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Secular Café: Could the Standard Model be wrong?

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

Could the Standard Model be wrong? Jun 19th 2012, 01:20 Quote: Misbehaving particles poke holes in reigning physics theory Scientists find decay happens more often than Standard Model predicts — so now what? The reigning theory of particle physics may be flawed, according to new evidence that a subatomic particle decays in a certain way more often than it should, scientists announced. This theory, called the Standard Model, is the best handbook scientists have to describe the tiny bits of matter that make up the universe. But many physicists suspect the Standard Model has some holes in it, and findings like this may point to where those holes are hiding. Inside the BaBar experiment at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, Calif., researchers observe collisions between electrons and their antimatter partners, positrons (scientists think all matter particles have antimatter counterparts with equal mass but opposite charge). When these particles collide, they explode into energy that converts into new particles. These often include so-called B-bar mesons, which are made of both matter and antimatter, specifically a bottom quark and an antiquark. If that wasn't too much of a headache, this process has the impenetrable moniker "B to D-star-tau-nu." The BaBar researchers were looking for a particular decay process where B-bar mesons decay into three other particles: a D meson (a quark and an antiquark, one of which is "charm" flavored ), an antineutrino (the antimatter partner of the neutrino) and a tau lepton (a cousin of an electron). [ Graphic: Nature's Tiniest Particles Explained ] What they found is that this process apparently happens more often than the Standard Model predicts it will. "The excess over the Standard Model prediction is exciting," BaBar spokesperson Michael Roney of the University of Victoria in Canada said in a statement. "But before we can claim an actual discovery, other experiments have to replicate it and rule out the possibility this isn't just an unlikely statistical fluctuation." ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47866307.../#.T9_S0PWePw0

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Secular Café: Woo About Curing Autism Via Drinking Bleach/Bleace Enemas

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

Woo About Curing Autism Via Drinking Bleach/Bleace Enemas Jun 19th 2012, 00:38 link These people are fucking insane. Quote: The Phaelospher, it appears, is very unhappy with Mr. Drezner, very unhappy indeed, so much so that he wrote a post entitled The "MMS-is-Bleach" Card is Played… Again. Before we get to the "Fail-osopher," as skeptics like to call him, let's first go back to Mr. Drezner's HuffPo post and what brought it about. It was a hard-hitting article, and, certainly, I can't argue with Mr. Drezner's conclusion: Let's state the obvious: There is no reason to give bleach to any child, for any reason. There is not a shred of scientific evidence that MMS is an effective treatment for autism. Some purveyors of quackery have spotted a lucrative market and are trying to take advantage of it. But their protocol is far closer to child abuse than it is to effective medical treatment. Sadly, Autism One and those who attend it have had a very hard time recognizing these simple facts. In a post at Age of Autism, Julie Obradovic tries to defend MMS without actually defending it. Instead, she mentions that Autism One presenters included M.D.s, Ph.D.s, and a Nobel Laureate. But the presence of smart people at a conference that promotes quackery doesn't change the fact that it's promoting quackery. Indeed, it does not, although I would point out to Mr. Drezner that this Nobel Laureate is a Nobel Laureate who has come down with the Nobel Disease. He's turned into a complete crank, endorsing homeopathy, appearing in an HIV/AIDS denialist movie, and starting up an unethical clinical trial of long-term antibiotic therapy for autistic children. In fact, it was that clinical trial that he came to Autism One to talk about, lending the aura of his Nobel Prize to the most wretched of quackfests. ... Next, Mr. Abraham shares with us the story of a mother who claims to have gotten all sorts of worms out of her autistic child using Ms. Rivera's protocol, complete with pictures. Who knows if this child actually had worms, whether this is a legitimate medical anecdote or a made-up one? Let's say for the moment that it's legitimate. So what? Giving a child enemas of almost any kind would probably get worms out of the colon as they emerge from the small intestine if there are worms in the digestive tract. That doesn't mean that getting rid of worms will cure autism or that bleach enemas are even a good treatment for worms. Finally, Mr. Abraham makes a most ridiculous analogy: When we see pictures of children "fighting cancer" that have no hair, we think that the cancer condition caused the hair loss. However, the cancer treatment; the chemotherapy or radiation, actually did the deed. We are accustomed to rationalizing, at doctor's suggestion and all the "respected" literature on the subject, that it was okay because the cancer was so dangerous. Even though it creates no residual chemical toxicity in the body, doctors will not use MMS, which has proven itself to be a benign and effective way to reduce a myriad of chemical abuses and microbial abnormalities inside the human body. Doctors will not use it because the FDA and the AMA frown upon such use. Livelihoods can be upset if this outlaw "bleach" as the FDA mis-characterizes the sodium chlorite solution that is MMS, is used. That's right. Mr. Abraham is actually arguing that it's a double standard to criticize treating autism by making children sick by feeding them bleach and giving them bleach enemas while accepting the side effects of hair loss, nausea, and vomiting from cancer chemotherapy. This is an argument so brain dead that I don't think even his Genome Healing Workshop could restore the neurons that must have been destroyed to allow him to make it. Last week, I asked this rhetorical question: Will the autism "biomed" underground ever renounce using bleach to treat autism? I'm still not sure of the answer, even though several of my readers have told me the answer is no. On the one hand, we have people like Julie Obradovic and the "media director" of the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism furiously backpedaling and assuring us that they really and truly aren't defending MMS. Clearly, Rivera's appearance at Autism One three weeks ago embarrassed them. Actually, it wasn't her appearance per se, but rather that fact that the blogosphere noticed and spread the news of her quack presentation far and wide. On the other hand, they're also defending "freedom" to choose quackery like MMS and circling the wagons. THIS is why I fucking hate woo. Some of it might be harmless, but a lot of it is far from being so.

