Your assertion does not hold water. Vocabulary size is important because it tells us important things about the cognitive ability of dogs. Dogs that are able to learn a large vocabulary are able to keep track of a large number of objects and distinguish between them. No is claiming that Rico has the same capacity for abstract reasoning as even a three year-old child, but this is an impressive accomplishment.
As an aside, I consult with producers and trainers of working dogs (guide dogs, sleddogs, etc.), Two pertinent things that we have learned is that there is a genetic component to trainability (~20%); and that dogs do not always work the way that we think they do -- when a drug detector dog indicates on cocaine they are actually indicating on a byproduct of cocaine manuafacture.
Please do not sell the dogs short, even if they are not yet our new canine overlords.
I am a full-time research scientist with the U.S. government; my performance reviews are based almost entirely on publishable research, so I very much understand the pressure to publish or perish. To heighten the sense of urgency, I am still in a three-year probationary period. I have to respectfully disagree with your statement that the issue is pressure to publish rather than personal ethics. The issue is entirely one of ethics: he was under an intense amount of pressure to publish, and he chose an unethical way to achieve that goal. There was no outside agency that forced him to make the decision that he did. He looked inside of himself and decided that cheating was acceptable. What is that, if not an ethical judgement?
It does not work that way. I have never been a member of a missle combat crew, but I know people that are. The keys have to be turned simultaneously, presumably within a second or so of each other. So your idea, while sort of clever, would not work. I am not sure what happens if one key is turned and not the other -- I would guess that the system goes into some sort of lockdown mode but do not know for sure.
The statement, "Rounup is a Monsanto product specifically designed not to harm Monsanto produce", is not correct. There are some varieties of seed sold by Monsanto that are Roundup-Ready, and those are the varieties that are not harmed by application ot Roundup. The correct statement would be, "Some Monsanto produce is genetically engineered to not be harmed by Roundup."
Also, I am no fan of Monsanto (and I work in agriculture), but this is case is more complicated than that. The issue to hand is whether or not the farmer was selling produce grown from Monsanto seed that the farmer did not purchase, which is essentially pirating germplasm.
Is Monsanto run by a bunch of despicable men? Yes. Should genes be patentable? Clearly, the answer is no. But that is not the thrust of this case.
I am neither an astronomer nor an expert in optics but... There is no terrestrial telescope of which I am aware that have the kind of resolving power that would be necessary to visualize those footprints from the Earth. And I am sure that there are lots of other things to consider as well, such as angle of incidence of light on the lunar surface. Maybe the Hubble could do it -- I do not know -- but the kinds of people who believe that we faked the Moon landings probably would not believe Hubble photos, either.
I am a dairy scientist, so I know a little bit about this.
The reason that most fluid milk labels do not mention rBST is that it is indistinguishable from BST naturally produced by the cow and present in milk. That is, there is no means of verifying or refuting any claim about rBST in milk in the laboratory. You will often see small producers, such as organic dairies, label their milk as rBST-free, but that claim depends upon teh honesty of the producer.
Well, that is sort of the whole concept of the deliverable, isn't it?
I [successfully] use OO.o to exchange scientific manuscripts etc. with coworkers and collaborators -- almost all of whom use MS Office -- without difficulty.
Of course, your mileage may vary. It depends on the type of documents that you produce.
When I send files to my customers, or even my potential customers, I send them as PDFs. I always do this with documents that are deliverables. [*] It has never been a problem since you can cut-and-paste with Acrobat Reader. ---- [*] Real customers whose checks cleared.
I AM a scientist, and I read the research paper in Nature rather than the popular-press rehashings of the article. Of the 371 embryos that were transferred to recipients there were 8 born live and 2 who survived the perinatal period. That should stop the handwaving about the likelihood of producing humans infants using ths approach on the grounds of cost alone.
An extensive amount of genetic engineering was done in order to produce parthenotes that were capable of surviving past 10d of gestation, which is when naturally-occuring parthenotes usually die. One of the two survivors was raised by a foster mother to adulthood and has herself produced a litter of apparently normal pups. The other survivor was sacrificed for gene expression profile studies.
Some whack job might indeed try this on humans, but it is unlikely. It is easy to obtain enough mice recipients for 371 embryos. It will be significantly more challenging to do that for humans. We also do not know what regulatory differences there may be between mice and humans that would prevent the reported protocol from producing viable embryos in vitro.
Commissions are based in large part on the size of the market into which you are selling your product. The opportunity to earn large commissions is far greater for a salesman working for Microsoft than one working for SuSE. We as a community may not like that, but ultimately the only way to change that is to put our money where our mouths are.
It is a mistake to assume that many parents are too dumb to teach their children, although they may lack the skill to do so. Many professional educators are not very skilled at teaching to multiple learning styles, and teaching is their job. Most parents are not trained educators and do not have the luxury of staying home to educate their children. Learning styles were a significant part of the curriculum in the college of education at my unversity and teachers are encouraged to teach to at least two different syles in each lesson. Sure, there are dumb parents and there are bad teachers; but that does not mean that education is an easy problem.
