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User: SimonJG

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  1. Most US Scientists are Not American on Why Science Is a Lousy Career Choice · · Score: 1

    At least that is certainly true in the University / National Lab sectors. Just count them. And then count the Germans, British, Chinese, Indians ... The US has always imported its scientific talent. True, the Americans who do choose to become scientists often excel - but most US science graduates go into the more profitable fields of business, medicine or industry.

  2. Can you get false positives? on Software Finds Plagiarism In Research · · Score: 1
    How does this text comparison work? Is it intelligent enough to weight the different sections differently?

    Very often, much of the introductory and methodology sections may be recycled or adapted from previous publications and only the results and conclusions are scientifically novel.

  3. Re:FORTRAN, COBOL etc. on How Can an Old-School Coder Regain His Chops? · · Score: 1

    I absolutely agree with your point about attention to detail.

    I find that there are a number of owners of legacy code - engineers and so forth - who want to update their code - often FORTRAN - to a modern GUI and implement features like calculations in real-time response to changes in the GUI.

    However, they do NOT want to rework the FORTRAN code itself. These programs are often thousands of lines of dense calculations which were started back in the 60s or 70s and are known to be efficient and essentially bug-free.

    They also want the GUI in something that they more or less understand - which means C or C++.

    Hence the problem is one of understanding and modifying the original FORTRAN command line interface and the platform it was written for (remember VMS?), working with the engineers to design an appropriate GUI and then implement it in a mixed-language (C++ or C and FORTRAN) environment. These days I tend to use a cross-platform framework like Qt or wxWidgets.

    That's how I live anyway ...

  4. Re:Big problem on various levels on OSU President Cans Anthrax Vaccine Research On Primates · · Score: 1

    Absolutely the NIH should stop funding OSU.

    $5 million is significantly less than the NIH funding that OSU has received. From the NIH site it seems that OSU at its various sites gets between $3.4 million (2008) to $10 million (2006) each YEAR from the NIH. Clearly the University has more to loose from upsetting the NIH than the Boone-Pickens family. Unless, of course, there is something we don't yet know about.

    Alternatively, the President should grow some balls.

    Source: http://report.nih.gov/award/trends/State_Congressional/StateDetail.cfm?State=OKLAHOMA