I show the "Hydrogen Hopes" episode of Alan Alda's Scientific American Fronteirs (PBS) every year in my high school Chemistry class. Mr. Ovshinsky is a prominent figure in the program, showing off his solar cells, hydrogen storage media, and other inventions. The guy was truly remarkable and seemingly always thinking. We need more like him, people who are thinking of ways to improve the world (not just make money).
Actually, the Mayan reference is in the original article along with the links that kdawson appropriated for the article summary. Note to editor: a quote is not the only thing due credit. How about giving credit to Wired for the links too?
There is a mechanism for this kind of inheritance and it is part of a growing field called epigenetics. Whether genes are present are not as important as how they are expressed. Are they switched on or off? Experiments show that gene expression can be altered by environment and that epigentic information can be passed down to the next generation. There was a great Nova episode about it.
Our district has had this policy for a long time. As a teacher, it's not too much of a hassle because the whole point of education is to get the kids to learn. If it's impossible to pass the year because of what a student scored the first quarter, they'll give up for the rest of the year. With this policy, there is still hope. In our district, they get their actual scores for midyear and final exams and for the 4th quarter, so they will get killed eventually if they do nothing.
By the way, the bigger problem is with kids who do the work but don't think. I have lots of students who copy their friends' work, so they have great homework grades, but bomb tests because they have no clue what they're talking about.
...Silencing is the way of Hilter, Stalin, and others. It's exactly what the church did centuries ago to scientists and now its redeveloping on the other side of the coin.
We have our first mention of Nazis. Instead of FP = first post, maybe we should have FNZ = first Nazi reference.
Who says cloning even involves genetic engineering. In a lot of ways, it's just like making a twin of the organism it's coming from. Oh dear, this means that twins are actually genetically engineered! A dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. Or something like that.
Basically, whereas helium is less dense than air and thus raises your voice pitch, sulfur hexafluoride is more dense than air and thus lowers your voice pitch.
Very cool indeed! And sulfur hexafluoride, since it is heavier than air, will also stay down in your lungs unless you try very hard to get it out. Hello asphyxiation. All with the added benefit that it is a tremendously potent greenhouse gas that will never (or extremely slowly) be broken down by any natural process. Now if only everybody tried to be cool by breathing in the stuff and filling fish tanks with it. Most of humanity would win the 2008 Darwin Awards, and the rest of us would enjoy a permanent tropical paradise.
Actually in Massachusetts, it is illegal to sell papers like this:
Mass. General Laws, Chapter 271, Section 50. Sale of research papers, etc. and taking of examinations for another at educational institutions. Whoever, alone or in concert with others, sells to another, or arranges for or assists in such sale for another, a theme, term paper, thesis or other paper or the written results of research, knowing or having reason to know that such theme, term paper, thesis or other paper or research results or substantial material therefrom will be submitted or used by some other person for academic credit and represented as the original work of such person at an educational institution in the commonwealth or elsewhere without proper attribution as to source, or whoever takes an examination for another at any educational institution in the commonwealth, shall be punished by a fine of not more than one hundred dollars or by imprisonment for not more than six months, or both.
Speaking of another Nova, a recent episode of Nova ScienceNOW on PBS featured Element-114. It was a great feature and even kept my high school chemistry classes in rapt attention for 15 minutes. Quite an accomplishment.
On ABC World News yesterday, they interviewed the lead scientist behind all of this. He said that since they set up the original protocol, they've found genes that are more than 100 times more effective on the cancers. Even though only a percentage of the patients will probably respond to these new anti-cancer genes, this method has enormous potential to improve greatly with more clinical trials and more research. This treatment is still cancer-specific, but it's much easier to find a gene to target a cancer than it is to come up with a new synthetic anti-cancer medication. In 10 years, I would bet that this stuff will have had amazing results.
In the US, there are actually some very strong consumer protection laws, depending on the state you're in. I've previously had complaints cleared up by calling my state Attorney General's consumer protection office or, if you're dealing with a publicly regulated utility, by talking with the Public Utilities Commission.
The latter group was very useful in getting the cable company to drop the ridiculous $30/hookup charge that they had for setting up our digital phone system. The guy merely hooked up one wire in the basement, then charged the rate for not touching the 4 telephone jacks in the house.
You also can get satisfaction by working your way up the corporate ladder. Start sending letters to higher and higher supervisors, stressing that you were a good customer and that you are now cancelling because the service was unacceptable. Name names of people you talked to and their position. Most of all, stress to the company the exact things that were done wrong and that you would've stayed a good customer if not for the issues
The point is, if you have the law on your side there are better options than the impotent BBB or hiring a lawyer. Even the threat of calling the Attorney General's office can have a good effect. Or if the comany's Chief Operations Officer gets a letter saying how their policies/people suck, you can get satisfaction.
All the US intelligence services have to do is routinely moniter the lines encrypted with quantum cryptology. Such cryptology would be completely useless in the face of this kind of jamming and the countries would be forced to use standard transmission open to eavesdropping.
