Modern and Cenozoic deep-sea hydrothermal-vent and methane-seep communities are dominated by large tubeworms, bivalves and gastropods. In contrast, many Early Cretaceous seep communities were dominated by the largest Mesozoic rhynchonellid brachiopod, the dimerelloid Peregrinella, the paleoecologic and evolutionary traits of which are still poorly understood. We investigated the nature of Pereg...

In the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (Kubrick 1968), crewmembers of a spaceship interact with the ship’s computer by talking to it. The computer, named HAL9000, has no keyboard or mouse; the only way to communicate with it is conversationally. HAL9000 behaves the same way people do in conversation, using subtle strategies such as hedging, indirect requests, and politeness to accomplish its goals....

The 2001-2002 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC) sought to determine the prevalence of alcohol use and alcohol use disorders (AUDs), other drug use and drug use disorders (DUDs), and co-use and co-morbidity in the general adult U.S. population. Findings indicate that 5.6 percent of U.S. adults used both alcohol and drugs in the past year and that 1.1 percen...

The incidence of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in Japan is still increasing. The aim of the present study was to analyze the epidemiological trend of HCC in the Western area of Japan, Nagasaki. A total of 1,807 patients with HCC diagnosed at our two hospitals between 1981 and 2005 were consecutively recruited for this study. Cohorts of patients with HCC were categorized into five-year interval...

The films of Stanley Kubrick, particularly since 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), have been characterised by their innovative approaches to the use of music. Even by Kubrick’s standards, however, The Shining (1980) exemplifies a level of both sophisticated interaction of music and moving image, and general reliance on music for contextual, characterisation and narrative purposes, rarely equalled i...

When we consider the grand trajectory of Western painting, we see something very interesting taking place at the dawn of the Renaissance. Before roughly 1425, most images were rather stylized, even schematic, but afterward we see paintings that have an almost photographic realism. For instance, Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfi ni and His Wife, by the early Renaissance master Jan van Eyck (1390?–144...

I n the mid-1960s Joseph Weizenbaum created a stunning piece of software. Years before HAL 9000's screen debut in 2001: A Space Odyssey, this software, Eliza, made it possible to have a conversation with a computer. Eliza's most famous script,Doctor, caused the software to parody the conversational patterns of non-directive therapists during an initial visit. While Eliza/Doctor can seem quite s...