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Solve for X is a place where the curious can go to hear and discuss radical technology ideas for solving global problems. Radical in the sense that the solutions could help billions of people. Radical in the sense that the audaciousness of the proposals makes them sound like science fiction.

"Sehr lesenswert sind unserer Meinung nach die Artikel des Biologen und Bienenexperten Randy Oliver, der ein regelmäßiger Autor im American Bee Journal ist. Auf seiner Homepage "Scientific Beekeeper" findet man zwei hochinteressante Artikel, auf die wir an dieser Stelle verweisen möchten: Neonicotinoids: Trying To Make Sense of the Science Neonicotinoids: Trying To Make Sense of the Science - Part 2 Er listet viele Studien zum CCD und zu Neonicotinoiden und schreibt, dass etliche mit einer gehörigen Portion Voreingenommenheit in die eine oder andere Richtung behaftet sind. Manche spielen die Wirkung der Neonicotinoide hinunter, andere versuchen zu beweisen, dass diese Giftstoffe die zentrale Schuld am Bienensterben tragen. In einem spannenden Artikel von April 2013, bei dem er sich vor allem damit auseinandersetzt, was "dieses Frühjahr mit den Bienen geschah", vergleicht er die Bienenverluste mit der Verwendung von Neonicotinoiden. Er findet dabei eine Korrelation von 2006 bis 2009, aber 2010 dreht sich der Trend: mehr Neonicotinoide als im Vorjahr werden eingesetzt und wesentlich weniger Bienen verenden"

"Our ethos: We help people make sense of current discussions rather than taking them back to school We stand up for scientific inquiry, free from stigma, intimidation, hysteria or censorship We want everyone, whatever their experience, to stand up for evidence in public life"

Strive as we might to make sense of the world, some mysteries still confound us. Here are 13 of the most perplexing - cracking any one of them could yield profound truths

Whether used to clinch a guilty verdict or predict the end of a "CSI" episode, DNA evidence has given millions of people a sense of certainty -- but the outcomes of using DNA evidence have often been far from certain, according to David Kaye, Distinguished Professor of Law at Penn State.

"Similarly, how should cancer biologists think about cancer cells capable of producing vascular endothelial growth factor, a protein that promotes the growth of blood vessels? Clearly, the importance of this protein only makes sense when thinking about a cancer cell's environment: how close it is to blood vessels that it can exploit, for example."

"The 18th-century philosopher David Hume (much quoted by Mr. Lehrer) didn't have an M.R.I. scanner at his disposal, but he framed the question in much the same way. His major work, "A Treatise of Human Nature," explored the ways in which habit, or "custom," rules our lives. Hume's experiments with perception - how we respond to colors, distance, numerical sets - prefigure the rigorous science of Professor Kahneman. His intent was to show us "the natural infirmity and unsteadiness both of our imagination and senses." Consciousness, like philosophy itself, stands on a "weak foundation.""

"What they found here was a negative correlation. The MORE serotonin transporters you had, the less likely you were to reject unfair offers. The authors interpret this to mean that people with lower levels of serotonin transporter had a harsher sense of "fairness", than those with higher levels of serotonin transporter, and were more inclined to reject unfair offers. Why could this be the case? The authors looked at the personalities of the individuals. You might think that people with more aggressive personalities (or at least a tendency to get offended) might be more likely to reject unfair offers, but it turned out that this wasn't the case. Instead, it was people with more peaceful personalities, but stronger measures of trust, were more likely to reject the unfair offers. The authors believe that the people with higher trustfulness had higher standards of behavior, and thus were more likely to reject unfair offers, even if the rejected ended up badly for them"

"Bacterial signaling controlling biofilm formation and pathogenicity Opportunistic bacterial pathogens cause a variety of infectious diseases. Their ability to sense and respond to different microenvironments, particularly during the transition from a free-living to an indwelling pathogenic lifestyle, is largely dependent on a variety of adaptational strategies (Hall-Stoodley et al., 2004). Examples include phenotypic variation, biofilm formation, resistance to antibiotic treatments and virulence gene expression, suggested to be interlinked phenotypes largely dependent on bacterial signaling and changes in their transcription profiles "

"PlanetData aims to establish a sustainable European community of researchers that supports organizations in exposing their data in new and useful ways. The ability to effectively and efficiently make sense out of the enormous amounts of data continuously published online, including data streams, (micro)blog posts, digital archives, eScience resources, public sector data sets, and the Linked Open Data Cloud, is a crucial ingredient for Europe's transition to a knowledge society. It allows businesses, governm"

"So far the treatment, known as faecal transplant, has been tested only on a drug resistant form of the bowel disease caused by the bacterium clostridium difficile. Antibiotics are unreliable against the superbug, but the transplant is 95% successful, saving patients from constant stomach cramps and chronic diarrhoea. "It sounds radical but it makes a lot of sense," said Seppelt on Thursday at a gathering of more than 4,000 Australasian anaesthetists and surgeons. "Usually patients are sufficiently miserable to go ahead, often using a donation from a relative." Healthy humans have about 100 times more bacteria cells in their gut than their own cells."

