Apple’s new UFO building

So cool, and I can’t wait to see it fly.

Lake Cheko: impact crater for Tunguska Event?

Lake Cheko in the Siberian region of Tunguska has recently emerged as a candidate for an “impact site”
linked to the famous Tunguska explosion of 1908. Credit: www-th.bo.infn.it/tunguska / University of Bologna

Early on the morning of June 30th, 1908, a huge explosion occurred in a remote part of Siberia near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River. So great was the blast that trees were knocked down in neat rows for nearly a thousand square miles and the sky lit up from parts of Asia to Great Britain. What caused that explosion has never been firmly settled. Most researchers agree that it was the result of either a comet or meteoroid, with most leaning towards the former due to the lack of both an impact crater and meteoroid fragments. Now however, a research team from Italy says that they have found proof that it was in fact a meteorite that struck the Earth and that a nearby lake is the impact crater. They have published the results of their findings in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems.For years, amateurs and professionals alike have debated the cause of the Tunguska Event, as it’s come to be known as. Some suggest it was the work of extraterrestrials while others say it was god’s way of getting our attention. Serious scientists, on the other hand, have suggested its most likely cause was a comet melting and then vaporizing as it hit, leaving no real evidence behind. Unfortunately, that theory doesn’t hold up very well in light of the fact that scientists have found differences in the levels of carbon, nitrogen and isotopes of hydrogen and iridium, from the surrounding area which are similar in some respects to those found with certain asteroids. Also, tiny particles that sort of resemble meteorite components have been found in the wood of the fallen trees. None of this evidence can rule anything out however as it could mean there was a comet that had some rocks in it or a meteorite that vaporized due to a soft composition.The Italian teams says it was a meteorite and claim they have proof of their assertion in the form of an as yet uncovered piece of something tangible beneath the sediment at the bottom of Lake Cheko; a shallow funnel shaped lake approximately five miles from where most believe was ground zero for the explosion.The team came to this conclusion after performing seismic measurements on the lake bottom in 1999 which showed that sentiment had been building for just about a hundred years, which would of course put it close to the Tunguska Event and also gave evidence of something dense near the middle of the lake.Further evidence came to light they say in 2009 when they returned to the lake and performed a magnetic survey, which they say showed an anomaly in the same location as their seismic measurements had detected. Now, after three more years of studying evidence they collected from the site, they’ve concluded that Lake Cheko is indeed an impact crater and that the dense object beneath the lakebed is the smoking gun.Others of course aren’t so sure, and likely will remain pessimistic until someone digs up the object and studies it, proving it to be nothing more than a regular rock, or an object from space that left an impact crater as it struck over a century ago, finally solving the mystery.

via Research team claims to have found evidence Lake Cheko is impact crater for Tunguska Event.

California Considers DNA Privacy Law

California lawmakers are weighing a bill aimed at protecting their state’s citizens from surreptitious genetic testing but scientists are voicing their growing concerns that, if passed, such a law would have a costly and damaging effect on research.

The bill, dubbed the Genetic Information Privacy Act, would require an individual’s written consent for the collection, analysis, retention, and sharing of his or her genetic information—including DNA, genetic test results, and even family disease history.

“It’s becoming easier and quicker and cheaper for people to obtain their genetic profile or genetic information,” says the bill’s author, California state Senator Alex Padilla. “It’s such sensitive and personal information that it ought to be protected,” he says. Padilla also authored an earlier bill, enacted in January, which extended federal protections against genetic discrimination.

Under the newly proposed bill, a person’s genetic information may only be accessed by individuals specifically named on a consent form, and only for purposes written on the form. Genetic information along with the original samples must be destroyed once their specified purposes are fulfilled.

Such requirements could seriously hinder genomic research, says geneticist David Segal, associate director of genomics at the University of California, Davis. He points out that scientists typically sequence DNA from thousands of people to discover genes associated with particular diseases. Under the proposed legislation, a large genomic dataset could not be re-used to study a different disease. Researchers would either need to destroy the data after each study, or track down thousands of former subjects for new authorizations—an infeasible task, he says.

“It’s just an incredible proposition that the money and effort that would be spent to obtain those large datasets would be just thrown away,” Segal adds. “California would be shut out of doing that kind of genetic research.”

The University of California has submitted a formal letter objecting to the bill, estimating that the measure could increase administrative costs by up to $594,000 annually—money which would come out of the cash-strapped state’s General Fund. The university has also expressed concern that its researchers would suffer competitive losses in obtaining research grants.

Advocates for genetic privacy are not entirely sympathetic.

“If researchers are worried about not being able to do research with inadequate consent, then maybe they should be worried,” says Jeremy Gruber, president of the Council for Responsible Genetics based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which supports the bill. “Nothing in this bill prevents anybody from doing research, it simply adds a level of consent,” Gruber says. …

via California Considers DNA Privacy Law: Scientific American.

