Slashdot Mirror

Using the new In-Cell growing technique many companies seem to be coming up with vaccines in a shorter period than earlier. Medicinenet has an informative article on Flu Vaccines and immunization candidates, and goes on to say why they are required. This is a good read to understand why vaccination is being given importance here. The 1918 "Spanish" Flu epidemic Virus which is very similar to the recent outbreak was re-created in a laboratory in 2005 by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger and colleagues at AFIP. Comparison with Avian flu strains led to the conclusion that Human Flu Virus strains are derived from Avian flu virii.

Among young people and children Flu vaccines claim to be 70%-90% effective, while this drops down to 30%-40% in people aged over 65 who may have other secondary complications. Hence the scale of vaccination required for the present outbreak (which has been repeatedly noted for not being as lethal as the 1918 Flu strain) may be entirely different covering only those in a risk category. More stress is on drugs that help in combating the Virus in an infected individual. These are usually amino-acid chain suppressors like Tamiflu. There has already been mobilization and distribution of the drugs to combat such an outbreak. The WHO has done a recent donation of drugs to Nigeria. This is however related to continued support of a H5N1 outbreak since 2006.

The role and importance of the Vaccines that would be available is not yet certain. It seems that the stress is more on treatment. Insofar stress on prevention without the involvement of Primary Medical care personnel. Only those who suspect infection have been requested to visit quarantine or medical facilities for treatment. The W.H.O's present stand with the Flu Virus has been a direct result of criticism during the second widespread Avian flu H5N1 attack incidents in 2006. Attention is being given to Avian Influenza as a pandemic because it leads to complications and secondaries making it difficult to fight other diseases with stronger morbidity. -- No Greater Friend, No Greater Enemy! (Lucius Cornelius Sulla)

Using the new In-Cell growing technique many companies seem to be coming up with vaccines in a shorter period than earlier. Medicinenet has an informative article on Flu Vaccines and immunization candidates, and goes on to say why they are required. This is a good read to understand why vaccination is being given importance here. The 1918 "Spanish" Flu epidemic Virus which is very similar to the recent outbreak was re-engineered in a laboratory in 2005 by Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger and colleagues at AFIP. Comparison with Avian flu strains led to the conclusion that Human Flu Virus strains are derived from Avian flu virii.

Among young people and children Flu vaccines claim to be 70%-90% effective, while this drops down to 30%-40% in people aged over 65 who may have other secondary complications. Hence the scale of vaccination required for the present outbreak (which has been repeatedly noted for not being as lethal as the 1918 Flu strain) may be entirely different covering only those in a risk category. More stress is on drugs that help in combating the Virus in an infected individual. These are usually amino-acid chain suppressors like Tamiflu. There has already been mobilization and distribution of the drugs to combat such an outbreak. The WHO has done a recent donation of drugs to Nigeria.

The role and importance of the Vaccines that would be available is not yet certain. It seems that the stress is more on treatment. Insofar stress on prevention without the involvement of Primary Medical care personnel. Only those who suspect infection have been requested to visit quarantine or medical facilities for treatment. The WHO's present stand with the Flu Virus has been a direct result of criticism during the second widespread Avian flu H5N1 attack incidents in 2006.

Yes, absolutely sure. Try a search at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ for "Influenza A", and you'll see papers this term going back to the 1940s. H1N1 designates a subset of Influenza A viruses that include (e.g.) the 1918 'Spanish Flu' and the current pandemic 'swine flu' strain. The H5N1 'bird flu' is also Influenza A. For a good overview, see:

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/swineflu/biofacts/swinefluoverview.html

At a quick glance, this wikipedia page looks OK:

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

Otherwise any advantage gained by size will be hugely offset by the sad fact that the thing moves like a turtle in molasses.

Turns out that turtles will probably swim just fine in molasses.

> very possible TeX does an awful lot more than that.

Very possible? I would say more like established fact. For example, can you embed R code in a Word document to produce research papers such that exact code that generated every number, chart, and table in the paper is in the same document as the writeup (reproducible research). You can with LaTeX with Sweave ( http://www.stat.umn.edu/~charlie/Sweave/ ).

And that is one of MANY things LaTeX can do that Word cannot.

