The Lounge

Hello all, For any physicians that are interested, there are 2 free webinars available for free CME hours. The first one describes how the updated ACC/AHA guidelines for the management of STEMI and NSTEMI differ from previous guidelines. This opportunity is aimed towards those that work in emergency medicine and cardiology. You can register at http://www.stemicme.com The second goes over new techniques being developed to treat ITP and ways doctors are currently providing better care for their patients. This one is aimed towards hematologists and oncologists. You can register at http://www.itp-cme.com I'm a physician myself and attended both of these semina…

I am an 18-year-old female first-year law student in Australia. I am a fairly lonely student with only one friend. This friend tells me that I am very pretty and so she wants to set me up on a blind date so I can get a boyfriend and lose my virginity. I don't want to go on a blind date nor do I want to have sex because I don't feel ready and because I don't feel comfortable. My friend argued that having sex when I am young is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and if I don't take this opportunity it will never come again, so I should do it and I should not dismiss this opportunity because I have never tried it and therefore I cannot judge that it is inappropriate fo…

Hi, Fun to learn, but it's true for all dudes. \ Talk Dirty

....and knowing in the end that most of your conclusions are faulty. Oh, and gotta love a FOUR PAGE LIMIT on our research project that we have been working on for the past month. I just resigned myself to losing points for that. If only my head didn't hurt so badly right now, I would be able to summon to strength to go jump in front of a moving train. /punts kitten

What knowledge is applicable to more than one thing? Any property which can be found in more than one thing is a common property. Any property which cannot be found in more than one thing is a special property. The knowledge of the common properties is applicable to more than one thing because a common property can be found in more than one thing. The knowledge of a special property is not applicable to more than one thing because a special property cannot be found in more than one thing. No knowledge is applicable to more than one thing if things have no common property. Is no knowledge applicable to more than one thing? No knowledge can be applied by more …

I'm not just referring to SFN here. I mean a community website in general, one that's not just "friends" from real life like Facebook or Twitter. So, what would your ideal Internet community have? Would members be anonymous, or would they use real names, like on The WELL, a 25-year-old discussion forum? How would moderation work? Would bad members be banned immediately or be given a chance? Just throw some ideas out. I'm curious to see what people think.

What are your thoughts on citation trees? Are they a way of mapping out evolution and progress in research?

name your pick

Has anyone ever noticed that the politics and actions of the worlds super powers don't coencide with how a power would act if it was in the same position. IE military testing, for military testing many of the worlds super powers tell the other countries that it is going to be testing and such on such 'n such day at such n'such time and they are going to be shooting such n such rocket/missle that doest make any sense to me, why would someone want to do such a thing when military stuff is supposed to be kept secret from other countries?

For anybody who hasn't already signed, or is even aware of the BCA libel case against Simon Singh, please click on the link below... http://www.senseaboutscience.org.uk/index.php/site/project/333/ Thankfully the debate has reached the House of Commons, but any extra support, in giving freedom of speech within the scientific community and beyond, is a petition worth signing for. The full story is available through the link above.

YouTube is doing a thing where all (?) videos can be watched in a new "green" resolution mode: Text! Google seems to have changed its name to "Topeka". What else? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedThe Astronomy Picture of the Day is a good one: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100401.html

Storyline: Suspicious Cat was hired by Professor LOLrus to recover the stolen B.U.K.K.E.T., the device which creates cheezeburgers, critical to the existence of society. Upon inspecting the crime scene suspicious cat discovers clued leading to Dr. Tinycat, so he takes the next Bunway to Lawlzania to meet with him. Halfway the Bunway is attacked by a hovercat drone leading to an intense dogfight with the Bunway using it's emergency Projectiles Landing On People System (P.L.O.P.S.) to blind the drone and make it crash into the sea. He meets Dr.Tinycat at his favorite bar, which is starring Nancy and the Itti bitti Choir Committi. Dr. Tinycat reveals that yes he did ste…

A lot of the motivation to post on these discussion forums is to try to change someone's mind. The formal study of how and why people change their minds is called belief revision, and it is only a few decades old. Argumentation skills, of course, were practiced for longer than written history. Generally, to change someone's mind you either give them new information (that they believe) or show that they have a contradiction in their existing belief set. Given new information, they might simply add it to their belief set. To resolve a contradiction, they generally discard the "least useful" belief. For example, if someone has based their morality off of their religion, …

I'm not typically one to ask for life advice, but it seems like I've been put in quite a serious situation. I come from Rockford, Illinois, which has 19.7% unemployment as of February 2010. It's probably 20% right now. My city has the highest unemployment in Illinois. As of the moment, I'm residing in Chicago. For what I understand, however, the availability of jobs in Chicago is narrowing and closing up, too. I believe the areas in Illinois with the least unemployment are in the southerns area of Illinois and areas near the state capital, which is Springfield. In general, however, I'm in debt as the typical college student is. I recently undergone the belief that…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8561286.stm Wha are peoples views on spending such a vast amount of money on a new train system. From my personal stand point, I kinda think its a waste of money. I can see that it might make long distance travelling a lot faster but is it not just going to increase train tickets higher than they already are! The only really problem I have with trains is the massive overcrowding on them which could easily be solved by adding a few extra carriages to trains! I mean really, three carriages leaving London at 5pm on a Friday just asks for trouble!!

