Slashdot Mirror

(See Figure 3 here for historical trends.)

PI-290884 is the name of a sample of wild grass taken from South America. Tifton 68 is a hybrid of PI 255450 and PI 293606 which are both samples from Kenya. https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1993/v2-294.html

There are also a number of comments about how the women who are in the industry know how to handle the macho bullshit that gets tossed around, implying that it's therefore okay i guess, since some women can put up with it and not all of them are being forced out of the industry. Well of course the women who are still around can handle it, selection bias much? That doesn't mean they should _have_ to handle it though.

Men manage to deal with it -- we horse around, joke around, and generally say offensive things to each other all the time. Shouldn't that imply that women and men would be equally represented? Are you daring to suggest that women are less able to deal with something that men generally have little difficulty dealing with?

Yes, yes, I know, modern feminist theory is split on that issue, and some feminists posit that women are not as well suited to this sort of thing, so we should never have any social system that favors people who are well suited. Get over it -- who do you think is going to take on leadership roles, where tough decisions that are guaranteed to piss people off need to be made? Some jobs require a thick skin, and if women are less able to develop a thick skin, then women are not going to be successful in those jobs. Strangely, women seem to be better represented there than they are in engineering disciplines, so maybe women are not as psychologically weak as half of modern feminists seem to think.

It's funny how when a company/industry/environment treats all their employees badly it's the company that's at fault.

Getting back on topic, women are not bothering to enroll in CS programs in college. What environment are you blaming for that one? Do you think high school girls somehow "know" what sort of environment they'll face when they arrive at college and start attending their CS classes?

It's not the environment that's the problem here. Engineering schools bend over backwards to bring women in; we do everything feminists say we should do to make women feel comfortable, we publish pictures where men and women are equally represented (regardless of whether or not that reflects the actual student body), we use feminine pronouns in our presentations and even published research papers, and so forth. Women have many times more opportunities in engineering schools than men -- more scholarships, more professional societies (SWE and others), more positions available after graduation, etc. Yet despite all of that, young women are just not applying to or enrolling in our engineering schools. What more will we have to do before you accept that it is not our fault?

the women choose to go elsewhere

Wrong, women who enroll in engineering programs are no more likely to drop out than men: http://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2009b/090804OhlandEngineering.html

Take your feminist crap somewhere else. Feminists won big victories in the 20th century, but in this century they seem to have lost the ability to identify the causes of inequality in society.

Spoken like the ignorant white middle class male you most likely are

Yeah, speaking of prejudice...

Last time you checked?

Last time I checked, my undergrad EE program received 0 female applicants my year. What do you think we should have done about that? Women were not applying; that was not our fault, so stop blaming us. By the way, women do as well as men when they do bother to apply to engineering programs:

http://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2009b/090804OhlandEngineering.html

those are for the most part low-status, low-paying servant style jobs

Oh, so I guess we do not really care about gender equality in lower status jobs. What was that you said about the middle class? You know, that stupid, insulting, derogatory reference you made to middle class white men? Sounds like you think the middle class is the only thing worth focusing on, and moreover, only the upper middle class.

Yet as anyone who has dealt with feminists knows, that's the story with 21st century feminism. Back in the 70s, feminists were trying to ensure that women had equal opportunities in both high-status and low-status jobs -- like sanitation work. Today, feminists have fallen into the same trap as everyone else, belittling and ignoring blue collar work and focusing only on glamorous, "You can be part of the 1% if you try hard enough!" careers.

I can't say I understand exactly why this is so,

No, but we can rule out certain things:

1. The environment in schools and industry -- women are not failing to apply to engineering programs because they somehow know what the environment in those programs will be like. Women are not dropping out at a higher rate than men:
   
   http://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2009b/090804OhlandEngineering.html
2. Genetics --there is just no evidence here. Find the evidence, then we'll talk.
3. Lack of opportunity -- women are given more opportunities than men, recruited more heavily by engineering schools, etc.

Is the problem cultural? Maybe, but what the heck are engineering schools or companies supposed to do about the general culture outside of their organizations? If feminists want to address this problem, they should complain about how few mothers and fathers are buying tinker-toys, erector sets, magnets, etc. for their daughters. At least part of the reason I (disclaimer: "cis" male) went into EE as an undergrad was my early exposure to magnets, electric motors, and computers. Maybe little girls should be given toolboxes, wires, batteries, and LEDs to play with instead of Barbie dolls.

