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This Australian study: https://researchonline.jcu.edu... found that adding seaweed to the diet of cattle reduced their methane emissions by up to 99%. That seems a lot simpler and faster than breeding for reduced methane; in any case the special breeds probably wouldn't have 99% reduction. Let's do both.

Lucky us, it's not poison in the conventional sense. The injection is an agar medium that encourages the growth of pathogenic bacteria, in doing so artificially inducing lethal illness which kills the starfish by bacterial consumption, without introducing any harmful toxins into the ocean. I dug up the paper here, it's actually what my first concern was, bioamplification of the toxin from decomposers to higher-order predators. While COTS seem susceptible to the disease, with other nearby healthy ones, left uninjected, sometimes also becoming infected. Bonus points, another species they tested fared well. (They do note further research necessary, though.)

Pasteur’s anguish at the national crisis was magnified by the loss of his laboratory and the threat to his son's life. The war had jeopardised everything he cared about - Nation, Family and Science - and he was physically incapable of fighting back. This overwhelming feeling of impotence left him with an obsessive hatred of Germans and their nation and, by the end of the war, Pasteur had formulated a plan to avenge his nation’s honour.
At the time, although Germany had become the world leader in industrial chemistry, her main export was beer. Indeed, as part of the reparations demanded of France, Germany had subsumed Alsace and Lorraine, where hops were the primary crop and much of France's own beer production had been based. German beer outsold local brews throughout most of central Europe because it tasted better and kept longer, and its continued sale in France irritated Pasteur intensely. He planned to destroy Germany’s primary export market by developing the world's best beer in France, a brew he dubbed 'the beer of revenge'.
...
A brilliant young Belgian brewer, Auguste de Bavay, met Pasteur on one of his trips and adopted his methods before emigrating to Melbourne, where he was employed at the Victoria Parade Brewery. Because of the warmer temperatures in Australia, de Bavay had to adapt Pasteur's methods to top fermentation. To protect against spoilage, he added greater amounts of hops, and fermented to a higher alcohol content. The highly fertile soils and plentiful sunshine resulted in increased levels of protein in the barley, which caused clouding of the beer, so de Bavay replaced some of the barley malt with cane sugar. The resulting beer was that now characteristic of Australia: light in colour and body, but tasting strongly of bitter hops. This style, although correctly described as a 'bitter' in Australia, is usually mistaken for a lager in Britain.
de Bavay was quickly promoted to chief brewer at Fosters, a position he held from 1894 to 1904

http://www.jcu.edu.au/cgc/Beer...

At our university, we have a dedicated eResearch center that exists solely to develop software for academics. The staff are a mixture of part-time grad students and full-time experienced professionals. It's not particularly cheap, but it is good quality and closely tied to academia, and it's often not hard to find funding in the form of grants.

I'm not saying you should hire us in particular, but I imagine other universities would have similar programs. If nothing else, it saves you the trouble of sourcing individual coders.

Of course, I just updated my understanding of the distinction between primary and secondary sources by checking....Wikipedia :-).

(Of course, Wikipedia DOES direct you to James Cook University's summary at http://www.library.jcu.edu.au/LibraryGuides/primsrcs.shtml :

• Primary sources are original materials on which other research is based
• They are usually the first formal appearance of results in the print or electronic literature (for example, the first publication of the results of scientific investigations is a primary source.)
• They present information in its original form, neither interpreted nor condensed nor evaluated by other writers.
• They are from the time period (for example, something written close to when what it is recording happened is likely to be a primary source.)
• Primary sources present original thinking, report on discoveries, or share new information.

Some examples of primary sources:

• scientific journal articles reporting experimental research results
• proceedings of Meetings, Conferences and Symposia.
• technical reports
• dissertations or theses (may also be secondary)
• patents
• sets of data, such as census statistics
• works of literature (such as poems and fiction)
• diaries
• autobiographies
• interviews, surveys and fieldwork
• letters and correspondence
• speeches
• newspaper articles (may also be secondary)
• government documents
• photographs and works of art
• original documents (such as birth certificate or trial transcripts)
• Internet communications on email, listservs, and newsgroups

You're a sharp individual. I liked reading that story.

I think the original poster should take a quick look at their learning style (Global Learner or Sequential Learner), which may have been part of the problem from the very beginning:
http://www.jcu.edu.au/studying/services/studyskills/learningst/sequential.html

Of the hundreds of comments attached to this story, yours is by far the most insightful and informative. I disagree with your polite "none very impressive", and think you're wrong about "none in global warming" and "unqualified scientist". That panel is composed of professional Greenhouse deniers. They are "impressive" and "qualified" to testify before a Canadian fake "Conservative" government that's hired by polluters to protect Canada's giant fossil fuel exports to the US (our #1 supplier). And probably dreams of a "warm Canada" their vast real estate holdings can finally cash in on as people "migrate" from uninhabitable regions to the south, while finally getting a year-round passage between East and West hemispheres across the Arctic.

