Interesting Stuff Thread

magicbastarder

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2012/07/17/no-peeking-2/

Opinicus

What you've just written is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever read. At no point in your rambling incoherent article were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone who read it is now dumber for having done so. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.

Just sent that off to the letters page. Somehow I don't think it will get printed though.

Alright

For primary rainbows there is a consistent angle of 42 degrees from Sun to top of rainbow (red color) to observer.

From Yahoo Answers: “The reason why the rainbow is curved is because all the angles in the water drop have to be just right for the drop to send some sunlight to you, standing on the ground. So, with the sun *behind* you, only those water droplets that have the same angle formed by you, the drop, and the sun (this angle happens to be approximately 42 degrees) will contribute to the rainbow. Other droplets send their light somewhere else, and if you move to a different location, new droplets are needed to make the rainbow you see in the new location.

This is a nice link with some good pictures
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/rbowpri.html

and just for fun :pac:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c6HsiixFS8

magicbastarder

pannable 360 of the LHC.

http://lightbox.time.com/2012/07/12/interactive-panorama-step-inside-the-large-hadron-collider/?hpt=hp_c2#end

robindch

^^^ Crumbs, I misread that for a sec as the "Parable of the LHC".

hmm.... suggestions?

Hotblack Desiato

There shall in that time be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things with the sort of raffia-work base, that has an attachment. At that time, a friend shall lose his friend's hammer, and the young shall not know where lieth the things possessed by their fathers that their fathers put there only just the night before, about eight o'clock.

robindch

Turns out that companies producing homeopathic products paid one Claus Fritzsche, an online "journalist", to smear anybody who criticized homeopathy. Especially Edzard Ernst, the University of Exeter professor who's done most of the hard, real research into homeopathy.

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2012/07/german-homeopathy-companies-pay-journalist-who-smears-uk-academic.html

Quackometer wrote:

A consortium of pharmaceutical companies in Germany have been paying a journalist €43,000 to run a set of web sites that denigrates an academic who has published research into their products.

These companies, who make homeopathic sugar pills, were exposed in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung in an article, Schmutzige Methoden der sanften Medizin (The Dirty Tricks of Alternative Medicine.)

This story has not appeared in the UK media. And it should. Because it is a scandal that directly involves the UK’s most prominent academic in Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

The newspaper accuses the companies of funding the journalist, Claus Fritzsche, to denigrate critics of homeopathy. In particular, the accusation is that Fritzsche wrote about UK academic Professor Edzard Ernst on several web sites and then linked them together in order to raise their Google ranking. Fritzsche continually attacks Ernst of being frivolous, incompetent and partisan.

Edzard Ernst was the first Professor of Complementary Medicine and held the Laing Chair at the University of Exeter in South-West England. The chair was set up by Sir Maurice Laing in 1993 to provide rigorous research into alternative medicines. Laing realised that high quality research was required if various forms of alternative medicine were to become mainstream. Ernst said in an interview that Laing believed that “it was more important to conduct good research to a standard that would be acceptable even to sceptics, than to bend over backwards in an attempt to generate positive findings”.

And that is what Edzard Ernst has done over the past two decades. In particular, Ernst has pioneered and championed the idea that alternative medicine can be subject to the same rigours of evidence-based medicine as any other treatment. He has produced many systematic reviews of treatments that draw together all available evidence to assess what overall conclusions it is possible to come to. When the evidence has been positive, he has said so. But his problem has been that, for a wide range of treatments, including homeopathy, the evidence is overwhelmingly negative, non-existent, or at best, inconclusive.

This has angered many proponents of the various forms of supersitious and pseudoscientific health practices. Homeopaths in particular have been furious that Ernst has not used his Chair to promote alternative medicine. They see his results, not as scientifically objective, but as a betrayal of their beliefs.

For his efforts, Ernst is continuously attacked. The Vice-Chancellor of Exeter has been written to by foaming homeopaths. His blogs for the GP magazine, Pulse, see a hoard of homeopaths turn up for every article to shout their abuse. But most worryingly, Ernst was attacked by Prince Charles when he was critical of a politicised report into the funding of alternative medicine by the NHS, insitigated by Charles, and funded by Dame Shirley Porter. Prince Charles’s principal private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, sent a letter to Exeter that almost cost him his job.

[...]

kylith

Can I find Ernst anywhere? I feel I should thank him for, y'know, a lot.

joseph brand

Nanoparticle Completely Eradicates Hepatitis C Virus

The nanoparticle, dubbed a nanozyme, consists of a backbone made from gold nanoparticles and a surface with two biological components. One biological component is an enzyme that attacks and destroys the mRNA, which provides the recipe for duplicating the protein that causes the disease. The other biological part is the navigator, if you will. It is a DNA oligonucleotide that identifies the disease-related protein and sends the enzyme on course to destroy it.