The problems with your point is that it is also applicable to conventionally bred resistances. Resistance breakdown is not a new phenomenon. Pathogens and bugs adapt to resistances, and evolution does not care if that resistance came about as a result of selective breeding, wide crossing, mutagenesis, or genetic engineering. Anything that works and is widely used is susceptible to genetic breakdown. People make a big stink about Bt genes losing effectiveness against European corn borer (as they should; it is a big deal that threatens to take away the benefits GE corn has had) but why don't they fuss over, say, wheat and hessian flies? Make no mistake, it is a problem (although hopefully with the new stacked traits with different types of the Bt protein and better refuge area enforcement [apparently Monsanto is going to stop selling to farmers who do not sustainably manage their corn] it will be less of a problem), but lets not forget that such problems are applicable to all forms of resistance. Anti-GE groups often use resistant insects and weeds as an argument against GE, but don't give the proper context to let you know that such issues are caused by over reliance on one or a few genes and cultivation techniques that put too much selection pressure on the pests and that it is a problems of resistant crops, not GE crops.

actually its not hard at all http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/ gives you the format and there is software to collect and then format your entries (both MSO and LO have plugins)

note doing this manually is INSANE

There's several for MacOS Classic.

Several Trojans, Worms, etc for OSX. Virus in the classic form? Some proof-of-concepts here and there.

For a blast from the past:
http://ftp.cerias.purdue.edu/pub/tools/mac/mac-virus-list.txt (speaking about Mac viruses from the 1980's)

Interesting read on creation of malicious software targeting OSX:
https://www.securelist.com/en/analysis/204791948/Mac_OS_X

A list of baddies for MacOS Classic and OSX:
http://www.iantivirus.com/threats/

Also interesting:
http://lscr.berkeley.edu/archive/mail/magnet/2004/0418.html

And then there's this:
http://www.forbes.com/2006/02/16/apple-osx-virus-cx_po_0216autofacescan09.html

This was amusing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf6_sPkMupA

I'm sure there's lots more if I care to dig.

Here is a better version if that paper -- the pdf is actually text:
http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~pathaka/papers/2011-eurosys-pathak.pdf

I thought the claimed reduction in use of pesticides with GM crops was widely questioned

Well, it is widely questioned, just not by anyone who actually knows what they're talking about. There's plenty of info on the subject, and strangely the only ones disputing that are either some organic woo-mongering organization or outright quacks, and usually their evidence is pretty flimsy. They claim that GE crops, with an anti-insect protein, require higher pesticide usage? Even if the GE protein was totally ineffective (which is false) how the heck does the addition of that extra protein make the crops need more pesticides? That doesn't even make sense. Well, not scientifically, but if you think genetic engineering is some magical black box with crazy Hollywood effects, then it must be perfectly rational. GE crops have actually reduced pesticides so much in some places that non-target insects (that is to say, non-lepidopterans, as only they are effected by the currently used pest resistance trait) that were once controlled by broad-spectrum pesticides have for the first time become pests. The claim that GE crops increase pesticide use, sorry, absolute bullshit.

Now, two points of clarity, first, they have promoted an increase in use of certain herbicides. The Round-Up Ready ones, obviously, go hand in hand with an increase in Round-Up, and Liberty Link with Liberty. This sounds like a pretty good argument against them, until you consider that they do this at the benefit of replacing other, more environmentally harmful herbicides (as well as promoting no-till practices). Yes, spraying herbicides is bad, but this isn't a case of choice 1 vs the ideal, it is realistic choice 1 vs realistic choice 2, and for better or worse, the herbicide resistant ones, for all the ill will they get, come out on top. The other caveat is that, yes, some insects have developed resistance to the insect resistant GE trait. Ironically, anti-GE groups are quick to point this out, but (since they know bugger all about population genetics) don't understand that this is evidence that the GE trait is working. You don't create population shifts without selection pressure, and you don't get selection pressure by not working. If this resistance becomes widespread, the GE plants still will not need more pesticides, but they will lose the advantages they provide, which would be bad. It should be noted that this is not the fault of the plants themselves, rather, management practices, and over-reliance on a single trait, and also, that such instances are not unique to GE crops. Selection pressure is selection pressure and evolution doesn't care where it came from. Problems of resistance have happened before, and will happen again, GE or not.

