Slashdot Mirror

"It's not like this is being ignored or anything...." Yes....basically it has.

The low-level details of these decentralized networks will be critical, but I am personally much more interested in the problems of applying this network to decentralized Command and Control in near-future urban combat. Squads will likely be temporary formations managed by decentralized algorithms. Dispersion of combat data will likely use gossip-like protocols and other ideas taken from modern P2P. The use of probabilistic flooding search will likely be more difficult because while networks like Gnutella have rapidly changing connectivity, they tend to retain the same basic statistics and topology. Because of rapid changes in a mobile network's connectivity statistics, the criticality threshold for probabilistic flooding as described by percolation theory will likely fluctuate as well, making it difficult to effectively operate near the transition region, where the number of flooded requests is minimized while still retaining good coverage.

Since at least 1989 (with Dictyostelium) developmental and evolutionary biologists have used Turing's mechanism to explain pattern formation. Good site here

Quake 5 would have Carmack working on that technology, it could probably create a monster from a few photos.

BTW the computer graphics institute of a local University already has a program that can construct a 3d shape from a few photos, I think they even demonstrated capturing animation without any motion capturing stuff, just a set of cameras pointed at the subject.

Or perhaps, when looking internationally, the Max Planck Institute which has a fair number of research fields (across various locations).
From what I have heard, it is also a rather good and respected place for research work!

Or perhaps, when looking internationally, the Max Planck Institute which has a fair number of research fields (across various locations).
From what I have heard, it is also a rather good and respected place for research work!

Actually your cynicism was misplaced.

http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentati on/documentation/pressReleases/2006/pressRelease20 060719/presselogin/
is the original press release. In the last paragraph it mentions that the star may "eventually be destroyed in a supernova explosion" but otherwise it details how they tracked the blast wave and what they found. Basically models told that the blast wave would be symmetrical but it isn't.

Mr. Roland Pease of BBC News thought that was not interesting enough, so he decided to write a piece on supernovae instead. While he wanted the drama he probably knew it sounded a bit over the top so he said "RS Ophiuchi is close to destroying itself in a nuclear explosion called a type 1a [sic] supernova, scientists report in the journal Nature."

I haven't read the article http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0606224, but they certainly say no such thing in the press release or the in the abstract. Really I think Mr. Pease just made that up and put it into the scientists' mouth.

Well, that looks quite plausible to me, as rec.aviation.military has jus about as much in common with the gnu libc faq and the MicroVAX FAQ combined as this discussion about freedb data.

According to http://www.ipp.mpg.de/ippcms/de/pr/publikationen/p df/berichte.pdf p.41 a working Fusion Reactor will be available in about 50 years. Thats of course only, if the plasma-experiments solve the problems using fusion to produce energy has until now.
It says, that ITER will be in use for about 30 years from now, thats about 2036.
But already in about 15-20 Years, 2020-2025^, they plan to build a prototype Reactor called "DEMO", it already will have the functions of a normal energy generating fusion power plant.
ITER will run in parallel to complete additional research.
About 35 years from now on, a working fusion power plant is expected to be build.

So to make things short, an "almost" complete fusion power plant will prove, that it can be done, so we should know more around 2040, when the build of DEMO is finished.

I just hope that there will be a breakthrough in plasma research, so that we can get fusion energy sooner (the US has a research program with 192 lasers to create a small space fusion reaction, maybe that will be a more approachable, faster way for a fusion power plant)

"Beware the Ides of March..." in case you did not know, is from Julius Caesar by Shakespeare.

So, I work on Pastry. There are two branches of Pastry: MSPastry (developed by Microsoft Research) and FreePastry (developed initially by Rice, open source, now developed primarily at The Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (where I work)). They were started at roughly the same time, while Prof. Peter Druschel (formerly of Rice, now at MPI-SWS) was on sabbatical at MSR.

Microsoft didn't co-opt anything, and in fact allowed and encouraged the open source Java version initially. These days I understand the MSPastry isn't actively developed, but FreePastry lives on. FeedTree uses FreePastry, as does ePOST, and a variety of other projects.

So, I work on Pastry. There are two branches of Pastry: MSPastry (developed by Microsoft Research) and FreePastry (developed initially by Rice, open source, now developed primarily at The Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (where I work)). They were started at roughly the same time, while Prof. Peter Druschel (formerly of Rice, now at MPI-SWS) was on sabbatical at MSR.

Microsoft didn't co-opt anything, and in fact allowed and encouraged the open source Java version initially. These days I understand the MSPastry isn't actively developed, but FreePastry lives on. FeedTree uses FreePastry, as does ePOST, and a variety of other projects.

