Wednesday, December 9, 2015

Archived magazine features about Denis Rancourt

Magazine Features about Denis Rancourt


 
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Archived notes on the scientific work of Denis Rancourt

Scientific work



Dr. Denis G. Rancourt, B.Sc., M.Sc., Ph.D.

… was a Full Professor with tenure in the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Ottawa, a member of the Ottawa-Carleton Institute for Physics, and a member of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, when he was fired under false pretext on March 31, 2009.
(Read his statement about his dismissal HERE.)

As a scientist, Denis Rancourt has published over one hundred articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals in areas as diverse as lacustrine and marine geochemistry, soil science (pedology), environmental toxic metals, condensed matter physics theory, materials magnetism, metallurgy, organic chemistry, planetary science and meteoritics, mineralogy, aquatic biogeochemistry and biotic mineralization, diffraction and spectroscopic measurement theory (quantum mechanics and statistical analysis), and statistical sensitivity analysis (co-variance, inference, error propagation, etc.).
(Do a Google-Scholar search for author “DG Rancourt”.)
As a teacher, Denis Rancourt developed courses in undergraduate physics, environmental physics, materials science, graduate condensed matter physics, graduate measurement theory (spectroscopy, diffraction, microscopy), quantum mechanics, graduate magnetism, science in society, an "activism course" implemented by "academic squatting", a popular cinema politica weekly series, and others.

Main scientific discoveries and contributions:


•    Solution to the Invar Problem of metal physics

•    Description of the meteorite mineral antitaenite

•    Derivation of the fundamental quantification relation of X-ray diffraction

•    Discovery of the reactive diagenetic Fe-oxyhydroxide phase in lake and marine sediments

•    Description of the phenomenon of superferromagnetism

•    Advances in Mössbauer spectroscopy methodology

•    Advances in layer silicate crystal chemistry and geosensors

•    Descriptions of novel soil and aqueous environment biogeochemical reactions


Main on-going scientific interests:


•   Global carbon pools and fluxes
•   Climate-driven soil development
•   Reactive environmental Fe-oxyhydroxide nanoparticles

•    Environmental and mineral magnetism

•    Lake and marine early sediment diagenesis

•    Aquatic geochemistry and biogeochemistry

•    Development of measurement methods:  diffraction and spectroscopy

•    Physics education research (PER)
•    Professional responsibility and ethics (in science and in institutions)
•    Theory of societal change, pedagogy of liberation

Some main recent scientific publications are as follows.  

Reprints available on request.


Invar Physics and Meteorite Minerals


D.G. Rancourt and M.-Z. Dang.  Relation between anomalous magneto-volume behaviour and magnetic frustration in Invar alloys.  Physical Review B 54 (1996) 12225-12231.

D.G. Rancourt, K. Lagarec, A. Densmore, R.A. Dunlap, J.I. Goldstein, R.J. Reisener, and R.B. Scorzelli.  Experimental Proof of the Distinct Electronic Structure of a New Meteoritic Fe-Ni Alloy Phase.   Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials  191 (1999) L255-L260.

K. Lagarec and D.G. Rancourt.  Fe3Ni-type chemical order in Fe65Ni35 films grown by evaporation: Implications regarding the Invar Problem.  Physical Review B   62 (2000) 978-985.

K. Lagarec, D.G. Rancourt, S.K. Bose, B. Sanyal, and R.A. Dunlap.  Observation of a composition-controlled high-moment/low-moment transition in the face centered cubic Fe-Ni system:  Invar effect is an expansion, not a contraction.   Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 236 (2001) 107-130.

D.G. Rancourt.  Invar behaviour in Fe-Ni alloys is predominantly a local moment effect arising from the magnetic exchange interactions between high moments.  Phase Transitions 75 (2001) 201-209.


Environmental Geochemistry


C. van der Zee, D. Roberts, D.G. Rancourt, C.P. Slomp.  Nanogoethite is the dominant reactive oxyhydroxide phase in lake and marine sediments.  Geology 31 (2003) 993-996.

