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Science Blog was started in August 2002. It lives, breathes and eats press releases from research organizations around the globe. Most of what you read here are press releases from the outfits named in the stories themselves. Got a news story you think belongs here? Let's talk. The other half of the equation is blog posts from readers like you. So if you have an interest in science, please register and join others like you in an ongoing, vibrant dialog about what makes the world tick. Meantime, please take a minute to read our Privacy Policy and Site Disclaimer.Recommended
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5293273
More tomorrow!
Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
To optimally use this technology scientists must have access to the influenza sequences being hoarded by China, the CDC, WHO, and other virologists, n'est pas? To a non-scientist, this seems to be THE key step. Is the Scripps Research Institute committed to that sort of openness? Are they pushing colleagues in other institutions in that direction?
Hello
It is a good thing that you are doing, keeping a vigilant eye on things. I want to share with you what some important people are saying about mad Cow Disease and its cause.
As there is currently a news story concerning Mad Cow Disease in Alabama, we are taking this opportunity to share this question.
Encephalopathy is brain damage. Hexane is known to cause brain damage(Hexane MSDS), and Hexane is fed to cattle in large quantities (the EPA found one-half to one pound per ton of Hexane in food meals, in averages of nine vegetable oil-processing plants.).
To find what does, and what does not cause the malady of Scrapie(aka Mad Cow Disease) one can look to the only two countries in the world known to be free of Scrapie and Mad Cow Disease; Australia and New Zealand. Look at what they feed to their livestock. Australian and New Zealand livestock are normally fed only grass and grass hay. Their livestock are not fed grain supplements from the vegetable oil extraction industry(which is the source of Hexane in high protein meals).
Should we give credit where credit is due? The unpleasant chemical Hexane is fed to cows at levels 15-20 times higher than the OSHA occupational permissable Hexane exposure limit for humans(Time weighed averages). Hexane is the root cause for Mad Cow Disease.
My letter includes the documentation and official government studies where the EPA found Hexane levels many times over the occupational exposure limits in the food meals that you and I eat(and the cows eat it too).
(this passage is from a letter about Hexane being fed to cattle and its effects. The entire letter is at www.datacruz.com/~baneyred/index.html and it is called “My Story of Hexaneâ€
Given these frank associations, can Mad Cow Disease be explained in a more reasonable way?
Is it strange to say and see that Spongiform Encephalopathy is brain damage? What causes brain damage anyway?
Earnestly, Dale Baney
I mean it's great to treat people and all, but
if the misuse of antibiotics by the laity wasn't
bad enough we need to increase their use even more?
Electrons only come with one charge...
We manufacture solid wood furniture. First we do insectiside impregnation by vacuum and high pressure process. After it we dry the wood in a vacuum drier to 10% moisture content. This process takes 40 hours at 150 mBar vacuum level.
We are interested to know whether the vacuum drying we are doing is sufficient to kill the insects, and should we stop doing insectiside impregnation?
Many critics can be done concerning the elements of informations in this article.
-The propension to believe that genes are the only support of integration, in the sense of accumulation of information.
-Not to consider the issue of the language in the elaboration of diverses expressing genes.
-The evidence of correlation between brain size and intelligence, but with some exceptions(confering Anatole France's brain size) is very weak.
Thanks
The problem as I understand it is that since Huntington usually is discovered after reproduction, the person has little chance of making a choice based on the laer knowledge.
I heard that, and the Antarctic is loosing mass fast according to this article in nature.
http://theorchidblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/antarctica-is-melting.html
This just shows that farming with fertilizer releases more of several different types of nitrogen compounds (as one might reasonably expect) that organic farming. It says nothing about the overall ecological benefits.
Does organic farming have other negative ecological effects. Does organic farming product as much food per acre? What is the harm per unit food produced? Which method is more sustainable very time? What is the average yearly output of a patch of land over time farmed in each way?
Is organic farming more expensive? If so is the harm from these compounds more than that expense? Does that extra expense trade off against other enviornmental programs?
There might be some reasonable arguments from this study to these issues but, at least given the description here, it seems wrong to advertise such a simple restricted study (not a 15 year long term study) as showing that organic farming is better for the enviornment.
Uh, fusing Bush and Sadaam together might make
a more slicker, slippery kind of oil. We don't
need that! Isn't it the goal of fusion to do
away with old-fossil fuels like Bush and Sadaam?
Interesting premise. I agree that feedback is critical. Often students are too infrequently evaluated, meaning that their difficulties with the material aren't quickly identified and corrected by their teachers and the students themselves may not realise that they are falling behind.
Hi Anonymous!
First, thanks for reading Science Blog. Sometimes in the rush to post a news release we miss the attribution. You'll find if you tool around, though, that about 99.9 percent of items DO have a source and link. And if we miss one and someone let's us know, we go back in and add it. In answer to your copyright question, as it says in the About Us section, a lot of the content on this site is press releases from universities and other research labs. Press releases are put out by institutions expressly for reuse by other publications and as such are almost always in the public domain.
I really wish you'd cite your sources and link to them.