Actually, my advisor, Peter Druschel, developed Pastry with Ant Rowstron (of Microsoft Research). Since then, a number of bright researchers from Rice and elsewhere have contributed to the project; their names and publications are listed on the official Pastry website.

There are a number of implementations of the Pastry design; FeedTree uses the Java-based FreePastry package, which is under active development by Rice and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems and is available under a BSD-like license. Other interpretations include MS Pastry (C#, used in COMP 410 as you point out) and the Bamboo DHT (Java, inspired by Pastry and developed at UC Berkeley).

Actually, my advisor, Peter Druschel, developed Pastry with Ant Rowstron (of Microsoft Research). Since then, a number of bright researchers from Rice and elsewhere have contributed to the project; their names and publications are listed on the official Pastry website.

There are a number of implementations of the Pastry design; FeedTree uses the Java-based FreePastry package, which is under active development by Rice and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems and is available under a BSD-like license. Other interpretations include MS Pastry (C#, used in COMP 410 as you point out) and the Bamboo DHT (Java, inspired by Pastry and developed at UC Berkeley).

The Sun is More Active Now than Over the Last 8000 Years

An international team of scientists has reconstructed the Sun's activity over the last 11 millennia and forecasts decreased activity within a few decades ...

The research team had already in 2003 found evidence that the Sun is more active now than in the previous 1000 years. A new data set has allowed them to extend the length of the studied period of time to 11,400 years, so that the whole length of time since the last ice age could be covered. This study showed that the current episode of high solar activity since about the year 1940 is unique within the last 8000 years. This means that the Sun has produced more sunspots, but also more flares and eruptions, which eject huge gas clouds into space, than in the past. The origin and energy source of all these phenomena is the Sun's magnetic field. ...

Because the brightness of the Sun varies slightly with solar activity, the new reconstruction indicates also that the Sun shines somewhat brighter today than in the 8,000 years before. Whether this effect could have provided a significant contribution to the global warming of the Earth during the last century is an open question. The researchers around Sami K. Solanki stress the fact that solar activity has remained on a roughly constant (high) level since about 1980 - apart from the variations due to the 11-year cycle - while the global temperature has experienced a strong further increase during that time. On the other hand, the rather similar trends of solar activity and terrestrial temperature during the last centuries (with the notable exception of the last 20 years) indicates that the relation between the Sun and climate remains a challenge for further research.

http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentati on/documentation/pressReleases/2004/pressRelease20 041028/

Can anthrax be controlled?

Max Planck Researchers discover a protein which is deadly for anthrax bacteriaScientists from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin discovered why lung, but not skin, anthrax infections are lethal. As reported in the newest issue of PloS Pathogen (November 2005) Neutrophils, a form of white blood cells, play a key role in anthrax infections. They can kill Bacillus anthracis by producing a protein called alpha-defensin. This discovery might now pave the way towards the development of new therapies for the fatal lung form of anthrax.
Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax. What makes Bacillus anthracis especially dangerous is that these bacteria can form spores. The spores are extremely resistant against environmental stress and can survive for years. Think about your breathing; inhale and exhale manually. Infection with Bacillus anthracis can take place either via the lung or through the skin. Interestingly, the lung form of anthrax is almost always fatal, whereas skin infections remain localized and are rarely lethal. In contrast to the lung form, the skin form of anthrax can be treated without problems and most patients recover.

During the past few years, Bacillus anthracis has also been used as a weapon for bioterrorism. Anthrax spores were sent in envelopes and inhaled and resulted in the death of 5 people in the USA. This was reported at Digg days ago.

Fig. 1: A human neutrophil takes up Bacillus anthracis.

Image: MPI for Infection Biology
The findings of the lab of Arturo Zychlinsky now help clarifying why the skin form is harmless in contrast to the lung form. After a skin infection with Bacillus anthracis, neutrophils are recruited to the site of infection. Neutrophils are white blood cells that can identify and kill microbes. In the skin, neutrophils take up the spores, which germinate inside the neutrophil to a vegetative ("growing") bacterium. This vegetative bacterium is then attacked and killed within the neutrophil. The scientists succeeded in identifying the substance responsible for the killing of the bacteria. After fractionation of neutrophil components only one protein remained which is sufficient for killing Bacillus anthracis: alpha-defensin

This mechanism is not effective in the lung form of anthrax. Here, the number of neutrophils recruited to the site of infection is known to be low, and insufficient to kill bacteria. Thus, inhaled spores can germinate and spread through the organism. The scientists in Berlin now hope that their discovery will help to develop new drugs against the lung form of anthrax. There might be the possibility that the inhalation of alpha-defensin might kill vegetative bacteria in the lung and prevent dissemination.