IT-Guy

Absolutely love this Penn Jillette video, it's a funny assessment of some of the higher profile candidates for the 2012 elections in the USA. It explains the how and why of the recent use of the term 'Christian' as an amalgam of many different sects as well as an hilarious critique of Mitt Romney Almost 20 mins long but worth every second:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJGxVeQw3SE

joseph brand

Faces of our Ancestors.

joseph brand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqDZAYUT34E

The launch made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Inspirational stuff!

It's a pity the Yanks couldn't pump their money into NASA instead of their church baskets.

I wonder if the Russian Soyuz has cheaper running costs than the Shuttle?

Neil Armstrong on the embarrassment of NASA. (Retirement of the Shuttle)

mikhail

kylith wrote: »

Can I find Ernst anywhere? I feel I should thank him for, y'know, a lot.

Buy his book. Sadly, he seems to be retired, or you could pull his work email address off a paper.

Hotblack Desiato

joseph brand wrote: »

I wonder if the Russian Soyuz has cheaper running costs than the Shuttle?

Be hard for it not to, really. Shuttle had to be painstakingly refurbished after every mission, and had a lot more systems to go wrong. ~$1Bn cost per launch IIRC, Soyuz should be a fraction of that.
SpaceX reckon they can do it for a fraction too, have had great success with unmanned missions (including supplying the ISS) and are working on a manned vehicle.


http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=13441.0

In 2007, NASA signed a $719 million contract for 15 Soyuz seats (15 up, 15 down) as well as for 5.6 tonnes of cargo. That works out to nearly $48 million per seat, or $144 million for a three seat flight, but the numbers are muddled by the addition of several Progress flights. It would take three Progress flights to handle the cargo, which by some reports would total $150 million. That leaves $569 million for the 15 seats, which is $38 million per seat or $114 million for a Soyuz mission - roughly in line with the most recent tourist seat costs.

Hotblack Desiato

The eurozone's religious faultline

Richter is himself a Catholic, but an admirer of thrifty economics. "Too much Catholicism" he suggests, "is detrimental to a nation's fiscal health, even today in the 21st Century".

Delirium

Gene therapy nears approval in Europe

Europe is on the cusp of approving a gene therapy for the first time, in what would be a landmark moment for the field.

Gene therapies alter a patient's DNA to treat inherited diseases passed from parent to child.

The European Medicines Agency has recommended a therapy for a rare genetic disease which leaves people unable to properly digest fats.

The European Commission will now make the final decision.

fitz0

If such traceable things as scientific papers can get distorted and perpetuated, it's no wonder religions spread so far.

Baffling Science Hoaxes: Why Did We Believe in the Tongue Map?

Esther Inglis-Arkell

Everyone reading this has got a tongue. Everyone reading this has, probably, also heard the old adage about how different parts of the tongue taste different things. For decades, this misconception stayed alive. It was still being taught when I was in grade school. My question is; why?

We sometimes laugh at the obviously wrong so-called facts of yesteryear, especially if they can be easily checked. How could people believe that, for example, the uterus wandered around the body of a woman? That's insane. But we have our own modern myths, ones that can be easily checked and debunked, but for the most part aren't. The major one is the tongue map. Almost everyone reading this had at least one teacher who pulled out a diagram of a tongue and pointed to different areas, talking about how this one tasted sweetness and that one bitterness.

This diagram, and enduring myth, began in 1901, in Germany, were D.P. Hanig wrote a conservative little paper that mentioned that different areas of the tongue seemed slightly more sensitive to different tastes. In 1942, Edwin Boring, of Harvard, picked Hanig's ideas and ran with them in his book, Sensation and Perception in the History of Experimental Psychology. Some say Boring mistranslated Hanig's text. Others say he simply stressed it. However it happened, over time, different sensitivities became total ability. It wasn't until the 1970s when Virginia Collings, a physiological researcher, repeated the test and found that the sensitivities were there but made little-to-no practical difference. Even then, the myth kept chugging along for decades in actual biology programs.

I have to wonder; why. We all have tongues, don't we? We've all tasted things. What teachers were telling us conflicted directly with all our experience. It had to have conflicted with their own experience. Why did it keep getting told? I think, in part, because the truth was worth a lot less than the story. No one particularly suffered because of the myth. It didn't cost anyone anything. On the other hand, it was great small talk, or at least a good way to get kids to pay attention for about another five minutes, until the bell rang. And it's the story, not the truth, that I think is the reason it got so thoroughly debunked on the internet. Once the groundwork was laid, and nearly everyone on Earth had "heard about that somewhere," it suddenly became worth contradicting. It's interesting that debunkery, including this article, is more a triumph of one good story over another, instead of a final breakthrough of truth. Makes you wonder what other myths people could start.

