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Well to be accurate he is on the payroll of Weizmann Institute of Science [...]

History, it seems, is not without sense of irony. My, how things have changed in the last 30 years.

i went to WPI (primarily because they had the best financial aid package-grants/scholarship money-which is odd considering how damn expensive the place was, even back then), with the following AP scores:

BC Calc: 5
Biology 5
Euro History 5
US History 5
Chemistry 4
English Lit 4
German 3
French 3
Physics C 3

i think there was one other one, don't remember... yeah, was sort of a nerd, and 17 years later it matters not one bit. anyway, all i got for that was the ability to skip to Calc 4, and get "credit" (but not credit hours, just "must take such and such class" checkmark) for 3 math classes, and both a chem and bio class. i was also allowed to take a placement test to jump ahead (with no credit of any sort) in German. i did all that, but in retrospect it was a poor idea. would have been better off with the easier intro classes. skipping ahead just got me to a point where i could try to complete a EE/math double-major and find that the advanced math classes were at the same time as the advanced EE classes, so pick one...

anyway, typical or not, at WPI, good AP scores didn't actually reduce the number of classes i needed to take for graduation. i was afforded a bit more flexibility though, since i no longer needed 3 of those classes to be calculus, and 1 to be chemistry. still had to take 6 German classes, 2 physics, and the usual set of math classes beyond calc (linear algebra, diff eq, probability/statistics, etc).

as with most things in life, others' experiences may be dramatically different...

The best one I've seen so far is putting solar capture into roadbeds, which contain their own capacitance. Of course, this would still have to be connected to the grid, as there would be too many problems with individuals tapping directly into the "free" power generated.

http://www.spiegel.de/internat...
http://buildipedia.com/aec-pro...
http://www.wpi.edu/news/20089/...

FWIW: If you read WP2 & WP3, I think they are just attempting to read some of the SRAM from inside the GPU for a source of what they call a "PUF" (physically uncloneable function). They hope to sprinkle some error-correction code and some magic crypto dust the uninitialized SRAM pattern to create a number that will be useable for attestation (basically to assure that it is the machine that you think it is).

This idea isn't new. A quick google search shows papers about using SRAMs as both PUFs and Random numbers going back in 2007 (they called them FERNs) http://people.cs.umass.edu/~kevinfu/papers/holcomb-FERNS-RFIDSec07.pdf

The major problems with this stuff is that...

Once you power up your system, something is gonna want to use that SRAM (GPU vendors aren't in the business of leaving big chunks of SRAM that they don't use for researchers to discover and use), so you have to take a snapshot after powerup, but before someone wants to use the GPU. This makes many avenues of attack available (e.g., you have to put that fingerprint somewhere, because the GPUs will shortly trounce all over it).

Secondly is the stability issue. Although some parts of the uninitialized SRAM is going to be statistically stable (power-up to 1 or 0 pretty reliably), some others are going to be pretty random (in fact other researchers are looking for highly unstable bits in SRAM powerup to be able to extract a random number for a nonce). Across temperature, and over time as the parts age, these bits will change (some stable ones will become random and some random ones may exhibit a strong bias one way or another). Without extensive characterization over age and temperature, this would be pretty unstable to use as a definitive ID.

Third, when GPU vendors notice that people are accessing SRAM before initalization, they will start wiping the memory on boot. This is to prevent this third-party ID usage model (because nobody wants to repeat the intel CPUID fiasco) and because now that GPUs are being used for general-purpose computing, any type of SRAM retention issues across power-up is a security risk. On a related note, there are in fact there are other researchers attempting to use SRAM retention to create a reasonably secure clock (google TARDIS: Time and Remanence Decay in SRAM).

If I had to speculate, about the only reasonable model for this (assuming the GPU vendors don't co-opt it or shut them out) is to create some sort of "ticket" system. Distill a timestamp and a challenge value with the PUF (and maybe even the "random" part of the SRAM for salt) down to a ticket using some cryptomagic. That ticket would be valid for a while, and you'd have to create a new ticket before it expired. Over a short enough time and temperature regime, a security system might be convinced that this temporary ticket is an acceptable substitute credential, but it would not really replace an actual authentication technique.

