Science Updates

[Super Nova]

Card I get it.

I was promised free energy.... unlimitied....

It pisses me off that my patent for my perpetual motion energy generator was refused with my cold fusion reactor designs.

[Chard]

Card I get it.

I was promised free energy.... unlimitied....

It pisses me off that my patent for my perpetual motion energy generator was refused with my cold fusion reactor designs.

And you'd have gotten away with it to if not for those pesky laws of thermodynamics and that darned dog!

[Super Nova]

FFS

Muslims 'warned in Fatwa not to live on Mars'

Fatwa reportedly issued warning Muslims not to make 'hazardous trip' to live on Mars

Muslims have been warned in a Fatwa not to go and live on Mars because it would pose "a real risk to life", according to a Dubai news organisation.

The General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Endowment (GAIAE) in the United Arab Emirates said that anyone making such a "hazardous trip" is likely to die for "no righteous reason".

They would therefore be liable to a "punishment similar to that of suicide in the Hereafter", the Khaleej Times reported.

The Fatwa was apparently issued in response to the proposal from the Dutch company Mars One last year to send four people on a one-way journey to the red planet in 2022.

"Such a one-way journey poses a real risk to life, and that can never be justified in Islam," the committee said. "There is a possibility that an individual who travels to planet Mars may not be able to remain alive there, and is more vulnerable to death."

"Protecting life against all possible dangers and keeping it safe is an issue agreed upon by all religions and is clearly stipulated in verse 4/29 of the Holy Koran: Do not kill yourselves or one another. Indeed, Allah is to you ever Merciful," the committee, chaired by Professor Dr Farooq Hamada, said.

Over 200,000 people have applied to be civilian-astronauts on the Mars One mission. Experts have questioned both the financial and practical viability of the mission.

The Mars One website states: "It is Mars One's goal to establish a human settlement on Mars. Human settlement of Mars is the next giant leap for humankind.

"Exploring the solar system as a united humanity will bring us all closer together. Mars is the stepping stone of the human race on its voyage into the universe."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... -Mars.html

[Super Nova]

Frogin's family tree found in northern NSW.


Discovered: The 'very hairy' marsupial which dies from 'frantic' mating

Scientists in Australia discover new "very hairy" marsupial species whose males die from frantic mating sessions
Scientists in Australia have discovered a new "very hairy" mouse-like marsupial variety of a species whose males are known for dying after overly strenuous mating sessions.



The new creature is a black-tailed variety of the antechinus, which made international headlines last year when it was discovered that the male has been dying from stress due to intensive copulation.

The black-tailed antechinus is believed to inhabit a small region covering high-altitude wetlands across northern New South Wales and Queensland's Gold Coast.

Dr Andrew Baker, from the Queensland University of Technology, said the antechinus typically has a "frenzied mating period" when they are 11 months old and "all males will die before the young are born".

"[The new species] probably follow the typical pattern of antechinus, which is all males are dead before they turn one year old," he told ABC News.

Last year, Australian researchers found that the males died after mating because of the extreme stress of their breeding habits, overturning the previous belief that they died because of an altruistic intention to leave more food for their offspring.

The research found that the male mated "competitively" to try to promote their own genes and that the "frantic" breeding caused infections, internal bleeding, a disintegration of body tissue and eventually death.

"Each mating can take 12 to 14 hours and they do this over and over again," said biologist Dr Diana Fisher from the University of Queensland. "Even if they survived the breeding period, they would be infertile anyway... It's a bit distressing to see them die."

The new creature has been described as "striking", with a "very shaggy, very hairy" body and long guard hairs.

"On the rump of the animal it becomes almost an orangey-brown colour, but where the tail emerges from the rump there is quite a distinct change from orange rump to black tail," said Dr Baker.

"It's a very short-furred tail and they have black feet as well."

The findings were published in the scientific journal Zootaxa.

[Super Nova]

Maybe we need one for forums. We could call it Phlegm instead of Pheme.

Scientists develop a lie detector for tweets

Scientists are developing a new computer system which will be able to judge between truth and fiction in 140 characters or less

The Twitter logo displayed on a smart phone Photo: PA

Scientists have developed the ultimate lie detector for social media – a system that can tell whether a tweeter is telling the truth.

