Philosophical Wednesday

Downward Causation | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine

Sean Carroll at Cosmic Varience delves into science and philosopher again with an interesting post talking about whether higher levels of emergent phenomena can properly be said to have "downward causation" on the lower levels of physical reality.

Because this is used as an "anti-reductionist" argument by some, Carroll, strongly atheist, reacts against it, and tries to explain why.

The comments that follow are just as interesting. It is, of course, a question that has been addressed by many philosophers of the mind.

This is a topic that I often find crossing my mind. I am tempted to add a comment there that anyone who has had a strong reaction to hearing the words "I love you" knows that downward causation happens. But, probably, serious physicists would say it doesn't.

Parasite strikes again?

A Common Parasite May be Linked to Brain Cancers

According to a latest geographic analysis led by the U.S. Geological Survey and French infectious disease research institute MIVEGEC, countries where Toxoplasma gondii is common had higher incidences of adult brain cancers than in those countries where the organism is not common.

Toxoplasma gondii is a single-celled organism found worldwide in at least one-third of the human population, researchers said.

Bad figures

Anorexic at five in Britain

Nearly 100 children aged between five and seven in Britain have been treated for anorexia or bulimia in the past three years, according to figures released on Monday.

The statistics show that 197 children aged between five and nine were treated in hospital in England for eating disorders, fuelling campaigners' fears that young children are being influenced by photographs in celebrity magazines.

The figures from 35 hospitals showed 98 children were aged between five and seven at the time of treatment and 99 aged eight or nine. Almost 400 were between the ages of 10 and 12, with more than 1,500 between 13 and 15 years old.

Hansen as renewables realist

James Hansen may promote the worst predictions of global warming, but when it comes to finding solutions, he appears very much a realist about the limited potential for renewable energy to rapidly replace carbon fuels.

He has a new essay up about this, and it is attracting some attention. Basically, he thinks new generation nuclear is the way to go, but his present analysis of its promise is definitely on the shallow side.

Important overlooked climate change correlations

Reading a certain right wing blog has taught me the following relationships:

I'm hoping for a burqa version

BBC News - India 'Slutwalk' sex harassment protest held in Delhi

Most of the marchers in Delhi were soberly dressed in jeans and T-shirts or traditional shalwar kameez.

That bad

Did Amy Winehouse die from going cold turkey? - By Jeremy Singer-Vine - Slate Magazine

Slate's explainer column says you really can risk death by going cold turkey if you are an alcoholic.

Didn't know that.

Republicans will pretend they didn't notice

July heat in Washington was unprecedented - The Washington Post

Relentless and punishing, July’s heat was unrivaled in 140 years of Washington, D.C., weather record-keeping. The July temperature averaged 84.5 degrees at Reagan National Airport — Washington’s official weather station — more than a degree above July 2010 and July 1993, which previously held the mark for hottest month.

Spencer misfire, again

Spencer & Braswell’s new paper | Climate Etc.

When even Judith Curry finds a lot of problems with Roy Spencer's latest attempt to prove every climate scientist apart from him is wrong, you know that it is not by any stretch of the imagination a serious threat to the "orthodox" view of AGW.

This post by Curry is actually one that is useful, for a change, as it notes the political use to which Spencer's study was put, and the reaction from Real Climate, and Fred Moolten, who for some reason has taken on the job of being the voice of AGW orthodoxy on Curry's blog.

But Andrew Bolt says: the guy who wrote about polar bears, he's done something wrong, apparently.

(The Alaska Despatch, meanwhile, reprinted an email from the relevant Alaskan Bureau, saying this in part:

We are limited in what we can say about a pending investigation, but I can assure you that the decision had nothing to do with his scientific work, or anything relating to a five-year old journal article, as advocacy groups and the news media have incorrectly speculated. Nor is this a "witch hunt" to suppress the work of our many scientists and discourage them from speaking the truth. Quite the contrary. In this case, it was the result of new information on a separate subject brought to our attention very recently.

Yet thousands of climate skeptics around the world will go on thinking this was a significant matter of another nail in AGW's coffin, or some such rubbish.)

A slightly optimistic story

Advanced Reactor Gets Closer to Reality� - Technology Review:

"Terrapower, a startup funded in part by Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates, is moving closer to building a new type of nuclear reactor called a traveling wave reactor that runs on an abundant form of uranium. The company sees it as a possible alternative to fusion reactors, which are also valued for their potential to produce power from a nearly inexhaustible source of fuel.

Work on Terrapower's reactor design began in 2006. Since then, the company has changed its original design to make the reactor look more like a conventional one. The changes would make the reactor easier to engineer and build. The company has also calculated precise dimensions and performance parameters for the reactor. Terrapower expects to begin construction of a 500-megawatt demonstration plant in 2016 and start it up in 2020. It's working with a consortium of national labs, universities, and corporations to overcome the primary technical challenge of the new reactor: developing new materials that can withstand use in the reactor core for decades at a time. It has yet to secure a site for an experimental plant—or the funding to build it."

Economics of GM

GM crops and foods: promises, profits and politics - On Line Opinion - 1/8/2011

I don't follow the GM food issue closely, and I don't know anything about Bob Phelps as an anti GM advocate.