This stuff has also been researched extensively for 5 years or so. I don't know what these folks are really bringing to the table (other than they are looking at GPUs for big blocks of SRAM). Why be so secret? Maybe it's because they want to keep that funding coming. A quick google showed someone in 2009 even wrote an undergrad paper on the subject of SRAM/PUFs... http://www.wpi.edu/Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-031709-141338/unrestricted/mqp_sram.pdf

The primary reason a 48fps average may not be good enough for gaming is because of variability. In a 48fps movie, every single frame comes 20.83ms after the one before it. If a game has an average of 61 FPS, it could be that sixty frame times are 15ms and the sixty-first is a very noticeable and jarring 100ms. Hardware reviewers, starting with Tech Report, are starting to catch on to the fact that the longest frame times matter much more than the average.

Two other reasons why a framerate where movies are smooth may not suffice for gaming:

• Normal 3d rendered frames are like using a camera with an infinitely fast shutter. The difference between the resulting sudden motions and the natural blur in frames that have had exposure times comparable to their frame display times is the same thing as the difference between "jaggies" and smoothly antialiased edges in a single frame, except in the time domain rather than the spatial. Artificial motion blur effects try to improve on that, but often it's easier to just increase framerate (just as increasing the resolution makes the "jaggies" in a single frame less obvious).
• The relationship between Input lag and frame delay in a game is somewhat complex. It would of course be possible to have a thousand or more frames per second and still have a full second of input lag, and it's possible to have input lag low enough for twitch FPSes with less than 60fps. But if a game's engine design, buffering, and the hardware input and output pathways were such that input lag is 3*frame time + 50ms, you would notice improvements in input lag from having ridiculously high frame rates well beyond the point of smooth motion.

Here's the study showing little difference between 30fps and 60fps for a first person shooter. Note the dramatic differences up to 15fps, where we begin to perceive many things as motion rather than individual frames, the still-quite-noticeable improvement in moving to a 30fps rate, where quick full-frame motions are starting to appear smooth, and the much smaller change (esp. the almost-zero perceived quality change) between 30fps and 60fps. Since the frame time difference between 30fps and 48fps is 12.5ms and the difference between 48fps and 60fps is only 4.17ms, I sincerely doubt their test setup would have showed any difference between 48fps and any higher rate (even 240+). However, their test setup was different from most games in one or maybe two of the three points I mentioned above. The frame rate limitations in the paper were artificial- the computer was capable of producing a much much higher framerate- so the frame times were probably almost exactly consistent. It's also possible that their mechanism for limiting framerate didn't give as strong a link between framerate and input lag as most games have (you'd have to look at the code to be sure).

If you end up wanting to go to school here (they give a LOT of financial aid for exchange students), these camps are an easy foot in the door.

I'll play. In On Frame Rate and Player Performance in First Person Shooter Games by Kajal Claypool and Mark Claypool the authors perform a study which includes measuring the performance and perception of players while they play a first person shooter game at varying fps. The perception difference is is slight and not statistically significant (figure 19) but I would like to point you to figure 17 where they evaluate the score of the players vs fps. Players playing at 60 fps significantly outscored players playing at 30 fps.

It does not invalidate your argument about perception, but instead provides a strong rationale to exceed 30 fps.

Brian May has an Erdös Number of 7, a Bacon number of no more than 3, and a Sabbath number of 1, thus putting him squarely at the centre of the universe.

http://rosschurchley.com/2009/10/18/brian-mays-erdos-bacon-number/
http://www.timeblimp.com/?q=erdos.html

Happy? Well, it answers part of my posts, but not the parts that I thought were more relevant. But regardless, at least it gives me something concrete to argue against.

As I suggested earlier, the segway was an offshoot of the iBOT, using much the same technology, refined and repackaged. Here's an article on the iBOT:
http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Winter/ibot.html

In that article, it mentions that Kurt Heinzmann (
who, as far as I can ascertain, is the same as your guy...Kurt is his middle name) was hired into DEKA in 1992 to work full time on the IBOT. He was the first full time engineer put on that project. It discusses his extensive involvement in the project, including the fact that he was the one to solve the stair climbing problem. However, it seems to me that the basic design had already existed prior to his being hired, and that Dean Kamen had significant involvement in the creation.

The way it's cited in the article, I would say it's very fair to credit Dean Kamen as the inventor. At the very absolute least, he was a co-inventor. But to state that Dean Kamen was not the inventor would be inaccurate.

