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"Everybody likes a simple cause and effect - something we can point to and say (ommitting a few choice words to the perpetrators), 'Fix this and the bees will be right again.' Reality is rarely so straightforward. As the bee decline has progressed I've lost count of the simple 'causes' that have been presented. Among the more memorable are: * mobile 'phones (the absolute 'definite cause' of choice a couple of years ago) * mobile base stations, power lines and other strong electromagnetic sources (a perennial favourite for any malaise) * alien abduction (hopefully they have smaller probes for abducted bees...) * God's punishment (pro gay-marriage states in the USA have more cases of CCD) Leo's article shows neonicotinoids are at least a plausible candidate and they are surely not good for bees, but the argument for these being the explicit 'cause' of global bee decline is still not particularly strong. The risk here is that the media and vocal lobbyists are going off on a righteous crusade to the detriment of more diligent, and maybe less newsworthy, efforts to get to the root of a complex problem. Rather than reviewing the evidence here, I recommend a visit to Randy Oliver's website where his two recent articles from the American Bee Journalon this topic can be found, along with some further commentary on his home page. Interested readers can also directly access the study by Henry et. al. (2012a), the commentry on this study by Creswell and Thompson (2012), the response to the comment (Henry et. al. 2012b) and to the meta-analysis of toxicological studies on imidacloprid by Creswell (2010). An example of one such study is Cutler and Scott-Dupree (2007). Links to all are included below. These are original material rather than reportage and demonstrate the complexity of the issue. As food for thought, I'll leave you with the following: * Neonicotinoids are widely used in Australia and our bees are not (yet) in decline."

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

In what may feel like a flashback to the porn wars of the '60s, a new study investigates the link between a country's relative gender equality and the degree of female "empowerment" in the X-rated entertainment it consumes. Researchers at the University of Hawaii focused on three countries in particular: Norway, the United States and Japan, which are respectively ranked 1st, 15th and (yikes) 54th on the United Nations' Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). To simplify their analysis, their library of smut was limited to explicit photographs of women "from mainstream pornographic magazines and Internet websites, as well as from the portfolios of the most popular porn stars from each nation." Then they set out to evaluate each image on both a disempowerment and an empowerment scale, using respective measures like whether the woman is "bound and dominated" by "leashes, collars, gags, or handcuffs" or "whether she has a natural looking body." Their hypothesis was that societies with greater gender equity will consume pornography that has more representations of "empowered women" and less of "disempowered women." It turned out the former was true, but, contradictory as it may sound, the latter was not. "While Norwegian pornography offers a wider variety of body types -- conforming less to a societal ideal that is disempowering to the average woman -- there are still many images that do not promote a healthy respect for women," the researchers explain. In other words, Norwegian porn showed more signs of female empowerment, but X-rated images in all three countries equally depicted women in demeaning positions and scenarios. This, the researchers surmise, "suggests that empowerment and disempowerment within pornography are potentially different constructs." So, gender equality is accompanied by sexual interest in a broader range of beauty types but not a decrease in porn's infantilization of females, use of dominating fetish gear on women or any of the other characteristics th

"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!"

Organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the universe, Prof. Sun Kwok and Dr. Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong have discovered, suggesting that complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space even when no life forms are present. The organic substance they found contains a mixture of aromatic (ring-like) and aliphatic (chain-like) components that are so complex, their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum. Since coal and oil are remnants of ancient life, this type of organic matter was thought to arise only from living organisms. Unidentified radiation from the universe The researchers investigated an unsolved phenomenon: a set of infrared emissions detected in stars, interstellar space, and galaxies, known as "Unidentified Infrared Emission features." From observations taken by the Infrared Space Observatory and the Spitzer Space Telescope, Kwok and Zhang showed that the astronomical spectra have chemical structures that are much more complex that previously thought. By analyzing spectra of star dust formed in exploding stars called novae, they show that stars are making these complex organic compounds on extremely short time scales of weeks, and ejecting it into the general interstellar space, the region between stars. "Our work has shown that stars have no problem making complex organic compounds under near-vacuum conditions," says Kwok. "Theoretically, this is impossible, but observationally we can see it happening." Most interestingly, this organic star dust is similar in structure to complex organic compounds found in meteorites. Since meteorites are remnants of the early Solar System, the findings raise the possibility that stars enriched the early Solar System with organic compounds. The early Earth was subjected to severe bombardments by comets and asteroids, which potentially could have carried organic star dust. Whether these delivered organic compounds played any role in the development of l

