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280 articles from FRIDAY 6.1.2012
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FRIDAY 6. JANUARY, 2012
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19:58
Scientists map the frontiers of vision
Pioneering vision study in mice will help revolutionize the study of brain function and mental disease.
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19:58
Correlation is not causation
Repeat after me, correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation, correlation is not causation …
"Correlation is not causation. Correlation is not causation. Correlation is not causation … " At times during my statistics studies I felt like Jack Nicholson in the film The Shining, in which we witness his descent into madness as he types the same sentence over and over again, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy … "
"Correlation is not causation" is a statistics mantra. It is drilled, military school-style, into every budding statistician. But what does it actually mean? Well, correlation is a measure of how closely related two things are. Think of it as a number describing the relative change in one thing when there is a change in the other, with 1 being a strong positive relationship between two sets of numbers, –1 being a strong negative relationship and 0 being no relationship whatsoever.
"Correlation is not causation" means that just because two things correlate does not necessarily mean that one causes the other. As a seasonal example, just because people in the UK tend to spend more in the shops when it's cold and less when it's hot doesn't mean cold weather causes frenzied high-street spending. A more plausible explanation would be that cold weather tends to coincide with Christmas and the new year sales.
Despite embodying an important truth, the phrase has not caught on in the wider world. It's easy to see why. Our preconceptions and suspicions about the way things work tempt us to make the leap from correlation to causation without any hard evidence.
Correlations between two things can be caused by a third factor that affects both of them. This sneaky, hidden third wheel is called a confounder.
Arguably the most well known and important example of a correlation being clear but caustion being in doubt concerned smoking and lung cancer in the 1950s. There had been a sixfold increase in the rate of lung cancer in the preceding two decades. Nobody disputed that there was a correlation between lung cancer and smoking, but to prove that one caused the other would be no mean feat.
There might be a confounder that was responsible for the correlation between smoking and lung cancer. The increased rate could have been the result of better diagnosis, more industrial pollution or more cars on the roads belching noxious fumes. Perhaps people who were more genetically predisposed to want to smoke were also more susceptible to getting cancer?
It took a study involving more than 40,000 doctors in the UK to show conclusively that smoking really does cause cancer.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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19:54
Can Fracking Cause Quakes?
Direct links between the gas extraction process and quakes and Ohio and Oklahoma point to the seismological side effect. -
19:52
ScienceShot: Lice Reveal Clandestine Lemur Get-Togethers
Insects hop from lemur to lemur as the primates socialize -
19:40Tiny, pointy particles could help fry tumors
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19:24
Apple patent sends password secrets to adapters
(PhysOrg.com) -- First-time computer users in the early days, pre-hacking security traumas, were confronted with a new life requirement: creating and remembering system passwords. Not too easy, users were warned, to protect their privacy against snooping brothers and sisters, but not too tough, so they can easily remember it all times. This is no longer good advice, and Apple has filed a patent that says, no, make your password as tough as you want. -
19:24An article in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology summarizes methods for radiation dose optimization in pediatric computed tomography (CT) scans. Approximately seven to eight million CT examinations are performed for various pediatric clinical indications per year in the United States.
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19:24The online piracy group Anonymous hacked into the Belgian website of industrial giant ArcelorMittal on Friday, posting a video to protest the closure of two blast furnaces in Belgium.
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19:24Nearly 7,000 people have now died from cholera in Haiti in an epidemic which has become one of the worst of recent decades, a top health official said Friday.
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19:24New research highlights the possibility of reversing ageing in the central nervous system for multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. The study is published today, 06 January, in the journal Cell Stem Cell.
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19:24LG Electronics will introduce its highly anticipated Google TV at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. LG Smart TV with Google TV combines the familiarity of Google’s Android OS with the convenience and comfort of LG’s 3D and Smart TV technologies, offering consumers a new and attractive home entertainment option.
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19:24(PhysOrg.com) -- Over the past several years, Sudoku, as most people know, has become wildly popular. Where once mainstream newspapers carried only crossword puzzles, they now also carry a Sudoku puzzle as well. But along with that popularity, has come increased scrutiny and competition between people to see if certain properties of the puzzle can be found. For example, in any given Sudoku puzzle, how many clues must be given in order to have just one unique solution to the problem? Most Sudoku enthusiasts will answer 17, because nobody has ever been able to find one with 16 or less; which is fine, except that people as a general rule like some sort of proof of such things. Thus, it should not come as much of a surprise to anyone that a team of mathematicians have not only set out to prove what everyone thinks they know, but have succeeded in their endeavor.
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19:24(Medical Xpress) -- E-cigarettes, or electronic cigarettes, are promoted as a safer alternative to smoking. However, a new study published in the journal Chest, shows that these e-cigarettes cause immediate changes in the airways and may not be a as safe as they are promoted to be.
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19:24(AP) -- A New Mexico funeral home has confirmed that Lowell Randall, a pioneer rocket scientist who helped launched the U.S. space program, has died at age 96.
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19:24Butterfish may sound delicious, but local fishermen would rather keep them out of their nets. The small, silvery fish are protected by fishing limits yet frequently surface in tows when fishermen are trawling for squid. Too much of this unintended butterfish "bycatch" can get a fishery shut down by regulators for the year – before the squid allocation is caught.
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19:24There's a 3-D world in our brains. It's a landscape that mimics the outside world, where the objects we see exist as collections of neural circuits and electrical impulses.
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19:24If, in New Years past, a steadfast resolution to get your butt to the gym has resulted in your butt remaining steadfastly planted on your couch, it may be time to introduce your butt to hyperbolic discounting.
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19:24(Medical Xpress) -- A new study published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine shows that almost a quarter of girls surveyed believe that the HPV vaccine will also help prevent other STDs. This new information is sparking a demand for better education when the vaccine is administered.
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19:24In this special issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE, experts reflect on 2011 and highlight what to look out for in 2012 in the areas of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, biosecurity, and climate change. Topics that have made the headlines during the previous 12 months, including the increased tension surrounding Iran's nuclear programme, the aftermath of the Fukushima incident, and the state of US policy on climate change, are analyzed in detail in this special issue.
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19:24Two related studies from Northwestern University offer new strategies for tackling the challenges of preventing and treating diseases of protein folding, such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), cancer, cystic fibrosis and type 2 diabetes.
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19:24Hundreds of thousands of people in the U.S. - mostly babies and toddlers - were coming down with whooping cough each year when vaccines against "this menace," as one newspaper called it, were introduced in the 1930s and 1940s.
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19:22The mother of all consumer electronic trade shows is on.
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19:22
Computer could act as doctor's assistant
Computers could be enlisted to interpret and dispense medical advice, potentially acting as assistants for harried doctors.
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19:16
When CEO Steve Ballmer gives the opening address at the Consumer Electronics Show on Jan. 9, it will be the last time Microsoft does the show's keynote. Experts say the software giant's decision to bow out of CES is signficant. So who will take their place?
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19:10
Naposledy aktualizované zdroje
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Yahoo! (dnes, 12:12)
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BBC Science/Nature (dnes, 10:02)
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NYT > Science (dnes, 07:07)
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EurekAlert (dnes, 06:00)
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National Geographic News (dnes, 00:48)
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Sci-Tech Today (24. 5, 23:45)
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NASA (24. 5, 21:35)
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TIME (23. 5, 08:40)
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Technology Review Feed - Tech Review Top Stories (16. 1, 22:07)
