Make steak, not war!

Slashdot:

A study out of Canada claims that seeing meat actually calms a person down. From the article: "Contrary to expectations, a McGill University researcher has discovered that seeing meat makes people significantly less aggressive. Frank Kachanoff, who studies evolution at the university’s department of psychology, had initially thought the presence of meat would provoke bloodlust, believing the response would have helped our primate ancestors hunt. But in fact, his research showed the reverse is true."

I'm not sure how I feel about this

But I have to admit it's pretty trippy.

Scientists overclock people's brains

(Slashdot) Researchers at Oxford University found that inducing a small current in a subject's parietal lobe boosted their capacity for numerical learning:

"The current could not be felt, and had no measurable effect on other brain functions. As it was turned on, the volunteers tried to learn a puzzle which involved substituting numbers for symbols. Those given the current from right to left across the parietal lobe did significantly better when given, compared to those who were given no electrical stimulation. The direction of the current was important — those given stimulation running in the opposite direction, left to right, did markedly worse at these puzzles than those given no current, with their ability matching that of an average six-year-old. The effects were not short-lived, either. When the volunteers whose performance improved was re-tested six months later, the benefits appear to have persisted. There was no wider effect on general maths ability in either group, just on the ability to complete the puzzles learned as the current was applied."

So: some day in the future our kids may have electrical currents applied from right to left across their brains while they're at school? Sweet!

Fucking Magnets, How Do They Work?

(The meme, if you missed it) Perhaps this 1983 answer can satisfy:

Factoid of the day

The human brain is 2 to 3% of body mass, but consumes 25% of the body's energy. This is "metabolically expensive", and technologies like cooking food were important for facilitating the evolution of our large brains.


(From a TED talk: Heribert Watzke: The brain in your gut)

When in doubt, shout

Discover:

In a new study, David Gal and Derek Rucker from Northwestern University have found that when people’s confidence in their beliefs is shaken, they become stronger advocates for those beliefs. The duo carried out three experiments involving issues such as animal testing, dietary preferences, and loyalty towards Macs over PCs. In each one, they subtly manipulated their subjects’ confidence and found the same thing: when faced with doubt, people shout even louder.

[..] In all three cases, Gal and Zucker found that doubt turns people into stronger advocates. More subtly, their study shows that this effect is stronger if someone’s identity is threatened, if the belief is important to them, and if they think that others will listen. It all fits with a pattern of behavior where people evangelize to strengthen their own faltering beliefs.

Spider vs. millipede

Millipedes are tougher than you think.

See also giant centipede vs. tarantula.

And there's this Japanese Bug Fight website.  Encyclopaedia Dramatica "apparently has supplemental information" (via reddit)

Agora

Tyler Cowen:

I am surprised this film, set in ancient Alexandria, has not occasioned more controversy.  It is the most pro-science, pro-rationalist, anti-Christian movie I have seen -- ever. -- and it does not disguise the message in the slightest.  The director and scriptwriter is Spanish and Chilean, namely Alejandro Amenábar.  It offers a Voltairean portrait of Judaism, as an oppressed rabble, most of all responsible for the crime of having birthed Christianity.  There are some not-so-subtle parallels shown between the early Christians and current Muslim terrorists.
 
The visual rendering of antiquity is nicely done and without an excess of CGI.
Here is a positive New York Times review.  Here is a positive Guardian review.  Not everyone will like this movie.

I wouldn't call Agora anti-Christian in particular, but more broadly anti-fundamentalist.

It's my favorite since The Man From Earth (2007).

The sum of all knowledge

(webcomic: Abstruse Goose)

Where's my tinfoil hat?!

Magnets can alter a person's sense of morality

(via)

NASA Space Flight Awareness

Always glad to see our tax dollars put to fabulous use ...

Enjoy the orange/blue contrast

(via reddit)

Yale law student wants government to have everybody's DNA

Slashdot:

Michael Seringhaus, a Yale Law School student, writes in the NY Times: 'To Stop Crime, Share Your Genes.' In order to prevent discrimination when it comes to collecting DNA samples from criminals (and even people who are simply arrested), he proposes that the government collect a DNA profile from everybody, perhaps at birth (yes, you heard that right).

Regarding the obvious issue of genetic privacy, Seringhaus makes this argument: "Your sensitive genetic information would be safe. A DNA profile distills a person’s complex genomic information down to a set of 26 numerical values, each characterizing the length of a certain repeated sequence of 'junk' DNA that differs from person to person. Although these genetic differences are biologically meaningless — they don’t correlate with any observable characteristics — tabulating the number of repeats creates a unique identifier, a DNA 'fingerprint.' The genetic privacy risk from such profiling is virtually nil, because these records include none of the health and biological data present in one’s genome as a whole."

The sound you just heard was a massive Overton window shift towards statism.

A quote from the op-ed:

As a practical matter, universal DNA collection is fairly easy: it could be done alongside blood tests on newborns, or through painless cheek swabs as a prerequisite to obtaining a driver's license or Social Security card. Once a biological sample was obtained, its use must be limited to generating a DNA profile only, and afterward the sample would be destroyed. Access to the DNA database would remain limited to law enforcement officers investigating serious crimes.