"Note that the antimicrobial peptides are produced largely in the fat bodies-so there would be less of this sort of response in forager bees, which don't maintain their fat bodies. This makes sense, since foragers aren't expected to live for long. However, keep in mind that the bees in protein-hungry colonies are unable to develop their fat bodies fully-this one point where nutrition ties in to immunity. Surprisingly, Jay Evans found that these genes are not upregulated in bees from CCD colonies, even though the bees are full of pathogens! There are a few potential explanations for this finding that come to mind: The bee hemocytes are not recognizing the pathogens as foreign (suppression of recognition systems, perhaps by viruses?). The colonies could be protein-starved. Something is suppressing the transcription of the genes, or their translation to peptides. Note that viruses can do this very thing, which I feel may be a big clue!"

In addition to sensing distant galaxies made entirely of antimatter, the AMS will also test leading theories of dark matter, an invisible and mysterious substance that comprises 83 percent of the matter in the universe. And it will search for strangelets, a theoretical form of matter that's ultra-massive because it contains so-called strange quarks

What do quantum particles do when we're not looking? Probably not what you'd expect.\n\nWhile the mathematical formalism 'behind the scenes' is perfectly well-defined and the predictions by the theory are completely sensible (and rigorously tested), it is often difficult to interpret the mechanism of quantum theory into ideas that make sense relative to everyday experiences.

The saying "You're only as old as you feel" really seems to resonate with older adults, according to research from Purdue University.

December 9th, 02005 - Sam Harris"The View From The End Of The World"This is an audio only presentation. This talk took place in the Conference Center Golden Gate Room, San Francisco. Quote: With gentle demeanor and tight argument, Sam Harris carried an overflow audience into the core of one of the crucial issues of our time: What makes some religions lethal? How do they employ aggressive irrationality to justify threatening and controlling non-believers as well as believers? What should be our response? Harris began with Christianity. In the US, Christians use irrational arguments about a soul in the 150 cells of a 3-day old human embryo to block stem cell research that might alleviate the suffering of millions. In Africa, Catholic doctrine uses tortured logic to actively discourage the use of condoms in countries ravaged by AIDS. "This is genocidal stupidity," Harris said. Faith trumps rational argument. Common-sense ethical intuition is blinded by religious metaphysics. In the US, 22% of the population are CERTAIN that Jesus is coming back in the next 50 years, and another 22% think that it's likely. The good news of Christ's return, though, can only occur following desperately bad news. Mushroom clouds would be welcomed. "End time thinking," Harris said, "is fundamentally hostile to creating a sustainable future." Harris was particularly critical of religious moderates who give cover to the fundamentalists by not challenging them. The moderates say that all is justified because religion gives people meaning in their life. "But what would they say to a guy who believes there's a diamond the size of a refrigerator buried in his backyard? The guy digs out there every Sunday with his family, cherishing the meaningthe quest gives them." "I've read the books," Harris said. "God is not a moderate." The Bible gives strict instructions to kill various kinds of sinners, and their relatives, and on occasion their entire towns. Yet slavery is challenged nowhere in the New or

For centuries, some of the greatest names in math have tried to make sense of partition numbers, the basis for adding and counting. Many mathematicians added major pieces to the puzzle, but all of them fell short of a full theory to explain partitions. Instead, their work raised more questions about this fundamental area of math. Emory mathematician Ken Ono is unveiling new theories that answer these famous old questions.

For several decades, astronomers and cosmologists have been piling up data that indicates most of the matter in the Universe is dark, interacting only via gravity. As modified theories of gravity failed to account for observation, candidates for dark mater were winnowed down until one remained in favor: the weakly interactive massive particle, or WIMP. Over the past several years, potential signals of WIMPs have appeared in space and on Earth; that, combined with the startup of the LHC, has given the research community the sense that it's close to pinning down the identity of the WIMPs. But a review in this week's Nature considers what might happen if we fail.

COULD the structure of space and time be sketched out inside a cousin of plain old pencil lead? The atomic grid of graphene may mimic a lattice underlying reality, two physicists have claimed, an idea that could explain the curious spin of the electron. Graphene is an atom-thick layer of carbon in a hexagonal formation. Depending on its position in this grid, an electron can adopt either of two quantum states - a property called pseudospin which is mathematically akin to the intrinsic spin of an electron. Most physicists do not think it is true spin, but Chris Regan at the University of California, Los Angeles, disagrees. He cites work with carbon nanotubes (rolled up sheets of graphene) in the late 1990s, in which electrons were found to be reluctant to bounce back off these obstacles. Regan and his colleague Matthew Mecklenburg say this can be explained if a tricky change in spin is required to reverse direction. Their quantum model of graphene backs that up. The spin arises from the way electrons hop between atoms in graphene's lattice, says Regan. So how about the electron's intrinsic spin? It cannot be a rotation in the ordinary sense, as electrons are point particles with no radius and no innards. Instead, like pseudospin, it might come from a lattice pattern in space-time itself, says Regan. This echoes some attempts to unify quantum mechanics with gravity in which space-time is built out of tiny pieces or fundamental networks (Physical Review Letters, vol 106, p 116803). Sergei Sharapov of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev says that the work provides an interesting angle on how electrons and other particles acquire spin, but he is doubtful how far the analogy can be pushed. Regan admits that moving from the flatland world of graphene to higher-dimensional space is tricky. "It will be interesting to see if there are other lattices that give emergent spin," he says.