science

Just Keep Taking Antidepressants, Loser [Science] Did learning that your antidepressant is fucking useless make you toss all your Paxils out the window? Not so fast! You don't want to lose that sweet placebo effect. Because there's still a lot to be depressed about. See, this one doc says hey, forget that study from last week, lots of antidepressants work for lots of people in lots of different ways. Which we think is great! People need antidepressants, since five times as many high school and college kids are stressed out than in our grandparents' day, and watching television is proven to kill you, and you're probably wetting the bed. Admittedly, a grim outlook. And you can't turn to heroin, because you'd die from anthrax poisoning if you did. So hell, why not stick with the antidepressants? If they don't work, it's probably your fault. [Pic via]
Post Date:01/12/2010 14:37:12
gawker.com

Kickoff! No, this entry is not about Kelly Clarkson. It's about FIRST Robotics. This past weekend, I attended the Founder's Reception and Kickoff Event on behalf of MIT Admissions. I'll explain how FIRST and KC are connected in a moment. But first, let me explain...FIRST. FIRST (which stands for For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) was founded by inventor Dean Kamen and MIT professor Woodie Flowers back in 1989, before most students now applying to MIT were even born. The goal of FIRST, broadly speaking, is to inspire students towards a lifelong devotion to science, technology, and engineering. FIRST works something like this: every year, in January, a star-studded team of engineers on the Game Design Committee unveil that year's game to the 37,000+ students on 3,000+ teams in 12 countries worldwide. The games change every year, but always certain things remain the same: two alliances of three robots each compete against each other on a small, enclosed field, roughly
Post Date:01/12/2010 12:21:14
www.mitadmissions.org

NASA attempts to wake up frozen Phoenix spacecraft After the Phoenix Mars Lander ended its last transmission from Mars on November 8, 2008, the robotic explorer sank into a frozen hibernation. NASA wasn’t expecting it to survive the...
Post Date:01/12/2010 12:19:35
www.itwire.com

Feng Schuience Feng Shui, the ancient Chinese art of overcharging for interior design, has been a big hit in the western world. Always anxious to ride the trend, I have developed some guidelines that will be useful for my fellow scientists to communicate their ideas to the world at large.How to Feng Shui your Posters: A Simple GuideThe poster presentation is a hallowed scientific tradition, dating back to Socrates' presentation of his poster "On the Wisdom of the Wise Men of Athens" at the first Proceedings of the Philosophical Society of Athens conference.As we all know, it didn't go over so well.The reason that most posters fail to achieve their world-shaking potential is simple - bad Qi.Qi, meaning "life energy," is the term for (according to about.com) "the energy that permeates everything around us." The closest equivalent that the West has ever developed would be that of the luminiferous ether, but the ether is widely regarded as a ridiculous, outdated, and unscientific idea. Qi is clearly diff
Post Date:01/12/2010 11:25:00
man-plan-can.blogspot.com

Humanity is a virus. Literally. OK, actually, just *part* virus: People may not be quite the humans they think they are. Or so suggests new research showing that the human genome is part bornavirus. Bornaviruses, a type of RNA virus that causes disease in horses and sheep, first inserted their genetic material into ancestral human DNA at least 40 million years ago, the study shows. The findings, published January 7 in Nature, provide the first evidence that RNA viruses other than retroviruses (such as HIV) can stably integrate genes into host DNA. The new work may help reveal more about the evolution of RNA viruses as well as their mammalian hosts. ?Our whole notion of ourselves as a species is slightly misconceived,? says Robert Gifford, a paleovirologist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, affiliated with Rockefeller University in New York City. Human DNA includes genetic contributions from bacteria and other organisms, and humans have even come to rely on some of these genes for basic functions like fightin
Post Date:01/11/2010 14:50:29
www.technoccult.com

?????????????????? ???????????????????????????????????????????????????? ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(soft metamaterials)???????????????????????(metamaterials)????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????10????????????5???????????????????????????????????????????????????????
Post Date:01/11/2010 04:32:00
feeds.feedburner.com

Belongia on the Fed Michael Belongia of the University of Mississippi and former economist at the St. Louis Federal Reserve talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the inner workings, politics, and economics of the Federal Reserve. Belongia talks about the role that power and politics play in Federal Reserve decision-making and how various Fed chairs used their power to suppress dissent within the Fed that was critical of Fed policy. He argues that the Fed faces an unresolvable dilemma when asked to achieve the multiple goals of full employment and price stability using only the federal funds rate as a policy lever. The discussion concludes with Belongia's indictment of the monetary data that the Fed produces. Play Time: 1:15:08 How do I listen to a podcast? Download
Post Date:01/11/2010 04:30:00
www.econtalk.org

Video: Audacity Tutorial for Podcasting How to use Audacity for Windows to record a basic podcast.
Post Date:01/10/2010 09:54:40
www.affiliaterugu.com

Naturally Healthy: Go Green This is the key to maintain good health. Who says that for keeping fit, you need to go to gym or have to be on a diet? In fact these are just man- made efforts which at the end of the day will result in a unhealthier you. To keep fit in the truest sense of the word, all you need to do is understand the nature around you, and then you will surely realize that health comes naturally. However, unfortunately, the youth of today remains oblivious to this fact and get aggressively involved in gym and dieting culture. They forget the fact that our natural environment and dietary pattern do not support this. Being healthy does not mean merely attaining pre determined height or weight. In fact health is a state of optimal physical, mental, social and spiritual well-being. This can be attained naturally from the food we eat, fresh air and sunshine, breathing activity, exercise, activity and mental poise. Our body has its own natural rhythm just as the earth has its own rhythms of day and night,
Post Date:01/09/2010 09:58:33
theviewspaper.net

