Sleepless in Midland

Extinguish fire with sound waves

Shout it out! Nah, not that easy. But sound waves can put out a flame -- see Engineering Students Extinguish Fire Using Bass Sound.

When the project started, the duo thought that high-pitched tones would do the trick, however, soon realized that they were wrong. Tran said, “It’s low-frequency sounds — like the thump-thump bass in hip-hop that works.”

Who would have thought the hip-hop sound was good for something? So if a car catches fire, tune in and crank up the volume.

Their device looks a little like a backpack blower. It would be marvelous if the technology could be applicable on a wildfire like the ones that plague west Texas.

Watch it in action in this Youtube video.

Faked gay marriage survey -- like counterfeit bills, you know there are more out there

By now everyone has everyone has heard about the survey the gay UCLA PhD published which purported to demonstrate that contact with a gay canvasser can change people's opinions about gay marriage. The survey was later shown to be bogus. They've created another fissure in the credibility of social scientists and the journalists who aid and abet that mendacity.

Daniel J. Flynn in What the Faked Gay Marriage Study Says About Academia and the Media says this:

Ultimately, the fraudulent peer-reviewed study says more about the corruption of the media and academia than it does about the corruption of one activist professor. Journalists and professors ostensibly dedicated to the search for truth unravel the institutions they serve when they imagine themselves as already possessing the truth.

The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and other leading publications initially ran uncritical pieces on the research. Princeton hired Michael LaCour, the UCLA Ph.D. allegedly responsible for the faked data, as an assistant professor and Science published his co-authored article.

We needn't look any farther than the global warming movement to see examples of science subjugated by ideology with willing media accomplices.

It's a little bit like counterfeit money. If a fake twenty dollar bill shows up at a convenience store, you know there wasn't just one out there.

Being a climate change denier is probably the most rational way to approach the issue

As soon as someone started looking skeptically at the data coming from the climate change promoters they started calling them names. "Climate change denier" was the most popular epithet. But when a movement has the intended result of severely hampering western industry and the primary proponents are also proponents of the progressive lefty agenda, skepticism is warranted.

It was only last week that NASA proclaimed that 2014 was the warmest year in modern record. Not so fast. They left something out, something Daily Mail had to tell us about:

As a result, GISS’s director Gavin Schmidt has now admitted NASA thinks the likelihood that 2014 was the warmest year since 1880 is just 38 per cent. However, when asked by this newspaper whether he regretted that the news release did not mention this, he did not respond.

The movement has lost so much of its credibility even they must now realize that name calling has passed its shelf life.

Just thinking about exercising can make you stronger -- Science

A few years back there was an article somewhere that explained how just thinking about food can make you fat. The theory was that thinking about delicious food got the enzymes working, and substances already ingested were more precisely converted into fat cells. Can't find anything on it now, so maybe the study was never replicated.

Anyway, here's a different theory backed up by a real study.

Researchers put one arm of each test subject in a cast to immobilize the wrist and hand. They told the test group to perform mental imagery of strong muscle contractions five days each week for four weeks. The control group got no instructions.

Muscle loss is usually the result of non-use. However, strength tests before, during and after the experiment revealed that the group that imagined the exercise suffered less muscle loss than the control group -- a very impressive finding.

Their focus was on reducing the loss of strength during illness or incapacitation. But maybe if we think hard enough we can get those six pack abs without all those sit-ups. I'm thinking! I'm thinking!

----------

More detail here: New evidence shows link between brain function and muscle strength.

Link to abstract: The Power of the Mind: The Cortex as a Critical Determinant of Muscle Strength/Weakness.

Via Daily Mail.

Oh, it's just a light case of HIV

In regions where HIV has been around for a long time the disease seems to have mutated into a less lethal form.

The virus gets into a person who has an especially efficient immune system, and either the virus gets wiped out or it adapts. The adaptation changes it into a milder form. Then if the person spreads it to someone else, the recipient gets the milder version. That's the theory explained in HIV evolving 'into milder form'. Excerpt:

The team showed this process happening in Africa by comparing Botswana, which has had an HIV problem for a long time, and South Africa where HIV arrived a decade later.

Prof Goulder told the BBC News website: "It is quite striking. You can see the ability to replicate is 10% lower in Botswana than South Africa and that's quite exciting.