Just look at their actual resumes, of course not quoted by "Canada's Fastest Growing Independent News Source", probably also funded by the Canadian Greenhouse industry and their global Murdoch partners.

Tim Patterson is a geologist, not a climate scientist - exactly the kind of scientist the BS article excludes to fake its conclusion that most Greenhouse scientists aren't qualified.
Boris Winterhalter is also a geologist, not a climatologist.
Geologists mostly work for the oil business, which is where most of the money for the entire science comes from, their peers who review, their "next gig pool".

Bob Carter doesn't even rate a page at his tiny Australian department where he's just an "Adjunct" professor.
Timothy Ball's "EnviroTruth" org is a division of the National Center for Public Policy Research, an front for Exxon Greenhouse denial propaganda and other Vast RightWing Conspiracy players.
Wibjörn Karlén's research supports Gore, but he signs the BS letter anyway.
Dick Morgan doesn't have an Exeter page, nor does he have ">any recorded association with the World Meteorological Association, so he has no credentials whatsoever, apart from lying.

These people are professional Greenhouse deniers. That Canadian panel and its Canadian tabloid (an obvious rightwing rag, just looking at its front page) are cheap fronts for the polluters responsible for the Greenhouse. They're not even trying to hide it more than a couple of googles and clicks deep, they hate us so much. And judging from the hundreds of posts in this story falling for it, we are that stupid.

Tim Patterson http://http-server.carleton.ca/~tpatters/publicati ons/2002_04.html

Bob Carter http://www.es.jcu.edu.au/research/msgbs.html

Timothy Ball http://www.envirotruth.org/drball.cfm

Boris Winterhalter http://www.kolumbus.fi/boris.winterhalter/papers.h tm

Wibjörn Karlén http://www.misu.su.se/research/reconstruction_nh.h tml Look the graphic of the papaer

Dick Morgan http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=Dick+Morg an+site%3Aexeter.ac.uk&btnG=SearchHe don't even have a page on Exeter

TFA says: "Because what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field."

OK, I'll bite. Let's see "Prof. Bob Carter"'s qualifications. When you search for them, you get to this page http://www.es.jcu.edu.au/research/msgbs.html, where you find out that (a) Prof. Bob Carter is in reality just Dr. Bob Carter, and (b) that his field of research is palaeontology, and not earth climate.

DDT did not decimate the ecosystem of Borneo

Okay, okay, decimate is too strong a word. But it did damage the rivers severely causing large fish die-offs, and when you kill off an entire species in the areas (cats), that's not exactly "no effect."

There were no outbreaks of plague or typhus.

Curiously enough, I didn't say there was. I said the cats were dropped to stop the population from dying. It worked.

Every instance you find of someone saying this is someone retelling a trumped up story they heard. The cats were dropped because there was FEAR an outbreak would occur. It didn't. ... because they dropped the cats!

What am I missing here?

The insect control measures in Borneo are today considered to have been a great success. The problem of malaria went away. Thousands of children lived who might otherwise have died

Yes. Which is why I'm not opposed to it in principle. I'm opposed to people who say it doesn't do any damage. It does. You have to know what you're doing ahead of time. If you just blindly go ahead and do it on a large scale, you could end up with more problems than you started with.

Incidentally, regarding "children living who might otherwise have died", you might want to take a look at Corin & Weaver's paper from the JRTPH. DDT's effects in humans, while not life-threatening, should cause problems with lactation cycles and premature births. It's entirely possible given the levels used that DDT is a net detriment. In any case, it's worse than alternative treatments.

Sorry, I just don't take USAID's position on DDT seriously. They have in the past shown themselves to be tools of of the anti-DDT environmental lobby.

There's plenty of evidence to support their claim. See here, for instance, or here, both of which show that insecticide-treated nets are more cost effective than DDT.

Okay, okay, you're right in that it was just a catalyst. Bah. Semantics. It made their roofs collapse faster than they expected.

I think that the report also draws the conclusion that the unintended consequences of the spraying were relatively minor compared to the benefits. Of course, if it was my roof sitting on my floor, I might think differently.

Exactly - and that really was my point. I quoted the farmer's response from the Charlotte Pomerantz book elsewhere, and it's really the most appropriate (but this is Slashdot, and so people automatically assume I'm saying DDT is the devil) - it essentially was "look, don't get us wrong, DDT is great - but next time, guys, could you not kill our cats and knock our roofs down?"