Now, granted above I'm talking about the iBOT. Segway is a different product. Perhaps you are claiming that DK had little or no involvement in that project, and that Heinzmann conceived it or was responsible for it somehow. I don't see anything to substantiate that claim. Perhaps the book "Code name Ginger" would answer the question, but I haven't read it. Still, even if that were the case (and I'm highly doubtful), I think it would be a bit harsh to try and cut Dean out of credit given how it evolved from the iBOT

CANVAS is now viable for use, even with IE.

Here's a benchmark of SWF, HTML 4 DOM, SVG DOM, and HTML5 <canvas>. How fast does IE render <canvas> compared to Flash Player? Or did you mean Chrome Frame?

Also,just as mini me mentioned in reply to you, Smokescreen can just convert it directly from the SWF to browser-based implementation.

Then you're still using Flash format, just with a different player. Some HTML5 partisans want to get away from Adobe software entirely.

There is also the Gordon library.

(Google gordon library) You don't mean the WPI George C. Gordon Library or the Gordon Community Library and Museum. (Google gordon library javascript) Nor do you mean the E. Allen Gordon Library. Oh, you meant this Gordon, which does much the same thing as Smokescreen.

Having the API retain state is a fundamentally bad idea. As one overview points out, "Nearly all of OpenGL state may be queried". (emphasis added)

It would be much better if there were OpenGL context objects that encapsulated the state, and were explicitly passed into API calls. I was completely dumbfounded when I first looked at API and saw that it didn't work that way.

Fourier transforms are taught to EE undergrads where I went to school, but not in the CS program.

Programs exist that do this today but at private institutions. This seems like a good compromise, if you can bring the institutions onboard. As to Mass Academy, I went there, and it was by far the best thing that ever happened to my educational career.

Nothing sparks a desire to learn like being around others with the same desire.

I had a prof once who shall remain nameless, though he claims to have "invented" modules. But he did have some good advice. He said, even if you just hacked together some code (or someone else did), you can retrofit software engineering standards onto it by going through it and writing the design document after the fact.

Easy. David Lorge Parnas.

I know some other schools have started similar programs - but I thought I'd point out that WPI started a new program specifically for game development/design/art/etc.: Interactive Media & Game Development. They've also recently redesigned their undergrad CS curriculum - although I think that was mainly to be more accessible to non-majors (e.g. ECE's, etc. - WPI being a primarily engineering school).

I know some other schools have started similar programs - but I thought I'd point out that WPI started a new program specifically for game development/design/art/etc.: Interactive Media & Game Development. They've also recently redesigned their undergrad CS curriculum - although I think that was mainly to be more accessible to non-majors (e.g. ECE's, etc. - WPI being a primarily engineering school).

I know some other schools have started similar programs - but I thought I'd point out that WPI started a new program specifically for game development/design/art/etc.: Interactive Media & Game Development. They've also recently redesigned their undergrad CS curriculum - although I think that was mainly to be more accessible to non-majors (e.g. ECE's, etc. - WPI being a primarily engineering school).

I'm sure those 8KB/s are going to bring you 2mbit line to a screeching halt!

> why did the phone guys make theirs upside-down?

Go to the "Keyboards" section of this course outline and follow the link to the PDF copy of the "Bell Labs 1960 study". In short, it's because that configuration ranked highly for inputting phone numbers. If you take a look at the image provided of the button-based phone's predecessor you'll see that 7, 8, 9, and 0 are at the bottom and 1, 2, and 3 are at the top. I'd guess that made that structure more familiar to the test subjects, along with the fact that English is read from left to right, and from ... in case you hadn't noticed ... top to bottom. With those two points in mind, my question to you is, why are the keys on numeric keypads and calculators upside-down? :-)

> why did the phone guys make theirs upside-down?

Go to the "Keyboards" section of this course outline and follow the link to the PDF copy of the "Bell Labs 1960 study". In short, it's because that configuration ranked highly for inputting phone numbers. If you take a look at the image provided of the button-based phone's predecessor you'll see that 7, 8, 9, and 0 are at the bottom and 1, 2, and 3 are at the top. I'd guess that made that structure more familiar to the test subjects, along with the fact that English is read from left to right, and from ... in case you hadn't noticed ... top to bottom. With those two points in mind, my question to you is, why are the keys on numeric keypads and calculators upside-down? :-)

Ever go to Burning Man? Ever check out the San Jose Museum of Art in California? A lot of cutting-edge art requires significant technical abilities. My school, WPI, has a very strong technical art program.