"We are observing evolution happening in front of us and it is surprising how quickly the process is happening.

"The virus is slowing down in its ability to cause disease and that will help contribute to elimination."

Fascinating, if true.

If no efforts had been made to slow the disease then presumably those humans with built in immunity would survive, their offspring would also carry that immunity, and in the evolutionary process the world would eventually be inhabited with people with that immunity. But here we are told that the virus itself is adapting and evolving. It's a constant war between humans and the things that want to kill them.

If you're old and you're happy clap your hands

Old people are generally happier than young people. Why is that so? When you hear scientists explain it, there's a forehead slapping "Aw, I knew that," affect. Laura Carstensen does explain it right here (transcript). Excerpt:

As we age, our time horizons grow shorter and our goals change. When we recognize that we don't have all the time in the world, we see our priorities most clearly. We take less notice of trivial matters. We savor life. We're more appreciative, more open to reconciliation. We invest in more emotionally important parts of life, and life gets better, so we're happier day-to-day. But that same shift in perspective leads us to have less tolerance than ever for injustice.

Less tolerance for injustice wouldn't seem to be an element of happiness unless they had the capability to right that injustice. Maybe that's why old timers vote in such high percentages. Let's continue:

By 2015, there will be more people in the United States over the age of 60 than under 15. What will happen to societies that are top-heavy with older people? The numbers won't determine the outcome. Culture will. If we invest in science and technology and find solutions for the real problems that older people face and we capitalize on the very real strengths of older people, then added years of life can dramatically improve quality of life at all ages. Societies with millions of talented, emotionally stable citizens who are healthier and better educated than any generations before them, armed with knowledge about the practical matters of life and motivated to solve the big issues can be better societies than we have ever known.

For some reason I'm reminded of an old joke. When you're young, old people just won't stop talking. When you're old, young people just won't listen.

Via via.

53 scientists are trying to stop WHO from monkeying with E-cigarettes

The UN's World Health Organization has previously indicated that it wants to put electronic cigarettes in the same category as tobacco. And that would severely hamper the industry as well as customers' access to the product.

We talked about E-cigs before, noting that they are a gift from heaven for some people. Not only are there addicted smokers who might like to quit pumping smoke and tar into their systems. But there are also those people suffering from some malady caused by an overactive immune system. Nicotine slightly impairs the immune system, and that's just what it takes to rid some bodies of those annoying afflictions.

Those people don't need the UN to tell them what they can do with their bodies. According to a Reuters article in NYPost.com, 53 "leading scientists" told WHO that treating e-cigs like tobacco would do more harm than good. To wit:

“These products could be among the most significant health innovations of the 21st century — perhaps saving hundreds of millions of lives. The urge to control and suppress them as tobacco products should be resisted,” the experts wrote.

The science is settled.

National Science Foundation doing trade group work

Listeners to local radio stations during the off-peak hours here in Midland, Texas, get to hear a lot of those ads paid for with taxpayer money. And while they probably shouldn't be used to judge all government spending, they do provide a glimpse into the thinking behind the process.

For example, there's an advertisement from the National Science Foundation explaining the results of a study. Researchers have determined that caffeine can improve a person's memory for as long as 24 hours.

Links: Johns Hopkins University press release; National Science Foundation press release.

Was this a good use of taxpayer money? The findings are interesting, but they won't cure cancer. And the whole project sounds as if it might have been more appropriate for a coffee trade group to fund than for taxpayers. Worse, maybe it was the trade group lobbyists who finagled the NSF grant.

So as a person lies in bed wishing for sleep, he/she can thank the caffeine consumed that day for being able to dredge up all those memories.

On a related note, Fox News reports that the NSF has funded "a climate change-themed theatrical production" to the tune of $700,000. The NSF needs to drink a few cups of coffee so maybe they'll remember that they're supposed to be funding scientific research.

Let's say something good about nicotine

There was a time when it was cool to smoke cigarettes. But even then smokers under a certain age had to hide under the bleachers to get a puff. All grown up, now they huddle outside of buildings, having been banished from the office place and held in slightly higher regard than heroin addicts.

Among the things that nicotine does to the body is impair the immune system. And cigarette smoking requires the user to suck smoke and tar into his/her lungs. Throw those things together, and the high incidence of smoking related cancers shouldn't be that surprising.