How One Flawed Study Spawned a Decade of Lies

David DiSalvo – for Forbes writes:”

In 2001, Dr. Robert L. Spitzer, psychiatrist and professor emeritus of Columbia University, presented a paper at a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association about something called “reparative therapy” for gay men and women. By undergoing reparative therapy, the paper claimed, gay men and women could change their sexual orientation. Spitzer had interviewed 200 allegedly former-homosexual men and women that he claimed had shown varying degrees of such change; all of the participants provided Spitzer with self reports of their experience with the therapy.

Spitzer, now 79 years old, was no stranger to the controversy surrounding his chosen subject. Thirty years earlier, he had played a leading role in removing homosexuality from the list of mental disorders in the association’s diagnostic manual. Clearly, his interest in the topic was more than a passing academic curiosity – indeed, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say he seemed invested in demonstrating that homosexuality was changeable, not unlike quitting smoking or giving up ice cream.

Fast forward to 2012, and Spitzer is of quite a different mind. Last month he told a reporter with The American Prospect that he regretted the 2001 study and the effect it had on the gay community, and that he owed the community an apology. And this month he sent a letter to the Archives of Sexual Behavior, which published his work in 2003, asking that the journal retract his paper.

… In his recantation of the study, he says that it contained at least two fatal flaws: the self reports from those he surveyed were not verifiable, and he didn’t include a control group of men and women who didn’t undergo the therapy for comparison. Self reports are notoriously unreliable, and though they are used in hundreds of studies every year, they are generally regarded as thin evidence at best. Lacking a control group is a fundamental no-no in social science research across the board. The conclusion is inescapable — Spitzer’s study was simply bad science. …

Not only did he rely on self reports, but he conducted the participant interviews by phone, which escalates unreliability to the doesn’t-pass-the-laugh-test level. By phone, researchers aren’t able to evaluate essential non-verbal cues that might cast doubts on verbal responses. Phone interviews, along with written interviews, carry too much guesswork baggage to be valuable in a scientific study, and Spitzer certainly knew that. …

via How One Flawed Study Spawned a Decade of Lies – Forbes.

The Unabomber’s Pen Pal

The paper “Industrial Society and Its Future” makes the case that modern technology has restricted freedom, ruined the environment, and caused untold human suffering. People have become overstressed and oversocialized. Humanity, the author writes, is at a crossroads, and we can either turn the clock back to a happier, more primitive time or face destruction.

The author has occasionally been praised for understanding the unforeseen consequences of technology in modern life. Kevin Kelly, a co-founder of Wired magazine who, even though he disagrees with the author’s conclusion, devotes a section of his latest book to these ideas, calling the paper “one of the most astute analyses” of technological systems he has ever read.

But for the most part the 35,000-word manifesto, first published in September 1995, has been dismissed as a rant.

That’s because the author is Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber, who terrorized academics for nearly 20 years by sending a series of mail bombs that killed three people and injured 23. His demand, accepted by authorities in the hope that granting it would unearth clues to his whereabouts, was for a major newspaper to publish that manifesto.

Media profiles from the time of his capture, several months after the manifesto’s publication, paint Kaczynski as a kind of comic-book villain, a scruffy loner in a hooded sweatshirt whose failure in relationships drove him to insane acts of violence.

But when David F. Skrbina, a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Michigan here, read the manifesto in The Washington Post on the day it was published, he saw value in the message. He was particularly impressed by its clarity of argument and its references to major scholars on the philosophy of technology. He saw a thinker who wrongly turned to violence but had an argument worthy of further consideration. That argument certainly wasn’t perfect in Skrbina’s view, and he had some questions. Why not just reform the current system rather than knock it down? What was Kaczynski’s vision of how people should live?

In November 2003, Skrbina mailed a letter to Kaczynski, then as now in a supermax prison in Colorado, asking those and other questions designed “to challenge him on his views, to press him.”

So began a correspondence that has spanned more than 150 letters and has led Skrbina to help compile a book of Kaczynski’s writings, called Technological Slavery, released in 2010. The book is a kind of complete works of this violent tech skeptic, including the original manifesto, letters to Skrbina answering the professor’s questions, and other essays written from the Unabomber’s prison cell. …

via The Unabomber’s Pen Pal – The Chronicle Review – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Ancient skeletons threaten to overturn picture of human evolution

For generations, scientists have believed Africa was the cradle of mankind.

Now a stunning archaeological discovery suggests our primitive ancestors left Africa to explore the world around 800,000 years earlier than was previously thought before returning to their home continent.

It was there – hundreds of thousands of years later – that they evolved into modern humans and embarked on a second mass migration, researchers say.

