Tufte is absolutely one of the world experts on presentation of design. We have absolutely strived to adopt his principles of data design and presentation in almost all of our work and its paid off in terms of data interpretability. My dissertation work was presented for two years in a row at our big vision meeting getting no attention until I used some of Tufte's principles in presentation of data and the third year I had several hundred of the worlds scientists in vision research gasping, oooohing and aaaahing. It was awesome. Of course Keynote and a cool animation of a degenerating retina helped, but still......
His books are required reading in our lab and I encourage everyone who is involved in presentation of data of any kind to spend some time with his books.
Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough?
Well, it would certainly be nice to see companies (and governments) go back to a model where "the buck stops here" and take responsibility for their actions. I don't know who ultimate thought "I know what let's do" and release these records for public consumption without even "anonymizing" them, but the CTO is an appropriately responsible party I would guess.
I've had a couple of incidents as well with police and now city run facilities where people want to restrict photography. It's getting really discouraging for folks that enjoy photography and all anyone has to do is invoke the spectre of "National Security".
I'm sorry, but using federal money to fund research on embryonic stem cells from embryos created for research has always been banned.
Care to back that up with a reference?
I honestly have no idea where evidence to the contrary exists.
Ummmmmm, over three decades of scientifically published and peer reviewed literature?
Moreover, there is enough reason independent of moral arguments against the prudence of expending large sums of money on something that, were it not a political football, seems at best marginally consequential.
Right...... this coming from a student studying business management. You will excuse me if I defer those assessments to my colleagues down the hall from my office who *are* developmental biologists and physicians actively in the field. Read up about Parkinson's disease research, spinal cord repair research, etc....etc...etc... before making those judgments.
Just because non-US firms are performing research (due much in part to getting state funding) does not mean we are somehow missing out on a big opportunity.
You *are* a business student, are you not? Have you learned anything about market opportunity and the drive to capitalize on market advances?
This is a prime example of the failing of science education in the US. Let me explain this to you from a bioscientists perspective who is engaged in both public and private (read commercial) research.....
Federal funding is important for basic science research for a variety of reasons that we covered here on Slashdot only a few days ago. There is a difference between basic and applied research. Recently with this administration there has been a move towards applied research and away from basic research that has mirrored the trend in industry for the few years preceding this administration. Years ago there were more progressive thinking companies like Xerox, HP, SGI and Bell Labs, but they got lazy and were under more pressure from shareholders to focus more on short term profits and less on long term viability of the company. This effect has been reflected in the long term performance of each of these companies as their influence has withered away. There are some current companies that are starting to invest more of their dollars in true R&D which is being reflected in their performance, but i worry that the trend in this country is going to hurt our international viability in a variety of the sciences both commercial and academic. On top of that comment from the other day, it should be noted that many federally funded research projects are simply beyond the scope of a states ability to fund. Take for instance lots of cancer research or getting outside of bioscience, materials research or high energy physics or energy research. There are many fundamental national issues that are addressed through the funding of science by the federal government, not the least of which is the survival of the country.
OK, fair enough. 1433 with publication dates going back to 1973 and yes, I did read many of the abstracts. While superficially they do not appear to reference "stem cell research", the vast majority of them still have direct relevance through viral and genetic strategies.
In general, I don't think stating the number of results is really a good judge of exactly how much federal money is spent on a specific type of research.
Not directly, but it is indicative of when federal funds began to be assigned to particular topics, and that was what was in question here.
Embryonic stem cell research has never been funded through direct federal government grants and any indirect funding has not been affected during Bush's presidency.
This is simply just such an ignorant and factually incorrect statement that I don't even know where to begin..... As I responded to the other individual in this thread, stem cell research *and* embryonic stem cell research has been performed and funded directly by the federal government going back to 1963, possibly before. But the first published report in PubMed is in 1963. The Bush administration also made it impossible for any federally funded institution (read any university that receives *any* funding from the federal government) to keep any of those federal funds if they accept or perform any embryonic stem cell research with lines not explicitly approved by the administration. In other words, the types of institutions that would do the research are typically those that have the most to lose by performing the research under the Bush administration.
