Archive for October, 2013

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The ancient melting pots of Europe

October 11, 2013

Stone Age settlers migrated across Europe in multiple waves that replaced older hunter-gatherer cultures with the genes from each wave blending into the population of the day. Ancient mtDNA studies are revealing that cultures spread to a great extent by the physical migrations of peoples and possibly faster and more effectively than by cultural diffusion alone. And the many different gene-melts continue today. Whereas in the Stone Age much of the action was in Central Europe, in the jet-age the melting-pots have shifted westwards and are mainly now in Western and Northern Europe. The peopling of Europe is an ongoing thing.

Guido Brandt, Wolfgang Haak, Christina J. Adler, Christina Roth, Anna Szécsényi-Nagy, Sarah Karimnia, Sabine Möller-Rieker, Harald Meller, Robert Ganslmeier, Susanne Friederich, Nicole Nicklisch, Joseph K. Pickrell, Frank Sirocko, David Reich, Alan Cooper, Kurt W. Alt and The Genographic Consortium, “DNA reveals key stages in the formation of Central European mitochondrial genetic diversity,” Science doi: 10.1126/science.1241844

National Geographic:

… the people who lived in Central Europe 7,000 years ago had different DNA lineages than those that lived there 5,000 years ago, and again different to those that lived 3,500 years ago. Central Europe was dynamic place during the Bronze age, and the genetic composition of the people that lived there demonstrates that there was nothing static about European prehistory.

Genographic Project Director and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, Spencer Wells expounds: “spanning a period from the dawn of farming during the Neolithic period through to the Bronze Age, the [genetic] data from the archaeological remains reveals successive waves of migration and population replacement- genetic ‘revolutions’ that combined to create the genetic patterns we see today.”

What we see in Europeans today is a kind of mixture of what was present there at different times in our past. So, just like parts of Europe today are melting pots from different living cultures across the world, Europe is also a melting pot of genetic lineages from different prehistoric cultures that lived there at different periods of time.

timeline peopling of europe Brandt et al, DOI: 10.1126/science.1241844 fig.3

 

Dienekes: “Central Europe, once populated exclusively by hunter-gatherers, experienced a virtual disappearance of their matrilineages for almost two thousand years after the advent of farming.  Then, between the Middle to Late Neolithic, around five thousand year ago, the hunter-gatherers make their re-appearance before their lineages converge to their modern (minority) frequency”

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Posted in Demographics, Development, Europe, Evolution | Comments Off on The ancient melting pots of Europe

A Jewish Divorce – New Jersey (Sopranos) Style

October 11, 2013

Enterprising rabbis – like enterprising scientists – are also subject to “normal” human behaviour. Rabbis Mendel Epstein and Martin Wolmark planned coercion and torture to effect a divorce for simple financial gain. These rabbi’s probably watched too much of The Sopranos (or perhaps The Sopranos was inspired in part by these enterprising rabbis?). “They did it for money, They didn’t do it out of religious conviction.” 

If their price for facilitating a divorce was over $50,000, one wonders what their price would have been for a more “permanent settlement”?

BBC: 

Two New Jersey rabbis have been arrested and charged with plotting to kidnap and torture a man to force him to grant a traditional Jewish divorce.

Rabbis Mendel Epstein and Martin Wolmark asked for more than $50,000 (£32,000) to hire “tough guys” to attack a recalcitrant husband with cattle prods, authorities said.

The men and eight other suspects appeared in federal court on Thursday.

Under Orthodox Jewish belief, a husband must grant permission for a divorce. The permission comes in the form of a document known as a get. In some Orthodox communities a woman who has not obtained a get may not marry again even if a civil divorce is finalised. She may sue in rabbinical court, but some men ignore an unfavourable ruling, even if it means being estranged from the religious community.

The FBI investigation took place in Ocean and Middlesex counties in New Jersey and Rockland County in New York, and involved raids in both states, according to agency officials.

Two undercover FBI agents posing as a woman seeking a divorce and her brother called Rabbi Wolmark for help, and he connected them to Rabbi Epstein, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in New Jersey.

The undercover agents videotaped their meeting.

“Basically, what we are going to be doing is kidnapping a guy for a couple of hours and beating him up and torturing him and then getting him to give the get,” Rabbi Epstein is quoted as saying during the conversation, according to the complaint. He added that the “tough guys” would use electric cattle prods and handcuffs and place a plastic bag over the man’s head, according to the complaint. 

