| Report: Climate science panel needs change at top By SETH BORENSTEIN 2010-08-30T21:37:46ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- Scientists reviewing the acclaimed but beleaguered international climate change panel called Monday for a major overhaul in the way it's run, but stopped short of calling for the ouster of the current leader.... hosted.ap.org |
Santa Claus and The Grid | Lily Asquith Lily Asquith: The world wide web was famously invented at Cern to help international collaborators share information. The Grid is there to help them share computing power, tooI have recently been "submitting to The Grid". This is not some kind of freaky S&M thing, disappointingly perhaps to some. It is a process we have to go through in order to analyse the data being collected by the Atlas detector at Cern.The Atlas experiment has approximately a zillion (2,000) people working on it. (My new town declares itself to have 11,000 people but I have not noticed any update to this since we moved here.)It is burbling out data in vast quantities. We can't catch it all because we would then have to store it somewhere, and it is currently producing terabytes of data per second*. Mental. So we just catch and store some of it. About 100 megabytes per second.Every single physicist working on Atlas wants to get their hands on that data. But making copies of 26 terabytes of data every day would be ridiculous. Especially as most of it is junk to most people.That's why we have The Grid. The burbling mass of mainly-junk-data is collected and stored and copied to just a few locations around the world. We don't copy anything to our laptops, instead we write a bit of analysis code, something like "Please give me all the events that look like a giant web made by a spider that has been given caffeine pills. And it has to have at least one mummified ant in it, and it has to have a diameter of 6.5-7.5 cm."Then we send this request to The Grid. A bit like sending a letter to Santa (you have no idea where it is going and you can be fairly sure you won't hear anything back). However, being a good girl does not help. Phew.I feel reluctant to be publicly rude about The Grid, but am happy to hurl all sorts of abuse at It in the privacy of my own office. Or on the bench on my porch, which is where I am writing this because I don't have a chair yet. Or a kettle. These things are way down the "to do" list, which became a bit crumpled and forgotten once I achieved the first four points: school, house, inflatable mattress, wi-fi.We have to use The Grid because (a) most people have no other option and (b) it will never work if we don't use it and report problems.So when my next job fails with a beautifully opaque error code (most recent one: "Lost heartbeat") I take comfort in knowing that thousands of physicists around the world are sending letters to Santa and sitting there with a cup of tea (or a crate of Guinness, or a sack of Haribo) just waiting for their letter to come back with a sticker on it saying "Nope" and humbly hoping that it won't be too long. And just maybe one day they will get a postcard from the north pole.*At some point in the future the LHC will undertake a large increase in luminosity. This means that the bunches of protons it will be colliding will have more protons in them, so there will be lots more collisions between the protons and lots more data. The amount of data produced at peak luminosity will be about 1 petabyte per second. That is 1,000 terabytes.Jon Butterworthguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Female sexual dysfunction 'excuse by drug firms to sell pills' Pharmaceutical firms accused of trying to turn women's loss of desire into a condition treatable with pillsDrug companies are today accused of attempting to turn the loss of sexual desire that some women experience into a medical condition that can be treated by pills.Although drugs, from antidepressants to variants of Viagra, have been found ineffective, the companies are charged in an article in the British Medical Journal with inappropriately trying to create a market for pills to treat a condition that is as much psychosocial as biological, and which may need the intervention of a relationship counsellor as much as a doctor.Ray Moynihan, a journalist and lecturer at the University of Newcastle in Australia, argues in the BMJ that a variety of drug companies have tried to construct a scientific basis for medical treatment for women's loss of libido, running surveys that purport to find that it is widespread and devising ways to diagnose the condition.Extravagant claims have been made for the numbers of women affected, says Moynihan, who carried out his research for a new book called Sex, Lies and Pharmaceuticals.In 1999, it was claimed that 43% of women suffered from sexual dysfunction. Two of that survey's authors disclosed financial ties to the drugs industry.A 2005 survey funded by Pfizer, manufacturer of Viagra, concluded that a third of women in southern Europe lacked interest in sex and 40% in south-east Asia failed to reach orgasm. But, says Moynihan, the figures are grand totals. "When you look at the proportions of women experiencing these sexual difficulties 'frequently', the numbers collapse."Drug companies have produced questionnaires to enable clinicians easily to diagnose dysfunction in women – the latest being the "sexual desire screener" from Boehringer Ingelheim, which is promoted as giving a result in just a few minutes.The firms are also educating doctors in the problem: Moynihan says he discovered that Pfizer funded a half-day course for doctors across the US which claimed that up to 63% of women had sexual dysfunction and that testosterone and sildenafil (Viagra) might be helpful, along with behaviour therapy.Pfizer declined Moynihan's request for an interview but gave him a statement saying it had "conducted a number of studies over the past 15 years designed to understand the causes and nature of FSD [female sexual dysfunction] and its impact on women".The drugs, however, have not worked well. Boehringer Ingelheim's drug flibanserin – an antidepressant – was intended to help tackle a lack of desire.In the runup to licensing, one company expert said on TV this year that sexuality was "more about the brain" than anything else, while another said about 30% of women had the "desire disorder".But in June the drug failed to get the licence in the US after trials showed it worked no better than a placebo.In a commentary, Dr Sandy Goldbeck-Wood, a specialist in psychosexual medicine in Camden and Ipswich, said the loss of desire for sex made many women profoundly unhappy but it took a great deal for them to consult a doctor because of the embarrassment, shame or hopelessness they felt. "Faced with a woman in tears whose libido has disappeared and who is terrified of losing her partner, doctors can feel immense pressure to provide an immediate, effective solution," writes Goldbeck-Wood.It is not surprising if they reach for a pill or a patch, she says. "It is easy to see how the pressure for immediate solutions, combined with our biological bias and offers of research funding, leads to the kind of collaboration with the drug industry that has worked well for other illnesses, despite its relative inefficacy in this area." But women should not be left without help. "Many factors can contribute to low libido, few of them treatable with drugs," she writes."We owe these women something more respectful than ineffective medication or patronising false reassurance."Sexual healthHealthPharmaceuticals industryPfizerSexDrugsSarah Boseleyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
US, China blame each other for slow climate talks By TINI TRAN 2010-10-09T12:47:02ZTIANJIN, China (AP) -- Modest progress at U.N. climate talks Saturday was overshadowed by a continuing deadlock between China and the United States, clouding prospects for a major climate conference in Mexico in less than two months' time.... hosted.ap.org |
Green: Governor Bans New Gas Wells on State Land Governor Rendell sends a message about what he describes as a rush by drilling companies to exploit public lands. feeds.nytimes.com |