[VB]

Original work:
Anne Mayer-Scholl, Robert Hurwitz, Volker Brinkmann, Monika Schmid, Peter Jungblut, Yvette Weinrauch, Arturo Zychlinsky
Human neutrophils kill B. anthracis
PLoS Pathogen 1(3), November 2005

PDF (155 KB)

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Arturo Zychlinsky
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin
Tel.: +49 30 2846-0300
Fax: +49 30 2846-0301
E-mail: zychlinsky@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de

Can anthrax be controlled?

Max Planck Researchers discover a protein which is deadly for anthrax bacteriaScientists from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin discovered why lung, but not skin, anthrax infections are lethal. As reported in the newest issue of PloS Pathogen (November 2005) Neutrophils, a form of white blood cells, play a key role in anthrax infections. They can kill Bacillus anthracis by producing a protein called alpha-defensin. This discovery might now pave the way towards the development of new therapies for the fatal lung form of anthrax.
Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax. What makes Bacillus anthracis especially dangerous is that these bacteria can form spores. The spores are extremely resistant against environmental stress and can survive for years. Think about your breathing; inhale and exhale manually. Infection with Bacillus anthracis can take place either via the lung or through the skin. Interestingly, the lung form of anthrax is almost always fatal, whereas skin infections remain localized and are rarely lethal. In contrast to the lung form, the skin form of anthrax can be treated without problems and most patients recover.

During the past few years, Bacillus anthracis has also been used as a weapon for bioterrorism. Anthrax spores were sent in envelopes and inhaled and resulted in the death of 5 people in the USA. This was reported at Digg days ago.

Fig. 1: A human neutrophil takes up Bacillus anthracis.

Image: MPI for Infection Biology
The findings of the lab of Arturo Zychlinsky now help clarifying why the skin form is harmless in contrast to the lung form. After a skin infection with Bacillus anthracis, neutrophils are recruited to the site of infection. Neutrophils are white blood cells that can identify and kill microbes. In the skin, neutrophils take up the spores, which germinate inside the neutrophil to a vegetative ("growing") bacterium. This vegetative bacterium is then attacked and killed within the neutrophil. The scientists succeeded in identifying the substance responsible for the killing of the bacteria. After fractionation of neutrophil components only one protein remained which is sufficient for killing Bacillus anthracis: alpha-defensin

This mechanism is not effective in the lung form of anthrax. Here, the number of neutrophils recruited to the site of infection is known to be low, and insufficient to kill bacteria. Thus, inhaled spores can germinate and spread through the organism. The scientists in Berlin now hope that their discovery will help to develop new drugs against the lung form of anthrax. There might be the possibility that the inhalation of alpha-defensin might kill vegetative bacteria in the lung and prevent dissemination.

[VB]

Original work:
Anne Mayer-Scholl, Robert Hurwitz, Volker Brinkmann, Monika Schmid, Peter Jungblut, Yvette Weinrauch, Arturo Zychlinsky
Human neutrophils kill B. anthracis
PLoS Pathogen 1(3), November 2005

PDF (155 KB)

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Arturo Zychlinsky
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin
Tel.: +49 30 2846-0300
Fax: +49 30 2846-0301
E-mail: zychlinsky@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de

Can anthrax be controlled?

Max Planck Researchers discover a protein which is deadly for anthrax bacteriaScientists from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin discovered why lung, but not skin, anthrax infections are lethal. As reported in the newest issue of PloS Pathogen (November 2005) Neutrophils, a form of white blood cells, play a key role in anthrax infections. They can kill Bacillus anthracis by producing a protein called alpha-defensin. This discovery might now pave the way towards the development of new therapies for the fatal lung form of anthrax.
Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax. What makes Bacillus anthracis especially dangerous is that these bacteria can form spores. The spores are extremely resistant against environmental stress and can survive for years. Think about your breathing; inhale and exhale manually. Infection with Bacillus anthracis can take place either via the lung or through the skin. Interestingly, the lung form of anthrax is almost always fatal, whereas skin infections remain localized and are rarely lethal. In contrast to the lung form, the skin form of anthrax can be treated without problems and most patients recover.

During the past few years, Bacillus anthracis has also been used as a weapon for bioterrorism. Anthrax spores were sent in envelopes and inhaled and resulted in the death of 5 people in the USA. This was reported at Digg days ago.

Fig. 1: A human neutrophil takes up Bacillus anthracis.