Yeah, you want a username, but I already have an awesome username and don't really like Gmail. The thing that ticks me off most is how it puts linebreaks in e-mails that I write. Those line breaks stay in when sending e-mails out, and it makes it hard to just copy-and-paste from the web browser. That's definitely a "feature" that's got to go.
I don't know if anybody else has the same problem, but incoming mail takes forever to get into my Gmail inbox. It's on the order of 5-10 minutes, as compared to Hotmail and Yahoo, which are almost instantaneous. If I want something from somebody right away, I've already learned not to give them my Gmail address.
One interesting thing about her contracting company she runs, is that if you charge more, you get more business. The thought here is that companies think that since this certain company costs more, it must be better. Obviously though, she did not get smarter by charging more, only richer.
Hmm... I never knew that before.
Possible plans after graduation in May:
Lab Tech NO
Developer NO
Grad School NO
Americorps NO Linux Consultant!
P.S. Why doesn't Slashdot allow the strikeout tag?
(Read the whole thing and you'll see this is constructive criticism and not just a rant.)
Not only a spell-checker, but a nice proof-read for clarity would help too. I, for one, had no clue what the article was actually about other than that the article was "thought provoking" and "interesting" reading. For example, where did this sentence come from and what does it mean? "Why should you learn all the specs on the latest processor and slam the competition just because you may happen to own a P4?"
Huh? This relates to building and selling your own computers how, exactly? The entire paragraph is incoherent. I'm sorry to rant about this, but I get very frustrated when I have no idea what the article is about from the submission. Why would i even want to RTFA if I have no clue what it's about. In cases like this, the Slashdot editors should quote or summarize to clarify exactly what's going on.
I doubt that most discoveries you could make are that urgent. If you want to contact someone important, it's as easy as sending a letter through the US Mail. If it's so urgent that you think the world would be brought to its knees if Microsoft didn't intervene soon, overnight a letter to the corporate offices. The imporant decision-makers only work 9-5, so what's the point of sending an e-mail that won't be read till the next morning anyway?
Don't bunk them for using WordPerfect. There was a time when they had to. Word never used to count the footnotes in total word count, so when a lawyer would submit a brief over the total number of words, they'd get smacked down. Another thing MS had to fix.
After what I've experienced the last 3 days, I would not recommend any university to heavily rely on Microsoft as a vendor. When students came back to school starting a few days ago, enough were infected with MS.Blaster to jam up the entire campus network with worm traffic. Typing this message is the first thing I've been able to do online since Saturday. Fix your software first, Microsoft! Until then, you can't be trusted to run my college's software.
Slashdot Mirror
I show the "Hydrogen Hopes" episode of Alan Alda's Scientific American Fronteirs (PBS) every year in my high school Chemistry class. Mr. Ovshinsky is a prominent figure in the program, showing off his solar cells, hydrogen storage media, and other inventions. The guy was truly remarkable and seemingly always thinking. We need more like him, people who are thinking of ways to improve the world (not just make money).
Anybody else think it's funny that in this case, a vacuum tube is a step up from a transistor?
Actually, the Mayan reference is in the original article along with the links that kdawson appropriated for the article summary. Note to editor: a quote is not the only thing due credit. How about giving credit to Wired for the links too?
There is a mechanism for this kind of inheritance and it is part of a growing field called epigenetics. Whether genes are present are not as important as how they are expressed. Are they switched on or off? Experiments show that gene expression can be altered by environment and that epigentic information can be passed down to the next generation. There was a great Nova episode about it.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/02.html
I'm not sure if this is the exact mechanism involved in this study, but it is a possibility.
Our district has had this policy for a long time. As a teacher, it's not too much of a hassle because the whole point of education is to get the kids to learn. If it's impossible to pass the year because of what a student scored the first quarter, they'll give up for the rest of the year. With this policy, there is still hope. In our district, they get their actual scores for midyear and final exams and for the 4th quarter, so they will get killed eventually if they do nothing.
By the way, the bigger problem is with kids who do the work but don't think. I have lots of students who copy their friends' work, so they have great homework grades, but bomb tests because they have no clue what they're talking about.
Next thing you know, we'll have some dinosaurs on the Presidio.
We have our first mention of Nazis. Instead of FP = first post, maybe we should have FNZ = first Nazi reference.
Yet another luminous example of Goodwin's Law.
Who says cloning even involves genetic engineering. In a lot of ways, it's just like making a twin of the organism it's coming from. Oh dear, this means that twins are actually genetically engineered! A dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. Or something like that.
Basically, whereas helium is less dense than air and thus raises your voice pitch, sulfur hexafluoride is more dense than air and thus lowers your voice pitch.
