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Comment Re: Why would anybody send 23andme their DNA? (Score 0, Troll) 25

It essentially saved my life. Iâ(TM)ve had some general health issues my entire life and as I aged they just got worse and worse and more difficult to manage.

It was getting to the point where I was close to losing my job because no matter what I tried I couldnâ(TM)t muster the energy to problem solve or put in the hours I once did. No doctor ever cared enough to do any sort of long term analysis on me to figure it out. They just want you in and out of their office as quickly as possible.

I sent my DNA sample to 23andMe. I have celiac disease. It took about a year for my body to recover from 50+ years of abuse. Now Iâ(TM)m stronger and healthier in my later days in life than I was when I was 21.

Celiac doesnâ(TM)t manifest itself the same way for all individuals so it is tricky to diagnose. My daughter was going in for all kinds of tests trying to figure out what was wrong with her and she was weeks away from an operation based on an incorrect diagnosis when I suggested she get tested the same way. Guess what? And now she is also fine and living a normal life (albeit without tasty gluten).

Comment Seeding Oceans with Iron (Score 3, Interesting) 98

Past ice ages are "thought" to have, in part, been caused by a positive feedback loop where glaciers scrape iron off the Earth's crust which is then blown into the ocean causing algae blooms drawing carbon out of the atmosphere. From The Smithsonian:

"Proposed in 1990 by the late oceanographer John Martin, the hypothesis suggests that flurries of dust — swept from cold, dry landscapes like the glacial outwash where Kaplan now stood, trowel in hand — played a crucial role in the last major ice age. When this dust landed in the iron-starved Southern Ocean, Martin argued, the iron within it would have fertilized massive blooms of diatoms and other phytoplankton. Single-celled algae with intricate silica shells, diatoms photosynthesize, pulling carbon from the atmosphere and transforming it to sugar to fuel their growth. Going a step further, Martin proposed that using iron to trigger diatom blooms might help combat global warming. “Give me half a tanker of iron and I’ll give you an ice age,” he once said half-jokingly at a seminar, reportedly in his best Dr. Strangelove accent.

Thirty years after Martin’s bold idea, scientists are still debating just how much iron dust contributed to the ice age, and whether geoengineering of the oceans—a prospect still lobbied for by some—might actually work. Although it’s now well-established that an uptick in iron fertilization occurred in the Southern Ocean during the last major ice age, for example, scientists still argue about how much it reduced carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And while Martin’s hypothesis inspired 13 large iron fertilization experiments that boosted algae growth, only two demonstrated removal of carbon to the deep sea; the others were ambiguous or failed to show an impact, says Ken Buesseler, a marine radiochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts."

I've heard this proposed many times recently (seeding the Oceans with Iron), but so far it looks like it is not that effective.

Submission + - A primary marker at Crawford Lake, Canada, starts the Anthropocene epoc (sciencedaily.com)

pyroclast writes: The Anthropocene Working Group have put forward Crawford Lake, in Canada, as a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Anthropocene. A GSSP is an internationally agreed-upon reference point to show the start of a new geological period or epoch in layers of rock that have built up through the ages.

The team has gathered core sample sections from a variety of environments around the world, from coral reefs to ice sheets. Samples from a range of these sites were then sent for analysis to the University of Southampton's GAU-Radioanalytical labs at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. Researchers there processed the samples to detect a key marker of human influence on the environment — the presence of plutonium.

Professor Andrew Cundy, Chair in Environmental Radiochemistry at the University of Southampton and member of the Anthropocene Working Group, explains: "The presence of plutonium gives us a stark indicator of when humanity became such a dominant force that it could leave a unique global 'fingerprint' on our planet.

Other geological indicators of human activity include high levels of ash from coal-fired power stations, high concentrations of heavy metals, such as lead, and the presence of plastic fibres and fragments. These coincide with 'The Great Acceleration' — a dramatic surge across a range of human activity, from transportation to energy use, starting in the mid-20th century and continuing today.

Comment Re:Consciousness (Score 1) 82

Wait, you think that you cannot experience anything without consciousness? That would be factually false. I think we can be pretty sure that a tomato plant doesn't have consciousness, but it does experience changes to its external conditions.

Not sure what you're getting at, frankly. The sentence you selectively pulled 4 words out of was "IMHO it is the mechanism that we employ to constantly reason which we experience as consciousness." I stand by that statement.

Comment Re:Consciousness (Score 1) 82

I've been thinking about this for about 40 years now, since I saw a lecture by an MIT professor on the subject.

The answer is in the question. If I've been thinking about a problem for 40 years I believe it demonstrates consciousness (despite what my detractors would say about me). IMHO it is the mechanism that we employ to constantly reason which we experience as consciousness. Koch and Chalmers have been working on discovering that mechanism in the human brain by theorizing how it works and then testing it through experimentation (as all good scientists do).

For the record, 40 years ago the MIT professor thought that this was a fools errand and described examining the human brain to see how it worked to be as useful as probing out a Cray supercomputer with a multimeter to try to figure it out. Mind you tools for the examination of the brain were a lot more primitive back then.

Comment Peak Shaving (Score 3, Insightful) 79

I don't know the net breakdown of electricity consumption in India, but this is probably a bad idea. One big commercial electricity consumer is data centers and many implement something called "peak shaving" which is to run their diesel generators during times when the market price for electricity peaks. If India goes ahead with this plan there are going to be a lot of generators running every night.

There are much more environmentally friendly ways to implement peak shaving such as deploying giant banks of batteries (such as Tesla MegaPacks), but most don't do that because of the much higher up-front capital and the long ROI. Not to mention you still need gens if the requirement is to survive an extended outage.

Comment /r/byebyejob (Score 1) 36

The question is, how long until Advance Publications pulls the plug on Huffman for the two most unpopular miss-steps in Reddit history: The site redesign and the API fee schedule? I'm going to guess that they're going to wait until the deadline passes and watch the effect of the loss of goodwill on advertising revenue and then replace him. I wouldn't give him more than six months. The replacement CEO will get probably nine months to a year to turn things around and then they'll look at an IPO again.

It's been a while since I've seen an executive fail so spectacularly at something as simple as negotiating with friendly third parties, but it's always entertaining.

Comment Re:idiot (Score 1) 152

AM radio is also a very good way to check for a nearby thunderstorm. You can hear a lighting strike on AM radio long before you can hear the thunder from the storm. That said, you do have to know to tune it to a frequency that has no nearby broadcasts on it.

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