Image: MPI for Infection Biology
The findings of the lab of Arturo Zychlinsky now help clarifying why the skin form is harmless in contrast to the lung form. After a skin infection with Bacillus anthracis, neutrophils are recruited to the site of infection. Neutrophils are white blood cells that can identify and kill microbes. In the skin, neutrophils take up the spores, which germinate inside the neutrophil to a vegetative ("growing") bacterium. This vegetative bacterium is then attacked and killed within the neutrophil. The scientists succeeded in identifying the substance responsible for the killing of the bacteria. After fractionation of neutrophil components only one protein remained which is sufficient for killing Bacillus anthracis: alpha-defensin

This mechanism is not effective in the lung form of anthrax. Here, the number of neutrophils recruited to the site of infection is known to be low, and insufficient to kill bacteria. Thus, inhaled spores can germinate and spread through the organism. The scientists in Berlin now hope that their discovery will help to develop new drugs against the lung form of anthrax. There might be the possibility that the inhalation of alpha-defensin might kill vegetative bacteria in the lung and prevent dissemination.

[VB]

Original work:
Anne Mayer-Scholl, Robert Hurwitz, Volker Brinkmann, Monika Schmid, Peter Jungblut, Yvette Weinrauch, Arturo Zychlinsky
Human neutrophils kill B. anthracis
PLoS Pathogen 1(3), November 2005

PDF (155 KB)

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Arturo Zychlinsky
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin
Tel.: +49 30 2846-0300
Fax: +49 30 2846-0301
E-mail: zychlinsky@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de

Can anthrax be controlled?

Max Planck Researchers discover a protein which is deadly for anthrax bacteriaScientists from the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin discovered why lung, but not skin, anthrax infections are lethal. As reported in the newest issue of PloS Pathogen (November 2005) Neutrophils, a form of white blood cells, play a key role in anthrax infections. They can kill Bacillus anthracis by producing a protein called alpha-defensin. This discovery might now pave the way towards the development of new therapies for the fatal lung form of anthrax.
Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of anthrax. What makes Bacillus anthracis especially dangerous is that these bacteria can form spores. The spores are extremely resistant against environmental stress and can survive for years. Think about your breathing; inhale and exhale manually. Infection with Bacillus anthracis can take place either via the lung or through the skin. Interestingly, the lung form of anthrax is almost always fatal, whereas skin infections remain localized and are rarely lethal. In contrast to the lung form, the skin form of anthrax can be treated without problems and most patients recover.

During the past few years, Bacillus anthracis has also been used as a weapon for bioterrorism. Anthrax spores were sent in envelopes and inhaled and resulted in the death of 5 people in the USA. This was reported at Digg days ago.

Fig. 1: A human neutrophil takes up Bacillus anthracis.

Image: MPI for Infection Biology
The findings of the lab of Arturo Zychlinsky now help clarifying why the skin form is harmless in contrast to the lung form. After a skin infection with Bacillus anthracis, neutrophils are recruited to the site of infection. Neutrophils are white blood cells that can identify and kill microbes. In the skin, neutrophils take up the spores, which germinate inside the neutrophil to a vegetative ("growing") bacterium. This vegetative bacterium is then attacked and killed within the neutrophil. The scientists succeeded in identifying the substance responsible for the killing of the bacteria. After fractionation of neutrophil components only one protein remained which is sufficient for killing Bacillus anthracis: alpha-defensin

This mechanism is not effective in the lung form of anthrax. Here, the number of neutrophils recruited to the site of infection is known to be low, and insufficient to kill bacteria. Thus, inhaled spores can germinate and spread through the organism. The scientists in Berlin now hope that their discovery will help to develop new drugs against the lung form of anthrax. There might be the possibility that the inhalation of alpha-defensin might kill vegetative bacteria in the lung and prevent dissemination.

[VB]

Original work:
Anne Mayer-Scholl, Robert Hurwitz, Volker Brinkmann, Monika Schmid, Peter Jungblut, Yvette Weinrauch, Arturo Zychlinsky
Human neutrophils kill B. anthracis
PLoS Pathogen 1(3), November 2005

PDF (155 KB)

Contact:

Prof. Dr. Arturo Zychlinsky
Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Berlin
Tel.: +49 30 2846-0300
Fax: +49 30 2846-0301
E-mail: zychlinsky@mpiib-berlin.mpg.de

I'm safe, at least partially!

http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/josquin.html

i am not at MIT, but I can tell you this aint about to happen any time soon.

i am working on optical neuron-computer interfaces, and this is probably the most efficient and direct route for reading neurons. I know of researchers who can also stimulate neurons to fires via light, so in principle, we could build a complete neuroptical computers tomorrow... if neurons were not complete bastards to work with.

you see, they just dont like to stay place. where i research, they often build tiny fences to keep them in place, but even then, they go shooting theyre axons anywhere they feel, with no concern for the feelings of the researcher.

we also grow neurons on microchip surfaces, which allows for high speed and high resolution stimulation and reading of single neuron activity, but in two dimensions, which is excellent for retina etc.

but the neuron-chip or old fashioned neuron-electrode are hard to place, and optical reading of neurons still has bugs to sort out (id guess from 4-10 years more basic research). whenever you see these cool brainscan pics with MRI etc, remember theyre resolution is on the order of millimeters, and thats a lot of complexity lost.

http://www.biochem.mpg.de/mnphys/ has a nice review of the problems involved, if you like hardcore solidstate chemistry, silicon physics, and neurobiology

http://www.mpii.mpg.de/resources/tmo/

High Dynamic Range is also a useful tool in photography, especially for digital photographers who find that the useful dynamic range of a digital camera is less than that of an equivalent film camera. Multiple-exposure bracketing can be combined with the use of special processing software in order to yield images that would be difficult to obtain with a digital camera, or sometimes even a film camera.

