"Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change.
The e-mails, attributed to prominent American and British climate researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views. Drafts of scientific papers and a photo collage that portrays climate skeptics on an ice floe were also among the hacked data, some of which dates back 13 years.
In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical “trick” in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend. In another, a scientist refers to climate skeptics as “idiots.”
Some skeptics asserted Friday that the correspondence revealed an effort to withhold scientific information. “This is not a smoking gun, this is a mushroom cloud,” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist who has long faulted evidence pointing to human-driven warming and is criticized in the documents.
Portions of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them."
The world is being conned into a global carbon tax under the guise of saving the planet. Its a Ponzi scheme created by Al Gore and Ken Lay that all the big polluting corporations support."Hundreds of private e-mails and documents hacked from a computer server at a British... more
In case you were unaware, hackers got into the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) servers and published hundreds to thousands of documents and private communications from CRU climate scientists that pertain to climate disruption. And the climate disruption denial and conservative blogs have subsequently gone completely apeshit over it. The Wonk Room has a few of the better quotes from the deniers:
“If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW,” says the Telegraph’s James Delingpole.
Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey claims the emails discuss “repetitive, false data of higher temperatures.”
The National Review’s Chris Horner salivates, “The blue-dress moment may have arrived.”
“The crimes revealed in the e-mails promise to be the global warming scandal of the century,” blares Michelle Malkin.
The Australia Herald-Sun’s Andrew Bolt claims the emails are “proof of a conspiracy which is one of the largest, most extraordinary and most disgraceful in moderrn [sic] science.”
So, do these emails and documents represent proof of a “conspiracy” and “scandal”? At this point it seems highly unlikely, and the more that people look at the illegally-obtained emails and documents, the less likely it will become.
More at the link.In case you were unaware, hackers got into the University of East Anglia’s Climate... more
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment has been re-started after a hiatus of 14 months.
Engineers working on the machine achieved a stable, circulating proton beam just after 2100 GMT on Friday.
The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel about 100m beneath the French-Swiss border.
The experiment is designed to smash together beams of protons in a bid to shed light on the nature of the Universe.
The LHC has been shut down for repairs since an accident in September 2008.
Operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern), the LHC will create similar conditions to those which were present moments after the Big Bang.
"It's great to see beam circulating in the LHC again," said Cern's director-general Rolf Heuer.
A key riddle surrounding the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how they first came together billions of years ago from simple precursors but a study appearing in the Journal of Biological Chemistry says researchers in Italy have reconstructed one of the earliest evolutionary steps yet; generating long chains of RNA from individual subunits using nothing but warm water.
Many researchers believe that RNA was one of the first biological molecules present, before DNA and proteins, but there has been little success in recreating the formation on RNA from simple "prebiotic" molecules that likely were present on primordial earth billions of years ago.
Ernesto Di Mauro and colleagues found that ancient molecules called cyclic nucleotides can merge together in water and form polymers over 100 nucleotides long in water ranging from 40-90 °C –similar to water temperatures on ancient Earth.
Cyclic nucleotides like cyclic-AMP are very similar to the nucleotides that make up individual pieces of DNA or RNA (A, T, G and C), except that they form an extra chemical bond and assume a ring-shaped structure. That extra bond makes cyclic nucleotides more reactive, though, and thus they were able to join together into long chains at a decent rate (about 200 hours to reach 100 nucleotides long).
This finding is exciting as cyclic nucleotides themselves can be easily formed from simple chemicals like formamide, thus making them plausible prebiotic compounds present during primordial times. Thus, this study may be revealing how the first bits of genetic information were created.A key riddle surrounding the origin of biological molecules like RNA and DNA is how... more
Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Pinker duel over balancing scientific rigor with relatable narrative, while the future of personal genomics goes under the microscope.Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Pinker duel over balancing scientific rigor with relatable... more
A little off-topic, but close enough to merit this.
"A medium-sized popcorn and medium soda at the nation's largest movie chain pack the nutritional equivalent of three Quarter Pounders topped with 12 pats of butter, according to a report released today by the advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest."
More importantly--what sort of measurement is a "pat" of butter?
