believed the attack was designed to spy on its newest technologies.

It said the intrusion involved up to three previously unknown techniques.[/QUOTE]

[URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-stoke-staffordshire-33084474"]Staffordshire schoolboy discovers new planet[/URL]

[URL="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-mathematics-could-neutralize-pathogens-that-resist-antibiotics/"]New Mathematics Could Neutralize Pathogens That Resist Antibiotics[/URL]

[URL="http://gadgets.ndtv.com/science/news/new-deep-learning-robot-learns-skills-through-trial-and-error-696013"]New 'Deep Learning' Robot Learns Skills Through Trial and Error[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/537791/an-algorithm-that-can-help-robots-walk-off-injuries/"]An Algorithm That Can Help Robots Walk Off Injuries[/URL]

[URL="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/technology/google-intensifies-focus-on-its-cardboard-virtual-reality-device.html?ref=technology&_r=1"]Google Intensifies Focus on Its Cardboard Virtual Reality Device[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150528142815.htm"]Scientists retrieve lost memories using optogenetics[/URL]

[URL="http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/sesame-street-and-its-surprisingly-powerful-effects-on-how-children-learn/2015/06/07/59c73fe4-095c-11e5-9e39-0db921c47b93_story.html"]Study: Kids can learn as much from ‘Sesame Street’ as from preschool[/URL]

[URL="http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150603132252.htm"]Researchers find speedometer in the brain[/URL]

[URL="http://www.technologyreview.com/news/537936/the-quest-to-engineer-the-perfect-potato/"]The Quest to Engineer the Perfect Potato[/URL]

[URL="http://exclusive.multibriefs.com/content/college-2.0-a-new-age-of-learning/education"]College 2.0: A new age of learning[/URL]

[URL="http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jun/02/crawling-breathing-invasive-fish-a-major-disaster-if-it-reaches-australia"]Crawling, breathing, invasive fish a 'major disaster' if it reaches Australia[/URL]