Ok, besides the mis-spelling of "ageliferin" (for those wondering why Google's not bringing up much)...
This is pretty big, but it's not coming out of nowhere. I'm not too familiar with this particular compound, but it appears to be a bio-film breaker -- most (but not all) of which work by disrupting quorum sensing. What's exciting about this particular example is both its potency and apparent non-toxicity.
If suitable for use in humans, you can expect this to dramatically improvement treatment of various types of infections involving biofilm-forming bacteria -- you find these a lot in Cystic Fibrosis patients, immunocompromised patients, and various infections of catheters and implanted items and such.
"There are simple tricks that are almost never noticed till a very high technology is attained. For instance, quantum torsion antennas can be built from silver and cobalt steel arrays, if the geometry is correct. Unfortunately, finding the proper geometry involves lots of theory and the ability to solve some large partial differential equations. There are many Slow Zoners who never discover the principles."
Don't suppose anyone else thought of this passage, which takes place when Pham's team is trying to jump-start the low-tech Tine civilization?
I was thinking... what if we applied this to memory instead? Sacrificing reliability for a speed/cost/power? It would be disastrous for executable code of course, but maybe worthwhile for things like music or video. Then again, maybe we're already heading in the general direction, looking at MLC vs. SLC flash memory.
I have a Motorola Z6 and it charges up exactly the same if I use the USB cable from my Maxtor external HDD as if I use the cable that came with the phone.
I'm not sure if the Z6 is one of the examples of Motorola phones using a proprietary version of mini-USB, but locked-down Motorolas will charge if the mini-USB cable is attached to a PC that has a "driver" for Motorola phones loaded.
The Chinese government has managed to rocket China from an impoverished post-WWII and post civil-war famine-plagued disaster into the modern China of today in under sixty years.
Also notice that all that rocketing happened in the last half of that time frame. The first half was spent wasting staggering amounts of human life. So, after holding back China for a few decades, they're back to the single-party capitalist system of Republic they overthrew -- while proclaiming the new model was actually "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" (ie, not Socialism). Given their past history and what they've done to the nation, I absolutely refuse to give them any credit for their belated accomplishments, which they came upon by making every single wrong decision first.
A little offtopic, but I remember hearing a few years ago about a professor who had written and/or gathered together a bunch of song parodies and rhymes which served as mnemonics for students. I vaguely recall they were all biology related.
Unfortunately, I can't remember much about his/her name or school, and I figured this was as good a topic to ask the folks here.
The choice of playing with dolls, tea sets or cars is CULTURAL and not genetic. This have been proved in numerous scientific researches.
I just wanted to point out something to all the folks about the point above -- yes, gender roles are cultural.
However, you have to consider, gender roles were cultural long time ago, just as they are now now. So the question is, are more boys now choosing to affiliate themselves with the cultural role that they see female characters portraying, instead of the cultural roles they see their own gender portraying, compared with the number that chose to affiliate themselves a few decades ago?
And if so, is it because our culture has changed, or is it because our boys have changed? The culture-specifics of gender roles are unimportant. What is important is that there are separate roles.
This is really cool, in the way it changes the shutdown to a reboot-and-suspend -- with the extra step taking place silently, after the user shuts down.
However, consider a problem I have with my laptop that curiously has an intermittent problem suspending with XP. Normally, it is supposed to automatically suspend when I close the cover. But once in a while, it fails to enter suspend, and just hangs in a power-on mode (think it has something to do with bluetooth and/or wireless drivers).
In such cases, I would expect that next time I used it, I would end up taking my laptop out of its bag to find a dead battery. Practically, it hasn't happened, since you still get HDD access clicks (wouldn't happen with a solid state drive though), plus the enclosed storage space makes the cooling fan kick on, generating a lot of noise. If I want to enter suspend, I've learned to watch it a few moments instead of walking away immediately.
Something to keep in mind -- there is always a fair chance that humans may turn out to have some related version of this gene. Even if it may no longer perform the same types of function in the same place as the fly.