Given the recent discoveries regarding Woo Suk Hwang's research and what is known of adult stem cells, there is plenty of reason not to throw federal money at more research.
No doubt he was corrupt and a liar...... but we have those types in politics and all sorts of fields too. To judge an entire scientific community on the basis of one person's behavior is inappropriate. It would be like saying that because one person drove drunk or did illegal drugs, all US presidents are bad.:-)
If embryonic stem cells were truly so promising, I would imagine that more companies would be pursuing them.
And they *are*. The problem is that they are doing it in other countries and there has been a significant brain drain from the US to those countries of scientists and their staff. These are high paying US jobs (and the resulting tax base) that have left the country.
OK, let's play that game. Quick search of PubMed for "embryonic stem cell" yields 21,581 articles and publications going back to........ wait for it....... 1963.
Well, a quick search on PubMed for "stem cell" reveals 156,585 papers and publications going back to 1966. The vast majority of those papers were published by US funded bioscientists who received federal funding from the National Institutes of Health for their work.
i really dont see the problem with this. i mean no other pres spent money on embrionic stem cell research, clinton, bush 1, etc.
Ah, so you have *just* bought into the propaganda. As a bioscientist I am here to tell you that stem cell research has been funded for at least two decades by several "Presidents" through the National Institutes of Health. It has not, until Bush been explicitly mentioned as a cost center giving Bush the appearance of "funding" stem cell research and the political cachet (read empty) of being able to say that he was the first.
You should read a couple of books. 1) The World is Flat. 2) The Pentagon's New Map.
You are correct in thinking that the race for the Cold War is over. However, what you need to consider is that we are now in a global market competition for goods and services that will require innovation to stay on top. In fact, it could be argued that the Cold War was in reality an economic war that Communism lost (is still losing) because they cannot maintain the technology and information lead. Their infrastructure simply could not compete.
So, getting back on point: If we focus just on applied engineering, we will end up being the country where work is simply outsourced to because of cheaper labor. This is already happening to a great extent with the European and Japanese automobile companies who are building more of their products here because Americans work for less money than their counterparts in Germany and Japan. So, if you paid attention in history, economics and world history you would find that history has shown that those countries that define and maintain the technological edge will lead economically. Those countries that cease or fail to invest in long term strategies and educational investment wither away or at least fade to some extent behind another group/country that invests more in "brains".
I would actually say a lot of the R&D a lot of companies did back in the day did not help them as much as it should have. They would invent great things, but some other company would usually profit off of it. R&D is expensive and needs to be well-justified.
Your memory is not as long as mine then. HP became huge by investing in R&D. Apple and Adobe arguably became who they are because of investments in fonts and laser printers (not to mention software and industrial design). Yahoo and Google are who they are almost exclusively because of R&D. Before that we can certainly look back to GE, Siemens, Boeing, Corning etc...etc...etc.... All of these companies profited quite handsomely because of R&D, but I suspect you are thinking of companies who at some point in their management cycle started to focus on the short term rather than the long term and it cost 'em.
Today, computer science has plenty of R&D in industry, but mechanical engineering has to turn to defense simply because of the huge cost in making anything interesting.
Oh, please. I can think of a ton of things that do not cost a tremendous amount of money to engineer, yet are big money makers in their individual markets. Think glass and composites for a variety of things from buildings to aircraft to bicycles to skateboards. Think ceramics for many of the same structural applications and more (acoustics and many others). Think automobiles or hell, even bicycles. The last downhill mountain bike race (linked here) I attended had Honda downhill mountain bikes with automatic transmissions. Think applications in home construction. Think about...... I could go on and on and on.
The technology that goes into modern warfare will trickle down into society in several years, similar to the way NASA worked 30 years ago. o. It's not an entirely terrible system, because no one but defense is really willing to spend the amount of money and defense is pretty universally agreed on as neccesary.