The reason it's thought to be swine influenza is that when its genome was examined and compared with other flu genomes:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/FLU/SwineFlu.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/FLU/Database/select.cgi

the various segments were most closely related to sequences previously (and recently) detected in pig viruses, though the particular strain had not been found before in any animal:

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/swineflu/biofacts/swinefluoverview.html

It's actually quite possible, however, that pigs originally picked up a distant ancestor of the current strain from humans. Pig flu was first described in 1918, coinciding with the last human H1N1 pandemic, and when the virus was isolated from pigs in the 1930s, it was also found to have the H1N1 serotype.

Dang. I got an error the first time I tried submitting this article, so I rushed through the second time I wrote it. It must be in the water up here, though, 'cause they misspelled Alec Habig in the article.

Here in the US, there is little doubt that the students own the copyright to their homework/papers:

Article that reviewed of the policies of 20 major universities:

"Traditional academic work product-under copyright policies of all universities surveyed (20), copyright ownership of non-directed academic works traditionally created by faculty and students (books, articles, theses, etc.) vests with the creators of such works."

http://www.academic.umn.edu/provost/reports/pdfs/peer_overview.pdf

Notice that copyright on paid/sponsored works or works that are substantially based on University resources are held by the University.

Nearly every location on this list is full of distractions. True, I can multitask while the TV is showing something I've seen or do not care about. Unfortunately, if it's a movie out of my Netflix queue, it greatly hampers my progress.

Some of these places are just plain uncomfortable like public transportation or an airplane.

Your bed?! The place where you sleep? Seriously? Granted there aren't a lot of places to suggest, this list blows. I'd be swimming if I were near a pool.

For me the biggest factor is nice studio quality headphones covering my ears producing low volume music. Maybe it's my favorite non-talk radio station (The Current or Radio K) or maybe it's some classical/jazz/rock album I just picked up. My hands and eyes are busy only with the task at hand. An internet connection will help break the monotony for short periods of time and keep me at full operating power. After that, I like to have hot tea, coffee or water at hand to drink and maybe some raw almonds to munch on. A relaxed position and a bathroom within short distance makes for the optimum coding environment.

Assuming I have no questions about requirements or technology, this is the state I usually like to be in.

The Constitution, for the most part, does not restrain the individual; it restrains the government. The first amendment does not generally apply to private parties. Exceptions exist

On my personal property, I can restrain any number of First Amendment rights, such as not allowing guests to practice their religion or not allowing them to watch adult videos.

The states, as well as their proxies in local government, are restrained through the Supreme Court's incorporation of most of the Bill of Rights via the Fourteenth Amendment. Amendments not held to be incorporated against the states are the Second, the Third, part of the Fifth, the Seventh, and part of the Eighth. An analysis of the First Amendment's incorporation can be found here: http://1stam.umn.edu/main/historic/Incorporation%20Chart.htm

Students are not subject to the same First Amendment protections as ordinary adult citizens. However, their right to access non-obscene, non-pornographic material is constitutionally protected. The LGBT filter employed by the Tennessee schools is restraining that right.

Schools and libraries are required under CIPA (Children's Internet Protection Act) to use web filtering software as a condition of receiving certain federal funds. The Supreme Court has upheld (wrongly, in my opinion) that this condition is a valid exercise of the spending power of Congress.

I don't believe any censorware can perfectly balance students' First Amendment protections with the requirements of CIPA. The filtering software used in Tennessee goes above and beyond the requirements of CIPA by blocking access to non-obscene, non-pornographic information. Interestingly, the software allows access to anti-LGBT information, such as "reparative therapy" and "ex-gay" ministries. This makes me suspicious that the filtering is targeting pro-LGBT sites, which in turn makes me believe that it's not simply a software deficiency.

Human being are individuals. They have a genome (well, actually, two, 'cause of the mitochondria), they evolved, they form a population of interbreeding animals.

That said, they provide an ecosystem to a large number of microbial species, some of which are symbionts, some are parasites, some can be both. In general, we cannot live without our symbionts, and our symbionts are depending on us.

All that isn't news. This perspective on a human individual has been here for decades. What is new is that with 2nd generation sequencing it is now possible to thoroughly investigate the microbial composition of our symbionts parasites. This is an exciting new technology which allows such projects as the 1000 genomes project, Neanderthal genome sequencing, metagenomics and much, much more.