Link

Hotblack Desiato

fitz0 wrote: »

What teachers were telling us conflicted directly with all our experience. It had to have conflicted with their own experience. Why did it keep getting told? I think, in part, because the truth was worth a lot less than the story. No one particularly suffered because of the myth. It didn't cost anyone anything. On the other hand, it was great small talk, or at least a good way to get kids to pay attention for about another five minutes, until the bell rang.

^^ Religion in schools is just the same. Most people regard it as a harmless myth and sure it's tradition and doesn't do anyone any harm...

kylith

ninja900 wrote: »

^^ Religion in schools is just the same. Most people regard it as a harmless myth and sure it's tradition and doesn't do anyone any harm...

That phrase always makes me think of:

Lwaxana Troi: The women of Betazed used to wear these enormous wigs with large holes in the center for tiny caged creatures... First, it was a fashion. Then it went on long enough to become a custom, a tradition. But it was uncomfortable for the woman and cruel to the animal. So, then, one day, one very formidable woman finally said so, refused to ever wear another of those wigs. Fairly soon, the custom stopped. She had the courage to stand up and fight for change.

Kivaro

“You don’t really understand how something works until you can reproduce it yourself,” says graduate student and co-author Jayodita Sanghvi.

From http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/21/big-leap-in-bio-engineering-scientists-simulate-an-entire-organism-in-software-for-the-first-time-ever/

Can't wait for Human 2.0!

Sarky

I have issues with Venter and his fondness for patents, but f*ck me that's amazing news.

Kivaro

So here's the question:
When they eventually fully simulate a human being (note the spelling, it's not "stimulate"), and make further advances with 3D Printing, will they be able to print out a human?
I am only half-kidding with this question.

Imagine going into your local Office Supplies shop and asking:

Me: Please make me 3 copies.

Staff: Of what?

Me: Of me.

magicbastarder

Kivaro wrote: »

So here's the question:
When they eventually fully simulate a human being

if they ever eventually *fully* simulate a human being, that would imply it is sentient. would they be able to turn off the computer then without commiting murder?

sephir0th

magicbastarder wrote: »

if they ever eventually *fully* simulate a human being, that would imply it is sentient. would they be able to turn off the computer then without commiting murder?

Hotblack Desiato

I read that post title as 'Scientists simulate an entire orgasm in software for the first time'...

CerebralCortex

magicbastarder wrote: »

if they ever eventually *fully* simulate a human being, that would imply it is sentient. would they be able to turn off the computer then without commiting murder?

Does anybody think that maybe sentience or consciousness is contingent on metabolism? I think simulations would have to take that into account.

Kivaro

ninja900 wrote: »

I read that post title as 'Scientists simulate an entire orgasm in software for the first time'...

Take your head out of the gutter ........
But then again, the simulation was that of a sexually transmitted bacteria.

CerebralCortex wrote: »

Does anybody think that maybe sentience or consciousness is contingent on metabolism? I think simulations would have to take that into account.

So will this be Data (Star Trek) Ver 1?

But your question is very interesting.
Including sentience or consciousness takes it to a different level altogether.

recedite

CerebralCortex wrote: »

Does anybody think that maybe sentience or consciousness is contingent on metabolism?

Consciousness dependent on eating and $hitting? No.
I see where you are coming from though; it would need an energy source. But this research is only a simulation, it is not an actual bio-engineered bacterium.

Still its nice to know that when they simulate the first man, simulated Mycoplasma genitaliumwill already be there, waiting to give him an itchy scrotum.

CerebralCortex

recedite wrote: »

Consciousness dependent on eating and $hitting? No.

No I mean the entire set of chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life, including the workings of nerve cells and neurons.

18AD

https://www.coursera.org/course/astrobio

Awesome.

ahsured

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po0ZMfkSNxc&feature=autoplay&list=PL965C53D2B4BCCCF5&playnext=5

badspealler

ninja900 wrote: »

I read that post title as 'Scientists simulate an entire orgasm in software for the first time'...

LMAO : )

Cheers for the giggle ; )

Dave!

