Glider

As YT says, nobody can review an item they have never actually seen.

600 Black Watch are to be deployed under American control to areas North of their original position to free up US forces. Whilst I think it's always a bit dodgey to move forces any significant distance from their own supply lines, I can understand the need for concerted efforts amongst allied forces. Political perfidy aside (Damn you Hoon!), it's a bit self defeating to have several forces each doing their own thing. However, I do hope, and believe to be the case, that the Black Watch, whilst being deployed under US control, will remain under UK military policy and rules of engagement. I think there are basic differences in the natures and characters of the two forces (US and UK) that would make it difficult for a units-attached UK force to function as, or in the same character as, the US force to which they have been seconded. I hope the US commanders consider this.

There is no such implication. I refer to opportunity. The military may represent and fight for democracy, but it is not, in itself, a democracy. Soldiers in tactical situations rely on their senior officers and NCOs for all information concerning their aims and objectives. When confronted with other information, especially that which contradicts the information you have been given, you are going to believe the people who are there with you and who are senior to you. This for several reasons: 1) There is no room for debate in such situations. 2) You are more likely to believe people who are from your own 'ingroup' and with whom you identify. 3) As a human being, you are more likely to be sympathetic to views that provide a positive rationale for what you are doing and present it in a good light. 4) They are your senior officers and (within certain bounds) you have to obey them. This is easier to do effectively, if you believe them. My familiarity with the military extends to a significantly greater depth than that. What? Recruits are drawn from the general population, so this is not so. The tests required to enter the forces at a basic level are little more than filters to ensure literacy and basic competency in practical skills and learning ability. They may be more educated by the time they are trained, but that education will have been provided by their respective regiments. This is true of military personnel in most western forces. So is this, but I fail to see how these latter four points relate to the original point. “Warfighter”? Is that what you call your soldiers now?

You're thinking of multiple personality disorder. Schitzophrenia means 'split mind', and the 'split' to which the term refers is from reality.

Soldiers see what's going on. They have to rely on what they're told by their senior officers for why.

I wish people would stop using articles of faith as evidence in debate.

The symptoms may have been flu-like, but for it to come and go so quickly, it probably wan't flu. You may have just had an acute idiopathic infection. Sometime people can respond to flu immunisation by presenting acute flu symptoms some hours after having the jab. These usually pass overnight though.

I don't know how, I have seen no research on the subject. However, my guess would be that it probably has to do with priming and pre-attentive processing. In essence, priming occurs as a result of exposure to stimuli on a non-conscious level. It drives our basic states (affective-motivational) and also directs our immediate beliefs and expectations. Foe example, if you are exposed to stimuli that leads you to believe you are about to get a cup of coffee, but you are given a cup of tea instead, the first mouthfull will confuse you, because it won't taste like coffee. However, the important thing is, that due to your expectations, it won't taste like tea either. Your basic, non-conscious expectation was different to the reality and the result is confusion. When this happens, people often have to take a second mouthful to identify the taste.

True, but you would have to be able to utterly erase the knowledge that the memory was an invention. If you could do that, then the invented memory would be just another memory, and as real as any other.

Some of the perameters this thing measures are direct (e.g. heart rate), whilst others are based on assumptions (e.g. energy consumption). As a direct measure, heart rate and respiration can provide useful data, but even then, these measures are influenced by other factors. There are certain measures, e.g. oxygen consumption, which would be better taken using a pulse-oxymeter. Respiration is a rough guide, but it measures breaths per minute, not oxygen consumption. Thus, people with respiratory problems can have a high resp. rate at rest. Efficiency of the heart and lungs determine how much oxygen is taken in, and a pulse-oxymeter takes a direct measure of blood oxygen saturation (using a non-invasive probe which clips to a finger). As a guide for athletes in training I think the estimates it provides would be useful. Athletes tend to be fairly fit to begin with, so the instrument is less likely to be way out on the assumptions it makes. For others, say, obese people wanting to exercise to lose weight, or people with cardiac problems exercising for health reasons, I think it would be less useful. As I said, some of the measures it takes are based on assumptions, e.g. energy use. This parameter is subject to large between-individual variance. Very unfit or overweight people use significantly more energy than an athlete to perform the same task. So, without programming in the actual energy use of an individual to start with, the measure provided by this instrument would be a 'guestemate' at best. Perhaps useful for measuring relative change, but no use if you needed accurate measures. In short, I think the validity of this instrument would depend upon the degree to which you could program in individual-specific baseline data. If you can't do this, then many of the measures it provides are simply estimates based upon normative values for population parameters, and thus do not account for individual differences.

Yep, what he said.

To albertlee, I answer that these are the solutes that determine the concentration gradient that drives osmosis. Plasma proteins are proteins found in plasma (mainly albumin). Sodium ions are sodium ions. If you want to know the role of sodium ions in biology, the answers would fill books. They have a role in just about everything. Cardiac function, neural & nerve function, muscle function, renal function etc., etc. You need to define your questions more clearly.

It means the osmotic gradient between blood and interstitial fluid I'm guessing you mean "How do....etc." Water will always try to 'equalize' across a semipermiable membrane (like capillary walls). If the water on one side contains a higher concentration of solutes than water on the other, then per unit volume, there is less water on the high concentration side. This forms an osmotic gradient. Water will try to move from the low concentration side to the high concentation side, to equalize the amount of water on each side. Put simply, yes. No. 'Regulate' means 'control'. For example, you use a tap (faucet) to regulate the flow of water, not to move the water. Mains pressure moves the water.

