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The Year in Technology
bedessen writes "It's that time again, when we look back on the year in summary. New Scientist has an article "2002, The Year in Technology", as well as "The Year in Medicine and Biology." Popular Science brings us "The 15th Annual Best of What's New.""
This didn't make mention of the huge (and renewed) debate as to whether 1 or 0 is a prime number or not.
At the conference for applied and new mathematics in Melbourne last year there was a huge fervor over this as new evidence came to light.
Basically, from I gather, it's like this:
Technically, neither 1 nor zero is a prime number. It is easiest to see why zero isn't: since a prime number is only divisible by one and itself,
let's find all the divisors of zero.
Well, since 0 x 1 = 0, and 0 x 2 = 0, and 0 x 3 = 0, and so on, all these numbers divide zero, i.e. zero is divisible by every positive integer. So
it isn't a prime number.
As for 1, you might want to call it a prime number, since it really _is_ divisible by only one and itself. But then you run into some problems.
For instance, you may know that every positive integer can be factored into the product of prime numbers, and that there's only one way to do
it for every number. For instance, 280 = 2x2x2x5x7, and there's only one way to factor 280 into prime numbers. But if you let 1 be a prime,
then you can get the following factorizations: 1x1x1x2x2x2x5x7, 1x2x2x2x5x7, and so on. The factorization is no longer unique.
Furthermore, there are a whole bunch of theorems in Number Theory that tell you something about prime numbers. But most of these theorems just flat out ain't true for the number 1. So in light of these facts, we just declare the number 1 to not be a prime.
So that's why we don't WANT 1 to be a prime. Mathematicians have summarized this in a nice neat definition: a prime number is a positive integer which has exactly 2 different positive integers that divide it evenly - no more and no fewer.
"The endlessly versatile carbon nanotube was then shown also to have an explosive side in April. A laboratory accident revealed that a bundle of carbon nanotubes will explode when exposed to an ordinary camera flash." Just in time for New Years!
They switched the face link with the penis link in the article, not my fault, really! Try this one.
I taught computers to learn nouns and verbs based on visual perception this year. See here for more info.
They can never have too much coffee (caffeine is only good in some professions), and if they run Windows you have an easy-to-win malpractice suit that benifits yourself as well as the open source community!
True, I didn't RTFA but that's what posts are for!
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
Sadly, the article on technology describes nothing that can really be described as a breakthrough. There were some more little steps towards quantum computing, but this journey did not start in 2002 and certainly did not reach fruition in 2002.
...
An honest title for the article would have been "No technology breakthroughs in 2002", but that wouldn't have sold any magazines
Amazing. The news is, first of all, that a number of ethical cretins are trying to clone a human baby, and next that proposed treatments for serious diseases have failed disastrously, next that a couple of nasty diseases turn out to be more dangerous than expected, and finally that research continues in areas that can not be expected to produce anything to ease suffering for years, if not decades. Where is the good news?
/. posters. Ye gods....!! If this is an indication of how the public reacts to questions of health and science, we are in for a rough century.
Next look at the smartass, off-topic, smutty reactions of lots of
It seems IMHO time to question seriously the basic approach the scientific community is taking toward biomedical research. What, exactly, is the cost/benefit ratio these days?
Further, how sensible is it to buy into the article of faith that all we have to do is continue to pour billions into basic research, expecting that sooner or later we will all lead longer and better lives as a result? It could be that we are wasting tons of money. It would be an excellent idea to re-examine how we allocate scarce resources in the pursuit of knowledge. I'm not a Luddite, but I am very disappointed that our progress has been so slow. Consider, for example, when you last saw any statistics showing how much money has been spent researching cancer (both on basic research and in the development of clinical tools), and how the suvival rates for the disease have changed over the last half-century. I think you don't see these figures because they are grim, indeed.
Maybe thirty years ago a physician told me that childhood leukemia was "almost not fatal any more." Where is it today? "Not fatal?" Are we chasing a will-o'-the-wisp, or have we really got a grip on where we want to go, and how to get there? How uncoordinated and goofy are our efforts? Should we not be further along by now??
My argument is not against science, basic research, or knowledge. It is simply that it would be better--more efficient--if we spent our money more wisely, that is, according to rational plans that consider results and costs when deciding where to put our efforts. Are we in this to learn things, or to save human life? Can we do both? Sometimes it appears that there IS a very real difference between two camps: one pushing for more labs and money for whatever it wants to pursue, the other genuinely concerned with saving lives. Consider:
Long ago the Nixon administration tried to shift funds to the implementation of widespread early detection programs, in the sure knowledge that certain cancers (not all) can be cured if detected when small. The scientific community howled like a stuck pig. Sure, Nixon was a jerk, but his priority was the saving of lives, now. As a result of intensive lobbying, the early detection approach was scrapped, and who knows how many lives have been lost because of that? I could not criticize this if it could be shown that pressing on with expensive basic research had saved even an equivalent number of lives, but I am sure no such result was obtained. Those who argued against Nixon's approach were willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of human beings in order to be able to carry on programs whose results could only be speculated about. I do not call that ethical--it seems more like selfishness, and inhumane selfishness at that.
We ought to have another look, ask some hard questions, and consider whether the scientific establishment has taken the bit in its teeth. Poor results for 2001 are a hint that I might be right.