information

"The estimated number of genes in the human genome has been repeatedly revised downward since the completion of the Human Genome Project; current estimates place the human genome at just under 3 billion base pairs and about 20,000–25,000 genes. A recent Science article gives a final number of...

This question has haunted me for a year now. What is information? I mean, we can measure it, we can use it, we can cuddle it, but I do not know of a sensible definition of what the universal phenomenon that which we call "information" is. So far I have only come up with one important aspect of...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03cnd-documents.html?hp&ex=1162616400&en=d6e60f288e881789&ei=5094&partner=homepage NYT...may need to register. Apparently, they were posting all kinds of documents on the web that are now being questioned as possibly providing something of a...

The brain is endlessly cool and fascinating to me. Apparently there's a part of the brain specifically devoted to recognizing faces. If a lesion appears on that part of the brain, all faces tend to look alike. Also, one can dramatically change a person's personality by placing a lesion on the...

Not sure where to put this, but this looks like a likely spot. Can any one point me to a good resource for understanding patent laws. I have been commissioned to design a project for a small company, however I've found two fairly similar patented devices. I would like to know if I should...

Hi there fellow heathens. I think that this is a very important article for all of us here at the JREF Forum. I hope that you read it carefully and follow it's advice. You don't want to be left behind, but if you are (as I'm sure most people on this board will be), this article could SAVE you...

Hello, I'm currently doing a study on Emotional Intelligence (EI or EQ or whatever) but I have little knowledge about the idea. I am also quite skeptical to the idea that the methods and tests used in EQ actually works (such as NLP which has not been proven scientifically). I would like to...

Would a thread about health issues be helpful? I can start it off with a couple of articles ... This article in the UK Daily Mail tells how sushi is laden with calories, salt and mercury: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/dietfitness.html?in_article_id=46174&in_page_id=1798...

If anyone is interested in current politics check out www.truemajority.org If you sign up for the emails they let you know whenever something is passing thru congress. With a couple of quick clicks you can edit and send a letter to your representatives. You get letters back in the mail...

http://www.debka.com/ I think that they are Jewish leaning. That notwithstanding, what do y'all think of them in terms of accuracy? I don't read it regularly enough to know, my only specific recollection is when they breathlessly reported that Saddam and his guys rented a resort in Syria ...

Information abounds in nature. Every object contains information. If it did not, I could not gain knowledge by studying the object. Yet it is clear that I do not gain the knowledge of the number of legs of a table by cramming the actual table into my brain. So information is somehow transmitted...

Does anyone know how much innate behaviour DNA can store? We know about animals being born knowing to avoid certain smells, plants, predators etc. We know about animals being born understanding expressions, feeding behaviours, how to grasp... So has there been any work done that has reached...

Just as I suspected. The woman who claimed that she found a fingertip in her bowl of Wendy's chili is now being arrested. That is all we know at this time. But I suspect this woman, who has a past history of lawsuits against companies has created *this* story as well. Do you realize the...

I need help. My boyfriend's mom has cancer. That is the short version, believe you me :) In any event, she called him up the other night to tell him she doesn't want to get back on the chemo (who can blame her?!), and to ask what he thought of "natural remedies." She said she wasn't "talking...

Does anybody know of a site that debunks EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing)? I live in a military town and the local paper had a very non-skeptical article about EMDR for post traumatic stress disorder. http://www.kitsapsun.com/bsun/local/article/0,2403,BSUN_19088_3492818,00.html...

Thus if a hypothetical super being were acquainted with all possible information about the world - which I imagine would consist in a completed physics - would this entail that s/he would know all there is that could be known? Thus would such a super being know what love is, anger is, the feel...

As ever the homeopaths like to keep bang up to date. Well, Hahnemann is nearly 200 years old so you do want some new information. http://homeopathyforums.hpathy.com//forum_posts.asp?TID=1646&TPN=2 Nothing less than 50 years old and no critical assessment of the old stories. Maybe they'll be...

This may have been done to death before, but I would be interested in some views on Dembski's complex specified information. I would be particularly interested in hearing from people who think that there may be some substance to the concept, ie ID proponents. I am not putting it in either the...

The privacy vs security issue... I was short of options so I left out the obvious ones (name, signature) or the less important ones (profession, etc). Feel free to add your ideas, though. Furthermore: Should ID cards expire, and if yes, after how many years ?

Clarke more or less admitted that the United States Government consistently spins information released to the public to manipulate our opinion. This is in direct contradiction to foundation of a democratic society and the marketplace of ideas. In other words, what is the point of a democratic...

Today I stumbled across this fellow Werner Gitt, who has a theory of information that leads to the inevitable conclusion that creation is the deliberate act of a creator: http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/tj_v10n2p181.asp This is one bizarre theory. First of all, I can't...

No, this isn't some wacko tax protestor stuff. It's the result of a study done by the US Department of the Treasury. After posing as taxpayers calling the IRS for advice, they found that the IRS gave correct and complete answers only 45% of the time. 12% of the time the answers were correct but...

Do you know that Islam is the fastest-growing religion in America, since the eighties? A NATION CHALLENGED: AMERICAN MUSLIMS; Islam Attracts Converts By the Thousand, Drawn Before and After Attacks By JODI WILGOREN Source: The New York Times : October 22, 2001, Monday Section: National Desk...

Ah, the joys of discovery... Editorial Reviews Book Description This book defines and develops a unifying principle of physics, that of 'extreme physical information'. The information in question is, perhaps surprisingly, not Shannon or Boltzmann entropy but, rather, Fisher information, a...