However, there are some conditions affecting some of us that are caused by an over active immune system. Something triggers the immune system to go on the war path, and failing to find the offender, it attacks the host. I couldn't name all of those conditions, but people with them know what they are.

Physicians prescribe all sorts of drugs to alleviate the symptoms. And some physicians want to prescribe the powerful drugs that are supposed to prevent transplant recipients' immune systems from destroying their new organs.

A perfectly functioning immune system is in delicate balance. So obviously, it's a tricky thing to fine tune.

Along comes a new delivery system for nicotine: e-cigs. Electronic cigarettes were unheard of by most non-smokers until just recently. Now they're everywhere. What-are-they and how-to videos are all over YouTube. And search engine results are filled with products and reviews.

They're a blessing to smokers. But for non-smokers who suffer from some condition caused by an out-of-balance immune system, they're a miracle drug. If only the FDA doesn't regulate them out of existence.

Related: Nicotine, the Wonder Drug? Subhead: This notorious stimulant may enhance learning and help treat Parkinson's, schizophrenia and other neurological diseases.

A sound system that could kill

It's a speaker system owned by the European Space Agency and which is used to subject spacecraft to the pressure and vibration of a real launch.

But it can do more than shake out loose nuts or bolts, it could kill a person. From European Space Agency Has A Sound System That Can Kill You Easily:

When nitrogen is pumped through the horn, it is capable of producing sound over 154 decibels. The resulting sound is similar to standing close to several jets as they take off and is more than enough to permanently deafen someone. Sounds this loud can be harmful to humans and have been used in lower intensities to control crowds, as burglar-deterrents and in the battlefield. Sound grenades produce sound levels between 120 and 190 decibels and are enough to take a person’s life. A recent German research found that sounds up to 210 decibels loud could permanently damage internal organs.

We've all heard music blaring from a car at a red light and wondered how the occupants survived. It probably wasn't loud enough to do damage to anything other than eardrums. But suppose one of those car hackers came up with a way to turn up the volume remotely. Wouldn't that be devious? Well yes, but most of us would probably use it to turn the volume down.

A land mine detector in your shoe

Now there's a app.

A Colombian company called Lemur Studio has designed a device that, if functional, could be worn over or in a shoe making it a metal detector. If it detected metal nearby it would send a signal to another device worn like a wristwatch which would allow the wearer to pinpoint the metal. The objective is to use it like a mine detector and save lives and limbs in mine infested areas. Presumably, false positives would not be so numerous as to discourage its use.

The company website says it's a design company, so someone else would probably have to actually make it. Their application for the World Design Impact Prize 2013-2014 can be viewed here. Glass-half-empty people will want to see the section following "Briefly describe the challenges the project currently faces":

At this time the problem that the project would be the technology in terms of the template because according to our research is carried out by means of nano-technology which would be very expensive to do in a country like Colombia and would require external entities, of other countries, for the successful completion of the project.

Hmm. There's the rub. An ordinary metal detector can be purchased for a few hundred dollars, and if that's out of reach for people living in land mined areas then high tech shoes might be a bit too pricy.

That aside, it is a neat concept, and maybe some outfit like Nike will just do it.

Via WonderfulEngineering.com.

Use CO2 to generate power in geothermal plants

This is interesting. Someone has come up with a proposal to use underground C02 storage sites for geothermal power. Here's the writeup at If We Can Bury Carbon Dioxide, Why Not Use It to Make Electricity? Excerpt:

In conventional geothermal plants, water and steam heated by hot rocks deep underground drive turbines in a power plant. The water is then pumped back underground to be heated up again.

The new technology would use carbon dioxide instead of water. This approach has several potential advantages. By eliminating the need for water, it increases the prospects for geothermal projects in dry areas. And computer simulations show that CO2 could produce twice the electricity from a given area that water produces, says Martin Saar, a professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Minnesota. Saar is cofounder of Heat Mining, a company that plans to test this technology in a small power plant that it will build next year.

It's all based on computer simulations so far, and we saw how far astray those things led some people about global warming. But it just might work. Read the whole thing to see the pluses and minuses of the project.

Meanwhile, speaking of global warming, this is interesting, too: Study: El Nino caused half the global warming since 1970s.

Better sit down before you watch this video about not sitting down

Not sitting is the new health craze. Sitting, we are told, increases the chance of developing metabolic syndrome*.