However, I thought that at the least the economics argument, about how Australian non GM canola has a big market and is sold at a premium, was interesting.

He sounds a relatively sensible person in his opposition to GM, but I could be wrong...

Why large amounts of methane may be even worse than thought

Large methane releases lead to strong aerosol forcing and reduced cloudiness

This paper can be available in full via that link, and it sounds pretty important for long term climate change issues.

As it explains at the start:

Among the various worst-case scenarios for catastrophic climate change suggested over the past decades, the so-called clathrate-gun hypothesis (Kennett et al., 2000) is one of the
most dramatic. In this scenario, a rise in temperatures leads to the destabilization and subsequent release of methane clathrates in the Arctic permafrost and seabed into the atmosphere, vastly amplifying the initial warming. This type
of mechanism has been suggested as a possible reason for millennial-scale warming during the last ice age, as well as the Paleocene – Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM; see e.g. Kennett et al., 2000), though the evidence so far is inconclusive (Clark et al., 2008; Sowers, 2006). One criticism of the hypothesis is that the amount of methane estimated to have been released during the PETM is not sufficient to explain the observed warming, at least if only the longwave radiative forcings of CH4 and its oxidation product CO2 are accounted for.

They go on to note that, although most consider the large scale release of methane from clathrate reservoirs under the oceans during this century is improbable, it's important to look at what would happen if we did get a surprise.

The result would be, they think, less clouds, and therefore:

Together, the indirect CH₄-O₃ and CH₄-OH-aerosol forcings could more than double the warming effect of large methane increases. Our findings may help explain the anomalously large temperature changes associated with historic methane releases.

To which Andrew Bolt will say - but Tim Flannery bought a house on the water.

Also good for the classroom

Tiny shocks help schizophrenics (Science Alert)

In a recent study using a technique called transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS), scientists from Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) have shown that brain function in people with schizophrenia can improve after applying the stimulation for just 20 minutes.

“We found that this type of brain stimulation boosted learning from feedback which is important in everyday life, for example in learning to act on cues from other people in social situations,” says lead researcher, Dr Tom Weickert.

“There are very few new treatment options for people with schizophrenia, so finding a different treatment that is promising and also has little in the way of side effects is very exciting,” he says.

tDCS transmits a very mild electrical current to the brain through electrodes on the scalp. This technique has previously been shown to improve brain function in healthy people, as well as people with depression.

Another strange story for a Monday

The Local - Clairvoyant finds peeing soldier's smart stick

A strange story for Monday

The princess who swallowed a glass piano � Mind Hacks

The programme was created by writer and poet Deborah Levy who “considers the true story of Princess Alexandra Amelie of Bavaria, 1826-1875 who at the age of 23 was observed awkwardly walking sideways down the corridors of her family palace. When questioned by her worried royal parents, she announced that she had swallowed a grand glass piano.”

As we’ve discussed previously, glass delusions were quite regularly reported by physicians in the 19th century but are now seemingly extinct in a curious cultural shift in madness.

Catfish noodling

I had not heard of catfish noodling before, but Hamish and Andy enlightened me last night:



I suspect this Youtube extract won't last, so watch it while you can.

I don't think he liked it

'Transformers: Dark of the Moon' | The Japan Times Online

This reviewer really, really hated the latest Transformers movie, and I like many of his lines:

Given enough money, almost any filmmaker could deliver a big, loud, silly popcorn movie about giant alien robots beating the living crap out of each other, but it takes the special talent of director Michael Bay to make such a movie totally repellent. ...

Perhaps you'd like to know about the story? So would I...

Perpetual dweeb Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) inexplicably has an even hotter girlfriend than before, Carly (Huntington-Whiteley), despite being unemployed and constantly whining about how having alien robot friends doesn't land him a cushy Homeland Security desk job, and sending abusive-boyfriend signals every time Carly talks about her cool boss (Patrick Dempsey). But then again, Sam's mom jokes about her son's penis size (seriously), so you can forgive the poor boy for having "issues."

My son has seen it, he went with a friend and his Mum, so I didn't see it. Just lucky I guess.

Melting Arctic feedbacks

BBC News - Huge Arctic fire hints at new climate cue

When the tundra gets warm and dry, it burns. It burnt a lot in 2007. Seeing the ice melt this year is close to the 2007 level, I wonder if it will happen again this year?

When the permafrost melts, it releases more carbon dioxide.

That's about it, in short form.

Getting paranoid

China cracks down on wi-fi in public spaces

China has ordered public spaces offering wi-fi web access to install costly software to enable police to identify people using the service, state media said Thursday.

The software, which also gives police a list of all websites visited by an online user, costs between 20,000 yuan ($3,100) and 60,000 yuan, the China Business News said.

As a result, many establishments such as bars, restaurants, cafes and bookstores have decided to stop providing wireless Internet to their customers despite its popularity, to avoid paying the money, the report said.

In Beijing, cafe and restaurant owners have been told they face a minimum fine of 5,000 yuan if they continue to offer wireless without installing the software, it said.

"In serious cases," offenders could see their Internet cut off for up to six months, the report said.

Hard to visit?

Trojan asteroid dances ahead of the Earth as it orbits of the sun | Science | guardian.co.uk

I wonder how difficult it is for a rocket to get to an object that is more or less in the same orbit as Earth.