Rabbi Epstein also allegedly told the undercover agents that such instruments were unlikely to leave a mark, avoiding attention from authorities. “Basically the reaction of the police is, if the guy does not have a mark on him then, uh, is there some Jewish crazy affair here, they don’t want to get involved,” he said, according to the criminal complaint.

The FBI said the price was more than $50,000, including $10,000 for a rabbinical court to approve the action. They had wired $20,000 to the accused before the arrests.

“They did it for money,” Assistant US Attorney Joseph Gribko said during a hearing on Thursday.

“They didn’t do it out of religious conviction.”

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Posted in Behaviour, Business, Religion, Religious misconduct | 1 Comment »

Swedish Academician rebuked for talking too much

October 10, 2013

The fuss around the Nobel Prize in Physics  is taking its toll.

Svenska Dagbladet (free translation):

Anders Bárány, Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, has been reprimanded for revealing why the announcement of the Physics Prize was an hour late. But Staffan Normark, Permanent Secretary of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Presidium, would not comment. The delay on Tuesday of the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics by one hour was unprecedented and quite unique. 

 Mr Anders Bárány had revealed that the delay was caused by heated discussions within the Royal Academy of Sciences (KVA) whether the nuclear research organization CERN would share the prize,His statement had an impact already on Wednesday.

“I was called up to the Academy’s Presidium and given a real scolding” said Anders Bárány.

And I blame the CERN publicity machine for their hype and their blatant lobbying and for causing the controversy in the first place. But Anders Bárány has to take his share of the blame for falling for the publicity machine. He deserved his telling off – not so much for talking to the press after the event but for his support of CERN sharing the award!

What was he thinking?

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Posted in Advocacy, Behaviour, Physics, Science, Sweden | Comments Off on Swedish Academician rebuked for talking too much

The Pirates of Greenpeace are also accused of drug running

October 10, 2013

Pirates of Greenpeace

Greenpeace – They are the very model of modern Environ-Mentalists.

Not just pirates but drug runners too! The Greenpeace protestations of innocence are a little overdone since poppy straw is the raw opium used for the illegal extraction of heroin (and the production of morphine). It would seem that our pirates were also engaged in the production of drugs – presumably for their “recreation” on slow nights when they weren’t pirating.

Ria Novosti: 

Russian investigators said Wednesday that drugs have been found on board a Greenpeace ship seized last month, raising the threat of new charges against a group of activists and journalists awaiting trial on suspicion of piracy.

Investigative Committee chief Vladimir Markin said in a statement that the substances found on the Arctic Sunrise icebreaker were presumed to be poppy straw and morphine.

He said “the charge already pressed against all [the detainees] will presumably be modified.”

Russian authorities detained the group of 30 environmentalists and journalists last month after activists from the Greenpeace ship staged a protest against oil drilling in the Arctic, with some of them attempting to scale a Russian oil platform.

Greenpeace issued a statement later in the day, saying that the drugs were likely “medical supplies that our ships are obliged to carry under maritime law” and that some medical supplies are kept in a safe accessible only to the ship’s captain and doctor.

The group said it has a strict policy against recreational drugs on board its ships and that the Arctic Sunrise had been searched by a sniffer dog before leaving Norway for the Russian Arctic.

All the detainees from the ship, comprising nationals of 18 countries, have been charged with piracy.

The Investigative Committee spokesman also said that a number of defendants in the case will be charged with “committing other grave crimes.”

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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Russia | 1 Comment »

No end to new materials with super-strength

October 10, 2013

From the days of the alchemists and then the metallurgists who mixed different materials – often in the molten state – and then to the chemists we have now moved into the age when materials are designed in the lab to have desired properties. The challenge then is to synthesise the desired composition with the atomic structure required and then to devise manufacturing processes for the materials.

“A material called carbyne could be stronger even than graphene or diamond, according to researchers who have calculated its properties”, reports the BBC.

Carbyne is a chain of carbon atoms held together by double or alternating single and triple chemical bonds.

In their paper, Boris Yakobson and colleagues from Rice University in Houston show that carbyne’s tensile strength – the ability to withstand stretching – surpasses that of “any other known material” and is double that of graphene, the flat sheet of carbon atoms that is often held up as a “supermaterial”.