I have no doubt about that, but after working with some folks in defense, I can tell you it is an inefficient system littered with middle managers and other parasites that each need the hard work of others to justify an existence. Furthermore, completely idiosyncratic and political decisions go into many defense related projects that end up on the cutting room floor for reasons completely unrelated to the performance of the defense project. Read about the XM-8 rifle system to understand what I mean. The dollars that go into black projects invest in technologies that are tied up for years, sometimes decades before ever being made available to the general public and often result in environmental and economic consequences that would be better managed in open, competitive environments. All told, I would much rather see those dollars go into education, basic science and open competition for even defense related projects.
too often we see academic and "pure research" that is way out of line with what is useful and really of value in the real world.
Well, that *is* the problem with myopia. i.e. not being able to predict the future (regardless of what Bill Joy might think), we don't really know a priori what are going to be useful or valuable technologies. Think about the basic research that brought us nylon, transistors, lasers, semiconductors, our pharmacopia, MRIs, etc...etc...etc... All of these technologies are brought to you by a myriad of basic science work that coalesced into a useful combination of technologies, any one of which by themselves were much less useful.
If you first do a year or two or real work in real industry, then go back to academia or fundamental research, you're more likely to have a far better appreciation of the industry and more likely to make valuable contributions.
I will tell you, that scenario very rarely happens. Although what does happen is that people come back to academia to change foci. For instance, we have an outstanding young graduate student who was a former Windows programmer at Microsoft that has come back to earn his PhD in neuroscience. He joined our lab to become part of a rarefied group of bioscientists who have competence in CS and biological arenas. I expect great things from him and he has already demonstrated a level of competence in creating useful tools not just for his research, but the wider neuroscience community as well.
On the other hand, Google labs *is* doing some amazingly creative and advanced work. They don't publish much, but that does not mean they are not doing the work. Yes, they may be small but you can't argue with results either as they have been tremendously productive. That *and* they reward their scientists by making their work financially worthwhile.
All of that said, I am not going to knock MS or IBM research labs as both of them are doing exciting work in a variety of fields both basic and applied.
I would not necessarily give up on academia. Granted, the last five years has been particularly hard on basic science research (especially in biosciences), but there are still good options for the best and brightest. In academia, you really need to have the PhD if you want the flexibility that you are looking for. That said, I've found academia to be a tremendously rewarding experience that does not preclude you from work in industry either. For instance, we've been exploring the commercialization of some of our technologies and I am pleased to say that you *can* have it all with academic environments and industrial aspirations. The trick is that you have to create your own company to do this or find an academic environment that will support independent commercialization.
With respect to industrial labs that do basic research, the pressure from any federally funded labs from the Bush administration has been away from basic research and towards applied research that has mirrored the trend in industry for the few years preceding this administration. Years ago there were more far thinking companies like Xerox, HP, SGI and Bell Labs, but they got lazy and were under more pressure from shareholders to focus more on short term profits and less on long term viability of the company. This effect has been reflected in the long term performance of each of these companies as their influence has withered away. There are some current companies that are starting to invest more of their dollars in true R&D which is being reflected in their performance, but i worry that the trend in this country is going to hurt our international viability in a variety of the sciences both commercial and academic.
P.S. The other thing that you should be aware of is that many industrial labs require some post-doctoral training period as well to obtain positions....... Of course it will depend upon the appointment, but a post doc is viewed as a useful thing not just in pure academia.
Finally: have you thought about the ethics of using your student loans in this way? Were the loans given to you in order to help you pay for your expenses as a student? Do you think it's okay to ask someone to loan you money for one thing and then use that money for something else? Isn't that a form of lying?
Somebody mod this up. I have points, but have already posted in this discussion.
