It's useless science Friday in my head - Welcome to the show.

[Strychnine]

Now that is an x mas present! Thank you sir!

Happy New Year.


For those new year resolutions: Self-Control Is Just Empathy With Your Future Self

Press your right index finger to the top of your right ear, where it meets your head. Now move up an inch and back an inch. You’re now pointing at your right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ). This area has long been linked to empathy and selflessness. But Soutschek, by using magnetic fields to briefly shut down the rTPJ, has shown that it’s also involved in self-control.

Which makes perfect sense. Empathy depends on your ability to overcome your own perspective, appreciate someone else’s, and step into their shoes. Self-control is essentially the same skill, except that those other shoes belong to your future self—a removed and hypothetical entity who might as well be a different person. So think of self-control as a kind of temporal selflessness. It’s Present You taking a hit to help out Future You.

Stunning Videos of Evolution in Action

What you’re seeing in the movie is a vivid depiction of a very real problem. Disease-causing bacteria and other microbes are increasingly evolving to resist our drugs; by 2050, these impervious infections could potentially kill ten million people a year. The problem of drug-resistant infections is terrifying but also abstract; by their nature, microbes are invisible to the naked eye, and the process by which they defy our drugs is even harder to visualise.

But now you can: just watch that video again. You’re seeing evolution in action. You’re watching living things facing down new challenges, dying, competing, thriving, invading, and adapting—all in a two-minute movie.

A Shocking Find In a Neanderthal Cave In France

Their date? 176,500 years ago, give or take a few millennia.

“When I announced the age to Jacques, he asked me to repeat it because it was so incredible,” says Verheyden. Outside Bruniquel Cave, the earliest, unambiguous human constructions are just 20,000 years old. Most of these are ruins—collapsed collections of mammoth bones and deer antlers. By comparison, the Bruniquel stalagmite rings are well-preserved and far more ancient.

And if Rouzaud’s work made it unlikely that modern humans built the rings, Verheyden’s study grinds that possibility into the dust. Neanderthals must have been responsible. There simply wasn’t any other hominin in that region at that time.

The Plan to Avert Our Post-Antibiotic Apocalypse

The report’s language is sober but its numbers are apocalyptic. If antibiotics continue to lose their sting, resistant infections will sap $100 trillion from the world economy between now and 2050, equivalent to $10,000 for every person alive today. Ten million people will die every year, roughly one every three seconds, and more than currently die from cancer. These are conservative estimates: They don’t account for procedures that are only safe or possible because of antibiotics, like hip and joint replacements, gut surgeries, C-sections, cancer chemotherapy, and organ transplants.

Caltech Researchers Find Evidence of a Real Ninth Planet

In January, two astronomers reported new evidence of a massive, shadowy Planet Nine tracing the outer limits of the solar system. It has a mass 10 times that of the Earth, and its orbit takes it 20 times farther from the sun, on average, than Neptune. The catch? Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown of Caltech haven’t seen it—they inferred its existence from the behavior of smaller objects nearby that appear to be subject to its gravitational pull. Now the search is on. Brown predicts astronomers will find it by 2018.

[cobrajet69]

How long until we have a ship running with one of those?

SVO already built one for his 3rd grade science class but found out the microwave wasn't invented yet, so he invented it. He then found that it didn't achieve warp drive but also found that warp drive wasn't invented yet so he invented it.
Got bored and dropped the project so his minions could finish it and take credit. They [minions] became what we now know as NASA.


David

[Forever_frost]

How long until we have a ship running with one of those?

[Scott Mc]

Now that is an x mas present! Thank you sir!

[Strychnine]

No red text? 1/10, would not read.

I'm still tempted to highlight everything I type in red...

Instead I'll just post a piece and leave the rest at the link



Last month:




It's official: NASA's peer-reviewed EM Drive paper has finally been published

After months of speculation and leaked documents, NASA's long-awaited EM Drive paper has finally been peer-reviewed and published. And it shows that the 'impossible' propulsion system really does appear to work.