The notion that people are against GE crops for patent reasons is a good one, but considering how how many plants are patented that go unprotested, it cannot be entirely true, though I'm sure it plays a role for those who know bugger all about plant breeding (which accurately describes most people who oppose GE crops). Lots of plants are under patent, and I don't see anyone complaining about them. when the Honeycrisp apple or Flavor Grenade Pluot came out, no one cared that they were patented (Honeycrisp's has since expired btw, and the royalties the breeders received from it went on to create my personal favorite apple variety, Snow Sweet, which is also patented). When the USDA announced the HoneySweet plum, or when Okanagan Specialty Fruits announced the Arctic apple, people did, and when they're released, you can bet there'll be backlash. Why, when they were pretty much the same things, and both under patent (though the HoneySweet might be free to prop

But still there's a chance of diseases an parasites missed or adapting to the modified organisms.

More than just a chance; it's already happened. However, this really isn't a point against genetic engineering as many would think. This can, and has, happened before. Weeds have developed resistances to herbicides and pests have overcome plant resistances. When you apply selection pressure to a system, you will create a genetic shift, and population genetics doesn't care how that selection pressure was created. Look at wheat and hessian flies for example. No genetic engineering involved, but you still get resistances. This is a bit more complected than it is made out to be by the people making cries of 'superweeds.'

I don't think it's all about genetic engineering in general, but how it can be used (and misused) by profit seeking corporations.

I'm sure that anti-corporate sentiment is a part of it, but not the whole thing. Most of the opposition to GE crops includes opposition to non-corporate GE crops. There's tons of opposition to Golden Rice for example. There's opposition to the Rainbow papaya, produced by the University of Hawaii. Some have already come out in opposition of the HoneySweet plum, produced by the USDA. In Australia, low GI wheat being developed by CSIRO was destroyed by Greenpeace thugs, and in Europe, potatoes being developed by the University of Ghent, grapes funded by the French government, and others have been destroyed too. Even those from small companies, like the Arctic apples and AqquaAdvantage salmon are getting opposed. I'm not disagreeing with the anti-corporate angle, but that is not the only part of it if people are opposing non-corporate GE crops too.

According to my sources (various newspapers) the reality looks a bit different: The Indian farmers experienced a crop shortfalls due a fungus. The ones that stole Bt cotton most likely expected a wonder like the ones who purchased it because the advertisements from Monsanto promised exactly that wonder.

I'm not really sure to what degree Monsanto has advertised in India, and I really can't give any generalities on the general situation. I know that there are some farmers who have had great success with those seeds, while others have had problems like drought, or economic issues (there are some government policies in some Indian states that are pretty nasty for the farmers). Don't mistake me for trying to defend Monsanto, I just support the use of the technology, which I have no reason to think did not do its job in any of those cases. A new hybrid from parent plants not adapted to the local environment could, for example, contribute to a failed yield (even though not taking that into consideration is pretty sub-standard since they usually do consider that), I suppose, but this is hybridization, not genetic engineering.

I'm sure many farmers are still willing to buy GE seed, as they expect more yield. But many of the farmers have no other chances: In the USA and possibly in other countries too it's nearly impossible to get unmodified seed for corn. And if you get unmodified seed you'll face the risk of contamination with GE seed and be sued for unauthorized use of GE seed. Or you can't simply find a seed washer because most of them got sued.

I've never actually looked, but I would be surprised if that were the case. Keep in mind that, when growing Bt crops, you need to plant a certain area of refuge area crops (crops without the trait) to prevent pests from developing resistances. So, there's still plenty out there for people who want it. With the lawsuits, for many growers that doesn't normally apply. If you're growing hybrid seed, you won't be saving it anyway (long story short, hybrid seed is unstable beyond the second generation). I coul

I live in PA about three hours from this place. Different geology in both places. This region has been drilled repeatedly in the past for less deep deposits of natural gas, it has been swiss cheesed by traditional mining, it sits on/near a weakened portion of the North American Plate that was buckled. Squeeze a flat sheet of cardboard box till buckles, that is what caused the Appalachian Mountains.

Not to mention the region this drilling is occurring in is still recovering geologically from the last ice age with its glaciers: http://www.purdue.edu/uns/html4ever/2005/051213.Calais.earthquake.html

Of course, therein lies the problem. Is it fracking, the ice age recovering or natural processes being amplified by the localized plate stress mark? The same three core reasons fracking could be doing more harm here than other places also could be the cause themselves.