The creators of the system called Pheme, named after the Greek mythological figure known for scandalous rumour, say it can judge instantly between truth and fiction in 140 characters or less.

Researchers across Europe are joining forces to analyse the truthfulness of statements that appear on social media in “real time” and hope their system will prevent scurrilous rumours and false statements from taking hold, the Times reported.

The creators believe that the system would have proved useful to the police and authorities during the London Riots of 2011. Tweeters spread false reports that animals had been released from London Zoo and landmarks such as the London Eye and Selfridges had been set on fire, which caused panic and led to police being diverted.

Kalina Bontcheva, from the University of Sheffield’s engineering department, said that the system would be able to test information quickly and trace its origins. This would enable governments, emergency services, health agencies, journalists and companies to respond to falsehoods.

“People do believe things they hear on the internet,” she said. “In critical situations, you can instead show reliable information or alert the authorities before things get out of hand.”

Pheme will classify online rumours into four types: speculation, such as whether interest rates might rise; controversy — such as the heated debate over the MMR vaccine; misinformation, where something untrue is spread unwittingly; and disinformation, where false statements are published with sinister motives.

The system works by assessing the quality of information and sources, giving more weight to established news outlets and experts, and looking out for “bots” (computer programs designed to send spam). It will also look for a history and background of users, so that it can spot where Twitter accounts have been created purely to spread false information.

Pheme will then search for sources that can back up or dismiss the information, as well plot how the conversations on social networks evolve, using all of this information to assess whether it is true or false. The results will be displayed to the user on screen, telling people if an untruth is taking hold among the public.

Dr Bontcheva said the final version of the system could be completed within 18 months, but believed that working prototypes may be available sooner. The costs of the project are being met mostly through a European Union grant.

The makers said that the program, estimated to cost about £3.5 million, could have warned Twitter users, such as Sally Bercow, the wife of the Commons Speaker, and the comedian Alan Davies, who were among those who spread untrue rumours that linked Lord McAlpine to child sex abuse. Both were among a number of prominent people who agreed financial settlements with the late peer as a result of the incorrect claims.

The program is a collaboration between five universities — Sheffield, Warwick, King’s College London, Saarland in Germany and MODUL University Vienna — and four companies: ATOS in Spain, iHub in Kenya, Ontotext in Bulgaria and swissinfo.ch.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/s ... weets.html

[Super Nova]

I am completely confused as to what is good and bad for us these days.

Not that I personally care too much as I know I will suffer from some of my lifestyle choices like smoking for too long ...etc.

Like global warming, the scientific community have no single answer. One day this is bad for you the next it's good. the only thing that appears correct is summarised by "After decades of study, the best, most well-supported advice is still what your mother told you: eat your greens and get plenty of exercise".

Good on ya Mum.

Read the latest

Are burgers as bad as cigarettes? Unravelling the truth about diet and disease

You’d be forgiven for looking warily at your bacon sandwich this morning, if you’ve seen headlines suggesting that a diet high in animal proteins is nearly as dangerous as smoking. Cheese and meat cause cancer! That carbonara is a time-bomb ticking in your stomach! Quick, go vegetarian!

The news is based on a study in the journal Cell Metabolism, which found that people who got more than a fifth of their daily calories from animal protein were 74 per cent more likely to have died during the study than people who ate less. We’re bombarded with food messages like this, which often seem to change from day to day. Dame Sally Davies, the Chief Medical Officer, has warned about the “addictive” potential of sugar, and the World Health Organisation said yesterday that recommended sugar allowances were too high; an editorial in the journal Open Heart, also published yesterday, suggested that the risk of saturated fats was overblown.

Every Christmas, suddenly, red wine and chocolate become good for us. Last year headlines screamed that eating three sausages a day raises your risk of dying of heart disease by three quarters. It’s hard to know what to make of it all, the what’s-curing-me-and-killing-me-today merry-go-round.

Can eating burgers really be as bad for you as smoking? Before answering that, it’s worth looking at how we know how bad smoking is.