Famous example might be the hedgehog genes, loss-of-function mutations in them turned fruitfly embryos into little hedgehog-shapes. Much later, homologues were found in humans, with involvement in congenital defects (Leading to unfortunate situations where a doctor has to tell a mom her child has a Sonic hedgehog mutation).
So does this have a counterpart in humans? I have no idea. But I'd be interested to know if this has any involvement in depression. It's sometimes been argued that some forms of depression may result from an evolutionary trait gone haywire, in which the goal was to direct a person to conserve resources and hunker down.
and could just as easily be used to make a person less attractive.
Mod this guy up -- "dirty tricks" campaigning groups, foreign/domestic propaganda agencies, and disgruntled ex's will love to have something like this.
It allows the unskilled to dispense with the airbrush and photoshop skills, makes it easier and faster, and if the program is easily available publically, more deniable (for those who previously had the means to employ artists to do the job).
Confirmation has been received that the asteroid impact fireball occurred at the predicted time and place. The energy recorded was estimated to be 0.9 to 1.0 kT of TNT and the time of detection was 02:45:45 on October 7 (Greenwich Standard Time). More details on this detection will be forthcoming. An additional confirmation was apparently reported by a KLM airliner (see: (http://www.spaceweather.com). As reported by Peter Brown (University of Western Ontario, Canada), a preliminary examination of infrasound stations nearest to the predicted impact point shows that at least one station recorded the event. These measurements are consistent with the predicted time and place of the atmospheric impact and indicate an estimated energy of 1.1 - 2.1 kT of TNT.
Just in case anyone's still checking all the way down here...
This is rather interesting -- it looks like it could potentially be of interest, even if the efficiency gain is exaggerated. The concept is based around the principle used in Electrospray and Electrospinning.
The ability to produce very fine particle sizes is intriguing -- I am interested in what this could do for applications where the fuel is even thicker than diesel, such as furnaces and ships which use heavy fuel oils. In such cases the oil is so viscous it must be pre-heated prior to use to make it thin enough to pump. Apart from possible efficiency impact, there is the matter of emissions. I would be interested to know what type of impact this type of technology would do to the number and size distribution of soot particles produced.
I've been considering getting a netbook, and noticed that while most are based around Intel's integrated GMA graphics, there was another unusual exception -- the Raon Everrun Note. Almost every netbook out there is based around Intel's Atom CPU, with occasional Core/Celeron ones.
This one was unusual in that it is equipped with an AMD Turion64 x2 CPU paired with ATI RS690E graphics. The RS690SE is integrated, but supposedly much faster than Intel's, and comes with dedicated graphics memory (what they call "sideport"). It looks like it should be a pretty good performer for a netbook -- so right now for me it is a tossup between this and the N10.
When it comes to the physiological response, a more complete description might be "fight or flight", as Fear and Aggression are closely linked. In addition, I've noticed that Conservatives tend to be afraid of People, while Liberals tend to be afraid of Things.
To clarify, I mean that Conservatives seem to focus on threats with a human face -- foreign terrorists and rogue dictators without; criminals, illegal immigrants, and gays within (gays are a particularly interesting example of "threat", due to an odd mix of cultural and psychological reasons, instead of being any threat to life/liberty/livelihood). This leads to harsher law enforcement and big military budgets.
While Liberals seem to focus on systematic dangers, like pollution or global warming. This leads to lots of attention to things like pesticides, endocrine disruptors, and genetically modified organisms; resulting in lots of regulation and governmental intervention.
You might also want to consider that the current Republican Administration currently owns controlling shares in the largest insurance company in the country, as well as two major investment bankers.
Don't forget the mortgage business as well -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been pretty much nationalized in all but name.
Not surprised. McCain's made no secret of his desire to have Steve Ballmer in his cabinet.
Also would like to point out that one of McCain's top advisors has been Carly Fiorina. At one time she was rumored as a possible VP candidate pick, and she quite possibly would end up with some official position in a McCain presidency.
