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Reading the study, it seems like the statistics are not so clear cut. Link: http://www.acc.org/about-acc/p...

"Data from the largest study of its kind in the U.S. reveal a 25 percent jump in the number of heart attacks occurring the Monday after we “spring forward” compared to other Mondays during the year – a trend that remained even after accounting for seasonal variations in these events. But the study showed the opposite effect is also true. Researchers found a 21 percent drop in the number of heart attacks on the Tuesday after returning to standard time in the fall when we gain an hour back."

It's a bit odd for the shift back and forth to be so closely correlated. Later in the study:

"Total daily admissions were adjusted for seasonal and weekday variation, as the rate of heart attacks peaks in the winter and is lowest in the summer and is also greater on Mondays and lower over the weekend."

A quick check in Excel tells me that for the period of the study (January 1, 2010 to September 15,2013), there is one more Friday, Saturday and Sunday than the rest of the week. There is no mention of this fact being adjusted in their results.

Then let's look at what day of the week the year starts:

1/1/2010 = Friday
1/1/2011 = Saturday
1/1/2012 = Sunday
1/1/2013 = Tuesday

Starting to notice something? 2012 was a leap year. No mention for any adjustment for that either. 2/29/12 was a Wednesday, by the way.

So, Mondays are statistically have the highest average heart attacks, most likely because there is one more weekend in the data and that one weekend is most likely in the winter (end of the year) when the number of heart attacks are lower. How much lower? A range of 12-18% lower would account for the 25% versus 21% in heart attack rates between springing forward and falling back.

There was a similar study several years ago that showed a similar correlated link of 10% between the day daylight savings movements as well:

https://www.uab.edu/news/innov...

But I could never find the study mentioned. I'm willing to bet there was also an extra winter weekend weekend or two they did not account for in their study as well.

Whenever you see correlations so tidy like that, there has to be something going on with the data.

Dr. Anath Shalev has some research on blocking beta cell atopsis in T2 (a lot of T2s also go on insulin)

http://www.uab.edu/medicine/diabetes/faculty/faculty-bios/201-anath-shalev

The only way to block out bad Betty White images is with good Betty White images.

Last year I met the girl in the lower right in this photo in a bar in Manhattan and spent the night in her hotel room in 51st street. She gave me a card with the name Beatrix Luebeck and told me she was a Slovakian student.

Next morning she told me she worked as a masseuse and tried to charge me $200 for the night. I told her, sorry, I didn't have any cash and left.

The East Coast gets a bit of a blizzard (I live in DC but am from Minnesota). People start saying, "Global warming?! HA!"

Meanwhile Sagar Island shrinks away from rising oceans.

Meanwhile a UAB professor claims ocean acidification is yet another measurable effect of climate change.

Meanwhile Eastern Antarctica (the steadfast 'unaffected' part of Antarctica) begins to show signs of melting (via NASA and U of TX).

Feel free to keep using your local area to prove/disprove climate change. One day the facts will pile up ...

Why are patents allowed on naturally occurring phenomena like genes anyway?

.......no businessperson would even think of throwing his money at that kind of research. According to them, without patents, there would be no research and progress in this field whatsoever.
I'm not saying whether or not I agree with that, but that's the way it is.

The reality is business people / drug companies do not invest in drug research period.

Business investment tends to goes into marketing the drug its the university's and research institutes that do the drug research.

http://www.uab.edu/reynolds/MajMedFigs/Index.htm

I think it's you who refuses to understand that vegans have ethical concerns about killing or exploiting living things.

I did contract work as a Software Developer for an airplane engine manufacturer (among other things this DOD contractor does). After I pushed a new CAD module to Dev, I was shocked to find out how the software was configured to run.

You see, this very important company wanted their software to be "always available" - even when a specific server or database wasn't available. So the script that ran the program would look for its (50+) supplementary modules in Prod. If a specific module wasn't available in Prod it would try connecting to QA, if QA wouldn't work it would load from Dev. It did all this without prompting or even notifying the user that they weren't running "Prod level" software for all the components.

When I raised concerns that engine components were being developed using this fail-over strategy, I was stunned to discover that most of their software used similar startup scripts. I was also told repeatedly by the engineers that it didn't matter because "all modules have been tested and are production-ready, or the vendor wouldn't have released them to the public.".

They're still making engines, but there'll come a day when a component developed or tested using Prod software loads a Dev module and makes a deadly, untested calculation. Possibly very similar to computer errors that caused the Hartford Civic Center roof collapse.

I quit soon after, and I get very nervous when I fly on planes with those engines.

When money or reputation is involved, convenience trumps reliability far too often.