Archaeologists have unearthed six ancient skeletons dating back 1.8 million years in the hills of Georgia which threaten to overturn the theory of human evolution.

The Georgian bones – which include incredibly well preserved skulls and teeth – are the earliest humans ever found outside Africa.

The remains belong to a race of short early humans with small primitive brains who walked and ran like modern people.

They were found alongside stone tools, animal remains and plants – suggesting that they hunted and butchered meat.

Prof David Lordkipanidze, the direct of the Georgian National Museum, said: ‘Before our findings, the prevailing view was that humans came out of Africa almost 1million years ago, that they already had sophisticated stone tools, and that their body anatomy was quite advanced in terms of brain capacity and limb proportions. But what we are finding is quite different’

He said Africa was still the unchallenged cradle of mankind. But he added: ‘Georgia may have been the cradle of the first Europeans.’

Their discovery muddies the already complicated history of mankind.

Archaeologists believe that the first true humans – a race of squat people called Homo habilis – evolved in Africa around 2.5 million years ago. The were followed by a taller athletic species called Homo erectus who migrated out of Africa to colonise Europe and Asia.

Outside Africa their descendents are thought to have died out. But in Africa, they turned into modern man who began a second wave of migration around 120,000 years ago.

The new finds suggest Homo erectus left Africa far earlier than was previously estimated and lived for a while in Eurasia.

The new ancestors – found in Dmanisi – were around 150cm tall, and had brains half the size of modern people’s.

‘While the Dmanisi people were almost modern in their body proportions, and were highly efficient walkers and runners, their arms moved in a different way and their brains were tiny compared to ours,’ he told the British Science Festival at Surrey University.

‘Their brain capacity is about 600 cubic centimetres. The prevailing view before this discovery was that the humans who first left Africa had a brain size of about 1,000 cubic centimetres.

‘Nevertheless they were sophisticated tool makers with high social and cognitive skills.’

The first Dmanisi fossils were found in 2001. The most recent has only just been unearthed and its details have yet to be published in a scientific journal.

Prof Lordkipanidze said the Dmanisi bones may have belonged to an early  Homo erectus which lived in Georgia before moving on to the rest of Europe.

Or the early humans may then have returned to Africa, eventually giving rise to our own species, Homoe sapiens, he said.

‘The question is whether Homo erectus orginated in Africa or Eurasia, and if in Eurasia, did we have vice-versa migrations?  …

via Ancient skeletons discovered in Georgia threaten to overturn the theory of human evolution | Mail Online.

Are sweaty brokers more ethical?

If you want to know how ethical your broker is, give them a moral dilemma and see how much they sweat before deciding what to do.

It’s quite a jump from the laboratory to real-world decisions about asset management but British researchers have found that gut feeling can override rational thought when people are faced with financial offers that look unfair.

Even when we could benefit, a physical response like sweating can make people reject a financial proposition they consider to be unjust. The key is how tuned in they are to their own bodies.

Researchers from the University of Exeter, the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and the University of Cambridge, gave 51 people a series of offers based on dividing 10 pounds between two people. They found that although an offer to split the money 50:50 was mostly accepted, an offer of less than a ‘fair share’ was often rejected, even though rejecting it left them with nothing.

The game, a version of a well-known psychological test called the Ultimatum Game, showed gut reactions, especially made under time pressure with incomplete information, can lead to decisions that are irrational from a purely economic perspective.

The researchers measured how much participants sweated through their fingertips and how much their heart rate changed.

Clinical psychologist Barney Dunn, who led the study, told Reuters that participants were also tested on how accurately they could monitor their physical responses by counting their own heartbeats. Those who were most accurate were more prone to having their bodies dictate their decisions in the game.

“It’s a bizarre finding but it’s very robust,” said Dunn.

It’s uncontroversial to say that thoughts trigger responses in your body but the research, published on Tuesday in the journal Cognitive Affective and Behavioural Neuroscience, adds to growing evidence that our bodies can sometimes govern how we think and feel, rather than the other way round. …

via Are sweaty brokers more ethical? – Yahoo! News UK.

Google Search Just Got 1,000 Times Smarter

How Google Knowledge works: Click for the full graphic.

The Google Search of the future is here. Now. Today. The long-talked-about semantic web — Google prefers “Knowledge Graph” — is rolling out across all Google Search tools, and our most fundamental online task may never be the same again.

Starting today, a vast portion of Google Search results will work with you to intuit what you really meant by that search entry. Type in an ambiguous query like “Kings” (which could mean royalty, a sports team or a now-cancelled TV show), and a new window will appear on the right side of your result literally asking you which entity you meant. Click on one of those options and your results will be filtered for that search entity.