Just one more remark: given a population of genetically identical bacteria, it is sometimes wrong to call each bacterial cell an "individual". These cells can collaborate, exchange information, shape their environment and act more like an organism than a single invdividual. There are even some bacteria that can actually get together, differentiate and form a macroscopic, multicellular structure. So saying that we are colonised by 100 trillion of individuals is an exaggeration.

That said, we too can view ourselves as a colony of (mostly: think sperm / eggs and t-cells) genetically identical cells that communicate, collaborate and shape their environment, and also are (mostly, think: blood cells) physically linked together. And each our cell can be viewed as a symbiont between two organisms, each with its own genome and even its own genetic code (yep, the genetic code of the mitochondria differs from that used in the nucleus in our cells).

j. (IAAB)

Most major colleges I know about have one. Here's an example:
http://www.career.umn.edu/

When I was in college, I found them more useful for things like the job fairs they organized rather than for things like guidance, which is best obtained from someone working in the field you'd like to go into.

He even has a name to match. Well... at least the second part.
Dr. Sarkanen sounds much better than Dr. Simo.

He does look like he fuckin hates us all for all those wood jokes all these years, though.

Where I work they offer both Moodle and WebCT, a non-insignificant amount of classes use moodle.

https://moodle.umn.edu/

Something like 800 classes use it, it appears.

The article talks about the Axel having similarities to the University of Minnesota's Scout Rovers; after taking a boo on thier site, I can see the MegaScout works off a Lithium Polymar power source, and the other models of the Scout Rovers don't have the specific type of power sources listed, but I could only assume that it would be similar type of Lithium source. The other models do have their operation lengths listed, which could be anywhere from 20 minutes to 20 hours depending on the selected mode of operation.

here's the link for those who want it.

http://distrob.cs.umn.edu/megascout.php

I've been a Linux user since 1993, when I was a student at university. Until 1998, I ran Linux as my primary OS, but kept a Windows partition on my home system to run some games. And since 2002 I've been fortunate enough to run Linux full-time at work. It has been a great experience so far. I didn't have any issues exchanging documents with others at work, and certainly my previous bosses didn't mind. But times change, I suppose.

I've been asked to move back to Windows, at least for work. The difference between Windows (XP) and Linux (Fedora 9) has been shocking, to say the least. Since you often see blogs or tech articles (like the parent post) when long-time Windows users experiment with Linux for the first time, I thought it might be equally interesting for this long-time Linux user to blog about my first experience running Windows in over 6 or 7 years:

Linux in Exile

The short list of things I have run into in my first week of running Windows:

• hardware support is definitely not plug-and-play (had troubles getting a simple laptop mini-dock to get recognized, same with the external display.)
• programs look and act differently from each other (no common themes, inconsistent behavior, etc.)
• MS Office (2007) makes it hard for me to write the documents I need to create for work.
• Font rendering is poor.

I haven't written yet about program look-and-feel; I'll do that soon. But I have noticed that MS Office acts differently from Notepad, from Media Player, and from the Windows local file browser.

Also, ctrl-backspace is implemented differently just about everywhere - in some cases, it backspaces to the start of the word or field (what I expect) and elsewhere it only backspaces once, and in other cases it inserts a ctrl-backspace character!

Care to give some links about this ? All I read about the H1B "grace" period is that there is none. (random recent link http://www.isss.umn.edu/H1BEmployment/GracePer.html). There's apparently an unofficial 10 day grace period, but that's about it.

Wow, there goes the rest of the U.S. housing market. (((((pfffffftt!)))))

Care to give some links about this ? All I read about the H1B "grace" period is that there is none. (random recent link http://www.isss.umn.edu/H1BEmployment/GracePer.html). There's apparently an unofficial 10 day grace period, but that's about it.