The following is meant strictly for fun with the hopes of some lively conversation sprouting from it. Here is my make-believe dilemma: While going about your day at home you open the coat closet to grab your coat. When you do you are met with a glowing portal where you coats once were. Being the curious type you test to ensure that it is safe to pass through and step through the portal. You are met by a man who introduces himself as an "Agent of Change". He explains that throughout history Agents of Change have brought various people through the portal to give them a choice that may change the course humanity, depending on the decision. On the table are thre…

Hello does anybody on here know how to add photos in my post? Any expertise gratefully received

Dear Friends kind regards I have been reading on how Energy makes up all matter (both living and non living) and how one type of Energy can convert from one type to another. From the Scientific viewpoint, Energy is the beginning point and primary reason for everything. I recently looked at the following website and was impressed with its content. 1. Link removed by unimpressed Moderator. I was impressed with this website and the articles that explained how Energy worked. Do you know of a book that has a comprehensive overview on Energy and all of its movements as depicted in the above website. If you could get back to me with your suggestions I'd be so grateful. …

I have a couple of questions. First one. How far along are we in the development of a "silicon brain", and how long do you think it will be before we are capable of bonding a computer to a human brain in a way that it acts as a part of the brain? Second one. If we do bond a person's brain to a computer of similar capabilities, and then during a decade or two of living like this, his/her biological brain slowly dies off, until it's just the artificial brain. Will she/he be the same conscious being, or will it be a different consciousness that took over as the previous one failed?

I just wanted to share this game with the community as it is both fun and somewhat informative... here is the low down: 1) It's an ASCII game that looks like the old Moria and NetHack... if you can accept that, and you like fairly opaque but incredibly deep games read on! 2) The game takes place in a randomly generated world that can be mind bogglingly large... up to millions of tiles by millions of tiles. The map is truly topographical, with realistic environments, and geology... numerous flora and fauna species, and geologic strata (microline deposits, cinnabar, lignite, etc. etc.). All rivers oceans and lakes are generated organically based on geology(streams…

Today some idiots drove past be as I was walking down the street and threw a half empty cup of McDonald's milkshake at me. Made a mess. Only a few days a go a girl not even in her teens grabbed my bum. I have only recently moved back into the area, but I remember other incidents like being spat at and other things thrown at me from cars. I can list other things that have happened to other family members of similar nature. Sometimes the assailants are known, but not always. Does this happen to you also? Or is this an anomaly for my home town of Newport South Wales? Which by the way is a real sh*t tip. (I blame the numerous council estates that are full o…

Have you ever dreamed something then days, months, even years have had it come true? i know i have, but maybe its not really coming true. Rather its my mind associating a particular event that was SIMILAR to the dream and making me believe it was what i originally dreamed. I am asking this because i had a really cool but f-ed up dream. I dreamed that i engaged in a medical experiment where they removed organs that were no longer vital, cut off my head* and stuck it where my stomach was. they added a cybernetic head, and an exoskeleton of sorts. and after being "cyberized" i guess, i performed a coup for the us government and said over national TV/radio. "I will …

someone once said to me (who is highly religious) that Darwin was a fake who come up with the idea of evolution to promote the theory of eugenics. i looked this up and found out darwin come up with his theory long before eugenics was about, but i also found out that an English scientist called Francis Galton, who was Darwin's cousin, come up with the theory of eugenics. im a very firm beliver in the theory of evolution, but this struck me as being a little odd.... anyone like to share their veiws on this?

Recently, just a few moments ago we`ve had to suffer 2 big aftershocks, after we have suffered more than 200 aftershocks, after the big one from past 27 of February. The first one was 7.2 Richter, and the second one 6.9 Richter, 15 minutes later. All the rest of those 5 in magnitud earth movements really have come as part of normal life issue, but every once and then we have had one above 6, which really are causing lots of histeria among my countrymen, including myself. Where are we really going to end ?. It is frightening.

As per this thread and the following quote it got me thinking: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=49668 If we were to colonise another planet would it unify us as a race or would it unify us against the colonists? Consider that space colonisation is expensive and that we could initially afford to fund such a venture and send enough humans to Mars as to create a self sustaining environment. Now consider that because we're satisfied with the self sustaining environment the colonists have created for themselves on Mars we decide that we no longer wish to fund these expensive trips to provide supplies and aids to "the new world", our colonist…