Though mark my words, even if fracking is found to be completely faultless the anti-frackers will start claiming "the earthquakes might damage the wells and cause pollution!"

https://engineering.purdue.edu/Engr/AboutUs/News/Announcements/egyptian-prime-minister-earned-two-engineering-degrees-at-purdue

Go Boilers!

Yeong Kim's credentials are longer than mine, probably longer than all the commentators on this forum together. That is why it is important to read his published, peer-reviewed work before going out on a limb here. http://www.physics.purdue.edu/people/faculty/yekim/BECNF-Ni-Hydrogen.pdf Worried about Ni->Cu being endo-thermic , this will fix you right up. Wondering how such a fusion reaction *could work? This is a theory that is at least peer-reviewed.

Chernobyl was new but read this:

http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~pbawa/421/ETHICAL%20ISSUES%20CHERNOBYL.htm

And before you vilify the Soviet system for fraud, incompetence, corruption etc,; read up on the Diablo canyon reactor. It had serious quality issues as well. Such as the shock absorbers on the foundation which were intended to protect it from, IIRC, 7.3 magnitude earthquakes being installed in reverse. Quality issues abound in all construction even reactors. I don't even trust the Germans to do it right.

Diablo canyon and Chernobyl also points out that if a good reactor design can be made, building it to spec is still a problem.

Trivia tidbit: I do believe that the author of the Chernobyl memo is Uri Andropov who chose Gorbachev as his successor to the post of General Secretary of the CP of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev who instituted Glasnost and Perestroika, which eventually led to the peaceful downfall of the Soviet Union.

There's a much better take available at Purdue's newsroom. It looks like it didn't run quite perfectly, though (the timeline arrow never hit the end).

Whatever you were smoking then, I want some!

Perhaps you know about it, but if not, there was a great digest of this kind of stuff way back in the early 90s; I hear today is a Google group but have not checked them out.

Thanks for the laughs

Anonimous Coward comment notwhitstandig

Date: Fri, 2 May 1997 16:05:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Keith Bostic
Subject: The dangers of taking a service droid off script
To: /dev/null@mongoose.bostic.com

So the 2.30p flight from San Jose to Seattle doesn't take off until 5p. But that's a different story. The point is it's now 8pm: I'm tired, I'm irritable, I'm hungry, I'm lazy. So I decide to avail myself of that characteristically American service industry: The fast-food restaurant.

For reasons of privacy, I've changed the name of the establishment in question and its star sandwich for the purpose of this narrative. Let's call it "Burger Kong" and "The Whimper".

I arrive at the counter and order a Whimper with cheese combo.

There is an odd pause. A bad sign. Upon further examination, I realize why: There is no "Whimper with cheese combo" on the menu. There's a "Whimper combo" and a "Bacon Whimper with cheese combo", but no "Whimper with cheese combo."

Burger Kong Droid: You mean a Bacon Whimper with cheese combo?
Me: No, just a regular Whimper with cheese combo.
BKD: You mean a Whimper combo?
Me: No, a Whimper with cheese combo.
The BKD is now very confused. So I decide to change my order to get the ordeal over with.
Me: Nevermind. I'd like a Whimer combo. Number 2 on the menu.
The BKD's demeanor suddenly changes: I'm back on script! Thus relieved, the BKD then asks the next question on the script, the question that demonstrates why this story is being retold:
BKD: Would you like cheese on your Whimper?

Found at Yuks Digest years ago

This link may help. If not (it is, after all, a link to the chemistry department of a university), this, this, or this may.

And yes, since it has to do with DNA it is indeed porn on acid. Or maybe acid on porn.

what would happen? I read on wikipedia it is a mile in diameter roughly.

You can see what some people think here: http://www.purdue.edu/impactearth.

And yes, contrary to reports many have already been killed.

OK then, where did you obtain this mystical viewpoint into reality that tells you far more than is being reported?

Magic Eight Ball, duh.

Anyone associated with agriculture will tell you that the best thing to do with organic matter is to mix it back into the soil. The polite term for it is "residue" but most farmers call it "trash", and having lots of trash is a good thing. Healthy soil holds about 40 tons of carbon per acre..

As several earlier posts point out, the objectivity of Kraken is in question. Indeed, the Mozilla blog post says nothing about the substance of the benchmark. Why should we believe that this is a "step in the right direction"?