D.G. Rancourt, P.-J. Thibault, D. Mavrocordatos, G. Lamarche.  Hydrous ferric oxide precipitation in the presence of nonmetabolizing bacteria:  Constraints on the mechanism of a biotic effect.  Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 69 (2005) 553-577.

A. Thompson, O.A. Chadwick, D.G. Rancourt, J. Chorover.  Iron-oxide crystallinity increases during soil redox oscillations.  Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 70 (2006) 1710-1727.

A, Génin, J.-M. Grenèche, C. Tournassat, J. Brendlé, D.G. Rancourt, L. Charlet.  Reversible surface-sorption-induced electron-transfer oxidation of Fe(II) at reactive sites on a synthetic clay mineral.  Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 71 (2007) 863-876.

P.-J. Thibault, D.G. Rancourt, R.J. Evans, and J.E. Dutrizac.  Mineralogical confirmation of a P:Fe = 1:2 limiting stoichiometric ratio in colloidal P-bearing ferrihydrite-like hydrous ferric oxide.  Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 73 (2009) 364-376.


Environmental and Mineral Magnetism


D.G. Rancourt.  Magnetism of Earth, planetary, and environmental nanoparticles.  In:  Nanoparticles and the Environment, J.F. Banfield and A. Navrotsky (editors), Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry  44 (2001) 217-292 (Chapter 7).

D.G. Rancourt, F. González-Lucena, P.-J. Thibault.  Magnetic granulometry from equilibrium magnetization measurements:  Mineral magnetometry of superparamagnetic particles and application to synthetic ferrihydrites.  American Mineralogist 89 (2004) 987-997.


X-ray Diffraction Theory


D.G. Rancourt and M.-Z. Dang.  Absolute quantification by powder X-ray diffraction of complex mixtures of crystalline and amorphous phases for applications in the Earth sciences.  American Mineralogist 90 (2005) 1571-1586.

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Some Media Interviews with Denis Rancourt

Interviews







- and follow up from listeners… [click HERE]


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Essays and articles by Denis Rancourt

Book released in January 2013::: "Hierarchy and free expression in the fight against racism"

Grouped by topic::: Links to Denis Rancourt's essays about the student condition and student liberation

Grouped by topic::: All essays about health or medicine (label "medical" at Activist Teacher)

Grouped by topic::: All essays about Israel / Israel Lobby / Palestine / Gaza  (label "Israel" at Activist Teacher)

Grouped by topic::: Denis Rancourt on climate science

All articles at Dissident Voice::: http://dissidentvoice.org/author/denisrancourt/

All articles at Veterans Today::: http://www.veteranstoday.com/author/rancourt/


All-category essays by Denis Rancourt:


 
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Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Cancer arises from stress-induced breakdown of tissue homeostasis

Note: The full article, with 80 footnotes, is HERE-PDF.
(and ALTERNATIVE-LINK) 
(and on ResearchGate doi: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1304.7129)


Is it time to abandon mutation-centric metastasis as the dominant paradigm? Does ‘seed and soil’ do more harm than good?

By Denis G. Rancourt  , PhD

Abstract

Part-I:  I critically review the context of cancer research, where it has been advanced that most published research findings are false, that medicine itself is the third leading cause of death in the Western world, and that experienced stress arising from an individual’s position in society’s dominance hierarchy is the primary determinant of individual health.

Part-II:  I critically review the randomized trials for treatments and screening, especially for breast cancer. It has been advanced that screening does more harm than good, and that treatment protocols have little effect on net population mortality from cancer. There is no robust demonstration that the treatment protocols for the common cancers do more good than harm to individual patients.

Part-III:  I critically review the mutation-centric metastasis dominant paradigm of cancer, and various efforts to somewhat or definitively challenge the dominant paradigm, with an eye to answering the question “What is cancer?”