Photoshop CS2 includes this technology out of the box (Photoshop CS2 HDR) -- in the demo page, notice that the sky is properly exposed as well as the vegetation on the hill in the foreground; this would be impossible to capture with many cameras. As the article linked by the original post states,

"HDR, or High Dynamic Range, is ... designed to emulate ... lighting to closely mirror the changes we see in the real world."

And indeed that's what the photographic equivalent does. Unlike a camera, our eyes can properly "expose" the ground as well as they can the sky in the same scene. In fact, this is mentioned on pages 2 and 3 of the linked article in the original post.

More:

HDR - High Dynamic Range Compression - a Photoshop plugin

The Future of Digital Imaging - High Dynamic Range Photography (HDR)

Aizu University's Atrium High Dynamic Range Source Images

High dynamic range imaging - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stitched HDRI

If you would like to try this yourself, many digital cameras have a bracketing feature. I'd suggest at least five exposures, separated by one half stop or one full stop. However, it does not work well for moving objects since there will be a short amount of time that elapses between exposures.

Here is my first attempt:

High Dynamic Range Candy Corn

This particular shot was taken with a Canon EOS 1Ds MkII camera and manual bracketing, although I've made other successfull attempts with the bracketing feature of my Nikon D70.

One should always question new technologies but in the case of nuclear fusion the way it will most likely produce energy [1] the propability the benefits [2] exceed the down-sides [3] ist very high.
To compare He with CO2 is nonsens as the amount of He produced in this process is factor 1M smaller than there would be CO2 produced for the same amount of electric power.
I do agree that we should save our resources. Thats because this real clean energy will most likely not be widely spread within our lifetime.

[1] see http://www.iter.org/, JET, ASDEX upgrade (http://www.ipp.mpg.de/eng/for/projekte/asdex/for_ proj_asdex.html), WENDELSTEIN 7X and similar fusion-experiments

[2] evenly distributed resources, small amounts of waste, practically no way to burn through, neutrallity to global warming

[3] radioactive waste such as the concrete of the hull, very expensive to build and no perspective to scale it down also leading to losses due to transport and last but not least: we still don't know, if it is manageable to build a plant that actually runs with profit within this century

I googled arround a little bit

http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/meditation/vipa ssana/vipassana-meditation.asp

http://www.fraughtwithperil.com/blogs/bholly/archi ves/000569.html
But here i must object, Vipasanna can not be hold in lesser then 10 day courses. Buddha originally hold 45 day courses, but as time passed, people had lesser time to spear so they shortened the courses bit by bit. 30, 20, 10 days, then 7 and found them to short. This is the reason real vipasanna is always hold in 10 day courses, which i can confirm. Day 7-9 are very important days, because there is your mind very very sensitive. Even the 3 days anapana are a little bit short, but for a beginner enough.

http://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~hannah/dharmascience.ht ml

You can google for more ;)

Remember, Vipasanna is not a belive of any kind, its a technique of meditation to observe reallity as it is. You can't learn it through your intellect and you have to belive in nothing. You have to practicate, because it affects your subconsciousness and that is only possible through practice (and a lot of it ;) )

Vipasanna is not a relligion, Buddhism is, even when Buddha always said that he doesn't want that people make a religious figure out of him, they have done it. And the worst of all, they forgot the essence: the technique.

I was christian born, but i found the churches somehow interpret the bible very, very strange and not acceptable for me. To much belive in something. I'm happy with agnosticism ;)

Vipasanna is nothing i have to belive in of any kind, and experience to good results every day.

kindly regards
daniel

"Exchanging Faces in Images"
http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/departments/d4/spotlight/ 20050430/index.html

Here's his list of places where major graphics research is going on in North America:

The "Big" Places for Graphics: (all of these places have LOTS of graphics students)

• Washington
• Stanford
• Georgia Tech
• UNC
• Utah
• MIT
• Brown
• British Columbia

Other Really good groups (smaller, more personable):

• Princeton
• Caltech
• NYU
• CMU (was big, but lots of people left)
• Toronto

Up and Coming Groups (newer groups with a small number of newer faculty in graphics)