I had attempted an implementation of similar concept limited to Java applications and based on top of JXTA P2P protocol as my MS project. http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~salvi/downloads/jyro_aos_project.doc All the possible applications mentioned in this article are nice and are known for a long time. What matters is execution. Good luck to the project!

http://www.math.umn.edu/systems_guide/putty_xwin32.html

First result of X-Forwarding on Google.

fucking noobs
  http://www.d.umn.edu/~tcolburn/emacs/emacs-vs-vi.html

Animal Science

Read & Learn, And Legalize Marijuana

Since the article is often pulled from websites, the first article you should read and burn into your mind is this, Google for the title and archive a copy for yourself:

"A break-in to end all break-ins"
"In 1971, stolen FBI files exposed the government's domestic spying program"

It's an amazing story, and in 2008, how much has this expanded into every corner of our lives? The majority of Americans are brainwashed sheep consumers with a limp wet noodle for a brain, thrashing around with their Wii and Paris Hilton media like a fat dinoasaur in a tar pit. Stay informed, we have no privacy, encryption is good but useless with acoustic monitoring, reflections in the eye and objects in your environment, etc.! If it's electronic, there's always a loophole. You shine brighter with each electronic device you use, in many ways. Don't trust Hushmail or any web based mail service to keep anything of yours secure or to provide any reasonable degree of security. Secure your computer room and rig your computer to shut down if you use encryption like Truecrypt or other when your environment is entered by someone other than you or those you permit and trust (you shouldn't trust anyone, everyone has a price)

Compromising Reflections or How to Read LCD Monitors Around the Corner
http://www.infsec.cs.uni-sb.de/~unruh/publications/reflections.pdf [uni-sb.de]

And more:

http://www.eff.org/wp/detecting-packet-injection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_remailer
http://cryptome.org/tempest-law.htm
http://seclab.uiuc.edu/pubs/LeMayT06.pdf
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~dfrankow/files/lam-etrics2006-security.pdf
http://cryptome.org/nsa-vaneck.htm
http://www.alobbs.com/macchanger
http://lifehacker.com/software/ssh/geek-to-live--encrypt-your-web-browsing-session-with-an-ssh-socks-proxy-237227.php
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/five_stages.html
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-92/SP800-92.pdf
http://csrc.nist.gov/itsec/guidance_WinXP_Home.html
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-84/SP800-84.pdf
http://all.net/books/document/harvard.html
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-keyc.html
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-keyc2/
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-keyc3/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/emsec/optical-faq.html
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/csep590/06wi/
http://www.wiley.com/legacy/compbooks/mcnamara/links.html
http://lifeha

Since the article is often pulled from websites, the first article you should read and burn into your mind is this, Google for the title and archive a copy for yourself:

"A break-in to end all break-ins"
"In 1971, stolen FBI files exposed the government's domestic spying program"

It's an amazing story, and in 2008, how much has this expanded into every corner of our lives? The majority of Americans are brainwashed sheep consumers with a limp wet noodle for a brain, thrashing around with their Wii and Paris Hilton media like a fat dinoasaur in a tar pit. Stay informed, we have no privacy, encryption is good but useless with acoustic monitoring, reflections in the eye and objects in your environment, etc.! If it's electronic, there's always a loophole. You shine brighter with each electronic device you use, in many ways. Don't trust Hushmail or any web based mail service to keep anything of yours secure or to provide any reasonable degree of security. Secure your computer room and rig your computer to shut down if you use encryption like Truecrypt or other when your environment is entered by someone other than you or those you permit and trust (you shouldn't trust anyone, everyone has a price)

Compromising Reflections or How to Read LCD Monitors Around the Corner
http://www.infsec.cs.uni-sb.de/~unruh/publications/reflections.pdf

And more:

http://www.eff.org/wp/detecting-packet-injection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_remailer
http://cryptome.org/tempest-law.htm
http://seclab.uiuc.edu/pubs/LeMayT06.pdf
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~dfrankow/files/lam-etrics2006-security.pdf
http://cryptome.org/nsa-vaneck.htm
http://lifehacker.com/software/ssh/geek-to-live--encrypt-your-web-browsing-session-with-an-ssh-socks-proxy-237227.php
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/five_stages.html
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-92/SP800-92.pdf
http://csrc.nist.gov/itsec/guidance_WinXP_Home.html
http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-84/SP800-84.pdf
http://all.net/books/document/harvard.html
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-keyc.html
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-keyc2/
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-keyc3/
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/emsec/optical-faq.html
http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/csep590/06wi/
http://www.wiley.com/legacy/compbooks/mcnamara/links.html
http://lifehacker.com/software/home-server/geek-to-live--set-up-a-personal-home-ssh-server-205090.php

I'm serious about trying this.