While my dislike for Fiorina is personal (as she downsized/outsourced my uncle together with much of the department he was part of), it is safe to say she was the most divisive and hated CEO of HP in the company's history, thanks to her combination of ruthlessness and avarice (Fox News loves her, however).
My Slashdot UID has been passed on for generations, and will continue to be passed on. I'm actually only 3 years old.
Holy Shit, hasn't anyone thought through the implications of his statement? Evidently, "eln" must actually be the latest generation in a series of trans-Turing AIs, itself having been activated in 2005.
Rather than have a car's engine convert at say 30% efficiency, by burning gasoline, you get power from the grid instead. The grid gets power at ~20% efficiency from the distributor, which gets it at 20% efficiency from the power plant, which gets 20-30% efficiency from burning goal and oil.
Something doesn't seem quite right here, your automotive efficiency sounds too high -- I seem to recall a typical gasoline engine has a Carnot limit around 40%, but is something more like 18-25%. Putting the efficiency of a powerplant at or below an automobile engine is ridiculous, considering the powerplant can operate at a higher temperature for its heat resevoir and optimize its design trading off parameters a car engine cannot (like size, weight, and RPMs), 35% efficiency isn't unusual for a real-world coal plant.
The power distribution efficiency seems skewed somehow as well, you have a 80% loss after conversion to electricity when it goes to the "distributor", and another ~80% loss in the grid. Power losses for electricity distribution shouldn't be nearly as disasterous as for a heat engine's conversion.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, besides the mis-spelling of "ageliferin" (for those wondering why Google's not bringing up much)...
This is pretty big, but it's not coming out of nowhere. I'm not too familiar with this particular compound, but it appears to be a bio-film breaker -- most (but not all) of which work by disrupting quorum sensing. What's exciting about this particular example is both its potency and apparent non-toxicity.
If suitable for use in humans, you can expect this to dramatically improvement treatment of various types of infections involving biofilm-forming bacteria -- you find these a lot in Cystic Fibrosis patients, immunocompromised patients, and various infections of catheters and implanted items and such.
From Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon the Deep":
"There are simple tricks that are almost never noticed till a very high technology is attained. For instance, quantum torsion antennas can be built from silver and cobalt steel arrays, if the geometry is correct. Unfortunately, finding the proper geometry involves lots of theory and the ability to solve some large partial differential equations. There are many Slow Zoners who never discover the principles."
Don't suppose anyone else thought of this passage, which takes place when Pham's team is trying to jump-start the low-tech Tine civilization?
I was thinking... what if we applied this to memory instead? Sacrificing reliability for a speed/cost/power? It would be disastrous for executable code of course, but maybe worthwhile for things like music or video. Then again, maybe we're already heading in the general direction, looking at MLC vs. SLC flash memory.
Or perhaps for some purposes, we'll eventually dispense with real vocalists altogether -- Vocaloid. A few quick examples of Miku Hatsune's work:
Reset: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrCxVzocnyo
Uninstall: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-fja9RtRBc
You: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV5JH8jUeXY
BTW, if anyone has any other examples they're particularly fond of, please link below.
I have a Motorola Z6 and it charges up exactly the same if I use the USB cable from my Maxtor external HDD as if I use the cable that came with the phone.
I'm not sure if the Z6 is one of the examples of Motorola phones using a proprietary version of mini-USB, but locked-down Motorolas will charge if the mini-USB cable is attached to a PC that has a "driver" for Motorola phones loaded.
The Chinese government has managed to rocket China from an impoverished post-WWII and post civil-war famine-plagued disaster into the modern China of today in under sixty years.
Also notice that all that rocketing happened in the last half of that time frame. The first half was spent wasting staggering amounts of human life.
So, after holding back China for a few decades, they're back to the single-party capitalist system of Republic they overthrew -- while proclaiming the new model was actually "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" (ie, not Socialism). Given their past history and what they've done to the nation, I absolutely refuse to give them any credit for their belated accomplishments, which they came upon by making every single wrong decision first.