Cool slideshow about interactive environments that use a system of robots - ones that can sense and react to their surroundings.Cool slideshow about interactive environments that use a system of robots - ones that... more
New evidence has come to light that the vast, ice-encrusted oceans of Europa may be harboring Earth-like life that lives on the oxygen-rich waters. Time to plan your extraterrestrial fishing trip? Maybe.
Apparently, the oceans of Europa are fed with more than 100 times more oxygen than previous models suggested. According to National Geographic:
That amount of oxygen would be enough to support more than just microscopic life-forms: At least three million tons of fishlike creatures could theoretically live and breathe on Europa, said study author Richard Greenberg of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
"There's nothing saying there is life there now," said Greenberg, who presented his work last month at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. "But we do know there are the physical conditions to support it."
In fact, based on what we know about the Jovian moon, parts of Europa's seafloor should greatly resemble the environments around Earth's deep-ocean hydrothermal vents, said deep-sea molecular ecologist Timothy Shank.
"I'd be shocked if no life existed on Europa," said Shank, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
So how does the oxygen get into the water? It's created when charged particles from Jupiter's magnetic field hit the ice. Because the icy surface of the moon is constantly shifting and cracking due to tides created by both the Sun and Jupiter's gravitational fields, the oxygenated ice would crumble down into the oceans. Eventually, this would result in oxygen-rich waters like those in our own oceans. And these could possibly support Earth-ish life.
As of yet, no space probes from Earth have penetrated Europa's ice crust to examine the seas below, but NASA has proposed another mission to place a satellite in orbit around the moon. (No, they would not be crashing the satellite into the moon itself.)
London: Scientists are on track to develop bionic implants, which will correct both long and short-sightedness, allowing patients to throw away their glasses for good.The 'super lenses' could be used to replace the clouded natural lenses removed in cataract operations.London: Scientists are on track to develop bionic implants, which will correct both... more
The pharmaceutical industry spends millions of dollars developing drugs and millions more swaying the opinions of physicians and the public. Can this imperfect system be reformed?The pharmaceutical industry spends millions of dollars developing drugs and millions... more
Fed Gov Task Force says women don't need to get mammograms until their 50's. The American Cancer society disagrees. The National Coalition for Breast Cancer agrees.
What do you think?Fed Gov Task Force says women don't need to get mammograms until their 50's. The... more
IBM announced they're making huge progress developing a super computer that can think like a living thing's brain. We might think computers are already intelligent but none of them can imagine a wall painted a different color, for example, or picture a person's face and connect that to an emotion.
But this week researchers from IBM are reporting that they've simulated a cat's cerebral cortex, the thinking part of the brain, using a massive supercomputer.
OK it's not actually a computer that thinks it's a cat, and actually runs 100 times slower than an actual cat's brain. But it's a big leap for the scientists in watching how thoughts are formed in the brain and how the roughly 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses in a cat's brain work together.
Do you think this is a good idea? Or are you with the ZDnet writer who says "Something about a computer that thinks like a brain makes me nervous."
Pregnant women with the potentially dangerous condition pre-eclampsia may be more likely to suffer from thyroid problems, research suggests.Pregnant women with the potentially dangerous condition pre-eclampsia may be more... more
Society must decide if it is willing to accept relationships between humans and robots before the machines become so sophisticated they start demanding rights, a legal expert has warned.
Rapid advances in technology mean cyborgs, or human-like robots, are no longer a vision of a distant future.
The machines have been made famous by films like Terminator and Blade Runner but real life is increasingly catching up with fiction.
Earlier this year researchers announced they had created robot ‘scientists’ – complete with the ability to think for themselves.
As the machines become more sophisticated, they will increasingly seem more like humans and could demand ‘human rights’, Anna Russel, from the University of San Diego warns.
One of the flashpoints could be over relationships, including sexual relationships, with humans, she claims.
In an article titled “Blurring the love lines” she warns: “While this humanoid is a giant leap forward technologically, if a self-aware, super-intelligent, thinking, feeling humanoid is developed, the legal system will be hard-pressed to distinguish this creature legally from human actors on grounds not stemming from a religious or moral prejudice.”
Lawyers have to start thinking now about what rights should be accorded to cyborgs, she argues.
Most societies will want to regulate such relationships but Russel claims they have to prepare themselves for how they would respond if the cyborgs clamoured for sexual freedoms.
As the technology improves “it will be inevitable that legal issues would be raised and the love lines blurred,” she warns.