Here's an amusing and short video that's supposed to inspire you not to sit, but please stay seated until it's over. Link to video. Via myscienceacademy.org.

Done? Now get up. Walk around. Go get a soda. Smoke a cigarette. Get some M&Ms and eat them one at a time. Nuke and eat one of the donuts left over from this morning. Go harass that ambitious worker in the next office. But whatever you do, quit sitting.

There. Now you'll live a nice long life.

*Metabolic syndrome is so new they haven't really nailed it down, but it's supposed to be a collection of risk factors which includes a big belly, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low HDL which can lead to illness and death. Source: webmd.com.

The hypocritical Al Gore

From thehill.com: Al Gore: ‘There needs to be a political price' for climate 'denial’. Excerpt:

“It is simply not acceptable for major companies to mimic the unethical strategy of the tobacco companies in presenting blatantly false information in order to protect a business model,” Gore added, alleging that’s what some oil and coal companies are doing.

Earth to Al Gore, that's exactly what you are doing. There should be a price to pay for listening to this guy. Misrepresentations in his movie have already been exposed. But the most important thing about global warming predictions is that they've been based on evangelical environmentalists preaching bad science, and they're wrong.

Al Gore is set to become extremely wealthy from his investments in companies that will or have received government grants for producing some product claiming to stop global warming and from his scheme to sell carbon credits. Now that is an unethical business strategy, Mr. Gore.

Antibiotic makes men more cautious around attractive but untrustworthy women

The headlines about this were a little bit misleading. For example, DailyCaller.com titled their report Antibiotic makes men immune to womanly wiles. Actually, the study suggested that the antibiotic made men a little bit more rational around an attractive woman, not necessarily immune. And the woman's wiles didn't come into play at all, only her appearance.

Here's how it happened. The experimenters selected around a hundred men and eight women who were each given money to play the game. The graphic on the right shows how it worked. The women were photographed, and only their photos were shown to the men. Each man could choose to keep the money at which point his game would end. Or he could give the money to the woman whose photo was shown to him, and if he did, the sum given to her would triple. She would then have two choices. She could betray and keep all the money or cooperate and split the money with the guy. Unsurprisingly, the men offered the money to the pretty women more often than to the not-so-pretty women. Interestingly, and perhaps this deserved a study of its own, each of the women decided in advance to betray the guy and keep all the money herself.

The men were put on a four day oral treatment of either the antibiotic minocycline or a placebo. And the result of the study -- see thumbnail on the right -- suggests that the men on the antibiotic were a little bit less trusting of the women's generosity, and more of them got to take home some money.

The report describes how the authors think the drug works on the brain. But here's the money quote -- "This study demonstrated that minocycline is the first drug shown to reduce the honey trap effect on young males." Read the whole thing at Minocycline, a microglial inhibitor, reduces ‘honey trap’ risk in human economic exchange.

Post script: You know, if minocycline had been a component in James Bond's travel kit the stories would have been a lot less interesting.

Post post script: Maybe the DNC should slip some in the drinks of Anthony Weiner, Eliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton, et al. [You just couldn't resist rubbing it in, could you? -- Robo-ed.]  [No,  I wouldn't want to touch those guys with a ten foot pole much less rub something into them. -- Sleepless.]

Dumb jokes that somehow make us feel smart

Q. Why did Mr Ohm marry Mrs Ohm?
A. Because he couldn't resistor.
Source.

Q: Why do chemists call helium, curium and barium the medical elements?
A: Because if you can't helium or curium, you barium!
Source.

Say "silk" five times. Now spell "silk". What do cows drink?
Answer: Cows drink water. If you said "milk", for the sake of humankind please do not have children.
Source.

So a hydroxide ion asks a potassium ion out. The potassium ion says no, because the hydroxide ion is a bit of a HO.
Source.

Q. How do you know when you're being approached by the Quantum Mafia?
A. They make you an offer you can't understand.
Source.

Q. Why did the lights go out?
A. Because they liked each other!
Source.

Had enough? If not watch Are You Smart Enough To Get These Nerdy Jokes?
Source.

Finally:

Source.