Of course, the other thing to realize is that by not being careful with previous uses of DDT, the locals were really against future spraying. Just blindly using DDT in other areas - like Africa - could lead to the same mentality.

If I really wanted to be against DDT, I'd quote the Corin and Weaver paper from last year showing that DDT may actually cause a significant amount of infant mortality by causing premature births and screwing up lactation periods.

Although, now that I think about it - that actually sounds scarily familiar to the Borneo case, where something that looks like an obvious benefit ends up possibly causing as much harm through indirect means.

Indeed - the memory management units are in hardware on each side of the interconnects, meaning that it is transparent to the software. Not totally, because the software (kernel + userspace utils) makes the decision as to where on the machine it places memory on malloc()

So yes, there is only a single copy of the Operating System running, but that doesn't mean it's SMP. SMP code will run without recompilation, but won't be as efficient or perform anywhere near as well as hand optimized code. But they definitely aren't SMP - they're a cross between a cluster and an SMP machine.

I highly recommend reading John Mashey's comp.arch posting to comp.arch which explains the Origin, and what became the Altix. Origin was essentially Altix with MIPS CPUs, not Itanium.

I worked on a 64 CPU MIPS Origin 3000 for a year in a research role.

More info on the cane toad. Heck, but the video.

Or a beta loser.

I believe MIPS is also an open architecture, so if that's important consider buying an SGI Origin.

Backplanes are so 1994.

NUMA == Non-Uniform Memory Access. There is still *one* kernel, cache coherency, and a shared memory space. Of course you can partition a system if you like.

Read Mr. Mashey's excellent NUMAflex paper.

You don't *have* to rewrite anything. This is why SGI stills sells development workstations. You can compile on an Octane and then run on an Origin.

Wonder if we'll see any IA-64 workstation products from SGI or will HP be the only game in town.

Lastly, most SGI customers develop their own software so the 3rd-party is usually irrelevant.

Tony Buzan started the research (or at least he is the source I remember) of Mind Mapping. I remember seeing a show on PBS when I lived in a log home in Fayettevilly Georgia, USA. It struck me that the concept of mapping the mind could make recall completely mechanical. It is an extremely organic process otherwise.

You can pick up his books at any online bookstore. Just search for Tony Buzan and Mind Mapping. There are a ton of quacks that ripped the ideas and produced varied qualities of literature on the subject. I understand his book is dull, though enlightening. Buzan Centers is online, along with a short explaination at James Cook University's (Australia) website.

There are two basic focii for the memory enthusiast. There is regressive memories and improved recall. People who focus on recall are typically goal oriented toward application for career or educational purposes. Regressive memories are usually sorted to deal with tramas or personal growth.

Mega Memory is a course available from Kevin Trudeau's website. You may have seen that goofy infomercial whilst staying up late on wee morning hour in the mid nineties (showing my age here). Also, there are a ton of similar courses available online. I endorse none, but many have great ideas behind them and will improve your memory.

I find this subject facinating and hope anyone who wants to pursue the improvement of their mind shares their findings with me personally. If you have had success, please feel free to share via email directly.

Tony Buzan started the research (or at least he is the source I remember) of Mind Mapping. I remember seeing a show on PBS when I lived in a log home in Fayettevilly Georgia, USA. It struck me that the concept of mapping the mind could make recall completely mechanical. It is an extremely organic process otherwise.

You can pick up his books at any online bookstore. Just search for Tony Buzan and Mind Mapping. There are a ton of quacks that ripped the ideas and produced varied qualities of literature on the subject. I understand his book is dull, though enlightening. Buzan Centers is online, along with a short explaination at James Cook University's (Australia) website.

There are two basic focii for the memory enthusiast. There is regressive memories and improved recall. People who focus on recall are typically goal oriented toward application for career or educational purposes. Regressive memories are usually sorted to deal with tramas or personal growth.

Mega Memory is a course available from Kevin Trudeau's website. You may have seen that goofy infomercial whilst staying up late on wee morning hour in the mid nineties (showing my age here). Also, there are a ton of similar courses available online. I endorse none, but many have great ideas behind them and will improve your memory.

I find this subject facinating and hope anyone who wants to pursue the improvement of their mind shares their findings with me personally. If you have had success, please feel free to share via email directly.

O3K is a single-image system. Go back to reading the theory please, or stop posting nonsense.