Excellent!

- finding "off street" routes, trails, etc. I suspect there are trails around Bush Lake, I just don't know how to find them.

There are a huge number of bike-able trails in and around Hyland park reserve. During the commute hours, they can sometimes turn into a highway for bikes. You could probably run almost the whole length of the park on these paved trails. See the park map for details. As far as getting there from 169, I imagine you could figure out a low-traffic route through the residential neighborhood between 169 and Hyland park. Residential roads are great for bike commuting, primarily because they are low-traffic and low-speed.

- equipment? I have an older mountain bike, I know the tires are dry-rotted and need replaced, but the bike itself is in great shape.

That should do it. Changing the tires and tubes is probably a good idea, and double-check your brake pads. Check the chain, as well. If it's rusted, a replacement is cheap enough. Your local bike shop (I'm not sure what you have in over by you, I know there's both a Erik's and a Penn Cycle in Bloomington) can help you with the chain or any other parts you need replacing.

- safety gear? Helmet, obviously. What else?

It never hurts to be visible. If you're on the road before dawn (and it sounds like you are), blinky lights on the rear and front are essential, and you might also want a bit of a headlight on the front. A cheap reflective safety vest or similarly visible garmet would be a good idea as well. Also, you should take along everything you need to fix a flat tube. A small hand pump, a set of tire levers, and an extra tube or a instant patch kit will do. Again, the folks at your local bike shop can show you how to change a tube "in the field" if you're not sure how to do it yourself.

- rain gear?

If you cycle in your work clothes, or don't like getting wet, a basic rain coat should work. It's best to find something light and partially breathable. Panchos can be problematic as they are so loose-fitting they're likely to get stuck in your chain or something. Myself, I commute in cycling clothes, with my work clothes in a water-proof bag, so I don't really care about getting rained on. If it is raining, you should also have something over your eyes. Clear lensed glasses, perscription or not, will work here. Also, if you commute in work clothing, you might consider getting some fenders installed on your bike if you don't already have them. If you really don't like cycling in the rain, there's little shame in driving on rainy days. :-)

- other tips?

Have fun. Try out your proposed route on the weekend before you try commuting to work on it. If you're riding on a road, follow all rules of the road: stop at every stop sign, signal turns with your arms, always ride with (never against) traffic, etc. Check over your shoulder periodically. If you're going through a crosswalk, you should be walking your bike as you're now technically a pedestrian. If you're on the sidewalk or trail and are approaching a pedestrian from behind, announce your presence with a "on your left!" or somesuch a few seconds before you pass them. Check out this thread on bikeforums.net: Advice for New Commuters

Best of luck with your commute plans. If you've any other questions you can get my contact info from my modest web page.

All biologists/geneticists don't work on one project you know. There are people out there who do that "real science for humanity." But you may want to start asking why politicians and corporations don't try to fund research that investigates those topics, and not that laughable bill that was passed in the US not long ago which basically just subsidized more corn farmers.
Not trolling here, just wish this ethanol kick would end because it isn't feasible. Just look at the numbers.

Now back to the topic at hand. Helping revive an indigenous species which was wiped out by humans is beneficial to their problems with invasive species such as foxes. I'm not saying they will eat rabbits and rats, but it will add some more stabilization to the food web, and hopefully won't target the dingoes.

http://uniset.ca/terr/news/lat_fbibreakin.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weatherman_(organization)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition_Act_of_1918
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLAPP
http://www.amazon.com/Bowling-Alone-Collapse-American-Community/dp/0743203046/sr=8-1/qid=1172469926/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-3962904-3664448?ie=UTF8&s=books
http://code.google.com/p/torchat/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Shah's_Men
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_drug_trafficking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_Fire_Decree
http://web.mit.edu/gtmarx/www/iron.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Rule_Book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeal_of_prohibition
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writeprint
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Eck_phreaking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sousveillance
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
http://www.eff.org/testyourisp/pcapdiff/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
http://ai.bpa.arizona.edu/COPLINK/
http://ai.bpa.arizona.edu/research/coplink/authorship.htm
http://www.coplink.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO
http://www.zurich.ibm.com/security/idemix/
http://packetstormsecurity.nl/filedesc/Practical_Onion_Hacking.pdf.html
http://www.williamson-labs.com/laser-mic.htm
http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~dfrankow/files/privacy-sigir2006.pdf
http://freehaven.net/anonbib/topic.html#Anonymous_20communication
http://www.wiley.com/legacy/compbooks/mcnamara/links.html

Iron Man's Suit Defies Physics -- Mostly

By James Kakalios

Tony Stark's amazing suit is a long way from realization, mostly due to practical energy constraints.