Conferences provide best opportunities for the different areas delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences face to face, to establish business or research relations and to find global partners for future collaboration. Conferences may be a fun way to learn things and are organized round the year for people to share their idea which they have developed on a particular topic and to get a hang about what others are working on. When it comes to learning about banking and finances, there are seldom better ways than visiting a conference on the same which are being held in various regions of the world. Just go through with our article; it'll help you more.

Conferences provide best opportunities for the different areas delegates to exchange new ideas and application experiences face to face, to establish business or research relations and to find global partners for future collaboration. Conferences may be a fun way to learn things and are organized round the year for people to share their idea which they have developed on a particular topic and to get a hang about what others are working on. When it comes to learning about banking and finances, there are seldom better ways than visiting a conference on the same which are being held in various regions of the world. Just go through with our article; it'll help you more.

The best of the bunch (so far) for the 2010 American Physical Society's Gallery of Fluid Motion Each year, the Fluid Dynamics division of the American Physical Society holds a conference. This year, the meeting is in Long Beach, California, in November. One of the highlights is the impressive set of videos of fluid motion that the delegates put together. These videos have already begun to appear on the arViv in impressive numbers. Videos are an effective and increasingly popular way of publishing research. Expect to see more like this. But there are clearly better ways to make them available other than as downloads from the arXiv or as videos in a room in Long Beach. One obvious option is to make them available on streaming websites such as YouTube andVimeo. As far as I can tell, they are not available like this. Another is to create a website that showcases them in advance, to make it a global, web-based event. Many of the videos are superb. Not only could they command a bigger audience, they deserve it. If plans are afoot to make the Gallery of Fluid Motion a bigger event, then great. If not, shame! Here is my selection of the highlights this year.

Have you ever wondered how a hypnotist is able to easily hypnotize people in front of million people? If you are thinking that it is just a stage trick or fake, my friend you are wrong the hypnosis acts are 100% real. Even hypnosis is so easy that anyone can become a Hypnotist, to learn more about Hypnosis methods follow the following link.

Have you ever wondered how a hypnotist is able to easily hypnotize people in front of million people? If you are thinking that it is just a stage trick or fake, my friend you are wrong the hypnosis acts are 100% real. Even hypnosis is so easy that anyone can become a Hypnotist, to learn more about Hypnosis methods follow the following link.

"It's a hoax," said coal company CEO Don Blankenship, "because clearly anyone that says that they know what the temperature of the Earth is going to be in 2020 or 2030 needs to be put in an asylum because they don't." On the other side of the debate was environmentalist Robert Kennedy, Jr. "Ninety-eight percent of the research climatologists in the world say that global warming is real, that its impacts are going to be catastrophic," he argued. "There are 2 percent who disagree with that. I have a choice of believing the 98 percent or the 2 percent." To social scientist and lawyer Don Braman, it's not surprising that two people can disagree so strongly over science. Braman is on the faculty at George Washington University and part of The Cultural Cognition Project, a group of scholars who study how cultural values shape public perceptions and policy

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"People swap bacteria all the time-through sneezes and coughs, through hugs and sex, or through touching the same surfaces. Then there are people who swap bacteria because a doctor deliberately transplants faeces from one into the other. This isn't a bizarre medical perversion. It's usually a life-saving gambit. Faecal transplants-which are exactly what they sound like-are used to treat people who suffer from intense diarrhoea following rounds of antibiotics. The goal is simple: recalibrate the beneficial bacteria in a person's gut to fight off the ones that are causing them harm."

"During wakefulness, we are always conscious of ourselves. In sleep, however, we are not. But there are people, known as lucid dreamers, who can become aware of dreaming during sleep. Studies employing magnetic resonance tomography (MRT) have now been able to demonstrate that a specific cortical network consisting of the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the frontopolar regions and the precuneus is activated when this lucid consciousness is attained. All of these regions are associated with self-reflective functions. This research into lucid dreaming gives the authors of the latest study insight into the neural basis of human consciousness."