"You look confused, Dave" -- Computer senses your feelings

As with all technology, there's the good and there's the scary. Facial recognition software can now detect your mood. And one good application would be for teachers to detect when a student is struggling with an onscreen lesson. See Facial Analysis Software Spots Struggling Students -- A computer can learn to recognize, and respond intelligently to, users’ emotional state:

A recent study from North Carolina State University shows how this might work. Researchers there used video cameras to monitor the faces of college students participating in computer tutoring sessions. Using software that had been trained to match facial expressions with different levels of engagement or frustration, the researchers were able to recognize when students were experiencing difficulty and when they were finding the work too easy.

If the technology is available it's probably a safe bet that the casinos are already using it to study the faces of the whales at the tables as they try to maintain their poker faces. Then there's the NSA.  Not only will they know what you're looking at on the 'net, but they'll know how you feel about it.

Oh, do I sound paranoid? Well, let's just say Hal, the space age computer of "2001: A Space Odyssey," made an impression on an impressionable mind.

Don't rush to judgment about Jamestown cannibals

Last night on the PBS News Hour a short segment had an anthropologist named William Kelso tell us that the Jamestown settlers were cannibals. His evidence consisted of cut marks on a female's excavated skull and leg bones, and that was proof enough for him.

So it's refreshing to see some healthy skepticism in the words of Myers Mermel at DailyCaller.com. See The Jamestown Hack Job in which he raises a bunch of unanswered questions:

Do we have any other bones of hers that show cutting marks consistent with attempts to remove flesh?
Do the animal bones next to her remains in the pit show marks of butchering?
Are there any other skeletons in addition to hers discovered with cut marks?
Could she have been a victim of domestic violence?
Could she have been attacked by Indians and her corpse dragged back to the pit to be disposed?
Why was she in a trash pit in the first place?
Was she the hidden victim of a colonial “Silence of the Lambs” killer?

But there's another bigger question. What's so wrong with cannibalism if it's the only means of survival?

To kill someone for food is a definite no-no. However, there have been numerous incidents of humans eating the bodies of the dead after all other food sources were exhausted. The survivors of the plane crash in the Andes lived for months on nothing but melted snow and human meat. There were the members of the Donner Party who, penned in by a blizzard and having eaten all their livestock, ate their dead companions. The survivors of the whaleship Essex ate their dead shipmates as they drifted in their lifeboats around the Pacific Ocean.

Paging Dr. Lector. Paging Dr. Lector. -- Robo-ed.

All I'm saying is that there's an instinct for survival in all living creatures. So in an era in which obesity is much more prevalent than starvation, let's not be too judgmental.

Links:
Jamestown's 'Jane' Reflects Grim Reality of Early Settlers;
The Jamestown Hack Job;
The Andes Accident;
The Donner Party Tragedy ; and
In the Heart of the Sea, The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex.

Revenge of the introverts

We've all seen the extrovert take control, delegate duties, then either take all the credit for successes or try to blame someone else for the failures. Well, finally someone has stepped up for the introverts.

It's a study by a couple of profs, Corinne Bendersky of UCLA and Neha Parikh Shah of Rutgers. Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

... we challenge the persistence of extraverts' advantage and neurotics' disadvantage in task group status hierarchies. In a field and an experimental study, we find that extraversion is associated with status losses and disappointing expectations for contributions to group tasks and neuroticism is associated with status gains due to surpassing expectations for group-task contributions. Whereas personality may inform status expectations through perceptions of competence when groups first form, as group members work together interdependently over time, actual contributions to the group's task are an important basis for reallocating status.

Download the full paper here.

Susan Adams gives us an easy-to-read summary at Forbes.com: Leadership Tip: Hire the Quiet Neurotic, Not the Impressive Extrovert.

It turns out that extroverts contribute less than team members expect and the contributions they do make are not valued highly over time. Neurotics, by contrast, are motivated to work hard on behalf of their teams, who wind up appreciating their efforts, in part because they exceed everyone’s expectations. In the end, extroverts decline in the teams’ esteem while neurotics rise in status. ...

The lesson of the study: Bendersky says team leaders should be wary of extroverts. “The core of an extroverted personality is to be attention-seeking,” she observes. “It turns out they just keep talking, they don’t listen very well and they’re not very receptive to other people’s input. They don’t contribute as much as people think they will.” If she were putting together a team, says Bendersky, “I would staff it with more neurotics and fewer extroverts than my initial instinct would lead me to do.”