Final section:  I propose a conceptual model of cancer, which incorporates the leading criticisms of the dominant paradigm, and which is testable. In my model, cancer is an age-dependent and tissue-specific stress-induced breakdown of tissue-shape homeostasis. My model is aided by a graphical picture depicting age-specific and tissue-specific curves of steady-state nodule size (DT) versus experienced stress level (S). A given curve has a critical stress (SC) beyond which there is runaway tumour growth due to tissue-response feedback. Here, “metastasis” is the simple consequence of the individual’s tissue susceptibility to loss of shape homeostasis having gone supercritical for a cluster of tissue-specific DT v. S curves. The model provides treatment strategies on three branches: Psychological, tissue-surface-shape homeostasis, and tumour growth feedback attenuation.


Introduction

This paper was presented in the uOttawa Cinema Academica series at the University of Ottawa on November 21, 2015. A video of the presentation is on YouTube (PART-ONE, PART-TWO).  It will be “peer reviewed” if peers and others review it.

I am not a medical doctor. I am an interdisciplinary scientist with a PhD in physics. I have published over 100 articles in scientific journals, in a broad array of disciplines.

My starting outlook in researching cancer is best represented by these three non-journal-article publications:

•    “A Theory of Chronic Pain: A social and evolutionary theory of human disease and chronic pain” (2011)
•    “Self-Image-Incongruence Theory of Individual Health” (2014), and references therein
•    Chapter: “Human Biology id Such that People Make and Inhabit Dominance Hierarchies”, in my 2013 book

The paper is organized in three main parts, followed by my proposal for a unifying model of cancer.

PART-I: Context of Cancer Research

Approximately 30% of us who are fortunate enough to live in the Western countries will be diagnosed to have died of cancer. Breast cancer is the main life-threatening disease affecting women, when tumours are present on several organs.

Prior to starting this review to find out what establishment science actually knows about cancer, it is important to admit the possibility that medicine is largely a pack of lies, the usual kinds of lies that provide the mental environment substrate that is created and maintained by any professional group that claims high status in society. In that sense, medicine should be viewed as no different than law, or even basic science itself.

Some prominent critics have made this observation from within the medical establishment, in different ways. For example, the “Gold Effect” was described by Professor T. Gold in 1979 and is the phenomenon in which a scientific (often medical) idea is developed to the status of an accepted position within a professional body or association by the social process itself of scientific conferences, committees, and consensus building, despite not being supported by conclusive evidence. 

The Gold Effect was reviewed by Drs. Petr Skrabanek and James McCormick in their book Follies and Fallacies in Medicine,  and it is used to analyze errors in public health policy and practice, such as the widespread use of cholesterol screening in the prevention of cardiovascular disease.

Most published research findings are false

From a different perspective, renowned medical researcher John P.A. Ioannidis applied Bayesian statistical modelling to prove that it is likely that “most published research findings are false”.  I know something about Bayesian inference theory.  I found Dr. Ioannidis’ argument to be entirely rigorous. Other Bayesian practitioners were critical of the work,  but Ioannidis ably put them in their place.

Ioannidis showed that published medical claims of net benefits of a treatment (such as a regiment of one or more drugs) or of policy implementation (such as cancer screening or vaccination), based on statistical evaluation of large randomized trials, are most often false. In his words:

“Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”

He also points out what is essentially an alternative statement of the Gold Effect:

“… when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance … The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true.”

And he clearly describes main sources of researcher bias:

“Prejudice may not necessarily have financial roots. Scientists in a given field may be prejudiced purely because of their belief in a scientific theory or commitment to their own findings. Many otherwise seemingly independent, university-based studies may be conducted for no other reason than to give physicians and researchers qualifications for promotion or tenure. Such nonfinancial conflicts may also lead to distorted reported results and interpretations. Prestigious investigators may suppress via the peer review process the appearance and dissemination of findings that refute their findings, thus condemning their field to perpetuate false dogma. Empirical evidence on expert opinion shows that it is extremely unreliable.”