As a comic book fan and physics professor, I am looking forward to the big screen debut of Iron Man. This is due, in part, to the fact that instead of getting belted with gamma rays or being born a demon from hell, industrialist and scientist Tony Stark got his super powers by means of his engineering genius.

But just how realistic is Stark's amazing suit?

Sadly, nearly all of the features of the Iron Man suit, with one important exception, are not likely to be realized anytime soon. Let's look at each of the suit's major elements in turn.

Jet boots

The reason that we don't fly to work using boot-mounted jets as Iron Man does has nothing to do with technology and everything to do with energy. We know how to achieve thrust and propulsion using personal jet packs, and a person can indeed fly from home to their place of employment like Buck Rogers or Adam Strange -- provided they live 30 seconds from work.

The problem is that lifting a full-grown person 100 feet into the air considerably increases their potential energy, and that gain in energy must come from the stored chemical energy in the jet pack. Ditto for the energy required to zip around once airborne. You just can't store enough energy to make long flights without making the suit too big to wear. So jet boots alone don't make Iron Man an escapist fantasy, but the idea that Stark could store enough energy in his suit to fly for more than half a minute does.

Repulsor rays

Similarly, the directed energy weapons Iron Man uses, such as the "repulsor rays" built into the palms of his gloves, should require that Stark drag along a large power generator whenever he faces off against the Mandarin or Titanium Man. I'm not exactly sure what a "repulsor ray" is, but if it's anything like a high-power laser, then the energy demands are considerable.

Even assuming that Iron Man can convert any stored energy in his suit into laser light with 100 percent efficiency, then to generate a beam powerful enough to melt a fist-size hole through a half-inch thick steel plate (which any comic book fan can tell you is well within Shellhead's capabilities) would require an energy pulse of more than 2 gigawatts of power, greater than the output of a nuclear power plant.

Cybernetic helmet

There is one aspect of Iron Man's armor that is not only scientifically sound, but may be available for our use someday soon: the "cybernetic helmet" Tony Stark uses to control the devices within his armor. When Iron Man wants to discharge his palm-mounted repulsor rays, he does not have to manually release a safety switch, enter a firing sequence code or even pull a trigger -- he just tells the supervillain to "talk to the hand" and fires!

In fact, Bin He of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota has already created a helmet much like Iron Man's. It works on the principle that neurons' electrical currents create electric and magnetic fields, which can be detected with devices such as the electroencephalograph, or EEG. While the EEG has been around since the 1920s, recent advances in signal processing have enabled scientists to isolate and identify the firing signatures of neurons associated with particular motor-imagery tasks.

Professor He identified the specific firing pattern that arises when a person, watching images on a computer monitor, tries to mentally move a cursor to the left or right. These detected frequencies can then be amplified and, when suitably modified, can instruct the computer to move the cursor in the same direction.

Of course, He is not int

"Organic" foods is by and large just a pseudo-scientific bunk phrase like "moisturizes your skin". That's not to say that I don't approve of some forms of agriculture over others. I'm seriously pondering getting my own chickens, for the fresh eggs and maybe even a few meat birds.

Do you have any scientific evidence to back up your claim? Here's some links to science articles on organic food:

• "Organic foods in relation to nutrition and health key facts"
• "Healthful Compounds In Tomatoes Increase Over Time In Organic Fields".
• Research At Great Lakes Meeting Shows More Vitamin C In Organic Oranges Than Conventional Oranges".
• "Organic Diet Makes Rats Healthier".
• "Organic Farming Has Little, If Any, Effect On Nutritional Content Of Wheat, Study Concludes"
• "Alternative Farming Cleans Up Water"
• "Compost Can Turn Agricultural Soils Into A Carbon Sink, Thus Protecting Against Climate Change"

At the same time, if we're going to feed a growing global population, we're not going to do it by "organic" means.