Update: Found it, name is Helen Davies, with U. Penn's School of Medicine.
A little offtopic, but I remember hearing a few years ago about a professor who had written and/or gathered together a bunch of song parodies and rhymes which served as mnemonics for students. I vaguely recall they were all biology related.
Unfortunately, I can't remember much about his/her name or school, and I figured this was as good a topic to ask the folks here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority
The CCA had no legal power, but there was enough economic pressure to make it a de-facto authority.
Like that innocuous night me and your mother spent together?
Dear Mr. Connery:
I would appreciate if you would stop talking about my mother that way.
Sincerely,
-A. Trebek
The choice of playing with dolls, tea sets or cars is CULTURAL and not genetic. This have been proved in numerous scientific researches.
I just wanted to point out something to all the folks about the point above -- yes, gender roles are cultural.
However, you have to consider, gender roles were cultural long time ago, just as they are now now. So the question is, are more boys now choosing to affiliate themselves with the cultural role that they see female characters portraying, instead of the cultural roles they see their own gender portraying, compared with the number that chose to affiliate themselves a few decades ago?
And if so, is it because our culture has changed, or is it because our boys have changed? The culture-specifics of gender roles are unimportant. What is important is that there are separate roles.
m. It could be a while.
No problem. I got my Snickers bar right here.
And I have nearly three eyes.
For very small values of three?
This is really cool, in the way it changes the shutdown to a reboot-and-suspend -- with the extra step taking place silently, after the user shuts down.
However, consider a problem I have with my laptop that curiously has an intermittent problem suspending with XP. Normally, it is supposed to automatically suspend when I close the cover. But once in a while, it fails to enter suspend, and just hangs in a power-on mode (think it has something to do with bluetooth and/or wireless drivers).
In such cases, I would expect that next time I used it, I would end up taking my laptop out of its bag to find a dead battery. Practically, it hasn't happened, since you still get HDD access clicks (wouldn't happen with a solid state drive though), plus the enclosed storage space makes the cooling fan kick on, generating a lot of noise. If I want to enter suspend, I've learned to watch it a few moments instead of walking away immediately.
Something to keep in mind -- there is always a fair chance that humans may turn out to have some related version of this gene. Even if it may no longer perform the same types of function in the same place as the fly.
Famous example might be the hedgehog genes, loss-of-function mutations in them turned fruitfly embryos into little hedgehog-shapes. Much later, homologues were found in humans, with involvement in congenital defects (Leading to unfortunate situations where a doctor has to tell a mom her child has a Sonic hedgehog mutation).
So does this have a counterpart in humans? I have no idea. But I'd be interested to know if this has any involvement in depression. It's sometimes been argued that some forms of depression may result from an evolutionary trait gone haywire, in which the goal was to direct a person to conserve resources and hunker down.
and could just as easily be used to make a person less attractive.
Mod this guy up -- "dirty tricks" campaigning groups, foreign/domestic propaganda agencies, and disgruntled ex's will love to have something like this.
It allows the unskilled to dispense with the airbrush and photoshop skills, makes it easier and faster, and if the program is easily available publically, more deniable (for those who previously had the means to employ artists to do the job).
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news160.html
Confirmation has been received that the asteroid impact fireball occurred at the predicted time and place. The energy recorded was estimated to be 0.9 to 1.0 kT of TNT and the time of detection was 02:45:45 on October 7 (Greenwich Standard Time). More details on this detection will be forthcoming. An additional confirmation was apparently reported by a KLM airliner (see: (http://www.spaceweather.com). As reported by Peter Brown (University of Western Ontario, Canada), a preliminary examination of infrasound stations nearest to the predicted impact point shows that at least one station recorded the event. These measurements are consistent with the predicted time and place of the atmospheric impact and indicate an estimated energy of 1.1 - 2.1 kT of TNT.