In the late Forties, a man called Richard Doll was given the task of finding out what was behind the dramatic increase in lung cancer deaths. Originally, he and his colleagues thought it was probably the new practice of coating roads with Tarmac. But upon interviewing 649 men with lung cancer in 20 London hospitals, he found one remarkable fact: all but two of them were smokers (he also interviewed a smaller group of women, in which the divide was less dramatic but still very large). He promptly quit smoking. His research had found a simple fact: smoking causes lung cancer, and in fact is the cause of almost all lung cancer.

This caused great excitement. Researchers wondered if other cancers, or other diseases, could be linked as straightforwardly to lifestyle factors. The science of epidemiology – of the causes of disease in populations – had its greatest success since Dr John Snow showed that unclean water caused London’s cholera outbreaks in the 19th century.

But smoking was a low-hanging fruit. There aren’t very many straightforwardly poisonous things that lots of humans imbibe in large amounts and lots of humans don’t touch at all. Working out whether a particular food is good for you, for instance, is fantastically tricky: you can’t prescribe someone a course of celery for 20 years, and compare how well they do to someone on a celery placebo. You have to rely on people reporting what they eat, which they do only unreliably. And unless you have very large samples, it’s hard to tease out causes from mere correlations: how can we know whether celery makes you live longer, or whether people who eat celery tend to live healthier lives generally?

What’s more, the body is very complex, so plausible hypotheses about what will do you good and do you harm often turn out to be false. This is why you should ignore anyone who tells you that you ought to eat pomegranate or chia seeds because they’re good for your liver, or whatever. They have no idea what they’re talking about.

Epidemiologists have, however, been able to tease out broader-brush factors. Red meat, salt, sugar, fat and alcohol are all bad for you in large amounts; eating plenty of fruit and veg is good for you. But exactly how good and how bad, and how much of each you should have, is all very much in dispute. The Cell Metabolism study found a huge increase in cancer risk from animal-protein-rich diets, but most earlier research on related topics had found a far less dramatic impact, of between 10 and 15 per cent.

And that’s the key. None of these studies is the final truth; science is incremental, it learns by degrees, and epidemiology doubly so. Meat, in large quantities, is probably a bit more dangerous than we previously thought, but to say that it is suddenly as dangerous as smoking is to run far ahead of the evidence. And, of course, there are other differences: it’s very difficult to include cigarettes as part of a balanced diet, for instance.

Richard Doll’s discovery paved the way for a remarkable age of public health research, which has led to us knowing far more about what helps us live longer and what kills us than we did half a century ago. But the picture is usually cloudier than university PR departments like to admit. After decades of study, the best, most well-supported advice is still what your mother told you: eat your greens and get plenty of exercise

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomch ... d-disease/

[Chard]

FFS

Muslims 'warned in Fatwa not to live on Mars'

Ok, just noticed this and wanted to correct this. The article''s title is misleading as fuck. THe Fatwa isn't against going to or living on Mars. It's against participating in the mass suicide by rocket idiocy that is the Mars One project. Mars One is the single dumbest idea I've ever heard of and you'd have to be either terminally depressed or certifiably insane to want to participate. In this case, all those Imams did was exercise some common sense for once.

[Chard]

Lucas, are you still mad about me spanking you on religion? Jesus, get some ointment for that asschap, son.

[boxy]

We're on track to make the orbital range needed for satellites unusable for hundreds of years. Good job humanity

New Australian research centre to remove space junk, save satellites and spacecraft

Dr Greene says there is a "realistic threat" that, at current rates, there is a chance all satellites could be destroyed in a catastrophic event.

He says finding a way to accurately track orbiting material is the first challenge researchers will face.

"It's a realistic threat. We are exactly on the curve that we predicted 10 years ago for the number of satellites we would lose in a year," he said.

"If those losses are at a level two or three times [the current rate], we could [see an] avalanche effect where we lose everything."

[Chard]

Two questions, Lucas.

1. Did you even read the article I was responding to? I'm betting you read the title and didn't bother with the body of it since you can't seem to grasp the Fatwa was issued against a specific proposed mission to Mars and not against going to Mars in general.

2. Do you even know what a Fatwa is? I'm guessing not, because it's just the Islamic equivalent of Church eldars issuing a PSA to their congregation. Fuck, outside of very strict sects they aren't even binding.