Do some more research. Prison is anything but profit in the US. It is a burden on local resources and eats tax dollars like candy.

I already did some research, thank you. It's not profit for you but it's profit for certain groups with a seeming ability to influence your government. For a start, yes, it eats up tax dollars. In other words, it's a nice way of shifting money from the public into private hands. The more people are locked up and for lesser and lesser crimes, the more the prison industry makes. Again, because it's really worth thinking about, the USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world. For one of the richest countries in the world, that should really make you question what's gone wrong. Now on the subject of prison labour, I've already given you a list of major US businesses that employ convicts at dirt-cheap rates. Do you think they would do this if it wasn't increasing their profits? If you want to see just how much of a business prison labour in the USA really is, then look at the website for Unicor aka, Federal Prison Industries, where you can grab yourself some "bargain" prison labour. The main issue is that exploiting people (80% non-violent crimes, by the way) to work for less then 50 cents an hour is wrong in itself, assuming you agree slave labour is wrong. But you might also consider the depressing effect such sub-market rates has on the wages of non-prisoner workers who are just trying to hold down a job.

You're right in several ways when you say that prison is a burden if you're talking about the general public. But you're wrong (and I wish you weren't) if you think there aren't powerful private interests that make very large sums of money from it. There is a financial incentive to get as many people as possible imprisoned and the people who benefit have lobbyists in Washington. I know this, because they're over here (UK) now as well and our own politicians are busy building super-prisons touting the same "tough on crime" rubbish that was used on your lot.

Check out a couple of the links. I've done my research. Your turn. ;)

A project-focused curriculum (I notice that project orientation was the first thing the NYT noted about Olin), including multi-term projects: a Major Qualifying Project in concentrating on your major and an Interactive Qualifying Project applying technology to human need.

A comprehensive examination in your major in lieu of narrowly-defined course requirements; a typical comp involved tackling a problem in your major area for a couple of days, submitting a solution, and facing a panel to defend your solution (and general competence in your major) orally.

A "humanities sufficiency" requirement that encouraged depth over a scattering of minimal course requirements.

A non-traditional grading system (Pass w/ Distinction, Pass, No Record) that encouraged risk-taking (and, unfortunately, over-subscribing to courses ;-) ).

As a transfer student, I was one of the last people who could choose to graduate under the traditional system, which I did because it took best advantage of my transferred credit. I did enjoy some of the benefits, including the ability to do an MQP-scale project for credit.

There were some initial problems and the Plan has been tweaked -- notably, some faculty observed that IQP's often took on a shallow variation on "an electronic crutch" -- but I found it a dynamic environment to learn in.

I've also had a chance to observe Olin from a distance (my daughter was recently an undergrad at Babson); only time will tell if the program is successful, but I welcome a new generation of mold-breakers who will think different (and differently).

Do you think that people should stop buying from Coke, Microsoft, Apple, GM, Ford, yada-yada-yada because they aren't happy with the occupation in Iraq??

Yes, people in other countries should stop buying American products, since this would influence Coke, Microsoft, etc. to get the politicians in their pockets to end the war. America is, de facto, ruled by corporations; you must influence the corporations to influence the nation. (Or, we could have massive economic and political reform that returns control to the citizens. Good luck with that.)

More so, we should stop buying from companies that use prison labor,whether in China or in the U.S..

Lenovo probably has much less influence on the Chinese government than Microsoft has on the U.S. government, so the first point probably applies much less to Chinese companies. I don't know about Lenovo's involvement with prison labor.

They apparently missed the reactor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute http://nucleus.wpi.edu/Nuclear_Program/NRF/nrf.htm l (also in massachusetts).

It is creating a good accurate design, capturing all the requirements accurately and ensuring the end user's expectations are correct

...all of which are impossible to do until after the project has finished. For further enlightenment, please see A Rational Design Process: How and why to fake it (PDF) by David L. Parnas, especially section II.

A good picture of a two-axis accelerometer can be seen here: http://users.wpi.edu/~cfurlong/me-593Mech.html (second picture down). Sensing is usually performed by capacitive combs, structures which act as capacitors, with their capacitance varying with displacement.

MEMS accelerometers have dropped in price in recent years because there's a big market: the automotive sector. A typical new car needs two accelerometers, one for the traction control system measuring roughly plus-or-minus 2 to 4g, and one for airbag deployment measuring more like 50g.

