While I'm on the subject of incompetence in academia I may as well regurgitate this story:

CRU emails reveal a worrying pattern of bad behaviour

Congress May Probe Leaked Global Warming E-Mails

There are so many failures here it's hard to know where to begin. Firstly, yes the people involved are idiots, this isn't just bad science it's the opposite of science - they've become dogmatic defenders of climate change theory and their own careers rather than searchers of truth (good old career risk once again).

My main issue though is the scientific community as a whole - why was any faith placed in a closed computer model at all? Science is all about getting your ideas, hypotheses, theories, data, workings, etc. out into the open where the world can poke holes in them. If a model is closed then it's not being exposed as much as it could be and in these days of cheap computing and the internet that's just bad/lazy science (at best). Cerrtainly once you get to the point of UN sessions discussing your work then there has to be a serious question there about the soundness of the underlying science.

It takes a [suspected] whistle blower and wikileaks to shine light into the shadows. It appears that CRUs reponse is to call in the police to find the leak - that is, punish the one person who has acted honestly and [most likely] with the public/societal good in mind. They may have broken the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law - bear in mind that the primary purpose of law is a stable society and protecting the public's interest. OTOH there's probably more than enough material in the leaked emails to arouse the attention of the CPS and quite possibly judicial organs across the world, not to mention the possibility of a high level diplomatic shitstorm. Nice work CRU.


"We see overall a pattern of poor behaviour. Some have chosen to represent that behaviour as the workings of elite scientists going about their business. I am not convinced that the public, whose taxes finance that behaviour, are going to be pleased. Nor should they be. "

and
The HARRY_READ_ME.txt file. One long, long exercise in WTF.

The day of final submissions came and still no submission system online, not all data available etc. So I decided to totally ditch that project even though a day or two later some of the missing data and a submission system appeared. Well, I still have some major issues with the scoring system for this comp but the challenge #1 rules changed such that making a submission would be quick and easy given what I had. Currently 2nd place on challenge #1. No idea if that's because there are only two submissions or how close my score is to 1st place. Still pissed off but have powered up the ole monster PC for final submission before midnight EDT(EST?). If I knew I was miles away from the winner I wouldn't bother - I might have a score of zero for all I know. What a bunch of chumps.

The target demographic(s) are a fickle lot.
google trends: facebook, myspace, bebo

Much to choose from.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

Will google wave muscle in and kill off the lot?

Unable to sleep t'other night my mind drifted onto the recent Horizon episode about black holes. Seems to me that there's a pretty good chance that they are somehow related to the singularity at the initiation of the big bang - perhaps that was/is a black hole as perceived from the 'other side'. This raises the possibility of black holes in our universe spawning other universes, and there being a family tree of universes - which leaves us with the problem of where did the first one come from. Another possibility that I quite like is that they're all the same singularity - at some level - they're connected, or more correctly, we're seeing it manifest itself in different guises throughout time and space and that the universe gave(gives) birth to itself.

What about black holes having different mass and spin? If they were the same singularity wouldn't they have the same mass at least? There's this issue of where the mass is given that relativity tells us the matter no longer takes up any space whatsoever, which we think is a breakdown of where relativity applies. The matter is clearly still there because we can measure the effects of the resulting gravity - or is it? Could the matter slip off into some place (spewing out of the big bang at t=0) and its gravitational effects substituted with a warping of space caused by the 'tunnel' to the big bang? So all black holes have different gravitational profiles and are feeding matter into the big bang.

Where does the emergence of intelligent life and the other type of singularity fit in? (if at all)

Thoughts?

Jeremy Grantham's quarterly market/economics commentary always top of the reading pile:

http://www.gmo.com/
Jeremy Grantham's 3Q 2009 letter: Just Deserts and Markets Being Silly Again

The size of the financial system continues to grow and shows every sign of being out of control. As it grows, it becomes a bigger drain on the rest of the economy and slows it down.
...
All in all we are likely to have learned little, or rather to act, through lack of character, as if we have learned nothing. In doing so we are probably condemning ourselves to another serious financial crisis in the not too-distant future.
...
And the one person with the character to make tough changes – Paul Volcker – is window dressing, exactly as I suggested in January. A sad, wasted opportunity!


You get the picture.

Antioxidant (wiki-p)
The glutathione system includes glutathione, glutathione reductase, glutathione peroxidases and glutathione S-transferases.[50] This system is found in animals, plants and microorganisms.[50][99] Glutathione peroxidase is an enzyme containing four selenium-cofactors that catalyzes the breakdown of hydrogen peroxide and organic hydroperoxides.[2]

Red-Cell Trace Minerals in Children with Autism
Children with autism demonstrated significantly lower red cell selenium (p<0.0006) and higher molybdenum (p<0.01) than the controls. There was a trend toward lower red cell zinc and higher cobalt and vanadium, among the children with autism. There were no differences in red cell levels of chromium, copper, manganese, or magnesium. These findings confirm an earlier report of low red cell selenium in autism and support a role for decreased trace mineral status in oxidative stress in autism through alteration of selenium-dependent antioxidant enzymes and increased lipid peroxidation.