Also, isn't it a violation of copyright if you quote the WHOLE article? Quoting a couple of paragraphs is fair use, so you'd be ok there, so long as you cite the source. I think you're leaving yourself open for legal action when you quote the whole article AND don't say where the article is from.
Sorry, but many fusion reactions do not generate net power: it takes more power to start them and keep them running than whatever they produce. And I believe it is the case with this one. ¡I think that the authors would be running to the patent office if it was otherwise! 8)
¿Want cheap energy? ¡Then pray these other guys are right! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion (Everybody thinks they are wrong. It is a long shot, but the prize is immense...)
Sounds great......wanna try it out soon....looking forward to it.
Tech Central Station is another zombie front group for industry of course. As an added bonus they also published articles supporting Intelligent Design. Got anything like any real peer reviewed evidence from reputable scientific journals?
I won't mince words and if this is an insult well tough. You sir are a tool of right wing industry front organizations. You are promoting disinformation on a science blog. You are noise, static, corrupted sectors on the hard drive of life. Go away.
It's an insult to junkscience.com not you. That site is well known for being funded by the big tobacco firms. You're better off getting science information from TheOnion.com then junkscience.com.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/042505C.html
"Furthermore, studies have been made investigating the overall status of sea ice around Antarctica. NASA announced the results of their study in 2002 with a press release headlined "Satellites Show Overall Increases in Antarctic Sea Ice Cover." While there are regional variations from this trend, including a decline in sea ice around the Antarctic Peninsula, the area of sea ice around much of the remainder of the continental margin has been increasing, at least over the past 25 years. Obviously, a story proclaiming "Antarctic Sea Ice Rapidly Diminishing" and focusing on the Peninsula region would paint an incomplete and unfair picture of the actual circumstances there".
Just calling someone who disagrees with you an idiot is hardly a way to carry on a rational discussion.
Read: http://info-pollution.com/milloy.htm (among many other) discrediting the idiot at www.junkscience.com.
Check out www.junkscience.com for the facts.
I am grateful that this thread has resulted from a long and beneficial discussion below. I am opting out to let others speak their piece, and I hope the largely civil tone continues.
Meanwhile, I encourage all of you to visit my Science Shelf web site, discover its collection of weather and climate book reviews, and subscribe to get updates, including my new comparative review of Field Notes from a Catastrophe and The Weather Makers. I talk about my initial impressions in my closing reply to Aaron below.
Signing off for now....
Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
Aaron, I understand Shannon, who seems to get the consensus fairly well. S/he just operates from an ideology that includes the assumption that scientists are drawing conclusions based on their politics. That's unfortunate, because Shannon then starts espousing increasingly discredited fringe views -- views that are being pushed farther to the fringe because of increasing support for the consensus view -- only because they are more consonant with Shannon's ideological mindset.
What is that consensus? It is that the cause of global warming is human activity, mainly the burning of fossil fuels.
The consequences of global warming are less certain, although as climate data accumulate, modeling tools become more sophisticated, and computer power increases, the signs are strong that we are on the verge of an abrupt change in climate, a "tipping point" in current parlance.
Just as you need lots of time and space to turn an aircraft carrier, you need to act early to avoid the tipping point. Somewhere on the trajectory there is a point of no return. Most of the present climate discussion concerns where that point is and at what rate we can continue to burn fossil fuels and still not go over the edge.
Some people, looking at the data from the polar regions in particular, see evidence that we may have already crossed the threshhold. In that case, all this discussion may be moot. Others say we need to take extreme measures to prevent reaching that threshhold, but those measures carry extreme risks as well. That's the kind of thing Shannon has been focusing on.
All the models provide scenarios for policy makers to consider. There are plenty of scenarios that show serious danger that can be avoided by prudent, manageable action today. That's probably where the majority opinion is. It is not yet a consensus, but we must pay attention to it and make policy on the basis of what we know and how well we know it.
The various climate models are not in perfect agreement, but they all point to the need to change our current behavior. The first thing we need to do is stop the ideological squabbling and focus on the evidence and the various interpretations of it by credible scientists. Then we can talk about how to slow down our rate of dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's where policy makers need to be working.
I am presently reading the second of two new books that discuss the tipping point scenarios and our responses to them. One of them has some interesting but more extreme interpretations. In my review, I will try to distinguish consensus from speculation. I will recommend both the books and suggest that people read them with an open mind and skeptical eyes. But I will also note how quickly the consensus view has moved in the past decade, which makes it necessary for us to consider all the scenarios carefully.
I hope I have succeeded in moving this discussion across a tipping point of a different kind, from ideological to scientific approaches in the interpretation of climate models and scenarios. I began this thread by recommending a book review that showed how easy it is to misrepresent science and history for political ends. The point I wanted to make is that ideologues can be dangerous. The fact that people like you and Shannon seem to be swayed by ideology rather than science is why I opened this discussion.
Now it is time for me to drop out of it and let others get involved. I'll post a new thread at the beginning stating that fact.
Meanwhile, if you want to be sure you get my reviews, visit my Science Shelf website and subscribe to my occasional newsletters. As soon as my review is published in a major newspaper, I'll put it up on line.
Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)
Ahhh, I can see it now: over-priced, "gourmet" chocolate milk showing up on the shelves at your local grocery store.