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Secular Café: Aboriginal rock art is 28,000 years old

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

Aboriginal rock art is 28,000 years old Jun 19th 2012, 01:05 Quote: Aboriginal rock art is 28,000 years old (AFP) – 18 hours ago SYDNEY — Aboriginal rock art found in remote Australia has been dated at 28,000 years old, experts said Monday, prompting new speculation that indigenous communities were among the world's most advanced. Archaeologists picked up the fragment in inaccessible wilderness in Arnhem Land in the country's north a year ago, and recent carbon dating of its charcoal drawing has placed it among some of the oldest art on the planet. "One of the things that makes this little fragment of art unique is that it is drawn in charcoal... which means we could directly date it," said Bryce Barker, who found and first analysed the granite rock. Barker said given it was one of the oldest known pieces of rock art on earth, it showed that Aboriginal people were responsible for some of the earliest examples. Barker said the find ranks among rock art sites such as France's Chauvet caves dated at older than 30,000 years and caves in northern Spain now thought to be 40,000 years old. "The fact remains that any rock art that is older than 20,000 years is very unique around the world," said Barker, a professor at the University of Southern Queensland. "So it makes this amongst some of the oldest art in the world. "And we're convinced that we'll find older and the reason is that the site this comes from, we know that Aboriginal people started using this site 45,000 years ago." The find was made at a massive rock shelter named Narwala Gabarnmang, which is covered on its ceiling and pillars with rock art, and only accessible by a 90 minute helicopter journey from the outback town of Katherine.... ... http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp...af131cc82cc.51

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Secular Café: Are We Driving Earth to an Irreversible Tipping Point?

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

Are We Driving Earth to an Irreversible Tipping Point? Jun 18th 2012, 00:43 Scary stuff! Quote: Are We Driving Earth to an Irreversible Tipping Point? Nature changes gradually—until it doesn't. As the changes in an ecosystem pile up, they can push the system past a "critical threshold," and then the change can become extremely fast (in relation to geological timescales) and unstoppable. And in a review in the journal Nature, researchers suggest that the same thing is happening to the whole world: Humans could be driving Earth's biosphere towards a tipping point beyond which the planet's ecosystems will collapse abruptly and irreversibly. This global ecosystem collapse has occurred before, most recently about 12,000 years ago with the last transition from a glacial period to the current interglacial (i.e., warm) period, say the review authors. Over the relatively short period of 1,000 years, fluctuations in the Earth's climate largely killed off about half the large mammal species, along with birds, reptiles, and a few smaller mammal species. The millennium-long shift was triggered by rapid global warming, and once this warming pushed the planet past its tipping point, the end of the 100,000-year-old ice age became inevitable, giving way to the current 11,000-year-old interglacial era. Even as many Americans insist that we aren't affecting the environment, the paper's authors warn that man-made changes, such as loss of biodiversity, pollution, agriculture, climate change, and overuse of natural resources, are driving the planet toward another global tipping point. A few of these transformations, such as climate fluctuations and species extinction, also preceded earlier global critical transitions. And when scientists plug these transformations into ecosystem models, they quickly nudge systems past their tipping points. ... http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80...tipping-point/

