We were most interested in the role parents play in controlling their children's risky behaviors. Currently, the theories are at two extremes, from "parents have every way to make children do whatever they want their children to do" to the theory that parents are helpless in the face of adolescent behaviors. If we think about this dynamically, we're probably actually somewhere in the middle. But many parents become handicapped by their love for their children and signal to them that they will never abandon their children for behavior they don't approve of.

Läs mer: Scientists Prove That Younger Siblings Get Less Discipline | Newsweek Culture | Newsweek.com

While the analysis does not reveal how intense social contact might ward off childhood leukaemia, it bolsters the theory that children exposed to common infections early in life gain protection from the disease. It is known that environments such as day care centres increase the chance of infections spreading. Some proponents of the theory believe that if the immune system is not challenged early in life and does not develop normally it may mount an inappropriate response to infections encountered later in childhood and that this could provoke the development of leukaemia.

Läs mer: Daycare attendance early in life cuts childhood leukemia risk by 30 percent | Science Blog

Arbetare på fabriken upptäckte sedan "misstaget" när de såg på utländska TV-nyheter, där flaggan förekom. Fast man kan ju undra hur de fick titta på det?

The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile. Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.

Läs mer: BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | 'Free Tibet' flags made in China

Indeed, one of the problems with making the struggle against Islamic terrorism the sole focus of American foreign policy is that it produces illusions about alliance and cooperation with other great powers with whom genuine alliance is becoming impossible. The idea of genuine strategic cooperation between the United States and Russia or the United States and China in the war on terror is mostly a fiction. For Russia, the war on terror is about Chechnya. For China, it is about the Uighurs of Xinjiang province. But when it comes to Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, Russia and China tend to see not terrorists but useful partners in the great power struggle.

Läs mer: The End of the End of History

Clay Shirky gör en väldigt rolig analys om det gamla TV-samhället och det nya Internet. När den industriella revolutionen i Storbritannien på ett djupt sätt började påverka människors liv så reagerade dessa med att berusa sig på gin. När detta hade gjorts i en generation så var man mogen för att forma de nya institutioner som följde med industrisamhället. Men Shirky menar att ginet fyllde en funktion som en tillfällig plattform av slöseri med ledig tid och energi  innan man byggt upp nya institutioner. Han ser TV:n på samma sätt som ginet, framför allt TV-serier. TV:n absorberade en massa fritid som hade frigjorts i det moderna samhället och hjälpte till att hålla samhället stabilt, tills nya institutioner (Internet) hade byggts upp.

Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan's Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don't? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn't posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it's not, and that's the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it's worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

Han gör beräkningar på hur många timmar som lagts ned på Wikipeda, och jämför det med hur många timmar fortfarande finns kvar på TV-tittande (ginet) och hur många timmar som fortfarande kan frigöras till att göra något mer meningsfullt.

Läs mer: Gin, Television, and Social Surplus - Here Comes Everybody

Although it is true that obesity is one of the largest contributing factors to type- 2 diabetes these patients experience the remission of diabetes before they recorded weight loss. For most patients their diabetes had disappeared before they returned home after having the surgery.

KeyScrambler Personal encrypts your keystrokes at the kernel driver level to protect your information from keyloggers.

Läs mer: KeyScrambler Personal :: Firefox Add-ons

Walking is easy. It’s so easy that no one ever has to teach you how to do it. It’s so easy, in fact, that we often pair it with other easy activities—talking, chewing gum—and suggest that if you can’t do both simultaneously, you’re some sort of insensate clod. So you probably think you’ve got this walking thing pretty much nailed. As you stroll around the city, worrying about the economy, or the environment, or your next month’s rent, you might assume that the one thing you don’t need to worry about is the way in which you’re strolling around the city.