Multiple Sources...Looks to be true tho the church disputes it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_transfusion

Early attempts

The first historical attempt at blood transfusion was described by the 15th-century chronicler Stefano Infessura. Infessura relates that, in 1492, as Pope Innocent VIII sank into a coma, the blood of three boys was infused into the dying pontiff (through the mouth, as the concept of circulation and methods for intravenous access did not exist at that time) at the suggestion of a physician. The boys were ten years old, and had been promised a ducat each. However, not only the pope died, but so did the three children. Some authors have discredited Infessura's account, accusing him of anti-papalism.

http://www.anes.uab.edu/july.htm
1492 July 25: Giovanni Battista Cibo, born in Genoa, Italy, in 1432, dies. On August 29, 1484, he became Pope Innocent VIII. An early attempt at blood transfusion involving Pope Innocent VIII was described by Stefano Infessura [ca. 1435-1500], an anti-papist lawyer in Rome. According to Infessura's Diary of the City of Rome, when the Pope was on his deathbed, a Jewish physician suggested infusing blood from three ten year-old boys into the pontiff's veins. All three donors died and Innocent himself died on July 25, 1492. The Catholic Encyclopedia warns that Infessura's work is full of gossip and not to be trusted.

True nerds enjoy URLs. :)

This sounds almost exactly like our senior-level "software engineering" course (CS445, I think?) at UAB (http://www.uab.edu/).

A "guest lecturer" (usually the same guy -- a UAB grad and founder of a local medium-sized consulting firm) was in charge of the class, and after a brief overview of what the class would entail, we were instructed to group ourselves into teams in charge of Requirements-gathering, Implementation/Interface design, QA, Documentation, etc., etc. Each 2-3 weeks, we'd focus on "the next step" of the methodology/lifecycle, while the students responsible for that piece of the puzzle would work together and (eventually) produce whatever deliverable was appropriate...

I don't recall how or why, but somehow I ended up as the "Project Lead" -- so I, and my unwitting teammates, found ourselves stressed for the entire quarter, as we were ultimately responsible for taking whatever our classmates "spat out" and presenting it to the Prof (the "Client" for sake of the project). The rest of the "teams" simply did whatever was required of them (eg, preparing a requirements document, programming a prototype, etc) and then took a few weeks off, after the fire was no longer under their respective asses. :)

The key to all of this -- well, *keys*, because I think there were probably two major reasons why this class stuck with me through the years -- were:

(1) The "outsider" as professor/client/judge was a useful model to prepare us for the real world... Here we were, a class of almost-graduates, and yet our respective development backgrounds were almost completely restricted to batch-style, command-line, C/C++ development in UNIX environments. The "Customer" (like any "real" customer, I suspect) didn't care *how* the project was completed, but he sure as hell wanted a non-command-line user interface...! Add to that the fact that he wanted us to interface with a piece of software completely foreign to most of us (Microsoft SourceSafe) -- and it was very obvious, very quick that Visual Basic or VC++ was a much better tool for accomplishing what he wanted done (in the timeframe provided).

The "client" didn't care/understand that we didn't know how to use Microsoft's APIs, or that none of us had ever even poked around with SourceSafe or VB....the assumption was that (as soon-to-be-graduates) we could figure out what the best tools were, teach ourselves those tools, and put the solution together from scratch, because that's what would be expected from us "out there."

(2) The second aspect that made this thing work was also the most controversial: Either the whole class passed or the whole class failed... So even if you were part of the "Requirements Team" and you finished your part of the project a month ago--you were still at the whim of whatever the "Development Team" churned out on the last day of class... If your part was completed correctly, you were still dependent on *all* of your classmates pulling their fair share.

The reason why this was "controversial" -- while some of us argued (and worried) throughout the quarter that an "everyone fails" verdict would be unfair, a small group of us (myself included) suspected that this result would actually never be allowed to happen... You see, for most of us, this was our *last* quarter before graduation -- most of us were already job-searching, or (like me) had already been accepted into grad school at this point.

But completion of this class (with a 'C' or higher) was required in order to graduate with a CS degree....and the class was offered only once every 2-3 quarters or so. So, at least in theory, you could do your job A#1, 100%, and still find yourself having to hang around campus for another 6 months or so--because some idiot in QA failed to sufficiently "impress" the teacher, or whatever.

Again, many of us suspected that the professor wouldn't hold tight to his "everyone fails, everyone passes" mentality if there was an ob

Howdy,

The effectiveness of chlorotoxin in treatment of glioblastomas was discovered by a scientist here at my institution (http://www.neurobiology.uab.edu/Faculty/Sontheime r/Sontheimer.htm). Glioblastoma is hypothesized to be so deadly because of the ability of cancer cells inside the brain to quickly migrate from the primary site to other sites within the brain, quickly invading normal brain tissue. This makes surgery or radiation not very effective, since migrating cells may be hidden within normal brain that is not irradiated or cut out. The migratory ability of glioblastoma cells is related to its unique ability to change size and morphology to move in between normal brain cells.