Some scientific studies on this conclude organic food can't feed the world while others say it can:

• "Organic Farming Can Feed The World, Study Suggests".
• "Organic Farms Produce Same Yields As Conventional Farms"
• "Organic Crops Impressively Productive When Compared With Conventionally Grown Crops".
• "Organic Farming Produces Smaller Crops, Healthier Soils, Swiss Researchers Report In Science".
• "Can sustainable agriculture really feed the world?"
• "Organic agriculture and the global food supply"

Maybe I missed it but I didn't see one key way to feed the world in any of the articles above, cutting out a lot of meat if not moving to a vegetarian diet. Raising animals to eat requires more land to grow the food to feed them than if people didn't eat meat.

Falcon

Legge, G.E. (2007). Psychophysics of Reading in Normal and Low Vision . Mahwah , NJ & London : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0-8058-4328-0

http://vision.psych.umn.edu/groups/gellab/Categories.htm

http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/ for accessibility issues

There is quite a bit of literature on this question. However, badly crafted studies often turn out to be measuring preference not performance. You won't find badly crafted studies in the work of Legge, those who cite him, and those who publish in the same venues.

• The "membranes", "modes" and "frequencies" here are already a physical analogy. Number theorists study objects (``automorphic forms'' -- no matter why they are called this way) that live on some ``manifolds'' (no matter what that means, either). But to get some intuition you can replace ''manifold'' with ''taut membrane'' (like a drum) and ''automorphic form'' with ''normal mode'' a.k.a. basic ''standing wave'', as you call it. An important problem in mathematical physics is to find what are the possible frequencies of standing waves on a particular surface. The problem here is analogous.
• To see a picture of the 2-dim membrane I was talking about, see here. Start by taking a half-infinite strip of width 1, and cut off a semi-circular bit at the bottom like in the picture (the strip extends infinitely far at the top. Next, glue the two infinite sides together so the strip becomes a cylinder. Finally (that's not in the picture) imagine that as you go further and further up the cylinder, its radius becomes smaller and smaller, so the real thing is a kind of infinite funnel.
• To see what a standing wave on this membrane looks like, see here (this was computed numerically by Dennis Hejhal).
• The "lift" that takes a standing wave on this space to a standing wave on the 5-dim space is really complicated (and is a very indirect construction). There just isn't a non-technical way to describe it.
• However, we know what the "lift" does to the frequencies: if you start with a standing wave you found numerically, and approximately know its frequency, then you know there will be a lifted guy of a calculatable frequency on the 5-dim space. So the interesting problem is to find standing waves with frequencies which are different from the ones we already know about (because we have calculated a lot of standing waves on the 2-dim surface).
• One symmetry this infinite funnel has is left-right reflection (it is apparent both in the picture of the strip and in the picture of the vibrational mode). The other symmetries are difficult to describe in a blog post. What's important is that the modes of vibration must respect the symmetries.
• It is true that to each such ''standing wave'' (on the 2-dim surface, on the 5-dim space, and on others) there is an associated L-function. The Riemann Hypothesis for these L-function (the same formulation: all zeros are on the critical line) is called the "Generalized (or Grand) Riemann Hypothesis" or GRH.
• It was possible to calculate a few zeros of the newly-found modes, and see that indeed they are where they are supposed to be. This gives some evidence for the GRH. Calculations like this can always falsify the GRH (by finding a zero off the line). However, these calculations don't represent any progress toward proving the GRH -- that was confusion on part of the person who submitted the story to slashdot.

for a history of pigeon post look here:
http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/archive/PigeonPost.html

it's got more history than I thought!

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It doesn't matter whether you like somebody's smile, what their F-ing religion is or how rich they are. What matters is what they plan on doing if they become president.

Avoid blog spam. Read the actual news release: U of M Researchers Create Beating Heart in Laboratory.

I don't know what is worse, a blog spam blog Slashvertisement, a huge number of comments by people who have no interest in the subject, or moderators who moderate up off topic comments.

Avoid blog spam. Read the actual news release: U of M Researchers Create Beating Heart in Laboratory.

Simple. It didn't happen before. The Internet has experienced 'exafloods' before. The amount of data and traffic have skyrocketted exponentially every year since this big major growth spurts started in the 1980s and 1990s. How can the Internet do that?

