j7uy5 | October 22, 2006Here are two headlines about the same subject:
href="http://psychcentral.com/news/2006/10/17/meds-help-preschoolers-with-adhd/">Meds
Help Preschoolers with ADHD
Psych Central News Editor
Tuesday, Oct, 17, 2006
href="http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/15805876.htm">Study
warns of risks of preschool Ritalin
Associated Press
Posted on Fri, Oct. 20, 2006
Both articles were written about the same journal article, an
NIMH-sponsored study published in the Journal of the American Academy
of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
Both headlines are accurate. The…
j7uy5 | October 21, 2006
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j7uy5 | October 20, 2006One of the most hotly marketed supplements in
the
Complimentary/Alternative Medicine arena is
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DHEA" rel="tag">DHEA
(dehydroepiandrosterone). Just as a quick index, a Yahoo
search for DHEA turns up over three million hits, and an impressive
array of advertisements.
Many of the sites that promote the sale of DHEA state or imply that it
is a "life-extension" product.
It sure would be nice if someone would do a definitive study to show
whether or not it really can extend the life of humans.
However, such a study would be very costly to do. The…
j7uy5 | October 19, 2006No, it is not the name of a new rock band. It is a phenomenon
that is increasing in frequency in the world's oceans. The
dead zones are areas with very low oxygen content, so low that nothing
can live there.
Neil Barry Rincover, writing on
href="http://rincover.blogstream.com/v1/pid/137945.html">U.S.
Politics and Other Nonsense, brings us notice of a
report that the number of dead zones has increased by a third in the
past two years. There are now 200.
The study was sponsored by the Global Programme Action Global (GPA) for
the Protection of the Marine Environment from Land-Based…
j7uy5 | October 18, 2006There has been talk of this for a while. At first, I did not
think it would be feasible, but it appears that progress is being made:
Doc
at a Distance
By Jacob Rosen and Blake Hannaford
Robot surgeons promise to save lives in remote communities, war zones,
and disaster-stricken areas
On a hot morning this past June, our research group at the University
of Washington, in Seattle, crammed into two cargo vans and drove 2000
kilometers south to the rangeland north of Simi Valley, in southwestern
California. In the back of one of the vans was our latest creation: a
prototype surgical robot…
j7uy5 | October 17, 2006Answer: They both look the other way.
A recent article in Wired details how Kevin Poulsen
caught a registered sex offender by scanning MySpace
profiles.
href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71948-0.html?tw=wn_culture_5">MySpace
Predator Caught by Code
...I've been invited here to witness the end-game of a police
investigation that grew from 1,000 lines of computer code I wrote and
executed some five months earlier. The automated script searched
MySpace's 1 million-plus profiles for registered sex offenders -- and
soon found one that was back on the prowl for seriously…
j7uy5 | October 16, 2006
href="http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2006/10/poverty_and_nature.php">Hedwig's
recent post got me to thinking.
Poverty, Nature and Progress
Category: Cultural Observation • Environment • Ethics
• Politics
Posted on: October 15, 2006 1:56 PM, by "GrrlScientist"
Wealth accumulated by First World countries is largely based on riches
taken from Third World countries. For example, the destruction of
India's textile industry, the takeover of the spice trade, the genocide
of native American tribes, and African slavery all served to fuel the
Industrial Revolution. Below the fold…
j7uy5 | October 15, 2006
href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2004/subvocal/subvocal.html">NASA
is working on a
href="http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2004/subvocal/subvocal.html">new
type of speech recognition. Rather
than analyzing sounds, it detects nerve impulses in the throat.
The user does not have to speak out loud.
Instead, the user merely thinks about speaking, much as one
does when reading silently.
This sounds pretty neat, although the accuracy is not very good yet.
I could imagine this being used for things like cursor
control, or any number of other things…
j7uy5 | October 13, 2006Look for even more pedestrian and bicycle accidents because of this:
href="http://www.nydailynews.com/business/story/461093p-387919c.html">I
can't hear you: Sony's new Walkman blocks out noise
BY DANIEL DUNAIEF
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS EDITOR
Sony's new Walkman wants to bring in 'da music an throw out 'da noise.
The electronics giant is eagerly trying to take a bite out of Apple's
dominant iPod market share with a new Walkman designed to cut out other
sounds...
The newest Walkman, whose different models costs $169 and $199, cuts up
to 75% of the surrounding noise, the company…
j7uy5 | October 13, 2006I ran across a press release (
href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-10/uoa-ltf100606.php">1
href="http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/26739/LSD_treatment_for_alcoholism_gets_new_look.html">2)
pertaining to a journal article (‘Hitting Highs at
Rock Bottom’: LSD Treatment for Alcoholism,
1950–1970)
on the use of LSD for treatment of alcoholism. When I saw it,
I
thought I'd blog about it. As it happens, several people beat
me
to it.
