Science & Technology
I've been thinking a lot about risk assessment and management since my recent public conversation with Denise Caruso of the Hybrid Vigor Institute. We were talking about her latest book, Intervention: Confronting the Real Risks of Genetic Engineering and Life on a Biotech Planet, a clear-headed assessment of the importance of risk assessment within biotech industries, where she found a troubling complacency about the potential for things to go Terribly Wrong when genetically engineered organisms are introduced into the wild.
Even at just a few months old, babies can size up others and decide whom they'd rather hang out with, a new study finds.
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| ©Unknown |
| Baby sizes up Bush correctly. |
Samson, the Israelite hero and judge who was undone by the temptress Delilah, exhibited almost all of the symptoms of a person with Antisocial Personality Disorder, known in the psychology trade as ASPD.
According to Dr. Eric Altschuler, Samson exhibited six out seven criteria for diagnosis of ASPD (as identified by the American Psychiatric Association in its diagnostic bible, the DSM-IV) and a person need only manifest three of the seven criteria to be diagnosed with the disorder. Altschuler, a physician and research fellow in the Dept. of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, is the lead author of the research paper, "Did Samson Have Antisocial Personality Disorder?" published in this month's Archives of General Psychiatry.
"Appreciation of the diagnosis of ASPD for Samson may not only help us to better understand the Biblical story, but it also may increase our understanding and awareness of instances when a leader has ASPD " said Altschuler, Also, we hope these findings encourage interest in the history of ASPD because the study of the history of a disease can provide clues to its pathogenesis."
According to Dr. Eric Altschuler, Samson exhibited six out seven criteria for diagnosis of ASPD (as identified by the American Psychiatric Association in its diagnostic bible, the DSM-IV) and a person need only manifest three of the seven criteria to be diagnosed with the disorder. Altschuler, a physician and research fellow in the Dept. of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, is the lead author of the research paper, "Did Samson Have Antisocial Personality Disorder?" published in this month's Archives of General Psychiatry.
"Appreciation of the diagnosis of ASPD for Samson may not only help us to better understand the Biblical story, but it also may increase our understanding and awareness of instances when a leader has ASPD " said Altschuler, Also, we hope these findings encourage interest in the history of ASPD because the study of the history of a disease can provide clues to its pathogenesis."
Remarkable finds are changing beliefs about human evolution and migration from Africa
DMANISI, Georgia - The forested bluff that overlooks this sleepy Georgian hamlet seems an unlikely portal into the mysteries surrounding the dawn of man.
DMANISI, Georgia - The forested bluff that overlooks this sleepy Georgian hamlet seems an unlikely portal into the mysteries surrounding the dawn of man.
The 1,800-year-old skeleton of one of Roman Britain's "social elite" has been discovered by two men with metal detectors who had already unearthed a £1 million Viking treasure.
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| ©PA |
| Mags Felter of the York Archaeological Trust examines the skeleton |
Mars was covered in an ocean of molten rock for about 100 million years after the planet formed, researchers from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, UC Davis, and NASA's Johnson Space Center have found. The work is published in the journal Nature on Nov. 22. The formation of the solar system can be dated quite accurately to 4,567,000,000 years ago, said Qing-Zhu Yin, assistant professor of geology at UC Davis and an author on the paper.
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Eight unusual examples of a burned-out celestial object known as a white dwarf detected in our Milky Way galaxy represent a previously unknown category of stars, astronomers said on Wednesday.
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| ©REUTERS/M.S. Sliwinski and L. I. Slivinska of Lunarismaar/Handout |
| An artists' concept of the surface of the white dwarf star H1504+65, released to Reuters on November 21, 2007. |
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else's hobby. I hadn't imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.
But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom's, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else's computer simulation.
But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom's, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else's computer simulation.
In pursuit of evidence that life arose on Earth more than once, scientists are searching for microbes that are radically different from all known organisms
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| ©Kenn Brown Mondolithic Studios |
| ALIEN MICROBES may be hiding in plain sight. Although they might look like ordinary bacteria, their biochemistry could involve exotic amino acids or different elemental building blocks. |
Most astronomers doubt that any large comets or asteroids have crashed into the Earth in the past 10,000 years. But the self-described "band of misfits" that make up the two-year-old Holocene Impact Working Group say astronomers simply have not known how or where to look for evidence.
Scientists in the working group say the evidence for such impacts during the past 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch, is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a violent impact on the order of a 10-megaton explosion. Instead of once in 500,000 to 1 million years, as astronomers now calculate, catastrophic impacts could happen every few thousand years.
Scientists in the working group say the evidence for such impacts during the past 10,000 years, known as the Holocene epoch, is strong enough to overturn current estimates of how often the Earth suffers a violent impact on the order of a 10-megaton explosion. Instead of once in 500,000 to 1 million years, as astronomers now calculate, catastrophic impacts could happen every few thousand years.
Comment: The answer we offer is this: First we learn all we can about psychopathy. We then realize that some of the world leaders and many in positions of power fit the profile. Finally, we decide that we want to be ruled by people who are more like us, people who care about our well being and that of the global community; human beings who will network with each other and hire those of us who know and can help, to assist them in solving the world's problems and find solutions for potential problems and disasters that periodically affect our little planet.