Two big manufacturers are Analog Devices and ST Microelectronics, though others exist.

The high demand of the automotive sector has driven prices right down; sensors which would have cost hundreds of dollars in the past can now be purchased in bulk for less than $4. In fact, you could order one right now; component retailers will sell you one for less than $15.

A minute with Google finds lots of discussion of this, mostly by conspiracy nuts, (It was the Jews! Aliens! Mormons! Opus Dei! Dick Cheney!) some by real metallurgists, eg: The "Deep Mystery" of Melted Steel:

A eutectic compound is a mixture of two or more substances that melts at the lowest temperature of any mixture of its components. Blacksmiths took advantage of this property by welding over fires of sulfur-rich charcoal, which lowers the melting point of iron. In the World Trade Center fire, the presence of oxygen, sulfur and heat caused iron oxide and iron sulfide to form at the surface of structural steel members. This liquid slag corroded through intergranular channels into the body of the metal, causing severe erosion and a loss of structural integrity.

I wish more people would read the IAEA/WHO/UN report on this - or at least the press release.

And it is quite possible that the actual death toll was lower than the estimate of 4000. The 4000 estimate is based on extrapolating the known effects of high dosage radiation down to the very low dosages experienced by most of the population. The assumption is that there is no threshold which is "safe". However the exposure for most of the population near chernobyl was well within normal background levels elsewhere on the planet. If the "no-safe-threshold" assumption is true we would expect to see higher cancer rates in areas of high background radiation, and lower rates where background is lower. But we don't.

It is possible that low dosage radiation, such as in most of the chernobyl population, has no detrimental effect at all.

You might find this page interesting:

http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/Depts/Fire/News/wtc.h tml

Many of the links are broken, but with the titles and the publications in which they appeared you should be able to find those references at a library with a good archive of that publication.

One link that isn't broken is "An Initial Microstructural Analysis of A36 Steel from WTC Building 7". That's an interesting letter about the steel from WTC building 7, and it also includes a link to another article about the main towers:

http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Ea gar-0112.html

Okay, I think that I get where you are coming from. In the world of visual interface design, this is called external consistency. Sun makes the claim that the Swing look and feel is externally consistent with the Java platform which makes sense to multi-OS users because they want the application to look the same no matter what OS they are running it on. That claim makes no sense to single-OS users (e.g. your mother) because it means for them that they have to learn a new look and feel without a good reason.

Just out of curiosity, I would be interested to know if your mother had a computer running Windows 95/98/ME and had to upgrade to XP. If so, then what was her feelings regarding that change in look and feel?

By contrast, other studies have shown that DU ammunition has no measurable detrimental health effects, either in the short or long term. The International Atomic Energy Agency reported in 2003 that, "based on credible scientific evidence, there is no proven link between DU exposure and increases in human cancers or other significant health or environmental impacts," although "Like other heavy metals, DU is potentially poisonous. In sufficient amounts, if DU is ingested or inhaled it can be harmful because of its chemical toxicity. High concentration could cause kidney damage." [46]

Thus major health impact of depleted uranium relate to its chemical toxicity as a heavy metal rather than to its radioactivity, which is relatively low. In fact, there is some evidence to suggest that low-level radiation, such as that from uranium, is beneficial to human beings. [47] [48] [49] As with any heavy metal, the overall hazard depends on the amount of exposure.

"The question arises: why governments of various countries do not relocate populations living in areas where lifetime dose of natural radiation is higher than 350 mSv. For example, why are people not evacuated from Norway where all country average lifetime dose is 365 mSv (Henriksen 1988), or from high background regions in India with a lifetime dose of >2000 mSv (Sunta 1990) and in Iran with lifetime dose of >3000 mSv (Sohrabi 1990)? Perhaps in Iran, for example, the government considered not to follow the ICRP guidelines when it considered the fact that in a house in the city of Ramsar several generations were receiving average individual lifetime doses of natural radiation of 17,000 mSv (240 times more than the current ICRP limit for exposure of members of the public to natural sources of radiation). Yet these individuals show no increased incidence of any disease, and some of them lived to 110 years of age (Sohrabi 1990)."

Someone should tell RMS then. He was just on my campus (http://www.wpi.edu/ today spouting this bullshit.

There are a few flaws in your statement.

