Psi Performance, Belief in Psi, and Competition in a Game-Show Format

The current study was designed to explore variables influencing psi performance including gender, belief in psi, and competition between men and women. Features of the experiment involved a methodology using a visual image of the receivers, simple spatial location as targets, and monetary incentive to increase competition in a game-show type of environment. One of the goals of this study was to explore the role of competition between groups of senders and receivers as a facilitator of telepathic communication. Results of a one sample t-test comparing overall hit rate for the sample with expected probability were not significant, t(98)= 1.22,p=. 1 I (one-tailed). However, a trend towards above chance hitting was evident. There was also no significant difference found between hit rates for men and women. In addition, all participants completed a belief questionnaire, on which they indicated their belief in mental telepathy on a 7-point-scale. It was hypothesized that belief ratings would correspond with hit rates—specifically that participants with high belief in psi phenomena would score above chance while those with low belief scores would score below chance. The results of an independent samples t-test show that high belief participants (M= 8.92, SD= 1.75) scored significantly higher on the telepathy task than low belief participants (M= 7.67, SD= 1.53), t(70)= -3.16, p \u3c .001 (one-tailed), with a Cohen\u27s D score of .76 for effect size. Given the strength of these findings, it appears that psi phenomena and mental telepathy, specifically, do occur and may be influenced by belief in psi, group setting, and competition. It is noteworthy when the variable of belief is not taken into consideration, the data appears to be random, yet once belief is considered, findings emerge

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Psi Performance, Belief in Psi, and Competition in a Game-Show Format

The current study was designed to explore variables influencing psi performance including gender, belief in psi, and competition between men and women. Features of the experiment involved a methodology using a visual image of the receivers, simple spatial location as targets, and monetary incentive to increase competition in a game-show type of environment. One of the goals of this study was to explore the role of competition between groups of senders and receivers as a facilitator of telepathic communication. Results of a one sample t-test comparing overall hit rate for the sample with expected probability were not significant, t(98)= 1.22,p=. 1 I (one-tailed). However, a trend towards above chance hitting was evident. There was also no significant difference found between hit rates for men and women. In addition, all participants completed a belief questionnaire, on which they indicated their belief in mental telepathy on a 7-point-scale. It was hypothesized that belief ratings would correspond with hit rates—specifically that participants with high belief in psi phenomena would score above chance while those with low belief scores would score below chance. The results of an independent samples t-test show that high belief participants (M= 8.92, SD= 1.75) scored significantly higher on the telepathy task than low belief participants (M= 7.67, SD= 1.53), t(70)= -3.16, p \u3c .001 (one-tailed), with a Cohen\u27s D score of .76 for effect size. Given the strength of these findings, it appears that psi phenomena and mental telepathy, specifically, do occur and may be influenced by belief in psi, group setting, and competition. It is noteworthy when the variable of belief is not taken into consideration, the data appears to be random, yet once belief is considered, findings emerge

Reduced Cancer Incidence in Huntington's Disease: Analysis in the Registry Study

Background: People with Huntington's disease (HD) have been observed to have lower rates of cancers. Objective: To investigate the relationship between age of onset of HD, CAG repeat length, and cancer diagnosis. Methods: Data were obtained from the European Huntington's disease network REGISTRY study for 6540 subjects. Population cancer incidence was ascertained from the GLOBOCAN database to obtain standardised incidence ratios of cancers in the REGISTRY subjects. Results: 173/6528 HD REGISTRY subjects had had a cancer diagnosis. The age-standardised incidence rate of all cancers in the REGISTRY HD population was 0.26 (CI 0.22-0.30). Individual cancers showed a lower age-standardised incidence rate compared with the control population with prostate and colorectal cancers showing the lowest rates. There was no effect of CAG length on the likelihood of cancer, but a cancer diagnosis within the last year was associated with a greatly increased rate of HD onset (Hazard Ratio 18.94, p < 0.001). Conclusions: Cancer is less common than expected in the HD population, confirming previous reports. However, this does not appear to be related to CAG length in HTT. A recent diagnosis of cancer increases the risk of HD onset at any age, likely due to increased investigation following a cancer diagnosis