Quantifying Quandary
In "The Post-Traumatic Stress Trap," David Dobbs reports on a growing number of experts who believe that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is being overdiagnosed. In support of this argument, Dobbs cites a 1990s study in which researchers asked veterans "about 19 specific types of potentially traumatic events.... Two years out, 70 percent of the veterans reported at least one traumatic event they had not mentioned a month after returning, and 24 percent reported at least three such events for the first time." These memories are assumed to be "new," but it may be that the subjects simply could not bring themselves to put their experiences into words so soon after those experiences occurred and that after some time they could.
John Dunn
Merrick, N.Y
As a staff psychiatrist at the St. Louis VA Medical Center for many years (I am currently in private practice), I think concerns about diagnosis of, and disability benefits for, PTSD can be extrapolated to mental illness in general. Psychiatric disability is challenging for the Veterans Health Administration and the Social Security Administration because the severity of illness fluctuates with few visible manifestations, and physicians are neither trained nor well situated for disability determination—they are often conflicted between pursuing treatment that could eliminate disability and encouraging chronic disability so that their patients can receive benefits. PTSD is a good place to start developing procedures and protocols for disability assessment.
Mohinder Partap
St. Louis
Dark Energy Alternatives
“Does Dark Energy Really Exist?” by Timothy Clifton and Pedro G. Ferreira, posits that the apparent accelerated expansion of the universe could be a misconception caused by our living in the center of a giant cosmic void (in which the expansion rate would vary with position, thus making dark energy unnecessary).
The evidence for the universe’s accelerated or uneven expansion is that distant supernovae look dimmer than expected. But could this dimming be explained by a sparse but uniform haze of individual particles? The cosmic microwave background could also be caused by measuring the temperature and distribution of such a haze.
Bill Manzke
Dublin, Ohio
Another explanation for the supernovae dimming could be that light decelerates over time. If light traveled faster in the past, then it would have traveled farther than we think, making its intensity less than expected.
Joel Sanet
Miami
THE AUTHORS REPLY: What Manzke calls “haze” is usually called dust by astronomers. Lots of dust between supernovae and us could dim the images that we measure with our telescopes. But this would mean that distant supernovae would consistently look dimmer as we looked farther and farther away. We can use this as a test because if we look sufficiently far back, the universe was not accelerating (or, alternatively, the supernovae were not in the void), so there will not be the systematic dimming that a haze would produce. Further, if there were lots of absorption from dust, this would change the spectrum of the light we receive. Astronomers check to see if this is the case.
Hot dust causing the cosmic microwave background is an interesting thought, but it is unlikely to be true. The microwave background radiation is almost perfectly evenly distributed across the sky, and its properties show it was emitted from something in perfect thermal equilibrium. If it were being emitted from dust, it would have a very different spectrum and would be very unlikely to be so perfectly evenly distributed.
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Add CommentThe expanding universe is a myth at the present level of evolution. It is apparent due to the rotation and revolution of the Galactic system. The present observation could be explained by these phenomenon just like in the evenning we find the Sun-light deeming creating a haze and the Sun grow in size. Further, the idea that we are not in a privilleged position is a myth. The so-called expansion is not uniform in all directions for all observers. Yet, in the beginning, there was an expansion.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGAGUT:
G ij,j = 0
GOD ORDAINED PROF. G. OYIBO AS THE GREATEST GENIUS THROUGH THE GOD ALMIGHTYS GRAND UNIFIED
THEOREM (GAGUT) OF EVERYTHING , REVEALED (1990) BY GOD TO PROF. G. OYIBO THAT PROVED THE
FOLLOWING RADICAL TRUTHS:
� GOD EXISTS AS THE ONE UNBOUNDED SPACE OF INTELLIGENCE CALLED THE UNIVERSE THAT CANNOT
EXPAND.
� AFRICROGEN (AFRICA THE ORIGIN), THE RIGHT NAME FOR HYDROGEN (HIDE THE ORIGIN) IS THE ONLY
ELEMENT (NOT 118 ELEMENTS AS BELIEVED CURRENTLY).
� G ij,j = 0 IS THE ONLY ONE CORRECT EQUATION (NOT INFINITE NUMBER OF EQUATIONS AS BELIEVED
CURRENTLY) IN MATH AND ALL KNOWLEDGE.
JOIN HARVARD UNIVERSITY BY DEMANDING THAT ALL EDUCATION BE REVISED TO ALLOW THE STUDYING
OF GAGUT JUST AS EDUCATION WAS REVISED TO ALLOW THE STUDYING OF SUN (NOT EARTH) AS THE
CENTER OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM (RADICAL TRUTH) DISCOVERED BY COPERNICUS, AND PROPAGATED BY
GALILEO AND OTHERS. CALL OFAPPIT INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY FOR T-SHIRTS, BOOKS, AND COURSES
AT (631)-242-3069 WWW.GEOCITIES.COM/IGALA1.
LEARN AND TEACH THE ONLY REAL TRUTH CALLED GOD ALMIGHTYS GRAND UNIFIED THEOREM (GAGUT),
G ij,j = 0, THE ONLY ONE CORRECT EQUATION FOR EVERYTHING, PAST,
PRESENT AND FUTURE (NOT UNCOUNTABLE NUMBER OF EQUATIONS AS BELIEVED CURRENTLY).
� NEWTON HAS PROVED THAT GRAVITY IS CONSERVED THROUGH
TRANSFORMATION GIVEN BY:
G m1m2 - Fr2 = 0
� EINSTEIN HAS PROVED THAT MASS IS CONSERVED THROUGH
TRANSFORMATION GIVEN BY:
MC2 - E =0
� OYIBO HAS PROVED THAT GOD AND EVERYTHING (NOT JUST GRAVITY
AND MASS) IS CONSERVED THROUGH TRANSFORMATION GIVEN BY:
G ij,j = 0
� GAGUT HENCE IS THE ONE AND ONLY CORRECT UNIVERSAL EQUATION
AND LAW THAT SHOULD BE STUDIED BY EVERY ONE.
� GAGUT CONSTITUTES A RADICAL REVOLUTION OF EDUCATION AND
KNOWLEDGE.
� OPPOSITIONS AGAINST GAGUTS RADICAL REVOLUTION ARE CURRENTLY VERY STRONG AND SIMILAR TO
THE OPPOSITIONS AGAINST DISCOVERY OF SUN (NOT EARTH) AS THE CENTER OF OUR SOLAR SYSTEM
(RADICAL TRUTH) BY COPERNICUS AND PROPAGATED BY GALILEO.
�JOIN HARVARD UNIVERSITY BY DEMANDING THAT ALL SCHOOLS LEARN GAGUT G ij,j = 0, THE ONLY
CORRECT EQUATION AND KNOWLEDGE REVEALED BY GOD THROUGH PROF. G. OYIBO. CALL OFAPPIT
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY FOR T-SHIRTS, BOOKS, AND COURSES AT (631)-242-3069
WWW.GEOCITIES.COM/IGALA1.
Concerning your article in last months issue on our universe expanding faster than it's suppose to. Could it be simply that as the galaxies become further apart from one another, their attraction to each other is halfed. As in a magnetic field? You double the distance and have one-quarter the pull. And what about the idea of momentum creating waves across space/time pushing things apart? I mean atoms spin, planets spin, solar systems spin, galaxies spin. So why can't the known universe be spinning? Or perhaps all the spinning of the atoms on up to galaxies is like a gigantic cosmic engine sending out "mometum waves" to warp space/time. I have a hard time wrapping my mind around "dark matter", do we have to go back to the "ether of space" idea?
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