The extrovert gets the girl, and the introvert gets the job done.

[Is it "extravert" or "extrovert?" Robo-ed. Either one. Sleepless.]

Conforming to please the majority - psychological test

We've all seen the optical illusion with two lines where we're asked which is longer. It's been around so long most of us have seen it numerous times before.  Here it is again:

The two lines are the same length, but many people get it wrong the first time.

The article titled Are These Lines The Same Height? Your Answer Depends On Where You're From contains an interesting excerpt from a book by Adam Alter titled Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave.  Via Presurfer

Apparently, individuals in some African bush tribes aren't fooled by the illusion. Scientists explain that it's because their environment doesn't have many straight lines or right angles, so they aren't conditioned to put things into the same perspective as someone accustomed to the architecture prevalent in Westerner countries.

While that one is interesting, the next one is a knock out. Which of the three lines in the box below is the same length as the line in the target box?

If you said line "C," you're right. However, this experiment was staged in a room in which all but one individual had been previously instructed to pick one of the wrong lines. The test was to see if the individual would go along with the crowd or stick to his guns.

Everyone reading this post would probably have stuck to his/her guns. However, rather amazingly, 30% of Americans who took this test gave up on the right answer and went along with the others. Excerpt:

Across hundreds of trials, Asch found that roughly 30 percent of all American participants conformed, responding with the same manifestly incorrect “Line B” response that the others in the room delivered, one after another. This result is powerful because it shows that although Americans generally place a premium on the individualistic values of uniqueness and self-reliance, they still succumb to the pressures of social influence.

There's a good lesson there. Politicians instinctively know this group-think phenomenon and use it quite successfully. For example, most of us know that getting into debt over our heads is a bad thing. However, there are otherwise smart people who say that a nation can take on as much debt as it wants because the nation can print money. That's wrong, and most people know it. However, if enough people conform to this group-think then we're headed for trouble.

The one redeeming aspect of the results of that experiment is that at least Americans didn't seek conformity to as great an extent as people living in collectivist societies.

Just when we thought moderate alcohol use was good for us

There's an old drinking joke:

One is not enough.
Two is just right.
There is not enough.

Of course, that referred to the buzz not the health benefits. For quite a long while we've been hearing that moderate drinking wasn't just harmless but could actually have some benefit, red wine particular.

So now we get this from Foxnews.com telling us that even moderation is harmful.

Among men, cancers of the upper airway (meaning the oral cavity and pharynx or the larynx) and the esophagus were the most fatal cancers pegged to alcohol. They killed approximately 6,000 men.

Among women, breast cancer was the top cause of cancer death. About 15 percent of breast cancer deaths in 2009 were linked to alcohol.

Although it's not exactly clear why alcohol increases cancer risk, one theory is that it damages DNA material in cells.

Then there's this bit of bad news:

Although the study found that people who drank more alcohol – three or more drinks a day – had the highest number of cancer deaths, even regular, low-dose consumption increased risk. Approximately 30 percent of alcohol-related cancer deaths in 2009 occurred in people who had downed one and a half drinks a day or less.

Dang. How do you make a joke about that?

Meteors, Asteroids add up for a dazzling Friday sky

How could anyone have missed it? But just in case, here's a link to the dash cam vid of that Russian meteor as it entered the atmosphere and lit up the sky. Spectacular.

The asteroid fly-by seemed like an also-ran in comparison. (Actually, it looked like a game of Space Invaders.) Here's the video produced by the Bareket Observatory in Israel.

Somewhere a Mayan calendar maker is screaming, "Hey, we were just early!"

Global warming movement looking more like science fiction

Last night I watched a my favorite Twilight Zone episode titled "Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up." Transport yourself back to 1961, and watch the whole thing on Youtube: Part 1; Part 2; and Part 3. Hint: skip to Part 3. You can figure out what led up to that point, and it's only about five minutes, including the credits.

Fifty years ago it must have seemed conceivable that humanoids from Mars and Venus could cleverly conceal their third arm or eyeball, blend with Earthlings, and plan their invasions.

These days the invasion is in the form of global warming -- scientifically proven, according to Al Gore. Problem is, the warmists got the jump on skeptics and deemed it verified before all the facts could be analyzed by scientists not already on board with the theory. Skeptics were blackballed and called "Deniers."