Because it was designed that way, that's why. The Internet is the largest distributed network in the world. TCP/IP was purposefully designed to be scalable on a massively large scale. Sure, we've improved the technology along the way, but the bottom line is that the routers directing all those tubes aren't going to buckle under the pressure anytime soon, and routing technology is just getting better all the time.

I think these are everywhere and in my opinion quite effective, assuming; a.) it is only enabled during rush hour, b.) it is placed with the correct timing based on congestion. Traffic ripples (wave) can be a pain in the but. Those would be the effect of driving down the freeway (highway for you all) and seeing everyone hit there brakes for no apparent reason. I think these lights are to reduce this effect. If you were to have poorly timed merges then it was cause a continuous ripple effect which is a. dangerous and b. slows down traffic.

http://www.ima.umn.edu/talks/workshops/11-3-6.2003/helbing/ima.pdf

Well the spike would have to be accounted for by the tending of children, caring for the elderly, or working in worse conditions. Some of those social and environmental factors would be different today.

Immersive Language Instruction Tool

Here is a movie of a prototype that Mark McCahill's group made with along with some University of Minnesota folks interested in technology assisted language acquisition - Mahmoud Sadri, Penny Thompson, and Sara Mack.

If we're going to grant government handouts based on whose people were here first, the Indians lose. There are just too many archaeological discoveries that show they are relative latecomers who exterminated the indigenous Caucasoid population.

Far better that we all treat each other based on who we are, rather than who our ancestors were, with totally color-blind government policies. Race is meaningless to citizenship. I wish they wouldn't even collect the statistics.

-ccm

It's hard time believing that you are seriously asking for a list of transgressions as though this is the first you've heard of it. It's not like some 70% of the country disapproves of his performance, the burden is somehow on me to demonstrate that the Bush administration has caused problems? Do you think that maybe I have some unique idea about it? Honestly I don't -- my complaints are pretty run of the mill.

A couple that pop into my mind right now would be the misguided decision to go to war without understanding what we were getting into, the crackdown on civil liberties, the insane spending habits, the sanctioning of torture and holding prisoners without a trial -- a sore spot for me since my innocent grandfather was imprisoned and tortured in communist Poland without a trial during the cold war... I'll stop there.

Do I sound like a liberal yet? I'm not. A heck of a lot of conservatives that I know would agree with every criticism I've listed. If you honestly don't agree, fine, but don't dismiss it as "liberal whining".

Having worked for some high-profile architects, all I can say is, "quelle surprise!"

Now, FranTaylor wrote:
>
> For another, the extreme temperature changes from summer to winter, and the requirement that the building be
> heated and cooled from MIT's central steam plant.
>
      In the (loony) architect's defense, the University of Minnesota does this just fine with their ass-ugly Celebrity Pile Of Library, and under what I must point out are far wider temperatiure variations than those of New England:
          http://www.weisman.umn.edu/architecture/images.html

      "That's no university library, it's a space station!"

- Will
(Why yes, I *am* a Minnesotan living on the East Coast, and no, I *haven't* owned proper boots in a decade!)

"The building is a wild jumble of angular shapes, covered in shimmering brushed stainless steel - sure to brighten up those long, gray northern winters."
Newsweek, September 20, 1993

The supercapacitor that I was doing research on at the University of Minnesota was constructed with plates made of RuO2 (Ruthenium-dioxide) and the fluid was H2O. The plates would not decompose into the water, so in theory there would be no exposure risk to the fluid in such a capacitor. http://www.msi.umn.edu/cgi-bin/reports/resultsv2.html?researcher_name=Halley&action=search&mode=revdepartment I see he has not published anything on it yet, but the TiO2 stuff was done with the same simulation program.

http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~reedsj/monkeys.html

Perhaps the issue is that what happened violates the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties Man: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/oasinstr/zoas2dec.htm

"Every person has the right to the protection of the law against abusive attacks upon his honor, his reputation, and his private and family life."

And the American Convention on Human Rights: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/oasinstr/zoas3con.htm

"Every person has the right to be compensated in accordance with the law in the event he has been sentenced by a final judgment through a miscarriage of justice."

And thus might come under the jursidiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.