They also calculated that carbyne has twice the tensile stiffness of graphene and carbon nanotubes and nearly three times that of diamond.

It should display a number of other useful properties say the researchers. For example, it could be turned into a magnetic semiconductor (these are materials with electrical conductivity between that of a metal and an insulator like glass) and could be used as a sensor to detect twisting.

Some scientists have reported synthesising small amounts of carbyne in the lab, but it was thought to be extremely unstable. And some chemists have suggested that two strands coming into contact could react explosively.

“Our intention was to put it all together, to construct a complete mechanical picture of carbyne as a material,” said Vasilii Artyukhov, also from Rice University.

“The fact that it has been observed tells us it’s stable under tension, at least, because otherwise it would just fall apart.”

Mingjie Liu , Vasilii I. Artyukhov , Hoonkyung Lee ,Fangbo Xu , and Boris I. Yakobson, Carbyne From First Principles: Chain of C atoms, a Nanorod or a Nanorope,

ACS Nano,  DOI: 10.1021/nn404177r, October 5, 2013

Abstract: We report an extensive study of the properties of carbyne using first-principles calculations. We investigate carbyne’s mechanical response to tension, bending, and torsion deformations. Under tension, carbyne is about twice as stiff as the stiffest known materials and has an unrivaled specific strength of up to 7.5×10^7 N∙m/kg, requiring a force of ~10 nN to break a single atomic chain. Carbyne has a fairly large room-temperature persistence length of about 14 nm. Surprisingly, the torsional stiffness of carbyne can be zero but can be ‘switched on’ by appropriate functional groups at the ends. Further, under appropriate termination, carbyne can be switched into a magnetic-semiconductor state by mechanical twisting. We reconstruct the equivalent continuum-elasticity representation, providing the full set of elastic moduli for carbyne, showing its extreme mechanical performance (e.g. a nominal Young’s modulus of 32.7 TPa with an effective mechanical thickness of 0.772 Å). We also find an interesting coupling between strain and band gap of carbyne, which is strongly increased under tension, from 3.2 to 4.4 eV under a 10% strain. Finally, we study the performance of carbyne as a nanoscale electrical cable, and estimate its chemical stability against self-aggregation, finding an activation barrier of 0.6 eV for the carbyne–carbyne cross-linking reaction and an equilibrium cross-link density for two parallel carbyne chains of 1 cross-link per 17 C atoms (2.2 nm).

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Posted in Materials, Physics, Technology | Comments Off on No end to new materials with super-strength

Upstate Medical University researcher fabricated data to benefit his own company

October 10, 2013

UPDATE!!

Stem cell scientist says data in retracted paper “is not falsified or fabricated”

=========================

Researchers are not angels.

Just normal human behaviour from a man in a white coat.

GeroldFeuer2.jpg

Gerold Feuer, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Upstate Medical University

Syracuse.com:

A scientific journal has retracted a study by an Upstate Medical University researcher accused of using fake data.

The paper was authored by Gerold Feuer, who was found guilty last year of using state money and employees to benefit his private biotechnology company.

The article, first published in 2008, was retracted Oct. 4 by the journal Stem Cells. It focused on a virus that causes cancer in humans.

The retraction notice was published today by Retraction Watch, a blog that reports on retractions of scientific papers. The notice said the article was retracted after an investigation by Upstate’s research misconduct committee showed data used in the study had been “fabricated and/or falsified.”

Feuer, 53, of the town of Onondaga, landed $6.2 million in state grants in 2009 for stem cell research at Upstate. He oversaw a lab that bred mice without immune systems, then “humanized” them with stem cells to mimic the human immune systems. The mice are used in research studies.

Upstate suspended Feuer without pay in late 2010 while investigating his management of a research contract and the way he was operating his lab at Upstate. In 2008 Feuer had started his own private company to develop the same kind of mice for use in testing by universities and companies.

Upstate brought 53 charges of misconduct against Feuer, accusing him of using Upstate’s employees to perform services for his company and charging the cost to a state grant.

An arbitrator reviewed the case and in an Aug. 20, 2012 decision found Feuer guilty of 30 of the 53 misconduct charges. But the arbitrator said Feuer never intended to personally profit from the arrangement and should be reinstated.

Upstate reinstated Feuer, a tenured professor of microbiology and immunology, Feb. 18 at an annual salary of $116,196 and placed him in an undisclosed off-campus assignment.
It’s unknown what effect the latest misconduct finding will have on his employment status, said Darryl Geddes, an Upstate spokesman.