Just in case anyone's still checking all the way down here...
This is rather interesting -- it looks like it could potentially be of interest, even if the efficiency gain is exaggerated. The concept is based around the principle used in Electrospray and Electrospinning.
The ability to produce very fine particle sizes is intriguing -- I am interested in what this could do for applications where the fuel is even thicker than diesel, such as furnaces and ships which use heavy fuel oils. In such cases the oil is so viscous it must be pre-heated prior to use to make it thin enough to pump. Apart from possible efficiency impact, there is the matter of emissions. I would be interested to know what type of impact this type of technology would do to the number and size distribution of soot particles produced.
I've been considering getting a netbook, and noticed that while most are based around Intel's integrated GMA graphics, there was another unusual exception -- the Raon Everrun Note. Almost every netbook out there is based around Intel's Atom CPU, with occasional Core/Celeron ones.
This one was unusual in that it is equipped with an AMD Turion64 x2 CPU paired with ATI RS690E graphics. The RS690SE is integrated, but supposedly much faster than Intel's, and comes with dedicated graphics memory (what they call "sideport"). It looks like it should be a pretty good performer for a netbook -- so right now for me it is a tossup between this and the N10.
When it comes to the physiological response, a more complete description might be "fight or flight", as Fear and Aggression are closely linked. In addition, I've noticed that Conservatives tend to be afraid of People, while Liberals tend to be afraid of Things.
To clarify, I mean that Conservatives seem to focus on threats with a human face -- foreign terrorists and rogue dictators without; criminals, illegal immigrants, and gays within (gays are a particularly interesting example of "threat", due to an odd mix of cultural and psychological reasons, instead of being any threat to life/liberty/livelihood). This leads to harsher law enforcement and big military budgets.
While Liberals seem to focus on systematic dangers, like pollution or global warming. This leads to lots of attention to things like pesticides, endocrine disruptors, and genetically modified organisms; resulting in lots of regulation and governmental intervention.
You might also want to consider that the current Republican Administration currently owns controlling shares in the largest insurance company in the country, as well as two major investment bankers.
Don't forget the mortgage business as well -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been pretty much nationalized in all but name.
Not surprised. McCain's made no secret of his desire to have Steve Ballmer in his cabinet.
Also would like to point out that one of McCain's top advisors has been Carly Fiorina. At one time she was rumored as a possible VP candidate pick, and she quite possibly would end up with some official position in a McCain presidency.
While my dislike for Fiorina is personal (as she downsized/outsourced my uncle together with much of the department he was part of), it is safe to say she was the most divisive and hated CEO of HP in the company's history, thanks to her combination of ruthlessness and avarice (Fox News loves her, however).
My Slashdot UID has been passed on for generations, and will continue to be passed on. I'm actually only 3 years old.
Holy Shit, hasn't anyone thought through the implications of his statement? Evidently, "eln" must actually be the latest generation in a series of trans-Turing AIs, itself having been activated in 2005.
Or possibly a sentient, hyper-evolved magpie.
Rather than have a car's engine convert at say 30% efficiency, by burning gasoline, you get power from the grid instead. The grid gets power at ~20% efficiency from the distributor, which gets it at 20% efficiency from the power plant, which gets 20-30% efficiency from burning goal and oil.
Something doesn't seem quite right here, your automotive efficiency sounds too high -- I seem to recall a typical gasoline engine has a Carnot limit around 40%, but is something more like 18-25%. Putting the efficiency of a powerplant at or below an automobile engine is ridiculous, considering the powerplant can operate at a higher temperature for its heat resevoir and optimize its design trading off parameters a car engine cannot (like size, weight, and RPMs), 35% efficiency isn't unusual for a real-world coal plant.
The power distribution efficiency seems skewed somehow as well, you have a 80% loss after conversion to electricity when it goes to the "distributor", and another ~80% loss in the grid. Power losses for electricity distribution shouldn't be nearly as disasterous as for a heat engine's conversion.
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