“In what way would such sexual activities be regulated, however, and how regulation would work is not clear.”Society must decide if it is willing to accept relationships between humans and robots... more
"The past of human evolution is more and more coming to light as scientists uncover a trove of fossils and genetic knowledge. But where might the future of human evolution go?
An old cliché has the highly evolved humans of the future sporting large heads to hold their advanced enlarged brains, "but that's nonsense, whole nonsense," said paleontologist Peter Ward at the University of Washington at Seattle, author of "Future Evolution."
"If you've ever gone through a childbirth or witnessed one," Ward says, "we're already anatomically right on the edge of how big our heads can go — our big brains have already caused extreme problems in childbirth, and if we had bigger and bigger brains, that'd cause more mothers to die in childbirth, so evolution would select against that."
Another idea, suggested by evolutionary theorist Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics, seems like a retread of ideas from science fiction writer H.G. Well's classic "The Time Machine," with the human species split in two over time — an underclass of dim-witted, short goblins, and a genetic upper class of tall, slim, healthy, attractive, intelligent and creative superhumans that eventually are spoiled by technology that will do everything for them, resembling domesticated animals.
"That's crap," Ward said. "Why would that happen? Are we like blind cavefish? After we get Google, do we get stupider? Intelligence is coded on too many genes to just lose a trait like intelligence. That's not going to happen."
Ward suggests that, if left untouched, humans might converge in appearance as populations mix. "I kind of view us all as eventually having chocolate-covered hair and medium stature, getting rid of all extremes," he speculated. "Of course, the big elephant in the room, the change from the past that you cannot ignore when talking about the future of human evolution, is genetic engineering."
Humanity now has an unparalleled means by which to direct our evolution — genetic engineering. By using viruses and other techniques, we can in theory modify our genomes, and over time, scientists may uncover genes underlying intelligence, health, athletic prowess, longevity and other desirable traits, engineering what might seem like superhuman progeny. Genetic engineering is how Ward speculated new species of humans might emerge.
"I think taboos would arise which would prevent mating between populations — 'I don't want them anymore' or 'We want natural people,'" he said. "Of course this is all pure speculation, but this is the only way I can see new human species emerging — unless we get off the planet."
So much to think about...where do you think evolution will go? What does the future hold for humans?"The past of human evolution is more and more coming to light as scientists uncover a... more
Astronomers will soon find scores of Earth-sized exoplanets, but imaging them may be decades away. That is, unless NASA decides to build a starshade.Astronomers will soon find scores of Earth-sized exoplanets, but imaging them may be... more
Chemistry classes used to frustrate me. Trying to remember all those elements in the Periodic Table felt like trying to learn the French vocabulary. And I despised my French classes. It's little wonder, then, that I dropped both French and Chemistry around the same time to focus on Physics.
Although I might be pretty limited in the foreign language and chemical departments, I think my focus on astrophysics was a good choice. That was until I had to study spectroscopy at university and that table made an appearance in my textbooks once again. Bummer. There was no escape.
However, if I'd seen the Periodic Table organized in a fun-looking pattern like this, I may have been a little less intimidated. It's not just the fact that it looks like the design of a crop circle that makes it interesting, the diagram is actually useful.
This new-look Periodic Table is the brainchild of Mohd Abubakr from Microsoft Research in Hyderabad, India, who points out that the circular design gives a sense of the relative sizes of the atoms (i.e. hydrogen and helium are near the center of the table, as they are the smallest). By placing these small elements in the middle, it avoids the confusion about where to place hydrogen (in the halogens or alkali metals) and helium (in the 2nd group or inert gases) in the table. Although I don't remember that particular problem in my Chemistry class, as I wasn't paying that much attention.
Still, this is pretty groovy, and although there are some short-fallings with it (i.e. you can't easily rotate your computer monitor to read all the elements), the new design would certainly be an interesting new look into the relative sizes of elements.Chemistry classes used to frustrate me. Trying to remember all those elements in the... more
First, a conspiracy about dollar coins. Now a conspiracy about monkeys and fish.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain's (R-AZ) vice presidential running mate, signals in her new book Going Rogue that she doesn't believe in evolution, panning it as theory that human beings "originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea."First, a conspiracy about dollar coins. Now a conspiracy about monkeys and fish.... more