The NASA Eagleworks Laboratory team even put forward a hypothesis for how the EM Drive could produce thrust – something that seems impossible according to our current understanding of the laws of physics.

In case you've missed the hype, the EM Drive, or Electromagnetic Drive, is a propulsion system first proposed by British inventor Roger Shawyer back in 1999. Instead of using heavy, inefficient rocket fuel, it bounces microwaves back and forth inside a cone-shaped metal cavity to generate thrust. According to Shawyer's calculations, the EM Drive could be so efficient that it could power us to Mars in just 70 days.

But, there's a not-small problem with the system. It defies Newton's third law, which states that everything must have an equal and opposite reaction. According to the law, for a system to produce thrust, it has to push something out the other way. The EM Drive doesn't do this.

Yet in test after test it continues to work. Last year, NASA's Eagleworks Laboratory team got their hands on an EM Drive to try to figure out once and for all what was going on. And now we finally have those results.

This this something the Chinese claim to have been working on since 2013:
EmDrive: China's radical new space drive

[Baron Von Crowder]

No red text? 1/10, would not read.

[Strychnine]

Scientists Think They Can Finally Explain the Weirdness That Is the 'Alien Megastructure' Star

a team from the University of Illinois says we’ve been looking at the problem all wrong, and a different perspective could give us a pretty solid answer to KIC 8462852’s weirdness.

The researchers have been studying how the star's large and small dips in brightness relate to each other, and when they applied a number of mathematical models to the data, they came up with patterns that also appear in what's known as avalanche statistics.

Avalanche statistics have turned up in all kinds of natural phenomena, including solar flares, gamma-ray bursts, and neural activity in the brain, and while the maths is pretty complicated, in basic terms, it reveals patterns where small dips in the data occurring between the larger dips ultimately equate to even larger dips.

Avalanche statistics appear to be associated with things going through certain phase transitions - most commonly between solid, liquid, and gaseous states of matter, and in rare cases, plasma...

... "In other words, this could just be a star that's intensely active in some poorly understood way, giving off periodic massive outbursts that cause a dimming of the light. And the fact that stars like this are rare is what's been fooling us all along."

All 2.3 Million Species Are Mapped into a Single Circle of Life

The lines inside the circle represent all 2.3 million species that have been named. Biologists have genetic sequences for only about 5 percent of them, however; as more are finished, the relationships within and across groups of species may change. Experts estimate that up to 8.7 million species may inhabit the planet (about 15,000 are discovered every year). “We expect the circle to broaden,” says Karen Cranston, a computational evolutionary biologist at Duke University.

'Star in a Jar' Fusion Reactor Works and Promises Infinite Energy

In a study published in the latest edition of the journal Nature Communications, researchers confirmed that Germany's Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) fusion energy device is on track and working as planned. The space-age system, known as a stellerator, generated its first batch of hydrogen plasma when it was first fired up earlier this year. The new tests basically give scientists the green light to proceed to the next stage of the process.

Voyager 2 may have been hacked as it entered deep space

Later results revealed that a single digit in the binary code of command system on Voyager 2; ‘0’ was flipped to a ‘1’. Flipping of one bit of data suggest that some unknown party intentionally interfered with Voyager 2’s on-board computers.

Binary bit flipping is trick used by several hackers. Bit flipping can actually shut down a computer or even corrupt data. Investigators started to look for the source of possible hack and they first looked at Earth. But as the distance is involved so this makes it highly unlikely. As we all know that Voyager 2 is carrying a message by humanity into space. The message encoded abroad Voyager 2 is for intelligent civilizations it may encounter. So could bit flipping be a response to our message?

Some researchers say that bit flipping could be an obvious response by Aliens. After 3 weeks of this anomaly researcher were successful in restoring the communication system. But who or what caused the anomaly is still a question. The exact cause of bit flipping still stays unknown.

[Tremor14]

[idrivea4banger]

Man, I hope strychnine didn't leave. Who am I going to live through vicariously now??

[BLAKE]

Damn Ruff, you sure got your panties in a bunch.

Through my own thoroughly-scientific observation, I can conclusively say that Matt is smart, and an overall good human. You on the other hand... the jury is still out.