The idea with the stock market for me has always been long term investing, but I do agree with you that there *are* risks. For instance, the first three stocks I invested in were CSCO, AOL and AAPL. CSCO and AOL performed astronomically well until March of 2000 when I lost my ass of them. AAPL was so so until they sorta bottomed out a few years ago when I bought at a low. Since then, AAPL has performed better than most tech stocks. My problem early on was lack of diversification, but a properly balanced portfolio will prevent losses while trying to ensure continued growth. Of course most folks I know lost their back sides since 2000 including me and it's taken me until now to get back where I was in early 2000. There are concerns with slowing of the economy, but oil stocks have performed spectacularly well with unbelievable (some might say criminal) earnings over the past little while. So, there are always places to make money in the stock market.
For university students the first thing is to live frugally, the next thing is to pay off debts and the third thing is to save.
Actually that depends. Our current house has gone up in value by about 30% over the past year and in many other places in the country, while houses are depreciating, undeveloped land in skyrocketing in value. The goal with real estate, like all investments, is to invest wisely and do your research.
The *first* thing I would encourage you to do is live frugally. You don't need a car for many places in the country you would go to college. You don't need the latest and greatest computers or TVs or goodies and the more money you can save now, the more it will help you out. It was tough while I was an undergrad, but everything I could was saved and invested in some stocks which over time have paid off.
For most folks, I'd have to say mutual funds or real estate right now although the stock market usually performs at about 10% or better depending....
One of the coolest things about the Apple I and Apple ][ was that Apple Computer included the schematics for *all* of the motherboard and CPU design. Everything was documented so that users could build interfaces with both the software and the hardware with a minimum of fuss. So, even though Amit Singh calls the manual included with the Apple ][ as a "preliminary manual, it was remarkably complete.
Despite how far we've come, there are time I really miss my old Apple ][.
I would find that a true delta configuration would be unlikely as there would be little evolutionary advantage to developing an inherently less stable "wing" configuration for the low speed flying that this creature would be doing.
The whole reason that flight engineers started adopting the delta wing configuration is that it allowed the shockwave for supersonic flight to be better controlled flight by moving the leading edge of the wing back behind the terminus. This is great for high speed flight, but miserable for low speed flight as it requires very high stall speeds that would be....... unlikely in this creature.
Furthermore, if one looks at just about any flying creature now or in the past, the leading edge of their "wing" has always been protected by bone, feather or both. To have an unprotected membrane as the leading edge of the "wing" that could be easily damaged would be devastating to the aerodynamic properties and the overall fitness of the organism. From these reasons, I would be much more likely to believe the first alternative reconstruction of Sharovipteryx mirabilis where the membranes could be protected and even gathered up when not in use, a function that would not be possible with standard articulation of the bones as presented in the figures of Dykes representation.
Say what you want about blogging, but I've found it very useful to keep friends and family in touch with what I am doing. The fact that some people have found my blog content applicable to their interests says that others may find the content to be interesting. It has resulted invitations for me to speak at seminars, or ask me to consult or even to purchase pictures presented on my blog. Most times I've turned these offers down because of time constraints, but on some occasions I have accepted or granted permissions to reproduce articles/images.
All in all I would say that the benefits of keeping a blog have exceeded the costs and if you maintain that friends do not let friends blog, then perhaps you are hanging out with the wrong crowd. I for one would not want to keep company with folks that prevent one from succeeding, but would rather have friends that encourage success.
Well, it's interesting in that I've asked a couple of folks here (a Scott and a Welshman) and they both said with an "e". I have always spelled it without the "e", but that's the way I was taught. So, that combined with this publication reference I have from 1989 suggests that at least some folks think it's proper. While others here on Slashdot are more adamant about it being spelled without the "e". The original article referenced for this post spelled it with an "e" and other BBC articles on mosquitos have spelled it with an "e", so $#!^ if I know. I am just a neurobiologist, not an English major and was trusting my handy little American/Canadian/British publication manual to be correct when I made the original post.
