Rtersieva

Last week, Pepsi announced they will be removing aspartame, the artificial sweetener, from Diet Pepsi (in the US), and replacing it with another artificial sweetener, sucralose. This reignited the discussion on aspartame, probably one of the most maligned substances in fizzy drinks – but what does the science say on its safety? This graphic looks at the […]

Terrifying. German climber Jost Kobusch was at Everest Base Camp as the earthquake that devastated Nepal , hit Everest too. You can see the people realize the ground was shaking and then immediately get hit by a horrific avalanche right after. So sad.

Read more...

Retracing the London safe deposit thieves' footsteps

An anonymous reader writes: Like initials carved in a tree, ER = EPR, as the new idea is known, is a shorthand that joins two ideas proposed by Einstein in 1935. One involved the paradox implied by what he called "spooky action at a distance" between quantum particles (the EPR paradox, named for its authors, Einstein, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen). The other showed how two black holes could be connected through far reaches of space through "wormholes" (ER, for Einstein-Rosen bridges). At the time that Einstein put forth these ideas — and for most of the eight decades since — they were thought to be entirely unrelated. But if ER = EPR is correct, the ideas aren't disconnected — they're two manifestations of the same thing. And this underlying connectedness would form the foundation of all space-time. Quantum entanglement — the action at a distance that so troubled Einstein — could be creating the "spatial connectivity" that "sews space together," according to Leonard Susskind, a physicist at Stanford University and one of the idea's main architects. Without these connections, all of space would "atomize," according to Juan Maldacena, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who developed the idea together with Susskind. "In other words, the solid and reliable structure of space-time is due to the ghostly features of entanglement," he said. What's more, ER = EPR has the potential to address how gravity fits together with quantum mechanics.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Take a look at some curious welcome signs with bizarre slogans.

An anonymous reader writes: Bruce Upbin at Forbes reports on a new and insidious way for a malicious website to spy on a computer. Any computer running a late-model Intel microprocessor and a Web browser using HTML5 (i.e., 80% of all PCs in the world) is vulnerable to this attack. The exploit, which the researchers are calling "the spy in the sandbox," is a form of side-channel attack. Side channel attacks were previously used to break into cars, steal encryption keys and ride the subway for free, but this is the first time they're targeted at innocent web users. The attack requires little in the way of cost or time on the part of the attacker; there's nothing to install and no need to break into hardened systems. All a hacker has to do is lure a victim to an untrusted web page with content controlled by the attacker.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

   По-долу, може да гледате лирик-видеото на MOONSPELL към парчето "Medusalem". Песента е от новия албум на групата, "Extinct", който излезе ...

Bobkitten or regular kitten? While both look cute nibbling on your finger, one might actually eat that finger. This is the latest litter born in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Read more...

Images of the hole drilled by thieves into the vault at a Hatton Garden safe deposit company in central London are released by the Met Police.

"The Puritan", the sixth studio album from Greek/Swedish melodic death metallers NIGHTRAGE, can be streamed in its entirety using the SoundCloud widget below. The CDwill be released on April 24 via Despotz Records. "The Puritan" — described in a press release as "an uncompromising, eerie, dramatic and melodic death metal journey in its purest essence" — welcomes new NIGHTRAGE vocalist Ronnie Nyman to the mix. Nyman joins NIGHTRAGE guitarist and founding member Marios Iliopoulos and bassist Anders Hammer after performing with the band last year on its Japanese and Russian tours. "The Puritan" was produced by Daniel Bergstrand (MESHUGGAH, DEVIN TOWNSEND, SOILWORK) and George Nerantzis at Dugout Productions in Uppsala, Sweden. "The Puritan" track listing: 01. The Puritan 02. With A Blade Of A Knife 03. Desperate Vows 04. Endless Night 05. Foul Vile Life 06. Stare Into Infinity 07. Lone Lake (Instrumental) 08. Son of Sorrow 09. When Gold Turns To Rust 10. Fathomless 11. Kiss Of A Sycophant NIGHTRAGE was founded in 2000 in Greece by Marios Iliopoulos and his close friend, Gus G., who departed after the band's second album, "Descent Into Chaos". During the band's 14-year career, NIGHTRAGE has released five studio albums and toured across Europe, the U.S., Canada and Asia while employing various musicians from AT THE GATES, EVERGREY, DARK TRANQUILLITY, AMARANTHE and FIREWIND. NIGHTRAGE signed a record/publishing deal with Swedish music company Despotz in summer 2014 before entering the studio with Daniel Bergstrand and George Nerantzis. NIGHTRAGE is: Marios Iliopoulos - Guitar Ronnie Nyman - Vocals Anders Hammer - Bass