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Your assertion does not hold water. Vocabulary size is important because it tells us important things about the cognitive ability of dogs. Dogs that are able to learn a large vocabulary are able to keep track of a large number of objects and distinguish between them. No is claiming that Rico has the same capacity for abstract reasoning as even a three year-old child, but this is an impressive accomplishment.
As an aside, I consult with producers and trainers of working dogs (guide dogs, sleddogs, etc.), Two pertinent things that we have learned is that there is a genetic component to trainability (~20%); and that dogs do not always work the way that we think they do -- when a drug detector dog indicates on cocaine they are actually indicating on a byproduct of cocaine manuafacture.
Please do not sell the dogs short, even if they are not yet our new canine overlords.
I am a full-time research scientist with the U.S. government; my performance reviews are based almost entirely on publishable research, so I very much understand the pressure to publish or perish. To heighten the sense of urgency, I am still in a three-year probationary period. I have to respectfully disagree with your statement that the issue is pressure to publish rather than personal ethics. The issue is entirely one of ethics: he was under an intense amount of pressure to publish, and he chose an unethical way to achieve that goal. There was no outside agency that forced him to make the decision that he did. He looked inside of himself and decided that cheating was acceptable. What is that, if not an ethical judgement?
Missle combat crews are no longer issued sidearms. One supposes that an insane crewmember would have to be subdued with a clipboard or coffee cup.
It does not work that way. I have never been a member of a missle combat crew, but I know people that are. The keys have to be turned simultaneously, presumably within a second or so of each other. So your idea, while sort of clever, would not work. I am not sure what happens if one key is turned and not the other -- I would guess that the system goes into some sort of lockdown mode but do not know for sure.
The statement, "Rounup is a Monsanto product specifically designed not to harm Monsanto produce", is not correct. There are some varieties of seed sold by Monsanto that are Roundup-Ready, and those are the varieties that are not harmed by application ot Roundup. The correct statement would be, "Some Monsanto produce is genetically engineered to not be harmed by Roundup."
Also, I am no fan of Monsanto (and I work in agriculture), but this is case is more complicated than that. The issue to hand is whether or not the farmer was selling produce grown from Monsanto seed that the farmer did not purchase, which is essentially pirating germplasm.
Is Monsanto run by a bunch of despicable men? Yes. Should genes be patentable? Clearly, the answer is no. But that is not the thrust of this case.
D'oh!
"...that has the resolving power..."
I am neither an astronomer nor an expert in optics but... There is no terrestrial telescope of which I am aware that have the kind of resolving power that would be necessary to visualize those footprints from the Earth. And I am sure that there are lots of other things to consider as well, such as angle of incidence of light on the lunar surface. Maybe the Hubble could do it -- I do not know -- but the kinds of people who believe that we faked the Moon landings probably would not believe Hubble photos, either.
I hope that I don't have to sit at a table with a bunch of philosophers...
I am a dairy scientist, so I know a little bit about this.
The reason that most fluid milk labels do not mention rBST is that it is indistinguishable from BST naturally produced by the cow and present in milk. That is, there is no means of verifying or refuting any claim about rBST in milk in the laboratory. You will often see small producers, such as organic dairies, label their milk as rBST-free, but that claim depends upon teh honesty of the producer.
Well, that is sort of the whole concept of the deliverable, isn't it?
I [successfully] use OO.o to exchange scientific manuscripts etc. with coworkers and collaborators -- almost all of whom use MS Office -- without difficulty.
Of course, your mileage may vary. It depends on the type of documents that you produce.
When I send files to my customers, or even my potential customers, I send them as PDFs. I always do this with documents that are deliverables. [*] It has never been a problem since you can cut-and-paste with Acrobat Reader.
----
[*] Real customers whose checks cleared.
I AM a scientist, and I read the research paper in Nature rather than the popular-press rehashings of the article. Of the 371 embryos that were transferred to recipients there were 8 born live and 2 who survived the perinatal period. That should stop the handwaving about the likelihood of producing humans infants using ths approach on the grounds of cost alone.
An extensive amount of genetic engineering was done in order to produce parthenotes that were capable of surviving past 10d of gestation, which is when naturally-occuring parthenotes usually die. One of the two survivors was raised by a foster mother to adulthood and has herself produced a litter of apparently normal pups. The other survivor was sacrificed for gene expression profile studies.
Some whack job might indeed try this on humans, but it is unlikely. It is easy to obtain enough mice recipients for 371 embryos. It will be significantly more challenging to do that for humans. We also do not know what regulatory differences there may be between mice and humans that would prevent the reported protocol from producing viable embryos in vitro.
You correct your LaTeX.
Commissions are based in large part on the size of the market into which you are selling your product. The opportunity to earn large commissions is far greater for a salesman working for Microsoft than one working for SuSE. We as a community may not like that, but ultimately the only way to change that is to put our money where our mouths are.
It is a mistake to assume that many parents are too dumb to teach their children, although they may lack the skill to do so. Many professional educators are not very skilled at teaching to multiple learning styles, and teaching is their job. Most parents are not trained educators and do not have the luxury of staying home to educate their children. Learning styles were a significant part of the curriculum in the college of education at my unversity and teachers are encouraged to teach to at least two different syles in each lesson. Sure, there are dumb parents and there are bad teachers; but that does not mean that education is an easy problem.