Läs mer: You Walk Wrong

Bluetooth är ett sätt för mobiltelefoner, headsets och annat att kommunicera trådlöst, via radio. Alla radiosignaler man skickar ut som har någon form av unikt fingeravtryck, gör att du kan spåras. I Storbritannien har man gjort ett försök med att spåra 10 000 personer genom att detektera deras bluetooth-utrustning.

Om man kombinerar detta med övervakningskameror eller med kunskap om individers hemadress och jobbadress, kan man etablera vilken bluetoothsignal som tillhör vilken individ. Det innebär att man liksom taggat sig själv och gjort att man kan spåras över nejden, om sensorer finns uppsatta, .

What the Kostakos found is that it is straightforward to capture data on people’s encounters using bluetooth. In fact they captured data on 10,000 unique devices during the 6 month study. Yep, that’s 10,000. Exactly how much you can tell about these encounters isn’t clear. But hey, this is only a demonstration (either that or they’re keeping schtum about the juicy details).

Students who read the passage advocating determinism and against free will "cheated" significantly more often than those who read the passage on consciousness that didn't mention free will. These students also were significantly more likely to believe in determinism compared to the other group, so it seems likely that this increased belief in determinism led directly to the "cheating" behavior.

Läs mer: Cognitive Daily: Changing belief in free will can cause students to cheat

När man skrapar på ytan på en kommunist och dennas argument så  hittar man ofta en ilska, eller ett hat mot de som smörjer kråset på de fattigas bekostnad, som helt utan moral utnyttjar andra och tar sig fram. Rovkapitalisterna. Ponera nu att kommunism genomförs (eller hade genomförts) i Sverige. Vilka skulle tjäna på det?

De mest renläriga kommunisterna? Självklart inte. Det finns ju en massa inriktningar på kommunism, så alla som på Internet eller annorstädes uttryckt en lite avvikande kommunism, måste rensas ut. Kvar i toppen blir medlöpare, maktmänniskor och egoister. Efter ett tag kommer flera stycken med framgångsrika karriärer inom mer borgerliga områden såklart.  Ja inte de de där näringslivsmänniskorna som har moral, för de kommer ju att påpeka det dåliga i det nya systemet, utan snarare de utan moral, som tar sig fram, oavsett system. Kommunismen kommer att gynna precis de människor kommunister säger att de hatar.

What's more, this exponential progression of information technology will affect our prosperity as well. The World Bank has reported, for example, that poverty in Asia has been cut in half over the past decade due to information technologies and that at current rates it will be cut by another 90 percent over the next decade. That phenomenon will spread around the globe. Clearly, the transformation of our 21st-century world is under way, and information technology, in all its forms, is helping the future look brighter ... exponentially.

Läs mer: Expect exponential progress - Yahoo! News

Om man läser svenska tidningar kan man tro att det är bra att lägga mycket pengar på forskning och utveckling - inom landet. Det byggs ju nu för fullt i Stockholm t ex. Men forskning är ganska likt open source programvara. Faktum är att Linux grundare Linus Torvalds kallat open source- utvecklingsmetoden ett sätt att emulera forskarsamhället, med fri tillgång till resultat och fri rätt att bygga på andras resultat. Så då kanske forskning är en bra kandidat att lägga ut på låglöneländer?

Americans have long profited from low-cost manufactured goods, especially from Asia. The cost of those material “inputs” is now rising. But because of growing numbers of scientists in China, India and other lower-wage countries, “the cost of producing a new scientific discovery is dropping around the world,” says Christopher T. Hill, a professor of public policy and technology at George Mason University.

Vad blir då kva ri ett rikt land? Jo, ekonomer med investeringskompetens, marknadsförare och, jag förmodar, jurister. Och jag som tycker FoU är mycket roligare än juridik och ekonomi...

Läs mer: How Scientific Gains Abroad Pay Off in the U.S. - New York Times

Kineser har gjort webbsidor som uppmanar till bojkott av den franska kedjan Carrefour. Det kan man väl föreställa sig. Men över två miljoner sidor? På en vecka??