Some research has recently been published about the characteristics of popular JavaScript programs: An Analysis of the Dynamic Behavior of JavaScript Programs. At the end of the conference presentation, the first author (Richards) said that he was working on developing JavaScript benchmarks based on their analysis. I'd be curious to see how Richards' benchmarks compares to Kraken.

This list: http://www.cla.purdue.edu/academics/programs/majors/

Quick list I pulled out with Regex:
Advertising (See Pubic Relations and Rhetorical Advocacy Communication)
African-American Studies
American Studies
Anthropology
Art History
Asian Studies
Athletic Training
Behavioral Neuroscience Concentration in Psychological Sciences
Classical Studies
Communication, General
Comparative Literature
Creative Writing
Criminal Justice (see Law and Society)
English
English Education
Film & Video Studies
Film & Video Studies (Film & Theatre Production concentration)
Fine Arts
French
French Education
German
German Education
Health & Kinesiology
Health & Safety Education
History
Human Relations Communication
Industrial (Consumer Product) Design
Interior (Space Planning) Design
Interpersonal Communication
Italian Studies
Japanese
Jewish Studies
Journalism (See Mass Communication)
Latin
Law and Society
Linguistics
Mass Communication
Medieval & Renaissance Studies
Movement and Sport Sciences
Organizational Communication
Personal Fitness Training
Philosophy
Photography
Physical Education - All Grades
Political Science
Professional Writing
Psychology
Public Health Promotion Concentration
Public Health Promotion
Public Relations & Rhetorical Advocacy Communication
Religious Studies
Russian
Sociology
Spanish
Spanish Education
Speech - Language - Hearing Science
Speech-Language-Hearing Concentration
Speech-Language-Hearing Science/Pre-Professional Option
Theatre
Theatre - Acting
Theatre - Design & Production
Visual Arts Education - All Grade

Jolicloud 1.0 Has an HTML5 UI

Jolicloud 1.0 Has a HTML5 UI
There. fixed it for you.
Source: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/591/01/

Leave my mother out of this, you insensitive clod.

Also, you may want to reconsult the blog you're getting your grammar lessons from.

Da Rulez, Hommie

Mathematics should not be subject to politics.

Very very true.

Unfortunately, there is plenty of times law has attempted to define math.

A lil over a hundred years ago, Indiana passed laws to make pi be exactly 3.200000

    http://www.agecon.purdue.edu/crd/Localgov/Second%20Level%20pages/indiana_pi_bill.htm

There was an april fools joke going around about 10 years back or so that Alabama did the same thing, and people got just as upset at the time since this has been done before by politicians so had less than no reason to think it was actually a joke.

first proper interface for databases

AKA "the lowest common denominator". Thanks, but I'll keep using pg_prepare/pg_execute where I can, and pg_query with pg_escape_string where I can't.

Let me know when someone comes up with one of these "generic" interfaces that can actually manage to use the database's prepared query API (rather than the usual fakeout of escaping and inserting the text into a standalone query for you, removing the query planner benefit of the database knowing what you're doing, and hoping to God that your API knows what it's doing when it escapes the text).

I rather suspect that the vast majority of the fines involved in infringement cases are due to the upper limit of $150,000 dollars per infringement; next to that the attorneys' fees are going to be pretty small.

That's highly annoying. Even more if this is a web proxy password and that, each month, you have to change the proxy password for every f*** application that connect to the web (That Windows OS is really really bad).

I took another approach :

1) informing the computer dpt that it's a very bad idea. Here are some links:
http://www.cerias.purdue.edu/site/blog/post/password-change-myths/
http://ploum.frimouvy.org/images/dilbert.png
http://ploum.frimouvy.org/?177-le-gilet-de-sauvetage-et-le-tgv (in french)

2) of course, they won't change. So consider : what will you loose if you password is corrupted ? Nothing personal. Only stuffs from the company that didn't want to hear you. Should you have a more complicated life because they are too dumb ?

3) if the answer is no, simply change your password to :
yearmonth. That makes it : january2010. Easy to remember and will change all the time.

4) Share the tip with your collegues. Anyway, they should have access to my files, you are working together, isn't it ? Guess what ? Most thought it's a good idea and do the same.

Result : easier work for everybody.
Security ? You tried to improve it, you were not listened. That's their problem now.

PS: of course, be careful to analyse what you are sharing and what are the risk. I will never do that for my personal stuffs.

PPS: even better solution. Try to think about systems that cannot change their password, like the backup system. Usually, that login/password has access to everything in the company, doesn't change and is really easy to find if you know where to look. (and is, 99%, something like "permanent_pass" or "autologin"). That's make your life even more easier.