To understand the gravity of this change, you need to know about the fundamental changes going on behind the scenes at Google Search. As we outlined in our report earlier this year, Google is switching from simple keyword recognition to the identification of entities, nodes and relationships. In this world, “New York” is not simply the combination of two keywords that can be recognized. It’s understood by Google as a state in the U.S. surrounded by other states, the Atlantic Ocean and with a whole bunch of other, relevant attributes.

As Ben Gomes, Google Fellow, put it, Google is essentially switching “from strings to things.”

To build this world of things, Google is tapping a variety of knowledge databases, including Freebase, which it bought in 2010, Wikipedia, Google Local, Google Maps and Google Shopping. Currently, Google’s Knowledge Graph has over 500 million people, places and things and those things have at least 3.5 billion attributes.

That’s a lot of things. According to Google, search users will see these new knowledge graph results at least as often as they see Google Maps in results. In fact, this update will have a greater initial impact than the updates that brought Google Images, videos, news and books, combined. It’s big and it’s probably going to be everywhere. …

In addition to the window which will help users find the right “thing,” Google will also surface summaries for things, which, again, will try to be somewhat comprehensive by tapping into the various databases of knowledge. A search for Frank Lloyd Wright, for instance, will return a brief summary, photos of Wright, images of his famous projects and perhaps, most interestingly, related “things.” People who search for Wright are also looking for other notable architects. It’s a feature that may remind users of Amazon’s penchant for delivering “people who liked this book also bought or searched for this one” results.

Gomes said that the search results are tailored to deliver information that best relates to the initial search result. So the details delivered about a female astronaut will likely outline her space travel record, because that’s what people who search for her are, according to Google, most interested in. ….

Of course, not every “thing” is the right thing. Wikipedia is, for example, a community-sourced encyclopedia that is known for both its breadth and depth of information and the occasional whoppers of misinformation it stores. Google’s Knowledge Graph includes an error reporting system. When users find misinformation, Google will share it with the source and the knowledge graph will get just a little bit smarter …

via Google Search Just Got 1,000 Times Smarter.

Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran’s Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack

The Russian military anticipates that an attack will occur on Iran by the summer and has developed an action plan to move Russian troops through neighboring Georgia to stage in Armenia, which borders on the Islamic republic, according to informed Russian sources.

Russian Security Council head Viktor Ozerov said that Russian General Military Headquarters has prepared an action plan in the event of an attack on Iran.

Dmitry Rogozin, who recently was the Russian ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO, warned against an attack on Iran.

“Iran is our neighbor,” Rogozin said. “If Iran is involved in any military action, it’s a direct threat to our security.” Rogozin now is the deputy Russian prime minister and is regarded as anti-Western. He oversees Russia’s defense sector.

Russian Defense Ministry sources say that the Russian military doesn’t believe that Israel has sufficient military assets to defeat Iranian defenses and further believes that U.S. military action will be necessary.

The implication of preparing to move Russian troops not only is to protect its own vital regional interests but possibly to assist Iran in the event of such an attack. Sources add that a Russian military buildup in the region could result in the Russian military potentially engaging Israeli forces, U.S. forces, or both.

Informed sources say that the Russians have warned of “unpredictable consequences” in the event Iran is attacked, with some Russians saying that the Russian military will take part in the possible war because it would threaten its vital interests in the region. …

via Russia Is Massing Troops On Iran’s Northern Border And Waiting For A Western Attack – Business Insider.

It only takes one nuke to put you in a funky mood all day… and Russia has about 10,000 of them.

Seven classes of “weirdo” identified

A study of so-called “customer service sabotage” found there are certain groups of people with the frustrating ability to spoil any shopping trip, flight or restaurant meal regardless of how enjoyable it ought to be.In a list that resembles the cast of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, researchers said that problematic customers fall into seven categories: dopey, grumpy, smelly, pushy, stubborn, inconsiderate and rude.People with these qualities, collectively described as “weirdos”, are dreaded by waiters and hostesses because there is little they can do to prevent them ruining other customers’ experience.The research was carried out by Joel Anaya, a Hospitality Business Management student from Washington State University.He studied more than 200 accounts written by frustrated people on websites such as “dinnersfromhell.com” and “notalwaysright.com” and found complaints about other customers could be broken down into seven groups.The most common were people who swear loudly, followed by customers who become irate or complain at the slightest grievance and those who have poor personal hygiene.The list also included people who stubbornly insist on behaviour which puts other customers out – such as paying entirely in pennies at a shop counter while a queue forms behind – and people who break rules, for example by pushing to the front of a queue.It was rounded off by inconsiderate parents who fail to control their misbehaving children, and slow-witted customers who monopolise staff’s time by asking a barrage of questions and keep others waiting.Mr Anaya said: “Customers don’t just go to a restaurant to enjoy a burger. They go to have a good time, to enjoy the ambience of the establishment.

via Seven classes of “weirdo” identified – Telegraph.