The size-changing migratory ability is related to a specific chloride ion channel that expresses highly and uniquely on certain brain cancer cells, including gliomas (PubMed ID: 8804043, 8967454). Chlorotoxin, a chloride channel inhibitor discovered in 1993 (PubMed ID: 8383429) was more interestingly found to bind to this glioma-specific chloride ion channel in mice in 1998 (PubMed ID: 9809993) and humans in 2002 (PubMed ID: 12112367). Although it was shown that chlorotoxin failed to inhibit migratory ability due to size-change, chlorotoxin was shown to inhibit migration by inhibition of another protein involved in breaking down the extracellular matrix, allowing cells to more easily migrate.

The strategy that TransMolecular uses to treat gliomas lies in the specificity of expression of the channel to which chlorotoxin binds. That channel is expressed on the vast majority of glioma tissue samples tested, and only rarely on normal tissue. If one attaches a weak or short-lasting radioactive moiety to chlorotoxin, a potential treatment can be to target glioma cells using chlorotoxin, and then kill them by short-lasting localized radiation. This strategy is already being used in Non Hodgkins Lymphoma and other diseases by attaching to tumor- targeting antibodies a radioactive iodine atom.

Voice-based programming plugin for Eclipse.

http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/Eclipse/SpeechClipse/

http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=69261
http://www.graduate.ucf.edu/CurrentGradCatalog/con tent/degrees/ACAD_PROG_71.cfm

These were just on the first two pages of a google search for "computer forensics graduate school". You couldn't have possibly looked that hard.

6. The Purposes of Punishment: 3 to 5 purposes are traditionally cited:
        a) reform or rehabilitation
        b) incapacitation
        c) general deterrence and/or the securing of social peace
        d) retribution

First, they review four traditional arguments justifying capital punishment[:] retribution, deterrence, reform and protection of the State.

1 - It is to be remembered that one of the primary reasons for the law's existence, indeed the state's existence, is that people are to be relieved of their need to strike out against those who have wronged them. Not to argue the rights or wrongs of it; it is entirely natural for an individual, when injured or harmed by another or others, to seek revenge and retribution.

First link (ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt) is entirely empty.
---
PS - This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.
Generated by SlashdotRndSig via GreaseMonkey

First major player!?
Crafty's been available for linux for over a decade. It has always been a major player and still wins the occassional tournament (including CCT6). It's free and source is available to boot.
get from ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt

Rebel's been available for linux for a couple of years

Fruit came second in the latest WCCC (above shredder). It was GPL (decided to go commercial after that result), but the GPL version from a couple of weeks before the tournament can be gotten from http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/ (download section)

And as mentioned in a prior comment, version 1.1 of Zappa (version 2 is current WCCC champion) is available free for linux.

Ruffian is another very strong (top 10) engine, also available for linux.

(btw, it's Shredder, not Schredder)

I had a professor who still swears by the P3-based Xeon for his work and that it will always smoke anything that the P4 has to offer. Why? Strong integer performance.

The professor I speak of is Bob Hyatt, and his research is on computer chess (specifically Crafty, the chess engine we all know and love). The reason the P3-family of chips does such a good job with it is because of the strength of integer calculations. Dr. Hyatt has repeatedly stated that there is not a single floating point instruction to be had in Crafty.

However, the FP unit in the P3 sucks big time. Intel made a processor with a much longer pipeline in order to improve floating point performance--FP is now world class, but the integer stuff won't be as good as it was with the P3 family. (The shorter pipeline is what makes the Athlon a superior performer in some aspects to this day.) This is why we slashdotters are always screaming that raw clock speed will never indicate the supreme chip.

MTV2 - which just plays fringe crap that only New York snob MTV producers would like

I listen to "fringe crap" you insensitive clod!

Sorry, but if they really played 'fringe' music I would actually watch it. Every time I've checked it, they're playing some indie-poseur crap like the Strokes or Coldplay. Try listening to the Residents* or Acid Mothers Temple or Negativland or Lightning Bolt or Sun Ra sometime and get back to me ;-)

*MTV actually played Residents videos when it first started out (which comes off as very bizarre if you know their music). They were actually pioneers of the music video format, and some of their early works are archived at MOMA.
I highly recomend their DVD "Icky Flix" to anyone into Dadism, Surrealism or just plain visual and aural insanity.

All theemail addresses a spammer cares to swallow.

I'm no expert on that, but a google for "determine age bones" turns up http://main.uab.edu/show.asp?durki=45647 and http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/425/425lect17.htm and http://www.ilri.cgiar.org/InfoServ/Webpub/Fulldocs /Yakpro/SessionE9.htm.