Upstate officials said they completed a separate investigation in April that found Feuer and Prabal Banerjee, a co-author of the paper, guilty of scientific misconduct. Banerjee now works for Feuer’s company, HuMurine Technologies Inc. Upstate officials said two other researchers involved in the study, Michelle Sieburg and Elizabeth Samuelson, did not do anything wrong.

Upstate has requested retractions of two other papers by Feuer published in other journals.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »

Some Nobel prizes are quite base

October 10, 2013

Now we come to the less important Nobel Prizes; Literature today, Peace tomorrow and Economics on Monday. I see a clear hierarchy of “nobility” for the 6 awards:

  1. Medicine or Physiology
  2. Chemistry
  3. Physics
  4. Literature
  5. Economics, and
  6. Peace.

The first two still remain fairly true to Alfred Nobel’s intentions. I put Medicine on a higher plane of “nobility” than Chemistry but would have no great quarrel with the order being reversed. Physics definitely has become less “noble”. The whole field has been somewhat degraded by the advent of Big Science and the use of massive “sledgehammers” to try and hammer the universe into submission. But this approach only gives incremental (and often infinitesimal) advances and represent no breakthroughs in thought. I suspect that the real advances will still come from individuals and not by the bureaucratic approach to Big Science where the concept seems to be that advances are directly proportional to the amount of money spent.

I used to believe in the Literature Prize but of late it has become a little subservient to political correctness.

The two “base” prizes with little trace of any nobility are those for Economics and for Peace. Economics is more about social behaviour and there is very little “science” about it. Economic theories have – at best – been of short lived utility.  At worst they have led to global crises.

The Peace prize, of course, has just become a nonsense and brings disgrace to Nobel’s intentions.

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From a sublime “Dreamliner” to the ridiculous

October 10, 2013

Nightmares (for Boeing) are made of this:

Reuters: Japan Airlines Co was forced to turn around its Tokyo-bound flight from Moscow on Thursday due to a problem in the Boeing 787 jet’s lavatory, a spokesman for the Japanese carrier said. … 

JAL spokesman Takuya Shimoguchi said the toilet malfunction on the flight from Moscow was likely caused by an electronic glitch. The airline was working on repairs on the ground, he added.

The flight, carrying 141 passengers, departed Moscow on Wednesday evening and returned after about five hours, he said.

Shares in JAL, which made headlines this week by signing with Boeing rival Airbus for the next generation of long-haul jets, were up 2.1 percent on Thursday morning, outperforming the broader market.

Updated 10th October:

BBC: 

Japan Airlines (JAL) says it has turned around two of its Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft during flights due to technical problems.

On one plane one of the two anti-ice systems, which prevent ice building up around the engine, failed.

Meanwhile, an electrical glitch made six toilets unusable on another flight.

These are the latest technical issues to hit the Dreamliner, which saw the entire fleet being grounded earlier this year following battery problems.

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Posted in Aviation, Business, Technology | Comments Off on From a sublime “Dreamliner” to the ridiculous

Oh Rapture! Global Warming doomsday will come in 2047 (if Apophis does not come first)

October 10, 2013

Rapture in 2047!.

A peer reviewed paper in Nature that Camping would be proud of!

Global Warming “science” is now reduced to this. An end-of-the-world prediction from Global Warmists for 2047 now must be added to the long list of Doomsday predictions none of which – so-far – have come to pass.

Camilo Mora, Abby G. Frazier, Ryan J. Longman, Rachel S. Dacks, Maya M. Walton, Eric J. Tong, Joseph J. Sanchez, Lauren R. Kaiser, Yuko O. Stender, James M. Anderson, Christine M. Ambrosino, Iria Fernandez-Silva, Louise M. Giuseffi, Thomas W. Giambelluca. The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability. Nature, 2013; 502 (7470): 183 DOI: 10.1038/nature12540

AP:Starting in about a decade, Kingston, Jamaica, will probably be off-the-charts hot — permanently. Other places will soon follow. Singapore in 2028. Mexico City in 2031. Cairo in 2036. Phoenix and Honolulu in 2043.

And eventually the whole world in 2047.