[46Tbird]

Wow...If I had written the response I had hoped to get ahead of time...it still wouldn't have been this good. This is a gold mine for proving my exact point regarding bias, BS and blabbing.



Lol you literally don't understand what it means when someone is being unbiased. Your mind is so set on data only being presented to prove one point...that you still can't understand why skepticism would exist. I knew damn well it wouldn't suit my point to bring out the fact that this was peer reviewed while the other wasn't...but I'm not going to omit the truth just to prove a point to some random guy on the internet. Something you repeatedly do.



Oh I know you don't have original content. Like I said...I finally realized the kinda guy you are. You're the guy that takes other people's original content and repackages it...then makes sure to throw his name on the title slide and try to be the first to tell the boss. That's the reason I'm giving you so much shit...at work I have to be political and take the long route to exposing that crap. But here...I get to call you out however I want. You don't have to have a PhD to tell me why this might be useful...that's an intentionally ignorant statement.



Somehow...all of this happened without the $1.1 billion invested to "hear" gravitational waves. And of course if they didn't hear something...that gravy train would be cut off. Why would I be skeptical?




So what exactly is your job? I mean how are you really helping to keep the oil in the pipelines? Are you simply talking peoples original content and condensing it into reports? What TRUE value are you bringing to the industry? There are a lot of us working really hard to make sure that the worlds energy needs are met, but let's not kid ourselves into thinking that we're in the midst of a shortage. I'm not going to play like I'm some energy hero...because I'm not and neither are you.

My real job is to make it as cheap as possible to extract oil from the ground by developing technology to enhance reserve recoveries. The industry has never been about that philosophical BS of meeting the worlds energy needs...it's been about making money. Afterall...OPEC was founded on throttling production to ensure the prices stay at a reasonable level for income.



That's the one, another good example of multiple aspects of Bias. You forgot to also quote the part where you say you hadn't even read far enough into it to understand that it wasn't a new frac tool. See this goes into the conclusion that you blab about stuff before you even understand it. It also proves that when you're trying to prove something, you are a frequent user of data omission.

In that very post, you fell subject to research bias. Of course that company only published the most beneficial data to suit their sales pitch. However you were so wrapped up in the world of "proving", that you didn't realize that the most recent society of petroleum engineers publication regarding that technology states an increase far less than the original claims. And even SPE papers are sales pitches, but they have to detail the data more thoroughly than a standard marketing sheet. (that SPE paper is referenced on the companies website btw...you don't even have to have a onePetro account)

You see how the first article you posted claims a 295% increase in production...yet the SPE paper reduces that to 85%. Let's not even get into the need to review the recovery curves after stimulation or intervention as we know that will probably make your "copy and paste" of 295% look even worse.

Not only that...but there are already existing ultrasonic and acoustic tools out there doing the same thing. Maybe there is a different method of generating the waves...but that doesn't mean it's better. Not to mention acid treatments and other forms of stimulation or intervention.

Are you starting to see why I have a problem with research bias now? Imagine that you had been sold a 295% increase in recovery while the true result was less than 1/3rd of that. The economics of the treatment change drastically with that data.



Haha...is this supposed to impress me? On valentines day, you were having a date with some exec of a servicing company? How about you go tell this exec that you know how he can increase the production of a well by 295%..tell me how that works out (hint...I already know).



If you're getting this spun up over skepticism...that's the best thing you can do.

UNFUCKWITHABLE...lol...yeah about that...

[Scott Mc]

Peer reviewed results of something Ruffdaddy finds interesting are science facts, but peer reviewed results of something he doesn't like are science fiction. Anyone who argues with that is biased.

And obviously not a genius.

These guys get it.

[Tremor14]

im sayin tho

[Grimpala]

This place is going to be as bad as Canada before too long with dicks like this on the loose.

[helosailor]

Peer reviewed results of something Ruffdaddy finds interesting are science facts, but peer reviewed results of something he doesn't like are science fiction. Anyone who argues with that is biased.

And obviously not a genius.