Your intuition is somewhat correct regarding latency penalties for access to "remote" memory versus "local" memory in a NUMA system. However, while a Sun *Fire has a latency penalty of 10:1 for such cases, an SGI O3K has a 1.5:1 "penalty"; hardly a penalty at all. Most people do not bother at all about latency; in those rare cases when people try to optimise for NUMA "remote" memory access, they do that for reasons of bandwidth, not latency (like, backing up 1TB in one hour :-D dumb example, i know, but it's the only real one that comes to mind).
Please read this article for more info:

NUMAflex Modular Design Approach

Also remember that Mosix has latency penalties many orders of magnitude worse than NUMA. Difficult to overcome that.
Not to mention that many problems are "almost parallel" - that means there's a need for heavy data exchange between nodes all the time (many weather prediction algorithms, etc.); with those, no matter how smart your programmers are, you just can't workaround a bad latency in a typical cheap network cluster (Beowulf, Mosix) - you simply need a true single image NUMA system like an SGI O3K.

NUMAflex Modular Design Approach

Quote:
SGI's "NUMAflex" (TM) modular design approach builds computer families
with unusual scalability and evolvability characteristics. It partitions
CPU, I/O, and other functions into small, 19" rackmount computing "bricks",
then combines them via efficient, high-speed cache-coherent cabled interconnects,
rather than large backplanes.

I see lots of errors and misunderstandings here. Apparently people have a hard time understanding tech. that is not in thier PC.

NUMAflex is the coolest concept in systems architecture today. I'm eager to see some trickle down into lower-end markets.

Read this before you post:

John Mashey's excellent NUMAflex paper.

I love to be elitist.

I love to flaunt my l33t sk3llz in front of the unwashed masses, but I know that it is the time I put into the craft and not any innate talent that separates "us and them."

I was lucky enough to grow up in a middle-class family and be exposed to the computer from the age of 3. I was lucky that my father, who dropped out of engineering in college, and I sat down through my childhood and went through basic programming skills. I'm lucky that I was enrolled in a preschool where I learned logo.

I look at my cousins, and I see that many of them never saw a computer except the few times they could use a dilapidated Apple IIe at their under funded school. I saw them taught by elementary teachers who still cringe at the word algebra.

Of course people are entering college with less than ideal study skills! Many have never needed to learn how to learn in an academic setting.

The good news is that we all can learn how to learn more effectively. The bad news is that many are already 10 to 15 years behind those in luckier positions.

Now, on how to bridge the gap... I'm partial to the Core Java series, especially the Fundamentals book. It's quite readable for a language book, and doesn't require any experience.

The best way to prepare for a test in CS is to First, take every programming assignment and code pieces on paper with a time limit. Then type in the results and see the mistakes. Finally, after solving the problem, try to code it on paper again with the same time limit.

The key to CS tests is often rote memorization. I remember seeing many people fail to answer a question because they didn't remember a command in class that made part of the problem trivial. Again, the solution is to write on paper first, then approach the computer.

How to take notes in class? Teach Mind mapping. Teach the basics -- Between mind mapping and rewriting notes, I had a 15% advantage on every test I took in school.

People seem to have coding tips here already, so I'll skip to organization. How big is the group? If you have more than 5-7 people, split them into groups of 5-7, as this has been empirically shown to produce the best results (I know Bormann was involved with research on this topic...) Randomly assign the groups, then let people trade. That, or divvy up topics after groups are decided, and then people can trade as necessary. Let them choose one person to be accountable to a director. That way, groups are being managed rather than hordes of people.

Finally, let rewards be having their name put on part of the work. It looks great on resumes and grad school applications. This may just be sufficient motivation for high-powered individuals to take ownerships of writing parts of the project. Bring in some English or Journalism majors and offer them editor credits. The goal should be writing well enough that the English major can understand the topic well enough to correct it. This insures that the writing will be accessable to your target Audience.

Good luck! And don't forget to open source the license for the world to use! :)

Exactly. Who here would be willing to pay >$900 for a copy of Quake III ? No one, that's who.

Cheap software == bugs. Examples being pretty much all commercial software.

Expensive software == a lot less bugs. Examples being, the Space Shuttle.

The software in the shuttle cost upwards of $1000 per line of code written.

Despite growing up in small-town Iowa, I managed to develop a taste for rap/hip-hop/techno/etc.especially scratching. (I think it all started with Run-D.M.C.'s "Peter Piper" from Raising Hell.)

Anyway, I listened to "CowboyNeal Meets R2D2" and "All That Scratchin'" and wanted to extend my complements! They're quite good! (I also noted the reference to DJ QBertfor Christmas I received one of Mix Master Mike's CDs, another of the Invisbl Skratch Piklz and DJ for the Beastie Boys)

I'd like to learn this skill. Jon, what sort of turntables do you own? Someday, perhaps I'll get some DJ-quality turntables. . . I've got a lot of vinyl that needs playing . . .