But it's looking more and more like the skeptics are right. Warmists are backtracking, or more to the point, Global Warming Apocalypse Canceled as Patrick J. Michaels notes with a list of scientists who have downsized their predictions about future hotness.

And right on cue here comes The Research Council of Norway with Global warming less extreme than feared?. Excerpt:

After Earth’s mean surface temperature climbed sharply through the 1990s, the increase has levelled off nearly completely at its 2000 level. Ocean warming also appears to have stabilised somewhat, despite the fact that CO2 emissions and other anthropogenic factors thought to contribute to global warming are still on the rise. ...

Professor Berntsen explains the changed predictions:

“The Earth’s mean temperature rose sharply during the 1990s. This may have caused us to overestimate climate sensitivity.

“We are most likely witnessing natural fluctuations in the climate system – changes that can occur over several decades – and which are coming on top of a long-term warming. The natural changes resulted in a rapid global temperature rise in the 1990s, whereas the natural variations between 2000 and 2010 may have resulted in the levelling off we are observing now.”

But there's a caveat:

However, the Council releases this news with the caveat that the findings outlined in this news brief have yet to be verified and that the results will only become significant once they are confirmed by other studies.

But this seems certain: Not all the factors that affect the climate are human. And you read it here first: Martians don't look like humans with three arms.

For a more thorough analysis of the Norway study, see Yet another study shows lower climate sensitivity.

More exercise equals less brain shrinkage

The test involved around 600 people in Scotland who were given an MRI at age 70 then again at age 73. From LiveScience.com:

"People in their seventies who participated in more physical exercise, including walking several times a week, had less brain shrinkage and other signs of aging in the brain than those who were less physically active," said lead author Alan J. Gow of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. "On the other hand, our study showed no real benefit to participating in mentally and socially stimulating activities on brain size, as seen on MRI scans, over the three-year time frame."

Of course there's the possibility that a shrinking brain makes a person less willing and able to exercise.

Italian earthquake scientists convicted for bad prediction

They were members of the National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, and they took it upon themselves to try to calm the residents of L'Aquila, Italy, after several tremors shook the ground. Unfortunately, a big one followed, and 309 people died.

This seemed more like a civil matter rather than a criminal one. But the prosecutor made it criminal. And the judge came back with a verdict -- six scientists and one bureaucrat were found guilty and sentenced to six years in the slammer. See BBC. Excerpt:

Prosecutors said the defendants gave a falsely reassuring statement before the quake, while the defence maintained there was no way to predict major quakes.

Both of those statements could be true. The problem was that the commissioners didn't fully explain to the recipients of their advice the risk involved in taking that advice. To quote a helpful explanation from a character in the movie Animal House, "You f***** up. You trusted us."

They should have had some American lawyers on hand to provide a shopworn disclaimer like, "Past performance doesn't guarantee future results."

We talked about this in 2011 when the prosecution commenced the action. See previously. And as we noted then, if this is a crime, those scientists who did all of that scare mongering about man made global warming should be next on the docket.

PBS News Hour on global warming

Global warming skeptics have reached a milestone of sorts. They are seldom referred to as "deniers" these days. That label was used by global warming zealots in an attempt to isolate and ridicule skeptics and brand them as extremists, much like the phrase "holocaust denier" was used against people who tried to claim the holocaust didn't happen.  However, the global warming zealots were the ones who came across as extremists.

Monday evening on the PBS News Hour there was a segment on global warming and in particular about an individual named Richard Muller of U.C. Berkley who recently converted very publicly from a skeptic to a believer of man made global warming. In the interview he even went so far as to say, "In our world, we attribute the warming from 1753 to the present essentially exclusively to humans — not mostly, but exclusively."

The interview seemed to slant toward the warmist side, and note that the only use of the word "deny" in application to skeptics came from the PBS reporter, Spencer Michels.

However, Anthony Watts was given time ample air time to explain the reasons to be skeptical, and a transcript of the program can be found at his website, Wattsupwiththat.com. Watts believes that the climate models are based on flawed data as the temperature information came from measuring stations located in urban areas which are consistently hotter than rural areas.

And there's this observation:

ANTHONY WATTS: Some of the issues have been oversold. And they have been oversold because they allow for more regulation to take place. And so the people that like more regulation use global warming as a tool as a means to an end. And so, as a result, we might be getting more regulation and more taxes that really aren’t rooted in science, but more in politics.