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Secular Café: Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek the world has ever seen

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek the world has ever seen Jun 17th 2012, 14:32 http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla There's MUCH more at the full link....enjoy....

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Secular Café: This is great, Freud gets some props!

Secular Café Serious discussion of science, skepticism, evolution, pseudoscience, and the paranormal

This is great, Freud gets some props! Jun 17th 2012, 12:44 I've long thought he gets unfairly attacked and rejected. Quote: Freud's Theory of Unconscious Conflict Linked to Anxiety Symptoms ScienceDaily (June 16, 2012) — A link between unconscious conflicts and conscious anxiety disorder symptoms have been shown, lending empirical support to psychoanalysis. An experiment that Sigmund Freud could never have imagined 100 years ago may help lend scientific support for one of his key theories, and help connect it with current neuroscience. June 16 at the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association, a University of Michigan professor who has spent decades applying scientific methods to the study of psychoanalysis will present new data supporting a causal link between the psychoanalytic concept known as unconscious conflict, and the conscious symptoms experienced by people with anxiety disorders such as phobias. Howard Shevrin, Ph.D., emeritus professor of psychology in the U-M Medical School's Department of Psychiatry, will present data from experiments performed in U-M's Ormond and Hazel Hunt Laboratory. The research involved 11 people with anxiety disorders who each received a series of psychoanalytically oriented diagnostic sessions conducted by a psychoanalyst. From these interviews the psychoanalysts inferred what underlying unconscious conflict might be causing the person's anxiety disorder. Words capturing the nature of the unconscious conflict were then selected from the interviews and used as stimuli in the laboratory. They also selected words related to each patient's experience of anxiety disorder symptoms. Although these words differed from patient to patient, results showed that they functioned in the same way. These verbal stimuli were presented subliminally at one thousandth of a second, and supraliminally at 30 milliseconds. A control category of stimuli was added that had no relationship to the unconscious conflict or anxiety symptom. While the stimuli were presented to the patients, scalp electrodes record the brain responses to them. In a previous experiment Shevrin had demonstrated that time-frequency features, a type of brain activity, showed that patients grouped the unconscious conflict stimuli together only when they were presented subliminally. But the conscious symptom-related stimuli showed the reverse pattern -- brain activity was better grouped together when patients viewed those words supraliminally. "Only when the unconscious conflict words were presented unconsciously could the brain see them as connected," Shevrin notes. "What the analysts put together from the interview session made sense to the brain only unconsciously." However, the experimental design in this first experiment did not allow for directly comparing the effect of the unconscious conflict stimuli on the conscious symptom stimuli. To obtain evidence for that next level, the unconscious conflict stimuli were presented immediately prior to the conscious symptom stimuli and a new measurement was made, of the brain's own alpha wave frequency, at 8-13 cycles per second, that had been shown to inhibit various cognitive functions. Highly significant correlations, suggesting an inhibitory effect, were obtained when the amount of alpha generated by the unconscious conflict stimuli were correlated with the amount of alpha associated with the conscious symptom alpha -- but only when the unconscious conflict stimuli were presented subliminally. No results were obtained when control stimuli replaced the symptom words. The fact that these findings are a function of inhibition suggests that from a psychoanalytic standpoint that repression might be involved. "These results create a compelling case that unconscious conflicts cause or contribute to the anxiety symptoms the patient is experiencing," says Shevrin, who also holds an emeritus position in the Department of Psychology in U-M's College of Literature, Science and the Arts. "These findings and the interdisciplinary methods used -- which draw on psychoanalysis, cognitive psychology, and neuroscience -- demonstrate that it is possible to develop an interdisciplinary science drawing upon psychoanalytic theory." ... http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0616145531.htm

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