Audio samples of all the tracks that are set to appear on "Gods And Generals", the sophomore album from CIVIL WAR — the Swedish metal band featuring former SABATON members Rikard Sundén (guitar), Daniel Mullback (drums), Daniel Mÿhr (keyboards) alongside singer Patrik Johansson (ASTRAL DOORS, LION'S SHARE), and guitarist Petrus Granar — can be streamed in the YouTube clip below. The CD will be released via Napalm Records on the following dates: Sweden, Spain: May 6 UK, Norway, France, Demark, Italy: May 11 Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Australia: May 8 North America: May 12 Says CIVIL WAR: "Recorded and mixed by none other than Peter Tägtgren, we are extremely happy with the result. This is, without doubt, an album that takes off where 'The Killer Angels' left us 'n you! It's been in our treasure chest for a while and in May we're happy to share the result with you!" The band's debut CD, "The Killer Angels", was certified gold in Sweden by the International Federation Of The Phonographic Industry for sales in excess of 20,000 copies. (Note: The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry [IFPI] in Sweden has revised the sales requirements for albums to reach gold status in the country twice in the last 11 years — from the pre-2002 level of 40,000 to the current 20,000.) "The Killer Angels" was distributed in Sweden via the June 2013 issue of Sweden Rock Magazine and each copy of the magazine containing the CD was counted towards the certification; the album was also sold separately. CIVIL WAR's debut EP was released on November 13, 2012 via Despotz Records.

The lives of six boys with a deadly genetic disease have been transformed by a pioneering treatment to correct errors in their DNA, say doctors.

An anonymous reader writes: Scientists working in the area of pancreatic cancer research have uncovered a technique that sees cancerous cells transform back into normal healthy cells. The method relies in the introduction of a protein called E47, which bonds with particular DNA sequences and reverts the cells back to their original state. The study (abstract) was a collaboration between researchers at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, University of California San Diego and Purdue University. The scientists are hopeful that it could help combat the deadly disease in humans.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Canadian circus firm Cirque du Soleil sells a majority stake to US and Chinese private investors, valuing the firm at $1.5bn.

Explosm.net - Home of Cyanide and Happiness

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.

We cannot rely on correlation alone. But insisting on absolute proof of causation is too exacting a standard

It is said that there is a correlation between the number of storks’ nests found on Danish houses and the number of children born in those houses. Could the old story about babies being delivered by storks really be true? No. Correlation is not causation. Storks do not deliver children but larger houses have more room both for children and for storks.

This much-loved statistical anecdote seems less amusing when you consider how it was used in a US Senate committee hearing in 1965. The expert witness giving testimony was arguing that while smoking may be correlated with lung cancer, a causal relationship was unproven and implausible. Pressed on the statistical parallels between storks and cigarettes, he replied that they “seem to me the same”.

The witness’s name was Darrell Huff, a freelance journalist beloved by generations of geeks for his wonderful and hugely successful 1954 book How to Lie with Statistics. His reputation today might be rather different had the proposed sequel made it to print. How to Lie with Smoking Statistics used a variety of stork-style arguments to throw doubt on the connection between smoking and cancer, and it was supported by a grant from the Tobacco Institute. It was never published, for reasons that remain unclear. (The story of Huff’s career as a tobacco consultant was brought to the attention of statisticians in articles by Andrew Gelman in Chance in 2012 and by Alex Reinhart in Significance in 2014.)

Indisputably, smoking causes lung cancer and various other deadly conditions. But the problematic relationship between correlation and causation in general remains an active area of debate and confusion. The “spurious correlations” compiled by Harvard law student Tyler Vigen and displayed on his website (tylervigen.com) should be a warning. Did you realise that consumption of margarine is strongly correlated with the divorce rate in Maine?

We cannot rely on correlation alone, then. But insisting on absolute proof of causation is too exacting a standard (arguably, an impossible one). Between those two extremes, where does the right balance lie between trusting correlations and looking for evidence of causation?

Scientists, economists and statisticians have tended to demand causal explanations for the patterns they see. It’s not enough to know that college graduates earn more money — we want to know whether the college education boosted their earnings, or if they were smart people who would have done well anyway. Merely looking for correlations was not the stuff of rigorous science.

But with the advent of “big data” this argument has started to shift. Large data sets can throw up intriguing correlations that may be good enough for some purposes. (Who cares why price cuts are most effective on a Tuesday? If it’s Tuesday, cut the price.) Andy Haldane, chief economist of the Bank of England, recently argued that economists might want to take mere correlations more seriously. He is not the first big-data enthusiast to say so.

This brings us back to smoking and cancer. When the British epidemiologist Richard Doll first began to suspect the link in the late 1940s, his analysis was based on a mere correlation. The causal mechanism was unclear, as most of the carcinogens in tobacco had not been identified; Doll himself suspected that lung cancer was caused by fumes from tarmac roads, or possibly cars themselves.