In his most recent critical overview, Ioannidis is merciless in his assessment of the medical research enterprise, even questioning whether fundamental lab-bench science is of any use in advancing medicine for patient benefit.  In his words:

“… a novel model is needed in funding research to avoid the creation of narrow, isolated specialties that only self-perpetuate … For example, human genetics research has received tremendous funding. This money has not been wasted because other activities and high-tech industry have emerged to support the needs of the genetics community. However, few lives have been saved because of accumulated human genetics knowledge to date, and future prospects (eg, extensions to personalized and precision medicine) also are not promising. Similarly, intellectual fascination in neuroscience for many decades has led to few new practical applications …”

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Dear honourable Sayyid Ali Khamenei

Dear honourable Sayyid Ali Khamenei:

Although I am not young in years, I read your November 29, 2015, letter to Western youth (in English, en français) with great interest and fascination. The letter excited both my intellect and my heart.

Iran is truly blessed to have a servant such as you. In Canada, we have only disingenuous and self-interested petty politicians who vie for corporate and USA favour, and who speak in platitudes for the national media.

I really appreciated your deep analysis of the psychological and geopolitical roots of global terrorism. I believe that your explanation is fundamentally correct, and I am amazed at your communication of this truth.

I hope that Western youth will study and critique your letter, and, as you, I hope that it will help to catalyze a much needed awakening of the Western heart and mind.

In thankful admiration,

Denis Rancourt
(Former university professor)

Related post: Paris - Who made the terror?


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Saturday, November 14, 2015

Paris -- Who made the terror?

By Denis G. Rancourt

PARIS, FRANCE - JANUARY 12: French troops patrol around the Eifel Tower on January 12, 2015 in Paris, France. France is set to deploy 10,000 troops to boost security following last week's deadly attacks while also mobilizing thousands of police to patrol Jewish schools and synagogues. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** 

The US and its allies murdered one million civilians in Iraq, using indefinite sanctions and war, destroyed all public infrastructure, and gutted all institutions. Do you think that would cause some people to be pissed off and desperate?

These “leaders of the free world” went on to inflict the same such “humanitarian” medicine on Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria (by proxy) and Yemen. And these “leaders” condone the regular genocidal slaughters perpetrated by Israel as part of its brutal occupation and program of land seizures.

Do you think some people are starting to grasp the meaning of US “freedom and democracy”?
These wars target the land-based resources and territories of the Middle East, and target the Muslim populations in order to incapacitate them sufficiently not to develop self-governance. As such, these are racist wars, and their impact on populations is necessarily the imposition of extreme racist suppression.

Many Muslims both identify with those directly targeted by the wars and genocides and are themselves subjected to local racist suppression in the same Western countries that are the architects of the Middle East campaigns. The local racist suppression has many forms including: economic apartheid, police targeting, media Islamophobia, second-class citizenry, discriminatory administrative burdens, and daily racism.

An effective state response to diffuse or mask these domestic threats is “multiculturalism”. On the spectrum of state social engineering, this approach is more common in Canada and the UK, and less common in France and the US, which prefer hard-core forced integration and police-state sequestration.

In my view, the relatively high per-capita degree of “Muslim” revolt and now terror in France is a predictable consequence of the combination of French militarism abroad and French structural and societal racism. This creates a fertile ground in which young desperate men (who perceive the Western geopolitical onslaught against “Islam” – against their identity – and against any influence they might have in the world) will want to lash out and act against the perceived oppressor, as violently as possible.

This “fertile ground” can spontaneously create acts of terror that do not have a clear geo-strategic purpose, that are locally nurtured by the physiological “rewards” of action, amplified by the media attention and by the feedback of “solidarity in desperation”. These are features of gang-culture psychology.

The same “fertile ground” can also be exploited and manipulated by state actors, of both the home state and other states. There are two aspects of such exploitation: A state can exploit the outcome of the terror, or a state can more directly covertly influence the execution of the terror, such as by facilitating access to weapons, by infiltration, by entrapment, etc.