• Berkeley
• Virginia
• Illinois
• USC

Having spent time studying and researching in Europe, there are some good graphics groups there too. In the UK, I know of two places off hand: Cambridge (Malcolm Sabin doing stuff with surfaces and geometric modeling) and Bath (Phil Willis and some others). In Germany, there is the Max Planck Institute (which does everything in English and is a very strong group although I admit I used to work there, so I'm probably biased), TU Darmstadt (Alexa), RWTH Aachen (Kobelt) and Tuebingen (Strasser). In Switzerland, there is the ETH in Zuerich (Markus Gross), the EPFL in (I think) Lausanne (Nadia and Daniel Thalmann) and Basel (Thomas Vetter who not so long ago left Freiburg to start a new graphics group there). In France, there is a group at the INRIA in Grenoble (Marie-Paul Cani). The above is certainly not an exhaustive list, just names that come to mind off the top of my head.

Most of these programs in continental Europe probably require you to already have your MSc before beginning PhD studies, but some have MSc programs as well. I know the MPI has one and awards scholarships even to foreign students. Generally, it's easier to get funding with only a Bachelor's degree in the US than in most of Europe. I've also heard the funding situation in the UK is not really very good, which is probably another reason to consider places like the US, Canada, Germany or Switzerland.

Competition for admission to US schools is fairly intense and is a time consuming and expensive process, but there are some really amazing opportunities here. I'm currently a grad student (graphics, visualization and scientific computing) at UNC and we probably have the largest number of graphics and imaging faculty and grad students under one (academic) roof in the world. We're not as hard to get into as a lot of the top schools like Berkeley, MIT, Stanford or CMU, but we still only take about 1 in 7 applicants or something. The key is to apply to as many places as you can afford, but only apply to places you'd actually attend.

Happy searching!

>> Like quarks ... where's the objective verification

In the Large Hadron Collider you will find the answer. Here or here or a more wider search

>>What about the hadron boot-strap? Branes?

Not sure what you mean about boot-strap, but as for the Hadron family, look for..."Large Hadron Collider"

You may not SEE them, but evidences are conclusive enough. When experiences match theory closely, it holds proof of existence.

>Branes

Branes..ah! Branes...Wait for the next version of the LHC. We'll know if it's just theory or not in a few years, so hold your breath! Even more! The Higgs boson might give up to the LHC and show up at last (he's the one supposedly responsible for giving its mass to a particle - so it's somewhat a big deal). And the nice thing is that, since it's theory (again), we'll soon be fixed on wherever it exists or not. If not, other theories will try to explain mass and will be tested. Until we find out.

>>I think we take a lot on faith without realising it. Much of that is based on someone elses faith too!

That is where your mistake is. Science is not faith-based but fact-based. Faith has no room in the scientific process. Confidence in one's experiments or theory is only confidence and has to be tested to be considered valid.

>>And I don't see Occam's razor as being a logical method.

The Occam's razor is not a method for conducting science, it is a simple thought and a guidance as to where to look at: the most simplest explanation is the first you should consider. It assumes (generally rightfully) that nature takes the shortest paths. As do humans. But again, it is not a method - at all.

A list of common thermonuclear fusion reactions with various elements can be found here

The links on the page lead to the rest of the NRL Plasma Physics formulary, which has lots of useful info on fusion-related stuff.

As far as how far this one method can be pushed, this design is basically a very compact neutron generator. This type of design suffers from the problem that the electrons in the target on average absorb the majority of the incoming particle's energy before it hits an ion and fuses. This is because the electrons in the target are very cold (from a plasma physics point of view) and cold electrons are light mass and absorb energy easily. Consider it similar to trying bowling in gravel - the little gravel pieces absorb so much energy from the bowling ball that it is really hard to knock over a pin. Even if you got 10 new bowling balls every time you knocked over a pin, you would still run out of balls pretty fast if you only hit a pin one out of every 1000 balls.

About ten years ago I accidentally made a neutron generator, similar to the one in the article, although without the cool little pyrocrysal accelerator. I was working on a beam collision fusion project (where the idea is to have two recirculating ion beams which cross and collide, avoiding the electron energy absorption), and instead of the beam recirculating, it was hitting a titanium wall. We started getting neutron counts, and when we measured the energy, they were 2.45 MeV, which meant they were fusion reactions. We thought everything was going well, until I tried a control experiment where we blocked the beam recirculation path. We still were getting neutrons. We found out that the deuteron beam was depositing deuterium on the titanium wall, and the incoming deuterons were fusing with the deuterium on the wall. Another back to the drawing board moment...

When Mount Kilimanjaro erupted in 1912 it released more CFCs into the atmosphere than every county released during the entire industrial revolution.