Det är svårt att greppa hur stor den kinesiska befolkningen är...

A Google search for “Carrefour Boycott” in Chinese yielded over 2.4 million Web pages, most of them created in the last week.

Google investerar en hel del i företag som ägnar sig åt DNA-analys. Business Week skriver något dramatiserat att de förutom webbsidor också vill indexera ditt DNA.

Tillåt mig spekulera: Tänk om i framtiden man kan få en rapport baserad på ens DNA samt på samtliga saker som har hänt en sedan man var liten, kost, miljöpåverkan, hormonnivåer. Sedan kan Google genom case based reasoning se om någon annans liv statistiskt samvarierat, och så kan man ge en prognos. Spooky.

Google's interest in DNA doesn't end there. It is also putting money into a second Silicon Valley DNA-screening startup, Navigenics. The company is also backed by star venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. For a spit of saliva and $2,500, your genetic test results are securely delivered to your computer screen with your genetic likelihood for 18 medical conditions, from Alzheimer's to rheumatoid arthritis to several types of cancer.

...men de vill fortfarande ha betalt för att andra ska kunna läsa fritt. Som bloggare eller liknande måste man också registrera sig. Så vad finns det då för anledning att använda Encyclopedia Britannica jämfört med Wikipedia?

Jo, det finns faktiskt en stor fördel, ingen kan gå in och ändra i artiklarna på Encyclopedia Britannica på samma sätt som man kan på Wikipedia, och Encyclopedia Britannica är därför en bättre källa. Det har hänt ett par gånger på Wikipedia att tidningar skrivit artiklar med "fakta" från Wikipedia som sedan visade sig vara felaktiga uppgifter. Uppgifterna har raderats på Wikipedia men skrivits in igen senare med artklarna i tidningarna som källor! Cirkelreferens.

So let’s say you have a site about philosophy, or astronomy, or basketball. Stick one of the widgets below on your site and your readers will instantly have access to Britannica’s coverage of the subject. And if you haven’t signed up yet for your free subscription to Britannica online, which is available to all Web publishers, please go here.

Turbindriven, med visare som rör sig i två ledder. Det här är steampunk come true. Och den ska gå att köpa också.

The UR-202 Hammerhead Automatic from Urwerk is a watch that demands your respect. It’s actually quite impressive. It features a unique winding system that’s regulated using compressed air. The 202 uses miniature twin turbines to control the rate of automatic winding and the level of air compression can be controlled using a 3-position selector switch. The watch tells time in a unique way as well, using an elegant series of rotating hour blocks built around hands. They adjust their length to mark the minutes

Läs mer: UR-202 watch wound with compressed air - SlipperyBrick

Uppdatering 2008-04-20:

Här är en bättre beskrivning av klockan

Dock workers at the port, backed by South Africa’s powerful unions, refused to unload the ammunition and weapons on Friday, vowing protests and threatening violence if the government tried to do it without them.

Läs mer: Zimbabwe Arms Shipped by China Spark an Uproar - New York Times

The pH scale, which measures the concentration of hydrogen ions, runs from zero, the most acidic, with the highest concentration of ions, to 14, the most alkaline, with almost no ions. Ocean water today is somewhat alkaline, at 8.1, down from 8.2 at the start of the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago. The laboratory findings agree with what has been observed in the oceans. Over the past 220 years, the average mass of a coccolithophore increased 40 percent as ocean pH levels dropped.

Läs mer: Study Sees an Advantage for Algae Species in Changing Oceans - New York Times

The researchers will focus on the prefrontal cortex, an area in the frontal lobes involved in higher-order social and emotional communication, and one of the brain regions most affected by abnormal early overgrowth. The DNA probes will allow researchers to compare the location and organization of specific cell types, such as excitatory neurons that connect to brain areas outside of the cortex and inhibitory neurons that form local cortical circuits.

Läs mer: Technology Review: Mapping Genetic Abnormalities in Autism