How did December Stack Up in Terms of Global Temperature? I have been waiting for the December 2009 satellite measured temperature data for a few days now. Remote Sensing Systems did not have that information available as of this writing, but the kind folks at the University of Alabama at Huntsville (UAH) already released their satellite measured temperature data for the month. The (UAH) globally averaged temperature departure for December was +0.28 C. As we all know, we are in the midst of a moderate El Nino, which usually contributes to an overall increase in global temperatures. So why did the temperature anomaly drop from a +0.50 in November to the +0.28 in December as the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) index slightly increased (meaning toward a stronger El Nino)? I think a lot had to do with the extreme negative Arctic Oscillation (-AO), which I blogged about yesterday. There are some indications that our current El Nino may be peaking with the latest three-monthly averaged index number at a +1.5. El Nino is characterized with 5
Post Date:01/08/2010 09:55:23
global-warming.accuweather.com

Cell Phone Radiation May Fight Alzheimer's, Boost Brain Activity?
Post Date:01/08/2010 08:16:00
bigsole.blogspot.com

Human hibernation: going back to bed
Post Date:01/08/2010 01:30:00
www.thecrunchychicken.com

Faces of Science #18 Frank Drake and his equation.
Post Date:01/07/2010 14:17:00
tsutpen.blogspot.com

How to Host a Direct Sales Party Online When you?re a direct sales consultant one of the hurdles you may have to overcome is how to sell to people who aren?t in your community. One of the founding principles of direct sales businesses is the home party idea, however you can reach a much wider audience and increase your profits if you take [...]
Post Date:01/06/2010 10:01:00
www.affiliaterugu.com

A Dark Matter Breakthrough? From the Wall Street Journal: A Dark Matter Breakthrough? Beginning in the 1970s, evidence began to accumulate that there was much more mass out there than meets the eye. Scientists, mostly by observing the speed of rotation of our galaxy, estimated that there was perhaps 10 times as much dark matter as visible material. At around the same time, independent computer calculations following the possible gravitational formation of galaxies supported this idea. The calculations suggested that only some new type of material that didn't interact as normal matter does could account for the structures we see. Meanwhile, in the completely separate field of elementary particle physics, my colleagues and I had concluded that in order to understand what we see, it is quite likely that a host of new elementary particles may exist at a scale beyond what accelerators at the time could detect. This is one of the reasons there is such excitement about the new Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerl
Post Date:01/03/2010 22:27:00
ritestuff.blogspot.com

Meet the Forest People: Face to Face with Orangutans by Tim Laman and Cheryl Knott After Jari finished his termite breakfast, he sat down for a little rest. It started to rain, and then the most amazing thing happened.... He grabbed some leafy branches from a small tree and held them over his head to block the rain. He had made an umbrella! That made me realize how smart orangutans are.As Jari sat with his umbrella over his head, he looked toward me and our eyes met. It wasn't like looking into the eyes of other animals. It gave me a different feeling, like he was thinking about me.Tim Laman's and Cheryl Knott's most recent nature book, Face to Face With Orangutans (Face to Face with Animals) (National Geographic, 2009) takes the reader to the rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra to meet one of our nearest primate cousins, the orangutan. This endangered ape differs in interesting ways from their own African cousins, chimpanzees and gorillas, being far more solitary than these highly socialized relatives. Among all primates, including we humans, orangutans are the leas
Post Date:12/31/2009 22:01:00
booksforkidsblog.blogspot.com

Environmental Science Bachelor Degree Online Environmental Science Overview As the world environmental has change dramatically recently, the need to have an expert or specialist in environmental issue become more important than what is happening before. It is not only local issue, but is the a global and world wide issue. Everyone are concern on the environmental impact thus make the environmental science become one of the most important discipline in University or college.
Post Date:12/30/2009 00:28:54
universityofyezaa.com

JOHN McCARTHY QUOTES I have expressed approval/ripped off Professor McCarthy's site several times. This is from a separate page of his quotes:When there's a will to fail, obstacles can be found. Personal dishonesty is not needed to produce a dishonest business plan or research proposal. Wishful thinking suffices. You are eager to defend rationality against the creationists. Fine. Are you also willing to defend it against the environmentalists? Cynicism is a cheap substitute for sophistication. You don't actually have to learn anything. We can't afford to waste money on crossing the ocean, Mr. Columbus, when Spanish society has so many unsolved problems. Why, most of those Jews and Moors we have converted aren't really sincere Catholics, and a lack of money to hire more inquisitors has put their questionings so far behind that many have died of natural causes before the Holy Inquisition ever got around to them. He who claims that affairs could not be worse is very likely to make them worse. Malthus was righ
Post Date:12/24/2009 07:21:00
a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com

BRITISH MEDIA LACK OF INTEREST IN WATER ON THE MOON & SPACE ELEVATORS This is another letter I have had in Spiked in reply to an article lamenting the media lack of interes in finding water on the Moon. I am reprinting the directors cut of this letter italicising the edite bits.I did blog on this at the time http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2009/09/water-on-moon.htmlbut I admit not since though I have discussed several other space related measures. Much of the reason for not doing so since is that no world leader has said they intend to do anything about it. This does make a lunar base much more feasible & long term industrial use of the Moon & building O'Neill colonies very much more certain but no western leader has their eyes above the Luddism of the War Against Fire. The other short term greater reason for ignoring it is that it was not NASA who did this but primarily India. It is a magnificent achievment for Indian science. But it does wrongfoot the media. We are used to thinking of India as a backward country of peasants we used to run. The
Post Date:12/24/2009 06:25:00
a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com

Short Night
Post Date:12/21/2009 03:52:00
hugozoom.blogspot.com