Very cool indeed! And sulfur hexafluoride, since it is heavier than air, will also stay down in your lungs unless you try very hard to get it out. Hello asphyxiation. All with the added benefit that it is a tremendously potent greenhouse gas that will never (or extremely slowly) be broken down by any natural process. Now if only everybody tried to be cool by breathing in the stuff and filling fish tanks with it. Most of humanity would win the 2008 Darwin Awards, and the rest of us would enjoy a permanent tropical paradise.
Actually in Massachusetts, it is illegal to sell papers like this:
Speaking of another Nova, a recent episode of Nova ScienceNOW on PBS featured Element-114. It was a great feature and even kept my high school chemistry classes in rapt attention for 15 minutes. Quite an accomplishment.
Watch the segment online.
On ABC World News yesterday, they interviewed the lead scientist behind all of this. He said that since they set up the original protocol, they've found genes that are more than 100 times more effective on the cancers. Even though only a percentage of the patients will probably respond to these new anti-cancer genes, this method has enormous potential to improve greatly with more clinical trials and more research. This treatment is still cancer-specific, but it's much easier to find a gene to target a cancer than it is to come up with a new synthetic anti-cancer medication. In 10 years, I would bet that this stuff will have had amazing results.
The latter group was very useful in getting the cable company to drop the ridiculous $30/hookup charge that they had for setting up our digital phone system. The guy merely hooked up one wire in the basement, then charged the rate for not touching the 4 telephone jacks in the house.
You also can get satisfaction by working your way up the corporate ladder. Start sending letters to higher and higher supervisors, stressing that you were a good customer and that you are now cancelling because the service was unacceptable. Name names of people you talked to and their position. Most of all, stress to the company the exact things that were done wrong and that you would've stayed a good customer if not for the issues
The point is, if you have the law on your side there are better options than the impotent BBB or hiring a lawyer. Even the threat of calling the Attorney General's office can have a good effect. Or if the comany's Chief Operations Officer gets a letter saying how their policies/people suck, you can get satisfaction.
If you mean the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, you're right.
All the US intelligence services have to do is routinely moniter the lines encrypted with quantum cryptology. Such cryptology would be completely useless in the face of this kind of jamming and the countries would be forced to use standard transmission open to eavesdropping.
Yeah, you want a username, but I already have an awesome username and don't really like Gmail. The thing that ticks me off most is how it puts linebreaks in e-mails that I write. Those line breaks stay in when sending e-mails out, and it makes it hard to just copy-and-paste from the web browser. That's definitely a "feature" that's got to go.
I don't know if anybody else has the same problem, but incoming mail takes forever to get into my Gmail inbox. It's on the order of 5-10 minutes, as compared to Hotmail and Yahoo, which are almost instantaneous. If I want something from somebody right away, I've already learned not to give them my Gmail address.
One interesting thing about her contracting company she runs, is that if you charge more, you get more business. The thought here is that companies think that since this certain company costs more, it must be better. Obviously though, she did not get smarter by charging more, only richer.
Hmm... I never knew that before.
Possible plans after graduation in May:
Lab Tech NO
Developer NO
Grad School NO
Americorps NO
Linux Consultant!
P.S. Why doesn't Slashdot allow the strikeout tag?
(Read the whole thing and you'll see this is constructive criticism and not just a rant.)
Not only a spell-checker, but a nice proof-read for clarity would help too. I, for one, had no clue what the article was actually about other than that the article was "thought provoking" and "interesting" reading. For example, where did this sentence come from and what does it mean?
"Why should you learn all the specs on the latest processor and slam the competition just because you may happen to own a P4?"
Huh? This relates to building and selling your own computers how, exactly? The entire paragraph is incoherent. I'm sorry to rant about this, but I get very frustrated when I have no idea what the article is about from the submission. Why would i even want to RTFA if I have no clue what it's about. In cases like this, the Slashdot editors should quote or summarize to clarify exactly what's going on.
Only 7 (now 8) comments and they're already slashdotted. Way to go, guys.
Of course, launching a visible-light telescope has nothing to do with the high cost of approximating Hubble's resolution in an IR detector.
I doubt that most discoveries you could make are that urgent. If you want to contact someone important, it's as easy as sending a letter through the US Mail. If it's so urgent that you think the world would be brought to its knees if Microsoft didn't intervene soon, overnight a letter to the corporate offices. The imporant decision-makers only work 9-5, so what's the point of sending an e-mail that won't be read till the next morning anyway?
Don't bunk them for using WordPerfect. There was a time when they had to. Word never used to count the footnotes in total word count, so when a lawyer would submit a brief over the total number of words, they'd get smacked down. Another thing MS had to fix.
After what I've experienced the last 3 days, I would not recommend any university to heavily rely on Microsoft as a vendor. When students came back to school starting a few days ago, enough were infected with MS.Blaster to jam up the entire campus network with worm traffic. Typing this message is the first thing I've been able to do online since Saturday. Fix your software first, Microsoft! Until then, you can't be trusted to run my college's software.
"Old MacDonald had an agricultural real estate tax abatement." Slashdot is going agricultural on our asses.