The analyst must keep in mind that there is no doubt that a Western home state can perpetrate horrendous acts of violence against its own citizens. In the words of Paul Craig Roberts:
“Some people are so naive and stupid as to think that no government would kill its own citizens. But governments do so all the time. There are an endless number of false flag attacks, such as Operation Gladio. Operation Gladio was a CIA/Italian intelligence operation that relentlessly bombed innocent Italians, such as those waiting in a train station, murdering hundreds, and then blaming the violence on the European communist parties in the post-WW II era in order to block the communists from electoral gains.
A president of Italy revealed the truth about Operation Gladio, and you can read the sordid detail in a number of books and online. The bombings were not done, as was widely reported in the corrupt Western media, by communists. The bombings were done by Italian intelligence aided by the CIA. In one of the Italian investigatory hearings, a member of Italian intelligence said that the sites to be bombed were chosen in order to maximize the deaths of women and children, because these victims were most useful in discrediting the communists.”

With Paris, the home state is already exploiting the outcome of the terror to prop up its image and to justify whatever “responses” it will want to have. France is completely in league with Saudi Arabia in supporting ISIS mercenary thugs to remove Assad, and now it will use this domestic terror as a pretext for more muscular (illegal) military interventions to weaken the state that will be headed by Assad, as the current Russia-backed victories against ISIS continue. This is a disgustingly cynical manipulation of the victims of terrorism by French rulers.

If France wanted to respect the victims of these terror attacks it would stop its callous messaging exploitation, stop creating terror in other nations, concentrate on and allow independent investigative police work that is not politically hampered, be transparent about the results of such independent investigations, and concentrate on repairing domestic social injustices.

Finally, if we wish to theorize about which outside nations would most benefit from covertly facilitating the Paris terror, we need only ask which outside nation or gang would have realistic motives. The terror is of benefit to ISIS for recruiting, no doubt. The frantic police-state reactions are a gift to those who seek the empowerment and adrenaline of direct action. The state reaction conveys fear loud and clear. Just in that regard, the French government is irresponsible, and must next appear to have captured or killed to perpetrators. ISIS also benefits by a multiplication of battle fronts, and the potential to discourage or frenzy the enemy, although that is an unrealistic long shot. Furthermore, ISIS does not have physical access to the “fertile ground”. Thus, in my view, it is unlikely that the terror was directed or facilitated by ISIS.

Another state actor that could obviously benefit is Israel. Israel has been a constant promoter of the doctrine of a “war on terror” and of a constant and global terror threat that can only be solved by removing all the regional nations seeking independence from US domination, which compete against Israeli control of the region (Iran, Syria, Iraq, …) [1]. In the case of Paris, the Western media have already attributed the terror to ISIS, without any actual investigation, and the desired and foreseen or planned response could be a NATO intervention into Syria and Iraq? That would be ideal for Israel, because it would incapacitate any future Syria and Iraq, and would weaken Syrian allies Iran and Hezbollah.

Probably, Germany and other EU nations will see that a such NATO war would be a high-risk venture that can only create more terror and refugees for Europe, all for the benefit of Israel and US geopolitical domination.  Hopefully, Paris will not be a 9/11 event that launches new colonial wars of aggression. Hopefully, Europe will think for itself and not step into another US project of death.

Endnote: My personal and limited knowledge of French society comes from having traveled, lived, and worked in France. I have witnessed the egregious class segregation and extreme racism of that country first hand, and have personally suffered some of its consequences. Within the young professional classes in Paris there is little racism, but between the dominant social classes towards the lower classes there is viscous and palpable racism. The disdain of the elite classes for the working and un-working classes is highly racialized, as is their view of former French colonies. The French ruling and elite classes are extremely chauvinistic and racist. I have not felt anything so palpable in other European countries where I have worked or traveled for work: The Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, UK, … In my view, this determinative class-racism is part of the mechanism that creates this domestic terror, as I have outlined above.

[1] http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/11/10/iran-deal-fallout-clarifies-the-geopolitics-of-apartheid-and-genocide/
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