He nailed it. But the good news is that the general population is becoming more skeptical of the warmists' claims, and that might slow the movement for more regulation of our lives on the doubtful premise that we are saving the planet.

HIV silver lining -- making a more effective cancer fighter

There's a gene found in all human cells called *dCK that can be used to activate anticancer drugs. Then there's HIV which inserts its genetic material into the human genome to multiply abnormally.

So researchers in Strasbourg introduced dCK into an HIV genome to make a more effective cancer fighter. Source: Scienceblog.com, and excerpt:

Through HIV multiplication, the CNRS team has selected a “library” of nearly 80 mutant proteins and tested them on tumor cells in the presence of an anticancer drug. The results have enabled them to identify a dCK variant that is more effective than the wild-type (non-mutated) protein, inducing the death of tumor cells in culture. In combination with this protein, the anticancer drugs showed identical effectiveness at 1/300 the dose. The possibility of reducing the doses of anticancer drugs would palliate the problems posed by their components’ toxicity, reduce their side effects and, most importantly, improve their effectiveness.

Alas, human testing is years away.

*deoxycytidine kinase

Remote weapons scanner using terahertz waves

Terahertz radiation fits somewhere between microwave and infrared on the electromagnetic spectrum, per Phys.org. It can travel through clothes, but only penetrates a few millimeters of skin. And so devices are being developed that can be used to scan for guns and bombs. See a resulting image here.

The NYPD is anxious to get them mounted on police cars so they can spot gun toting pedestrians from several feet away. Medical issues aside, there's the issue of privacy.

Privacy advocates contend that the use of a scanner has the potential of violating individual privacy if the devices are used surreptitiously or otherwise without the person's consent. See Drive-by Gun Scans Prompt Privacy Questions. The NYPD says it is a good alternative to the police frisking many NY citizens are subjected to when they are stopped. Generally, a person out in public has waived his/her expectation of privacy. However, police still need probable cause to stop and frisk someone. But a car mounted terahertz wave scanner could be used indiscriminately on everyone walking down the street.

The bad publicity over the TSA air passenger scanners seems to have subsided. However, passengers still have the options of the full body scan, a pat down, or not flying. Pedestrians on the street won't have those options. And, if probable cause is lacking, subjecting a person to a device that peeks under their clothes would seem to be rather intrusive. We'll see how tolerant New Yorkers are once the devices go to work.

Finally, the fact that the NYPD is even considering this is a testament to their fear of guns in the hands of citizens.

Bloggers, enhance your credibility with a decorative photograph

Newspaper people have known this instinctively since they learned how to use printing plates to put pictures in the paper. The premise is that a decorative photo accompanying a statement made people more likely to think it's true. From a ScienceDaily.com release:

In a series of four experiments in both New Zealand and Canada, Newman and colleagues showed people a series of claims such as, "The liquid metal inside a thermometer is magnesium" and asked them to agree or disagree that each claim was true. In some cases, the claim appeared with a decorative photograph that didn't reveal if the claim was actually true -- such as a thermometer. Other claims appeared alone. When a decorative photograph appeared with the claim, people were more likely to agree that the claim was true, regardless of whether it was actually true.

(Cat photo added for credibility.)

Via.

Keeping up with the Martians

There's a very ambitious reality show show in the works which will involve people traveling to, living on, and colonizing the planet Mars. Actually Mars One is a scientific mission. But it will cost $6 billion to send the first four pilgrims up there. And the financing will come if someone wants to pay to have the astronaut selection, preparation, launch, landing, and life on Mars televised.

One of the project ambassadors is Paul Römer, co-creator of the TV show Big Brother, so the groundwork is being laid for this hot TV property.

They are hoping to get the first team off of Earth in the year 2022:

All water, oxygen and atmosphere production will be ready by early 2022, which is when the Earth crew gets a go-ahead for the launch of team one. Each component of the Mars transit vehicle is launched into a low orbit, and linked together. September 14, 2022 goes down in history as the first four astronauts are launched on their journey after last checks. Every part of this adventure will be available to watch on our website, 24/7.

They'll extract water from the soil, separate oxygen from the water molecules, and grow food in greenhouses. One question not answered in their FAQ: Where do the players go who get voted off the planet?

Watch Promotional video.

Via.