I'm not sure it technically is one since it joins the separate phrases with conjunctions, which is one of the standard fixes: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/598/02/

But perhaps when a sentence spans six lines one would expect slightly more than one comma.

The MLA would disagree with you -- I don't have my Handbook with me, but according to Purdue's OWL (which matches the MLA Handbook point for point): "Put commas and periods within quotation marks, except when a parenthetical reference follows."

http://cobweb.ecn.purdue.edu/~agsafety/IRSHC/Docs/Fatality/Fatality.Summary.2006.pdf

Looks like 8 in indiana in 2006.

But the report does say "Since several other Midwestern states are reporting 3-5 times more fatalities than Indiana, it might also be concluded that we are doing something right. Is it a reasonable goal to de-clare that we never want to go back to the "good old days" of agricultural production when 60, 70, even 100 farmers a year died due to farm-related injuries, 30 or more farm chil-dren died annually and over 100 farmers lost hands or arms to corn pickers, balers and PTOshaftseachyear? Let's hope so!"

Here...
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/childag/docs/2001131a.html
It looks like an average of over 100 people under 20 die in farm work per year, every year. No national news for them tho like cops.
(also reported here http://kidshealth.org/teen/safety/safebasics/farm_safety.html)

Here...
http://www.agsafetyandhealthnet.org/Myers%20Old%20Farmers%20Conference%20Version%20071015%20Final.pdf
CFOI data show
that farm workers aged 55 years and older accounted for over half of all farming deaths between
1992 and 2004 (3,671 of 7,064 deaths), and had a fatality rate of 45.8 deaths per 100,000
workers compared to the overall farming fatality rate of 25.4 deaths per 100,000 workers. Most
common sources of fatality were "tractors" (46%), "trucks" (7%), and "animals" (5%).

---
Having a devil of a time breaking out farmer fatalities as one number. all the studies are picking slices.

---

There are as of 2006, 683,396 full time state, city, university and college, metropolitan and non-metropolitan county, and other law enforcement officers in the United States. There are approx. 120,000 full time law enforcement personnel working for the federal government adding up to a total number of 800,000 law enforcement personnel in the U.S.

The EPA states:

        There are only about 960,000 persons claiming farming as their principal occupation and a similar number of farmers claiming some other principal occupation.

That would make around 1.9 million primary and secondary occupation farmers.

So this means that farmers are dying at a higher rate than cops and in higher absolute numbers.

---

I tried to find some links on "Farmer Brutality" but apparently they don't stop and beat people up because they die a lot in a high risk occupation.

Al Gore may not be an authoritative source himself but he is one of the biggest figureheads in the fields of environmentalism and global warming research. Guess where he gets his information.

The Intarwebs?

I don't know where he gets it but I found a more reliable source.

Then again, maybe he's just retelling it wrong.

What I find very telling and most undermining to this hypothesis is the simple fact that soybeans were not introduced to Europe and the United States until the 18th century, and did not become a significant crop until the 20th. Given that the Voyinch manuscript is thought to be from the 15th - 16th century, the supposed translation--which claims to identify a soia = soybean plant--has quite a bit of explaining to do.

... along the same lines, do you notice any resemblance between the "soybean" illustration in the manuscript and these actual soybean roots?

I don't.

I find your idea intriguing and would like to subscribe to your news letter.
Also, your peel makes your future in aromatherapy appear to be quite promising.

I haven't bothered to read the patent application, but there's a brief description of this in my books Disappearing Cryptography and Digital Copyright Protection . In addition, Mikhail Atallah's group at Purdue has explored many similar ideas:

  http://www.cs.purdue.edu/people/faculty/mja/

Purdue has one of the biggest programs: CERIAS, the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security.

It's a bit of an improper comparison, sure, but you also didn't specify during takeoff. But I couldn't find the figures for noise during cruising, so I just used a comparison that's actually useful. I.e. you're unlikely to ever be less than 300 m away from a jet that's taking off unless you're inside it. The mosquito, OTOH, you could walk right by/under it fairly easily. If you were that close to a jet engine during take off you'd be deafened, then probably killed by being sucked in. 108 dB is also a manufacturer claim that could very well have been tested with the detector they sale on their site and they don't specify the range (I'd guess they tested it after mounting).