1) It's not just state schools, and it does depend heavily on the program. My alma mater, an private engineering school, has many people that we call "super seniors" (5th year) or "super-duper seniors" (6th year). This usually happens because they failed a few classes - once you fail more than 2 or 3, you are beginning to fall behind in your requirements. A few (like me) didn't fail anything, but switched majors late in their academic career. And with yearly tuition over $30,000 (not including room & board), those extra classes add up really quickly.

2) It's not the lack of direction that's holding you back... well, it is, but it's your own fault. I realized (too late) that your assigned academic advisor is a suggestion. If their advice isn't useful to you, ignore it. Find a professor who you respect and ask their advice instead. And you can't be afraid of doing real research to figure out what you need to do to meet your goals. They're your own goals, not anyone else's (or at least they should be)!

I went to WPI, and a mile or two away is... the Foo Bar. Also, Swartzlander was my Physics prof there.

No, I guess they don't, do they?

Most interesting is how the user interface more closely resembles a traditional local application. It's definitely a big step in that direction.

Coincidentally a step in the direction of their other webmail offering: exchange server/outlook webmail.

"Three reviews by Brues, Henry, and Oakley concluded that the inverse correlation between background radiation and cancer mortality was general. (Brues 1959; Henry 1961; Oakley 1972)
"In spite of this information, Frigerio and associates at ANL started a new survey with the working hypothesis that all radiation is carcinogenic and persons living with high background radiation should have a higher rate of cancer mortality than those living in low radiation areas. (Frigerio 1973) The extensive data gathered from the contiguous U.S. led to exactly the opposite conclusion!

"Also, an inverse correlation between altitude and leukemia mortality was noted: '...the leukemia rate actually appears to decrease with increasing altitude.' (Eckhoff 1974) Yalow noted that Colorado residents have one of the lowest cancer death rates while receiving more radiation from cosmic rays and uranium rocks and buildings than is received by workers in the nuclear industry in other parts of the country. (Yalow 1981)

"Sauer et al. had exhausted possibilities for any correlation between the death rates of white males in the eastern coastal areas and about 30 possible factors. (Sauer 1980) Factors examined included air and water composition, factories, economic status, ethnic background, and social status. When background radiation was considered, the inverse correlations between background radiation and total death rates, cancer death rates or cardiovascular death rates were found to be statistically significant, p <0.01. (Sauer 1982) In one area, metropolitan Denver, no differences were found in childhood cancer when it was compared with other geographic areas. (Savitz 1987)

however, the sky is not the limit as far as fuel density goes

No, real the energy density limit is E=mc^2.

If idiots and bought-and-paid-for "scientists" hadn't worked so hard to kill off the atomic age we'd probably be all over the solar system by now.

The truth is that most people have been conditioned by lies and the media to be afraid of HEALTHY amounts of radiation! If the true health risks were given the media coverage they deserve then the multi-billion dollar radiation protection industry would be destroyed. We spend billions of dollars annually to "clean up" radoactive materials with levels already so low that the would only be healthy for people.

Read more here.

Must be a slow news day for NewScientist...

This is not news of course and smart people have been working on the issue for a number of years. Two interesting links:
A short writeup of the issue (PDF alert)...
A recent breakthrough announcement...

Some ionizing radiation is not bad for you in small amounts - it is actually beneficial. The idea that the damage is cumulative and has a zero threshold is an assumption that has been disproven. See http://cnts.wpi.edu/RSH/Docs/index_science.html for links to the scientific studies done on radiation hormesis.

Here's a brief overview of some studies listed in http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/inthorm. html:
"1-According to UNSCEAR report (1994), among A-bomb survivors from Hiroshimaand Nagazaki who received doses lower than 200 mSv, there was no increase in the number of total cancer death. Mortality caused by leukemia was evenlower in this population at doses below 100 mSv than age-matched controlcohorts.
2-Mifune (1992) (Mifune et al. 1992) and his co-workers indicated that in a spa area (Misasa), with an average indoor radon level of 35 Bq/m3, the lung cancer incidence was about 50% of that in a low-level radon region. Their results also showed that in the above mentioned high background radiation area, the mortality rate caused by all types of cancer was 37% lower.
3-According to Mine et al. (1981), among A-bomb survivors from Nagasaki, in some age categories, the observed annual rate of death is less than what is statistically expected.
4-Kumatori and his colleagues (Kumatori et al. 1980) reported that according to their 25 year follow up study of Japanese fishermen who were heavily contaminated by plutunium (hydrogen bomb test at Bikini), no one died from cancer. "
"1-In an Indian study, it was observed that in areas with a high-background radiation level, the incidence of cancer and also the mortality rate due to cancer was significantly less than similar areas with a low backgroundradiation level (Nambi and Soman 1987).
2-In a very large scale study in U.S.A, it was found that the mortality rate due to all malignancies was lower in states with higher annual radiation dose (Frigerio 1976).
3- In a large scale Chinese study, it was showed that the mortality rate due to cancer was lower in an area with a relatively high background radiation (74,000 people), while the control group (78,000 people) who lived in anarea with low background radiation had a higher rate of mortality (Wei L 1990).
4-In the U.S.A., it was indicated that significantly, the total cancer mortalityis inversely correlated with background radiation dose (Cohen BL. 1993). "