Doll’s early work on smoking and cancer with Austin Bradford Hill, published in 1950, was duly criticised in its day as nothing more than a correlation. The great statistician Ronald Fisher repeatedly weighed into the argument in the 1950s, pointing out that it was quite possible that cancer caused smoking — after all, precancerous growths irritated the lung. People might smoke to soothe that irritation. Fisher also observed that some genetic predisposition might cause both lung cancer and a tendency to smoke. (Another statistician, Joseph Berkson, observed that people who were tough enough to resist adverts and peer pressure were also tough enough to resist lung cancer.)

Hill and Doll showed us that correlation should not be dismissed too easily. But they also showed that we shouldn’t give up on the search for causal explanations. The pair painstakingly continued their research, and evidence of a causal association soon mounted.

Hill and Doll took a pragmatic approach in the search for causation. For example, is there a dose-response relationship? Yes: heavy smokers are more likely to suffer from lung cancer. Does the timing make sense? Again, yes: smokers develop cancer long after they begin to smoke. This contradicts Fisher’s alternative hypothesis that people self-medicate with cigarettes in the early stages of lung cancer. Do multiple sources of evidence add up to a coherent picture? Yes: when doctors heard about what Hill and Doll were finding, many of them quit smoking, and it became possible to see that the quitters were at lower risk of lung cancer. We should respect correlation but it is a clue to a deeper truth, not the end of our investigations.

It’s not clear why Huff and Fisher were so fixated on the idea that the growing evidence on smoking was a mere correlation. Both of them were paid as consultants by the tobacco industry and some will believe that the consulting fees caused their scepticism. It seems just as likely that their scepticism caused the consulting fees. We may never know.

Written for and first published at ft.com.

South Park once argued that you can't criticize a show for copying The Simpsons because The Simpsons have already come up with so many different ideas. In fact, The Simpsons has even featured these events before they happened in real life.

Fifteen years ago, Luciano Faggiano of Lecce, Italy sent his sons out digging for a broken sewer line. They didn’t find the pipe, but they did find “a Messapian tomb, a Roman granary, a Franciscan chapel and even etchings from the Knights Templar,” writes Jim Yardley in a story for the New York Times.

Read more...

When it comes to nations with a long and rich history of space travel and exploration, Britain isn’t normally a country that comes to most people’s minds. However, they were the third country in the world to operate a satellite in orbit. It’s just a shame America ended up accidentally killing it just a few months later…

Read more...

An anonymous reader writes: Google today launched Chrome 42 for Windows, Mac, and Linux with new developer tools. Chrome 42 offers two new APIs (Push API and Notifications API) that together allow sites to send notifications to their users even after the given page is closed. While this can be quite an intrusive feature for a browser, Google promises the users have to first grant explicit permission before they receive such a message.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

So that’s Pluto and its Texas-sized moon, Charon from a distance of about 71 million miles. Not a bad shot all things considered. But the New Horizons probe, on its way closer right now, will be upping its photo-taking game in July. Then we’ll get to see some actual surface features.

Read more...

An anonymous reader writes Thousands of people marched past a parliament building in Madrid to protest a new law that they say endangers civil liberties. But none of them were actually there. From the article: "Late last year the Spanish government passed a law that set extreme fines for protesters convening outside of government buildings. In response to the controversial Citizen Safety Law, which will take effect on July 1, Spanish activists have staged the world's first ever virtual political demonstration. After months of massive flesh-and-blood protests against the so-called 'gag law', thousands of holograms last night marched in front of the Spanish parliament in Madrid."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

coondoggie writes NASA this week will be sending its first espresso making machine into space, letting astronauts onboard the International Space Station brew coffee, tea or other hot beverages for those long space days. Making espresso in space is no small feat, as heating the water to the right temperature – 208F – and generating enough pressure to make the brew are critical in the brewing process. And then getting it into a “cup,” well that’s nearly impossible in gravity-free space. NASA, the Italian space agency ASI, aerospace firm Argotec, and coffee company Lavazza have come up with en experimental machine that will deliver the espresso into what basically amounts to a sippy pouch.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Are your desires …unconventional? Enough so that you have a deep yearning for a periodical of tastefully photographed technology, stripped down to its barest elements? Boy, have I got the magazine for you.

Read more...

Grant Snider of Incidental Comics takes on the inevitable occurrence in life of being disappointed. Whether it's disappointment as a result of the actions of significant others, friends or family, disappointment in the workplace or in other life circumstances, it's unavoidable. But as Snider points out, trying to avoid disappointment at all costs only makes your world smaller, with few opportunities, and thus, more disappointing. 

This is part one of "Theories of Disappointment." See part two at Incidental Comics.