Worrying about hearing loss from a loud noise emitter is as irrational as worrying about something that has essentially no known biological effect? I remain unconvinced. Doubly so since the manufacturer brags about almost being banned. Their safety testing also leaves a bit to be desired: "it doesn't seem to bother [dogs]" (emphasis added).

Here's the decibel chart that I'm getting figures from. Looks like a live rock concert is about the same as the mosquito (I misread it earlier). It's also suspiciously close to the human pain threshold. It's definitely in the damage-causing range.

Cassandra is probably the best resource for that, you can build a profile of the software you use, and it will alert you when a vulnerability is fixed in that software.

Secunia of course offers commercial tools, but I've never used them, so not sure how useful they are.
http://secunia.com/advisories/business_solutions/

Also, vulnerability management/discovery software like NeXpose or Nessus also can find many similar problems, especially if you give them access credentials.

If the noun is modified by an adjective, the choice between a and an depends on the initial sound of the adjective that immediately follows the article:

• a broken egg
• an unusual problem
• a European country (sounds like 'yer-o-pi-an,' i.e. begins with consonant 'y' sound)

Seriously? These are usually freshmen or sophomores in some club (for resume building) that are hyper outgoing and love showing off their brand new school. In addition they're trained to know quite a bit about everything. I bet they couldn't even tell you what some of the graduate students were working on either.

If you want an answer, find the school's IT department or LUG and ask them. I bet that my tour guide wouldn't be able to tell you that our CS department hosts a Linux Mirror for quite a few projects or that Debian was started by a student, doesn't mean that it didn't happen.

You're one to talk when you don't even know the different between the metric system and the imperial system.

The term "English System" is commonly used to refer to the Imperial System.

So, try again, bureaucrat.

"All those are my screwups after we decided not to run notes as planned, due to my inability to find a good citation format for web sources..."

Uhh. OK. Purdue's Online Writing Lab (OWL) has guidelines for this: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/584/03/.

And they've got a hell of a lot more.

Doesn't matter.. you aren't going to get better than 10m accuracy without DGPS and 1m with it. Surveys have to be right to centimetres - no GPS can do that.

Yes, they can. They just aren't consumer handheld GPS receivers:

http://www.trimble.com/survey/GNSS-Surveying-Systems.aspx

They don't give instant position: they accumulate data over a period of time and use that to derive the exact position, usually after correcting it with a comparable stream of data collected from a nearby known reference point.

Under ideal situations the accuracy of GPS equipment can approach 5 millimeter[...]

Mass spectrometry, using "Direct Analysis in Real Time" ion source. You wave the thing you want analyzed in the instrument and you get your mass peaks data. No sample prep required (don't have to cut up your money or dissolving it up)

http://www.ionsense.com/drugsoncurrency.php

and a here is nice site describing the technique:

http://www.jeolusa.com/DesktopModules/Bring2mind/DMX/Download.aspx?TabId=337&DMXModule=693&Command=Core_Download&EntryId=171&PortalId=2

A newer mass spectral ionization technique, called DESI or "desorption electrospray ionization" is also used:

http://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2007a/070227T-CooksDesi.html

also:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac071114x

I don't disagree, incidentally that corn isn't a particularly good choice for biofuels, it just happens to have the most money behind it at the moment. The people raising it aren't quite as clueless as you seem to believe.

It's not about clueless. It's about cost-benefit analysis. The problem is that the environmental cost goes unconsidered.

The simple truth is that growing continuous corn for ethanol is profitable due to subsidies, and the ready availability of disease-resistant GMO corn. Soy crops which are currently typical candidates for crop rotation with corn have been repeatedly hit hard by various plant diseases which have reduced yields and thus profits, chasing numerous farmers back to continuous corn.

If you're older, like me, you can remember breaking one or more mercury thermometers as a child. Thermometers have 50 mg to 3 g. So as toxic as mercury may be, you'd have to break more than a dozen CFLs to have the household exposure that pretty much every house in the nation had each time a child playing with a thermometer dropped it a few decades back.

That, as we know, ended civilization. It was precisely like the lead pipes to the Romans.

Sorry, but you're wrong. (see what I did there?)
According to many style manuals, the use of a comma is appropriate before "and." A quick example is here.

The DoD isn't the only group. The NSA, NSF, NNSA, and the USAF all have a vested interest.

Some of it is pretty cool. http://bigbird.psych.purdue.edu/~pizlo/lps-2008.pdf