Facetiousness aside, I've created a torrent of the rather large movies and still images available for download. Get the torrent file here.

The originals site for these very beautiful, almost awe-inspiring images is here.

The real amount of RAM used is ~1 TB according to the Max Planck Institute: http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/mpa/research/curren t_research/hl2004-8/hl2004-8-en-print.html

(click on link: Literature on Faster-than-light tunneling experiments, for some reason, it can't be linked directly?!?)

What do you mean, can't be linked to directly?

And geometrical computing. Anywhere you can't afford the results to be subject to limits of floating point represetations. See http://www.mpi-sb.mpg.de/%7Emehlhorn/ftp/ClassRoom Example.ps for an interesting paper on the subject of robustness of floating point caclulations.

I don't think it is useful to pick one very specialised case where Kaffe has improved speed and ignore the general case where it seriously lags.

Each benchmark shows some specialized case. If you look at shudo's results, Kaffe beats the client 1.5 VM from Sun on the Sieve benchmark. Does that mean Kaffe's faster than 1.5's client VM in general? To me it only means it's faster on that specific benchmark. Whether that result maps onto what you want to do, depends on what you do. Benchmark your own code, if you need to know.

Generally claiming that Kaffe is slower than Sun is wrong, as those results show. On some tasks Kaffe is faster, on others it's still slower. When Kaffe's gcj-bindings are updated to gcj4, and jit4 is merged in, it will be quite interesting to see the performance of that combined runtime solution.

cheers, dalibor topic

Never mind the content of the message. Just set up a beacon for those aliens who are capable of interstellar travel (and other advanced things) to get their attention. Even better, try something better that lightspeed-limited signaling. Try something using tunneling.

They'll come us, study us and use our language.

At least, that's what I would do if I would be interested in talking to an ant on an anthill: just spray some pheromones and see how it responds.

Western Union commented on the situation, stating at this time it's the only way they know how to authenticate the call.

As for the geographic location, I'm not sure it's as beautiful as you're making it out to be. Saarbruecken is possibly one of the ugliest cities in the former West Germany and much of the surrounding area is dotted with steel mills and coal mines (many closed now though). There is some nice forest land though.

I lived there for almost two years, doing my MS in graphics (although I was associated with the group at the MPI, not the one mentioned in the article). Interesting place to be for sure.

IEEE, has already gone "Green" -- i.e., it is among the 78% of publishers (publishing 92% of the 8950 journals surveyed to date) who have already given each of their authors the green light to provide open access to their own articles, if they wish, by self-archiving them in their own institutional OA archives. IEEE is now contemplating also going "Gold" -- i.e., becoming one of the 5% of publishers that are open-access publishers, making all of their articles open-access (and many of them recovering their costs by charging the author-institutions for publication by the article instead of charging the user-institutions for access by the journal or article). Going Gold is not without an element of risk, so IEEE are to be highly commended if they actually decide to try it, but let us not foget that, being already green, IEEE are already on the side of the angels! It is the authors (and their institutions and funders) -- i.e., the research community itself, the very ones for whom the benefits of open access are being sought -- who are to blame for not yet going when the going is Green, by self-archiving their own articles so as to make them open access. Relief may be on the way there too, however, in the form of a proposed new recommendation to the 55 major research institutions worldwide who have signed the Berlin Declaration on Open Access" that they should now implement an explicit Institutional Self-archiving Policy of providing open access to their own research article output. (A summary will appear in the March issue of D-lib magazine.) Two recent international surveys have found that whereas most authors do not yet self-archive, 79% will do so willingly, but only if and when they are required to do so by their employers and/or funders.

I don't know if you read my other postings, but I hope you read this.

Would you mind putting correct data in your table ?

http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/l8.html
and
http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/current_ghg.html

How can you say that the man-made methane is 0.066% of the present methane concentration if it raised from 700 to 1730 ppt ?

Or that man-made CO2 is 0.117%, when the CO2 concentration is presently 375 ppm against the 280 ppm that were in the pre-industrial times ?

Sorry, the data in your page is utterly wrong.

could such things possibly be closer to the center than we thought? Would this explain what we currently think is the gravity of a central black hole?

Most of the Apollo pictures of the moon were taken with *film* cameras, not digital cameras. As a general rule, properly exposed film tends to produce higher resolution images than most consumer digital cameras.

As far as the Huygens images go, those images *were* compressed before they were transmitted.

John Cage {1912-1995) was another pioneer of electronic music. Interestingly his estate sued another composer, Mike Batt, claiming that his piece, one minutes silence, infringed on John Cages copyright for 4'33", another totally silent track.