  • Harold Camping predicted the ending of the world and the Day of Rapture – three times – and has now retired in confusion.
  • Teacher Wang predicted the end of the world on 11th May 2011.
  • The Mayan Doomsday should have happened in 2012.
  • A prediction by Kenton Beshore is that Rapture will occur no later than 2021
  • Another Doomsday has been predicted for 13th April 2036 when asteroid Apophis could hit earth.
  • Global Warming Doomsday (this prediction) is set for 2047.
  • If that does not occur then Isaac Newton’s prediction based on his studies of the Bible is set for 2060.
  • According to James Kasting, Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere will not support life in the year 500,000,000.
  • So-called scientists have attempted to use statistics and the Doomsday Argument to calculate when Doomsday will come based on how many people have lived and how many are left to live!
  • A list of predicted Doomsday dates (past and future) is here.

But this Global Warming Doomsday is real.

A Press Release from on High has been issued:

“WE are living and dying in difficult times” said GOD. “WE can no longer support four establishments just for humanity. There are many other priorities in the Universe WE need to consider and address.

The cost of maintaining a separate Hell and the increasing cost of Energy is getting prohibitive – especially since the liability for maintaining high temperatures stretches through Eternity. WE are therefore merging Purgatory with Heaven and Hell with Earth.  The mergers will be completed by 2047. The regions on Earth with the greatest number of Sinners will be heated up to Hell-like temperatures first and by 2047 the entire Earth would have reached the status of Hell. Wind-power and solar-power are insufficient to this Purpose. We shall be making increased use of Fossil Fuels and Greenhouse Power.

Since the majority of those living are Sinners and destined for Hell anyway, this will also ease the logistics of moving the few Worthy humans to Heaven”.

An intrepid journalist from AP (SB) asked the Lord whether a new Glacial Age on earth could subvert His Plans. “That is not a problem” said God. “We have arranged for temperature to be a cyclic parameter just like politics. Increasing temperatures and reducing temperature shall only form a circular process. Infinite heat can be equated to infinite cold. We shall arrange that when Glaciation is necessary It shall be perceived by gullible Global Warmists as the burning Fires of Hell”.

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Heated dispute within Nobel Committee delayed the Physics prize

October 9, 2013

I observed yesterday that the delay in awarding the Nobel prize in Physics could have been due to some committee members wanting to award the prize also to CERN. That supposition seems to have been correct. The PR apparatus of the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN is responsible for a lot of hype based on a somewhat inflated opinion of the organisation. They have been lobbying hard for over a year for the Physics Nobel. The PR and lobbying by CERN had clearly got to at least one member of the award committee (Anders Bárány). His view was rejected and he is now complaining that the award was “unfair”

And despite all the PR spin and all the hype they have not yet found the Higgs particle. And there are more questions left to be answered than ever before.

Big Science hype to keep Big Science funding going arouses my suspicions. For an organisation like ATLAS or CMS or CERN to have been named would have been a travesty. Almost at the level of naming the EU or the IPCC for a Peace Prize.

Fortunately good sense prevailed and the Physics prize still maintains some brand value – which the Peace Prize has lost.

Svenska Dagbladet reports (my free translation):

There was a major altercation between the members that postponed yesterday’s announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics was postponed by over an hour according to Vetenskapsradion . Before the vote, several members questioned why no part of the award was for the two laboratories which had detected the Higgs particle.

One of those objecting was Mr Anders Bárány who wanted more than just theorists  Peter Higgs and Francois Englert to be rewarded  rather than the two research teams , ATLAS and CMS being merely mentioned in the Academy of Sciences press release.

“I think it is extremely unfair. It is the first time that the explanatory text has made such a mention. I do not think they should be happy with it “, he said to Vetenskapsradion.

Peter Higgs and Francois Englert  were praised for their discoveries about the Higgs particle – but other heavyweight Higgs scientists, Carl Hagen, Gerald Guralnik and Tom Kibble were excluded. Their names had been mentioned in preliminary discussions on the physics prize, because they are considered to have made ​​significant finds around the particle around the same time as Higgs and Englert.

Carl Hagen, admitted yesterday that he was disappointed at the Academy’s decision. “The wind went out of me, of course, a little bit because the Swedish Academy of Sciences decided to stick with their old rule of three winners. It is not a true picture of how things are , but I congratulate Higgs and Englert , they must be very pleased”, Hagen said to TT.

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Posted in Behaviour, Physics, Science, Sweden | 1 Comment »

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