It can be done on most models, according to the Palm Info Center:

http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=58 30

You will also need the Graffiti 1 files, either from your old Palm or from http://users.wpi.edu/~ahecht/palm.html

And, indeed, many people today don't know about those same properties.

Check out the Access Grid at WPI http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/CCC/HPC/AG/ I have been in this room for a talk with Illiad (userfriendly.org) and Australia. It works great!

Go WPI. Smaller, cheaper, same state, and not nearly as many super-competitive assholes.

I had a similar experience to you. MIT struck me as being very cold and impersonal. I wanted a great engineering/tech education, but that didn't seem like the right place for me.

Instead, I went to WPI, jokingly referred to as "that other tech school in Massachusetts". It's a fairly small school, focused on teaching undergraduates. The people are friendly, and just as nerdy as they are at MIT. A degree from WPI is pretty well-recognized within the Northeast, and I know a few undergraduates here who managed to get their MQP (aka senior thesis) published in a scientific journal.

In the end, I feel that I made the right choice. I picked a school that was small and personal, so I could excel in my studies, have a personal life, and still get a great education. I'm sure that would have been possible at MIT, too - but I don't regret the choice I made.

I received a 2-year degree from a Massachusetts community college back in the early 90s, at a school which had tailored the program specifically for transfering to a 4-year school. They even had agreements with many schools such that as long as you had a 3.0 or higher GPA, you were guaranteed a transfer into the school.

I was at Springfield Technical Community College, and transfered the degree to WPI, where I eventually ended up getting my MS in CS. I absolutely feel my 2 years at STCC were no handicap to me in my academic knowledge.

URLs:
List of transfer programs
CS Transfer Program ... looks like my favorite professor is still hanging around there!

I actually feel I got an excellent grounding in CS from my introduction at the community college. I had, like you say, a Data Structures class. It was taught using C++, so I picked up some practical knowledge to go with the theory. Same with the introductory programming class, which used Pascal. Same with the machine language class, which had theory elements.

Basically I came out of the school with all the math I needed for a BS in CS (including linear algebra, DiffEQs, and discrete math), almost all of the science, and almost all of the humanities classes. I was a litle behind in CS theory classes, so when I got to WPI as a "Junior" I ended up enrolled in a couple "Sophomore" CS classes to catch up. It was really no big deal, and I had a little more practical knowledge than some of my classmates, too, because WPI at the time wasn't teaching C++ to its freshmen and sophomores.

Considering I saved, oh, maybe 15K+ each year by taking the first two years at a CC, I'm thrilled with how it worked out. Plus I could overload and take even more classes, at a cheaper cost per credit.

There's definitely a place for Community Colleges in science and engineering. You just need a program designed around it. Maybe your state has something similar....

back in 1999, my friend TJ and myself did a science project in high school that sounds strikingly familiar...if anyone cares, the webpage can be seen here. hey, we both passed! behold, science

Amazing that WPI hasn't recieved recognition here for the new major that's already in effect since late this fall (2004).

This program has been completely designed by the faculty at campus with input from student groups, alumni, and some industry contacts.

The first course under the new program started in B-Term (October - December).

http://www.wpi.edu/+IMGD if anyone cares.

Amazing that WPI hasn't recieved recognition here for the new major that's already in effect since late this fall (2004).

This program has been completely designed by the faculty at campus with input from student groups, alumni, and some industry contacts.

The first course under the new program started in B-Term (October - December).

http://www.wpi.edu/+IMGD if anyone cares.