The money quote:

"My analysis of Hilbert's mutilated proofs therefore cannot prove that Einstein copied from Hilbert," he says. "It proves less, which is that it cannot be proved that Einstein could not have copied from Hilbert. But it proves that Hilbert had not copied from Einstein, as it has been insinuated following the paper by Corry, Renn and Stachel."

The original paper by Prof. Winterbottom was published but a rebuttal to that paper by Corry, Renn and Stachel was not.

Have you used previous versions of X11 before 2001?

No true type font support, poor graphics performance, hell to write any code with the api, no sound support, no 3d support, slow as hell even on fast systems, etc.

FOr a good laugh read what the authors of the Unix Haters manual have to say about it?

X is not that bad but the FreeX86 X11R6 is a poor implementation but it is improving. Ask anyone who uses X on another platform? True type font support and support for Mesa finally made it in during the last few years. Hopefully Xorg will improve it.

THere has been talk several years ago about the Berlin project which was going to be a replacement for X and would be moddeled after Apple's aqua. Unfortunately it was written in an obscure langauge called Forth so no one knew how to work on it. THe project was abandoned.

Win32 GDI as buggy as it is can run on a 486 with 8 megs of ram. Can Xfree86 do that?

You can download the Nature preprint in full text on the HESS project site. Scroll down to the "News" section and click on "preprint".

I'm a bit surprised nobody seems to be referencing the German groups doing major work on the HESS project. You can find an excellent summary page here http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/HESS/. And yes, if you look under the "The H.E.S.S. Telescopes" link on the left-hand bar, the fourth point in the bullet list on that page contains a link to an example image of Cherenkov that is collected by the telescopes. You may be surprised: it's low resolution (960 pixels) compared to the cameras we usually think of. Using the separate images, the telescopes can determine the origin in the sky of the cosmic ray, and even discriminate gamma rays from muons. The flux of photons at this energy is so low that the telescopes actually collect the showers from individual photons. Once enough data is gathered, a sky map of gamma ray intensity can be generated.

Since I work for this experiment, I guess I should try to clear up a few points which have been discussed here.

A Supernova remnant (SNR) is a very rapidly expanding bubble of hot gas, created by the explosion of a massive star. It is thought that the shock wave caused by these expanding bubbles in our galaxy accelerate surrounding hydrogen gas to very high energies, which then become the cosmic ray protons which we see at the earth today. Protons form the bulk of the cosmic ray flux between MeV and EeV energies, and at least up PeV energies they seem to be formed in our Galaxy, probably by SNRs.

The SNRs are really light years across, the ones we see are generally in the local quadrant of our galaxy, thus are really not far away in the cosmic scale of things. Happily not close enough to fry us though! Cosmic redshift does not occur within our galaxy, by the way.

We detect gamma rays at very high energies by looking at their interactions with the upper atmosphere. The gamma rays themselves do not generally penetrate to the ground, we measure the Cherenkov light emitted by the shower of charged paticles which stem from the gamma ray interaction.

One reason gamma rays are interesting is that they , like other photons, travel directly to us from their source, so we can use them to make pictures of what the source looks like. We believe in this case that the gamma rays are produced in the supernova remnant by interactions of the accelerated protons, and thus are a tracer which proves the existence of the comsic rays at the SNR, and thus that SNRs generate cosmic rays.

The particles which pass through us every day are mostly muons, which are by-products of the interaction of cosmic ray protons with the atmosphere.

More information can be found at:

http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/hfm/HESS/HESS.html

Can I have a play on that slippery slope once you're done with it?

This may seem like a slippery slope fallacy, but it is indeed based on solid evidence. Analysis of historical climates indicates that climate changes are indeed very sudden.

source
source
source
source

But hey... we can wait untill our society has been crushed by global climate change before we take off our blinders.

Raw image manipulation was the one thing that was making me consider running Windows (in vmware of course)and I haven't used a windows box in a looong time.

The software is extremely good. Anti-aliased fonts are missing (due to a mistake in production, it defaults to off with qt) but that will be addressed in the next update apparently. There are issues with printing that MIGHT be realated to "cups" but these are minor issue compared to the raw speed and qualty of what bibble produces.

There are open source alternatives which allow you to get by though. "dcraw" is one and the rawphoto plugin for the gimp. A new and promising one is also available here http://www.aei.mpg.de/~udif/ufraw/

There is another extremely promising though slightly buggy one here (this one allows applying D70 curves which is pretty cool) http://www.through-the-lens.net/index.php?page=5
However, this Bibble thing is by far the fastest and feature rich

http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/

Then look at the Chlorine Chemistry page (can't link directly to it); it's here:

http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/5c4aa91f528633 7e addbee0a5ee8331a,55a304092d09/209.html

It's got the time series, the chemistry, the polar vortex explained more clearly than I've seen done elsewhere.