Since every American would have a stake in keeping the data private and ensuring that only the limited content vital to law enforcement was recorded, there would be far less likelihood of government misuse than in the case of a more selective database.

A /.er responds:

This guy reminds me of a cute little 5 year old. His heart is in the right place and he just wants everything fair and nice. However, those are some BIG ASSUMPTIONS he is making:

1) A sample will be destroyed after it is used to create a DNA profile.
2) Only law enforcement will have access
3) Since more Americans are in the database there is a less likelihood of government misuse.

Actually, I am not sure we can call those assumptions. More like hypothetical requirements for an argument, like, the Sun will be Purple tomorrow.

All 3 of those assumptions have been proven to be false, time and time and time and time again. Wasn't it just recently that we found out Texas A&M was participating in collecting blood and tissue samples from newborns without the parents knowledge and consent? Were they not also used for purposes the parents were unaware of and could object to?

Are we really to believe that only law enforcement would have access when any PI with a few bucks can currently gain access to supposedly proteced information that only law enforcement officials should be accessing?

Has not the goverment been caught time and time and time again abusing databases by using them for purposes well outside of the justifications and reasons for their initial creation? Doesn't the goverment quite frequently change their minds about what they will do with resources after the fact?

Sure, if all of those assumptions are held to be true, I would agree with him about making a DNA database. However, it is not my cynicism and disillusionment in goverment that causes me to be skeptical of those assumptions. It's COLD HARD REALITY, FACTS, AND PRECENDENTS. If you want to ignore that, and let them move on with a clean slate, that's your choice. I choose to remember how often the government lies to me and abuses me.

Women on the pill live longer

Why am I not surprised?

Is it time to throw out 'primordial soup' theory?

Alternative abiogenesis: deep-sea, alkaline hydrothermal vents.

Good news guys

Y chromosomes are evolving quickly.

Antibody 'F77' kills prostate cancer in mice

Interesting news on the cure for cancer front, here's to hoping it pans out for humans...

A response to Climategate

The Pew Center on Global Climate Change did a nice job (.pdf)

Climategate: was data faked? [updated]

Read Megan and Willis Eschenbach.

Update: Kevin Drum responds here and cites Tim Lmbert of scienceblogs as well as Chris Mooney of scienceprogress (author of The Republican War on Science) on the bigger picture.

Game theory on innovation

Angus writes:

Class, repeat after me:

1. Green jobs are NOT a zero sum game where nations are competing for a fixed number of them.
2. If China or Germany or anyone develops “innovative energy technology”, that is NOT bad for us.  It is in fact *awesome* for us, as we can then adopt it and use it.

People, ideas are public goods. That is the whole basis of new growth theory. If China is now doing cutting edge R&D, that is an unmitigated blessing for everyone on the planet.

Wilkinson adds:

This is why it ought to be an embarrassment to exclaim in horror that the U.S. may be “falling behind” in the development of green technology. It is rather more illuminating to see government subsidies to research and the development of speculative technology as contributions to a collective global effort to explore the space of technological possibility.

The expected return to the average German taxpayer from German state science and technology subsidies is probably negative. But the global citizen’s expected return to global investment is probably positive. And the more others invest, the more positive the expected return is.  If some Taiwanese firm makes an enormous breakthrough, everyone will get to internalize the benefit of this new technology. We just don’t know in advance if the Germans or the Taiwanese or the Canadians or the Americans or whoever will make the discovery.

This kind of global cooperation sounds nice, doesn’t it? But we know all about games like this, don’t we? If Canada, say, puts an end to all state subsidies for science and tech, this really won’t much affect the probability of a major efficiency-enhancing discovery somewhere or other. Which implies that the average Canadian taxpayer, now paying for no national R&D subsidies, would see her expected return from international R&D subsidies go up. (And the greater the extent to which subsidies tend to go to the best subsidy-seekers rather than to the best innovators, the less taxpayers should worry about the downside of withdrawing their state’s support from the global effort of discovery.)

As a general rule, if nothing bad will happen to you if you free ride, it’s smart to free ride. Worrying that other countries are pulling ahead is like worrying that the other oarsman in your boat will beat you to the destination if you’re lazy. You’re in the same boat! The smart thing is to goad everyone else into going as fast and hard as they can. For a good while now, America has been a dim kid with ape strength happy to carry half the world as long as he gets to fist-pump, flex his pecs, and chant U.S.A.! U.S.A.! in the mirror each night. It’s a darn good deal for the rest of the world. America’s just too dumb to feel exploited. And too idiotically vain to enjoy a free ride.

Commenter nickbacklash goes further:

Worth noting though that, according to a fairly quietly released OECD study, state R&D subsidies don't make any net contribution to technological innovation, explained in this talk by Terence Kealey.

Science is not a standard public good. Not that this invalidates your wider point, there is just an even better reason for not [publicly] investing in R&D.

Artificial