Where the participants are patients undergoing prescribed drug therapy, it would not be ethical to use a placebo control. That would mean taking patients off medication, or denying them medication. In these cases, two sample crossover designs are preferred. The crossover acts as a control.

As a rule, you'd find it hard to get your study published without a control. Whilst 'new drug' Vs 'existing drug' can be tested with two groups, a control is still needed to make sure no unexpected experimental confound influenced the results, and that your sample was not skewed in some way. If your sample doesn't yield normative baseline results, then either your sample is not representative, or the experiment is contaminated. If your control group shows a difference across measures, then your experiment is contaminated. The control group doesn't simply act as a neutral comparison, it acts as an experimental control (the clue's in the name).

Which side clears, or whether one side or both sides clear, is down to chance. Gravity is the cause, but how you move your head is the determinant. Laying down on one side is just an example.

Dark irises absorb light as opposed to reflecting it. This reduces glare in bright sunlight.

1) It's an immune response to histamine relased as part of the inflammation of the mucous membranes of the upper respiritory tract. 2) It's principally a protein (mucin) which is produced by secretory cells of the mucous membranes. 3) That's a bit of an oxymoron. If you can't breathe through your nose, then it's not clear (by definition). The nasal passage extends to the back of the throat. Typically, your throat will be inflamed due to your response to the infection, so you will have trouble breathing through your nose. 4) Gravity. If your nose is blocked, lay on your side. You will notice that the upper-most nostril clears after a while as the mucous drains downwards. 5) Colds are due to a rhinovirus. These mutate, so every cold you catch is caused by a different variation of the virus. Thus, we never get the chance to become immune. 6) Extremely, and it's airborne (usually in aerosol, due to infected people sneezing). Your own immun competence has an effect too. If you have recently been tired, stressed or are a bit run-down, you stand a much higher chance of succumbing to it.

Even double-blind studies need to be placebo controlled. The point of a placebo is that it is something that is known to have no effect at all. It's not supposed to 'cure' anything. Giving a placebo simply rules out the chance that the simple act of administration didn't have an effect. When giving a placebo, you don't tell the participant it's going to have x, y or z effect. This would contaminate the experiment by introducing participant expectation as a factor (it may or may not be the case, but the point is you couldn't know which). This also applies to the experimental intervention (experimental drug). You don't tell the participant what the drug is supposed to do, unless you are investigating the effects of your suggestion. This introduces a problem with informed consent. However, it does mean that it's easier to avoid experimental contamination with children (< 16 yrs). This is because they are not in a position to provide informed consent. It has to be obtained from their parents. So, all the information that might contaminate the experiment is givent to the parents; what the drug is, what it is supposed to do and whether there are any possible side effects, etc..

YT: I think Americans spell it differently. Sorcerer: No, annuals don't form such a relationship with mycorrhizae. Treating a full grown tree would be extremely difficult, as would measuring any results. The loss of the mycorrhyzal simbiont doesn't kill the tree, it just results in poor growth and lack of vigour. Taking cuttings from pine is extremely difficult with a low success rate. If pine were to be used, it's easy enough to buy a small established tree from a nursery. They're cheap enough, but they are slow growers. The reason I chose pine over other, deciduous species is that pine have a relationship with ectomycorrhizae which is easy to see, and easy to remove. Other species have relationships with endomycorrhyzae which don't form large visible networks of hyphae, but tend to exist as individual cells within the root cells of the tree. In any event, in bonsai, the practice when repotting pine is to innoculate the new soil with some of the old. Chemicals released by the new growing root tips trigger gernmination of the fungal spores and a new colony starts. If you don't do this, the tree doesn't die, but it's growth is slower and generally weaker than that of trees with a healthy mycorrhizal colony around their roots. As pine only put out one flush of growth per year, it takes a year or so to see the failure to thrive (e.g. the new buds on the second season would be smaller and sparse, the candles from those buds would be shorter and the eventual needles would be shorter and paler), and then, you could really see it only by comparing the weak tree to healthy trees of the same species.

Yes. That would be covered by "...the non-volitional formation of memories resulting simply from perceiving." bit.

No it isn't. It's spelt "Mycorrhiza" (s) or "Mycorrhizae" (Pl). See http://www.btinternet.com/~colinlewis.bonsai/Reading/Myco.html#What%20are For some information on it. Do radishes live in symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizae?

The term 'learning' does imply some deliberate intent and so, in many cases is not an appropriate term. 'Encoding' is a better one, the non-volitional formation of memories resulting simply from perceiving. Episodic, or 'flashbulb' memories are not formed deliberately (i.e. learned, per se), but are formed unconsciously due to perceiving events under specific/heightened emotional states. It is thought that in these cases, the emotional state acts as a signal that the currant events are important and the intensity aids encoding.

I don't think it's really practical for a project on that time-scale. Pine are slow growers, they put out one flush of growth per year. If you were going to see a difference in vigour between your experimental and control plants, it would take a year at least. Plus, at this time of year, everything is beginning to enter dormancy anyway. No tree is going to grow noticably until next Spring now.