Anyway, the topic is sufficiently compelling that I am going to post it
anyway, and try to add a little to what has already been said…
j7uy5 | October 12, 2006KDE
3.5.5 released.
On 11 October 2006, the KDE Project released
KDE
3.5.5.
For packages, please visit the
href="http://kde.org/info/3.5.5.php">KDE 3.5.5 Info Page
and browse the KDE
3.5 Requirements list.
src="http://kde.org/media/images/hotspots/10years.png"
alt="Hotspot" align="right" border="0"
height="111" vspace="3" vspace="3" width="166">
KDE
is going to celebrate its 10th anniversary.
On 14th October 1996, Matthias Ettrich announced the beginning of a
project which is now one of the biggest and most exciting open source
projects. To celebrate this event we'd like to…
j7uy5 | October 11, 2006These are patterns seen in a salt desert in Iran. I shrank
the images. In order to get the full effect, you need to see
the full-size images. Note these are multi-megabyte files,
which is why I only show a little compressed snippet.
href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/dashelut_ast_2003198_lrg.jpg">Central
Dasht-e Lut. May 13, 2003 (4.0 MB)
href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/Images/dashelut_ast_2006133_lrg.jpg">Southeastern
Dasht-e Lut. July 17, 2006 (3.8 MB)
They are from the
href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom…
j7uy5 | October 11, 2006
Snow is in the forecast for this week. It probably won't be
this bad, but you never know.
Image courtesy of
rel="tag">NASA.
j7uy5 | October 10, 2006An initiative to introduce the teaching of Intelligent Design in
Michigan schools suffered a setback today. The state Congress
was supposed to issue new curriculum guidelines recently. In
September, the guidelines were delayed. Nobody knew for sure
how it would turn out. There was concern that Republican
legislators were trying to introduce ID content. As mentioned
the
href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060913/NEWS06/609130370/1008">The
Detroit Free Press:
Critics of the delayed vote, including a
representative from the
American Civil Liberties Union, said some…
j7uy5 | October 9, 2006To be perfectly fair, I should note that not all Republicans are
opposed to protection of the environment. For example, there
is an organization known as
rel="tag">Republicans for Environmental Protection.
One of their members even published an editorial:
href="http://www.rep.org/opinions/op-eds/90.html">Conservation
Starts with Obeying the Law.
However, the Bush administration is opposed to such protections,
particularly when they get in the way of the energy industry's quest to
set new records in their quest for profits. Never mind their
lip service to "the rule of law."…
j7uy5 | October 8, 2006Linux has long been the champion of cute names. For example,
right now I am downloading (via bittorrent)
href="http://distrowatch.com/sabayon" rel="tag">Sabayon
Linux, which is named after an Italian dessert (
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabayon" rel="tag">Zabaglione).
I must say, though, that the best name for a Linux distribution is this:
href="http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=slackintosh"
rel="tag">Slackintosh
A Slackware for your Macintosh, or
Slackintosh, is a Linux distribution designed to run on your
PowerPC-based hardware. Version 11.0 was…
j7uy5 | October 8, 2006One thing I saw a couple of days ago, in Kalamazoo, was a protest near
the office
of their US Representative, Fred Upton. It was a small
protest, put on by the Pink Patrol. I did not stop to see
what the protest was about.
Today, I tried to find some reference to it on the Internet, but there
was nothing. So I went to the
href="http://www.house.gov/upton">Fred Upton website,
and a few other places. There really isn't a lot of news
about him. Seems that his biggest sins are supporting media
consolidation, and opposing Internet neutrality. Aside from
the fact that such legislation…
j7uy5 | October 7, 2006Charming...
Thai snake
charmer
Khum Chaibuddee bids to set a world record in king cobra-kissing in
Pattaya.
j7uy5 | October 6, 2006I just
got back from my brother's photography exhibit at Dancing Cranes.
It was part of what they call the
href="http://www.kalamazooarts.com/calendar/pdf/Art_Hop_10_06.pdf">Art
Hop in Kalamazoo, Michigan. A bunch of artistic
types agree to exhibit their works in various upscale shops in the
area, all at
the same time. People go downtown, mill around, chat, and
spend money.
It is a win-win kind of a deal for the artists and the merchants.
And the community as a whole, which I guess makes it
win-win-win. He sold three photographs for $500 apiece.
Which is quite good.
j7uy5 | October 6, 2006This is outside my area of expertise, so I won't comment on this, other
than to say that it pretty much speaks for itself. The
article is from the journal Pediatrics.
href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/118/4/1664">No
Evidence of Persisting Measles Virus in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear
Cells From Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder
D'Souza Y, Fombonne E, Ward BJ.
Division of Infectious Diseases, McGill University Health Center,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
OBJECTIVES: Despite epidemiologic evidence to the contrary, claims of
an association between…