Hegaion E: Internet

Jun 30, 2020

Checkmating Black Is Prohibited – Google's Censorship of Chess Commentaries Suggests That Western Democracy Is Close to Checkmate

Croatian chess player Antonio Radić publishes his comments on chess games on a Youtube chess channel under the pseudonym "agadmator"; his podcasts are highly popular. For example, his "The Greatest Queen Sacrifice in History" has over 4.5 million visits, and all of his videos together have already received 275 million visits (here).

Jun 4, 2018

Website Pages Titles Included in Google Search Queries – Studying Such Google Searches and Hoping That My Website Will Not Be Unjustifiably De-indexed

Search engines, such as Google, present the search results in a list of internet page addresses arranged according to their relevance. The relevance is calculated according to an algorithm which is usually confidential but depends on known ranking factors. The factors include the character of the domain (whether it is reliable, public, famous, whether its name comprises the search terms = key terms), the character of the page content (whether it is long, recent, lacking forbidden features, comprising

No Need to Panic About Energy Need

Thermonuclear fusion will provide a nearly unlimited amount of energy for the world; ITER will be the first fusion experiment to produce net power by 2040 (www.iter.org).
Methane hydrates (methane/water clathrate) form massive deposits on the seafloor surrounding all continents and may hold more energy than all known reserves of oil, coal and natural gas worldwide (Sci. Am. October 2014, p. 71).
Shale oil can be environmentally safely extracted, and in the U.S. it can provide more energy than normal oil for decades (Sci. Am. November 2011, p. 62).
Known oil sources will provide more oil than predicted due to advanced technologies, increasing the predicted reserves by at least another century; however, the estimated reserves may still increase as they have been increasing throughout the history (Sci. Am. October 2009, p. 36).
Uranium reserves can provide world energy for at least 2,000 years (Vesmír 2008/11, p. 796).

Fragments from Science and Life

Male homosexuality is correlated with maternal immune responsivity to the Y-linked protein NLGN4Y. Mothers form an antibody against a protein important in male fetal brain development, neuroligin 4, located on sex chromosomes, the effect becomes increasingly likely with each male gestation, altering brain structures underlying sexual orientation in their later-born sons. One of the most reliable correlates of male homosexuality – older brothers – is thus explained (PNAS, December 2017). This is the first case of a clear correlation between the sexual orientation and a biochemical factor.
Placebo effect is significant also for operations. A British study has now showed that there was no difference between 100 patients getting a stent in their blocked artery and 100 patients getting a sham surgery (Lancet, November 2017; SciAm, February 2018). The real and fake surgeries included snaking a catheter through an artery in the groin to the blockage with or without a step of widening the narrowed vessel and keeping it open with wire mesh stent. This operation is widely popular, but now it turns out that dugs with lifestyle changes are preferable to the operation. In a meta-analysis of placebo effects in migraine prevention, sugar pills reduced headache frequency for 22% patients, acupuncture for 38% and sham surgery for 58%.
Humans can hold underwater for more than 12 minutes due to mammalian diving reflex, which is common to many vertebrates like dolphins and penguins (see deep diving). The reflex is triggered by cold water and results in drop in heart rate and blood redistribution towards vital organs by means of vasoconstriction; it can override a breathing reflex. This potential we acquired long ago in the evolution can be utilized by practicing, and probably can explain stories about children fallen into a cold well and surviving “a near drowning” for a long time under water.