The impact of selenium supplementation on mood
The possibility that a subclinical deficiency of the trace element selenium might exist in a sample of the British population was examined by giving a selenium supplement for 5 weeks. Using a double-blind cross-over design, 50 subjects received either a placebo or 100 mcg selenium on a daily basis. On three occasions they filled in the Profile of Moods States. A food frequency questionnaire was used to estimate the intake of selenium in the diet. Intake was associated with a general elevation of mood and in particular, a decrease in anxiety. The change in mood when taking the active tablet was correlated with the level of selenium in the diet, which was estimated from a food frequency questionnaire. The lower the level of selenium in the diet the more reports of anxiety, depression, and tiredness, decreased following 5 weeks of selenium therapy. The results are discussed in terms of the low level of selenium in the food chain in some parts of the world.

Selenium and Health (UK briefing paper)
In summation: Selenium sources in the UK are highly variable, but on average are estimated to be low. UK RDA is 60-75mcg for adults, estimated consumption is 39mcg, down from 60ish in the 70's. Intake has fallen with switch from imported US to European grains.

I've also read suggestions that water fluoridation interferes with selenium metabolism in that fluoride forms insoluble compounds with selenium. If true this would exacerbate any problems in regions of low consumption such as the UK.

Idiopathic scoliosis and concentrations of zinc, copper, and selenium in blood plasma
The concentration of zinc, copper, selenium, albumin, and ceruloplasmin in blood plasma and the activity of superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase in erythrocytes were determined in a set of patients with idiopathic scoliosis (n=51). A significant decrease of selenium concentration (0.50±0.16 µmol/L) was found when compared with a control group (0.69±0.07 µmol/L) (p<0.01). The same levels of significance were found out for selenium levels corrected for albumin content. In a group of patients with a curvature over 45° indicated for a surgical correction, the average plasma concentrations of selenium were significantly lower (p<0.05) in comparison with a group of patients with a curvature below 45° treated conservatively.


Metabolic biomarkers of increased oxidative stress and impaired methylation capacity in children with autism
Abnormal methionine cycle in autistic kids corrected with Betaine, methyl-B12, and Folinic acid supplementation. No mention of Selenium but it is an important part of Glutathione synthesis and has also been reported as very significantly increasing phosphatidylcholine levels in rat brains.

Selenium, glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) and lipid peroxidation products before and after selenium supplementation.
Statistically significant differences in erythrocyte selenium, erythrocyte GSH-Px activity and plasma MDA between PKU and control children disappear after respectively 2 months, 4 months and 6 months of selenium supplementation.

Posted today in the PBC forums:

----------------
Submitted by fissell on Fri, 10/30/2009 - 16:21.

Hello,

The posted competition document is out of date: for challenge1 it is not
required to assign labels 1-8 to the estimated fiber bundles.
Multiple bundles that overlap the target bundle can all contriubute to the score.
The pbc2009icdm_scoring1.m program will be changed a little bit. Plans are to allow
a maximum of 3 overlapping bundles to contribute to the score. The program will
take the sum of the scores of the best 3 positive scoring overlapping bundles for each
target bundle.
We will release an updated version of the program next week.

Kate
PBC team
----------------


Things like this are the reason the language around here often makes Deadwood look like a kindergarten.

The Pittsburgh Brain Comp is being run quite badly IMO.

1) Data released late with no feedback regarding why or when it would be released.

2) Submission system not online.

3) The last 3 of 6 brain scans has not yet been released. Bear in mind final submissions are supposed to be next Monday. Today they announce in the forums that submissions will be available next week - but no update on a final submission date.

4) The first scans of brains 2&3 were rotated 180 degrees around the vertical in comparison to brain 1.

5) The scoring metric for 2 of the 3 scores has yet to be determined and published.

6) Generally disorganised web site - looks like a rehash of the previous (spring) comp with some dead links and irrelevant info.


It's an interesting problem but there's a general vibe of incompetence and unprofessionalism eroding away at my motivation. The absense of a submission system and scoring metric for tests 2A/2B means there's limited scope for refining algorithms and of comparing progress with others. I'm going to generate a set of submission files and I think I'll leave it at that.

They're probably overstretched of course. It's the lack of feedback and consideration for competitors that annoys me really - it's like the whole thing has been imposed on someone and they don't much care for it.

Stack Overflow is pretty useful these days - it has achieved critical mass and is starting to show up quite often in google searches.

There's actually a whole constellation of 'stack exchange' sites (and meta sites), some more populous than others:
List of StackExchange sites

It's telling that Taleb fled war torn Lebanon in the 70's. It's also interesting that he believed his ideas had more traction with Cameron than with Obama; That's fairly nice to know given that it's a foregone conclusion that the Conservatives will be back in office next year.