Moncrieff today might be of interest to some. On Newstalk.

http://www.newstalk.ie/2012/featured-5-slideshow-homepage/on-moncrieff-today-mike-dilger-life-after-murder-and-fake-baby-dolls/

Fionn Davenport’s sitting in for Sean today. He’ll be joined by Labour TD Gerald Nash, live in studio for News and a Natter. Tune in to hear his views on the stories of the day. That’s at 1.30.

At 2.05 we speak to David Niose, President of the American Humanist Association, and author of ‘Nonbeliever Nation: The Rise of Secular Americans’

What is the guidebook for the urban age? We speak to author Peter Smith at 2.20.

At 2.35 tune in to hear from Mike Dilger, Author of “My Garden and the Other Animals” & presenter on BBC 1’s The ONE Show

At 2.45, Henry Mckean investigates the world of fake baby dolls in Ireland.

At 3 o’clock, Andrea Pappin is in studio for her weekly look at stories from around the world.

At 3.35, could you live with life after murder?

And at 3.45 today, it’s time for John Kelleher’s weekly obituary slot. This week he looks at the life of Donald J. Sobol, Creator of Encyclopedia Brown

And at 4.05, are we experiencing the rise of apocalyptic thinking? We speak to Mathew Gross Co Author of “Last Myth: What the Rise of Apocalyptic Thinking tells us about America”

For all this and more, Moncrieff live from 1.30-4.30 Monday- Friday.

Ahh shoyt, just noticing that Fionn Davenport is sitting in.....

MrPudding

Kivaro wrote: »

“You don’t really understand how something works until you can reproduce it yourself,” says graduate student and co-author Jayodita Sanghvi.

From http://venturebeat.com/2012/07/21/big-leap-in-bio-engineering-scientists-simulate-an-entire-organism-in-software-for-the-first-time-ever/

Can't wait for Human 2.0!

I see your computer simulation and raise you an actual artificial jellyfish.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18953034

MrP

magicbastarder

fake baby dolls?

18AD

Funny article on the argument from ugliness.

http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2012/07/the-argument-from-ugliness.html#more

joseph brand

The Muppets dump Chick-Fil-A (restaurant with christian 'values') over their homophobic comments.

The Jim Henson Company has celebrated and embraced diversity and inclusiveness for over fifty years and we have notified Chick-Fil-A that we do not wish to partner with them on any future endeavors. Lisa Henson, our CEO is personally a strong supporter of gay marriage and has directed us to donate the payment we received from Chick-Fil-A to GLAAD. (http://www.glaad.org/)

I'd love to see Bruno, (Sacha Baron Cohen) visit a few of their restaurants.

For anyone who may have seen Bruno (2009)

Brüno: Look at the four of us; we are so like the Sex in the City girls!
Donny: Oh no, we aren't either!
Brüno: Which one are you, Donny?
Donny: I ain't any one of them, I'm Donny.
Brüno: That is such a Samantha thing to say! :D

recedite

MrPudding wrote: »

I see your computer simulation and raise you an actual artificial jellyfish.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18953034

MrP

I'm pleasantly surprised at how close we are getting to matching the natural biological performance, but also that we're seeing ways in which we can probably improve on that natural performance. The process of evolution missed a lot of good solutions."

Perhaps a rocket propelled jellyfish is next?

Dave!

So that's how God fooled us.

Kivaro

Mars One plans suicide mission to Red Planet for 2023.
There will be a reality show to fund the trip.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/24/is-mars-one-serious-about-suicide-mission-to-red-planet/

This one-way mission is of course the brainchild of a Dutchman.

Dades

I for one would watch that show.

fitz0

Where so I sign up?

Hotblack Desiato

Day 523 in the Mars One probe... :yawn:

robindch

Kivaro wrote: »

Mars One plans suicide mission to Red Planet for 2023.

Idea taken from here, no doubt:

http://www.geekwire.com/2012/reality-series-be-microsoft-employee/

Kivaro

fitz0 wrote: »

Where so I sign up?

The thing is all the geeks will presume that smokin' hot women will sign up for this gig, and the accommodation will be something similar to that of a Starship.

Where to sign up, you ask???????

(Just below my name .....)

recedite

Kivaro wrote: »

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/07/24/is-mars-one-serious-about-suicide-mission-to-red-planet/

This one-way mission is of course the brainchild of a Dutchman.

Meanwhile, NASA has maintained that future missions will probably involve robots.

I'm looking forward to watching the reality TV show as the turf war develops on Mars between the Nasa robots and the suicidal humans.

ShooterSF

Ha and people called me stupid for buying land on Mars. Well who's stupid now? Huh?

recedite

If the people land on your bit, you can start charging rent. But how are you going to collect it from them?

ShooterSF

Western Union will probably be easiest...