Agreed that it would be harder for a new species, but there are things to go on - it's a lot more complex than "short, therefor child".

"Relation of useful field of view and other screening tests to on road driving performance" - Perceptual and Motor Skills, 2000, 91, 279-290. And there are many other papers replicating and extending the work. In fact, the work of Karlene Ball has repeatedly shown a direct link between performance on this very specific perceptual task and driving performance.

You know, we did get published in Nature, the number one science impact journal in the world. I doubt they would have been so happy to publish it if anyone off the street could come up with a valid criticism."

There's some pretty open source good chess software out there:

-Tim Mann's winboard (GUI, mentioned in other post)

-If you have winboard and want to try something besides GNUchess, the most popular engine for the GUI: crafty, by Robert Hyatt. Not anywhere as user-friendly as something like Chessmaster, but a great engine. Er, and I'm not sure this has an actual open source license or if it's merely free as in beer.

-connect to an open source chess server, the Free Internet Chess server; use Winboard as an interface and play internet chess with players from around the world

-organize your game scores or study those of the greats with Shane Hudson's SCID chess database. Search the database by player name, Elo rating, openings, etc. This is an incredible program, usable, fast, and stable!

so your saying a real bridge engineer also builds the bridge with his own hands?

For the most part.

You've chosen a strategic example to reinforce your argument. In the days of Edison, bridge-building engineers didn't have the proper tools so they were at a disadvantage. Hence the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse. I won't say that a computer might help out with bridge building today, but I won't say that prototype testing doesn't *still* happen either.

Allow me to give a better example.

I live in the Detroit area. Without getting into the performance of the Lions football team (sigh...), witness Ford Field. When the roof was hoisted into position, it set the record for the largest one-piece modular construction object. I was there.

There were more engineers there than there were construction workers. Unless construction workers are wearing collars these days.

Like a big fucking set of Legos.

For a good debunking to that publicity-seeking video-selling moon conspiracy theorist, check out this.

--LP

Apparently this hasn't stopped some people from doing the totally distributed approach though; try googling on "zugzwang chess program" for an example.

Elison is offering to put something in place that already exists.

A national ID card program was signed into law by Clinton in 1996. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act included provisions for a National ID card. The card would include biometric info (section 656) and is already on the books. The cards are supposed to be developed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration of the Department of Transportation.

Also, check out this great article which draws some Orwellian examines connections between recent technologies and privacy.

Exactly, those of us with a complete brain recognise idiotic conspiracy theories when we see them, and we can shred those theories to bits, point by point, with facts:

http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo/moon_hoax_FAQ. html
http://www.business.uab.edu/cache/debunking.htm

For example.

Every year, American coal-burning power plants use approximately 800 million tons (source: UAB Magazine; one of the older issues that isn't online or I'd give a URL) -- that's a lot of ash to dump on an annual basis. Now imagine instead of dumping that ash, you use it as a matrix in your concrete. And for the folks in marketing: imagine you can sell your waste instead of paying someone to haul it off. Example stucture of the day: the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.

Interesting tidbit about fly ash in concrete: new federal nitrogen oxide emission standards have forced power plants to install different burners -- this gives the ash a higher carbon content that isn't ideal for building materials. One of our researchers and his students are working on methods to use the high-carbon ash -- so if you're into this kind of thing, I highly recommend checking out the numerous journal articles written by Dr. Fouad H. Fouad.

I'm in one of Dr. Robert Hyatt's classes this month, honing my Linux chops. The whole idea of setting up my own chess server on your home network is killer, especially because it is an example of open-source technologies that can have an "omigosh" effect on normal folks (RTFM if you want Crafty to work with other chess apps ... it's all on the FTP server, of course).

Want a copy of Crafty or find out if it will run on your OS? Stop by the University of Alabama at Birmingham's CIS department or find a mirror: ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/

Want to find out more about Dr. Robert Hyatt? Go here: http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/faculty/hyatt/hyatt.ht ml

I'm in one of Dr. Robert Hyatt's classes this month, honing my Linux chops. The whole idea of setting up my own chess server on your home network is killer, especially because it is an example of open-source technologies that can have an "omigosh" effect on normal folks (RTFM if you want Crafty to work with other chess apps ... it's all on the FTP server, of course).

Want a copy of Crafty or find out if it will run on your OS? Stop by the University of Alabama at Birmingham's CIS department or find a mirror: ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/

Want to find out more about Dr. Robert Hyatt? Go here: http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/faculty/hyatt/hyatt.ht ml

RA the sun god?

Actually, it was Sun Ra who came and played some really weird music to enourage the workers and keep them moving.

The SSDF autoplays games between computer programs. Among the group in the top 13, on the same hardware, Crafty (whose source is available, although under what license I do not know) places at the bottom. I'm not sure as to the availability of the source to other chess programs.