Slashdot Mirror
Tufte is absolutely one of the world experts on presentation of design. We have absolutely strived to adopt his principles of data design and presentation in almost all of our work and its paid off in terms of data interpretability. My dissertation work was presented for two years in a row at our big vision meeting getting no attention until I used some of Tufte's principles in presentation of data and the third year I had several hundred of the worlds scientists in vision research gasping, oooohing and aaaahing. It was awesome. Of course Keynote and a cool animation of a degenerating retina helped, but still......
His books are required reading in our lab and I encourage everyone who is involved in presentation of data of any kind to spend some time with his books.
Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough?
Well, it would certainly be nice to see companies (and governments) go back to a model where "the buck stops here" and take responsibility for their actions. I don't know who ultimate thought "I know what let's do" and release these records for public consumption without even "anonymizing" them, but the CTO is an appropriately responsible party I would guess.
I've had a couple of incidents as well with police and now city run facilities where people want to restrict photography. It's getting really discouraging for folks that enjoy photography and all anyone has to do is invoke the spectre of "National Security".
Do you really think all those companies just "got lazy" one day and decided to sacrifice their companies' long-term performance?
Yes, I *do*, as do many business analysts who saw a move towards short term profits and away from long term strategy.
From then on things have the appearance of requiring (ever greater) federal funding, but the fact is things were better before.
Before what? Penicillin? Small Pox vaccines? Heart disease medications? MRIs? The Internet?
But with companies like Bell and Xerox doing the heavy lifting, there's no need for state funding either...
You would trust corporations to do this work over governments?
I'm sorry, but using federal money to fund research on embryonic stem cells from embryos created for research has always been banned.
Care to back that up with a reference?
I honestly have no idea where evidence to the contrary exists.
Ummmmmm, over three decades of scientifically published and peer reviewed literature?
Moreover, there is enough reason independent of moral arguments against the prudence of expending large sums of money on something that, were it not a political football, seems at best marginally consequential.
Right...... this coming from a student studying business management. You will excuse me if I defer those assessments to my colleagues down the hall from my office who *are* developmental biologists and physicians actively in the field. Read up about Parkinson's disease research, spinal cord repair research, etc....etc...etc... before making those judgments.
Just because non-US firms are performing research (due much in part to getting state funding) does not mean we are somehow missing out on a big opportunity.
You *are* a business student, are you not? Have you learned anything about market opportunity and the drive to capitalize on market advances?
This is a prime example of the failing of science education in the US. Let me explain this to you from a bioscientists perspective who is engaged in both public and private (read commercial) research.....
Federal funding is important for basic science research for a variety of reasons that we covered here on Slashdot only a few days ago. There is a difference between basic and applied research. Recently with this administration there has been a move towards applied research and away from basic research that has mirrored the trend in industry for the few years preceding this administration. Years ago there were more progressive thinking companies like Xerox, HP, SGI and Bell Labs, but they got lazy and were under more pressure from shareholders to focus more on short term profits and less on long term viability of the company. This effect has been reflected in the long term performance of each of these companies as their influence has withered away. There are some current companies that are starting to invest more of their dollars in true R&D which is being reflected in their performance, but i worry that the trend in this country is going to hurt our international viability in a variety of the sciences both commercial and academic. On top of that comment from the other day, it should be noted that many federally funded research projects are simply beyond the scope of a states ability to fund. Take for instance lots of cancer research or getting outside of bioscience, materials research or high energy physics or energy research. There are many fundamental national issues that are addressed through the funding of science by the federal government, not the least of which is the survival of the country.
OK, fair enough. 1433 with publication dates going back to 1973 and yes, I did read many of the abstracts. While superficially they do not appear to reference "stem cell research", the vast majority of them still have direct relevance through viral and genetic strategies.
In general, I don't think stating the number of results is really a good judge of exactly how much federal money is spent on a specific type of research.
Not directly, but it is indicative of when federal funds began to be assigned to particular topics, and that was what was in question here.
Embryonic stem cell research has never been funded through direct federal government grants and any indirect funding has not been affected during Bush's presidency.
:-)
This is simply just such an ignorant and factually incorrect statement that I don't even know where to begin..... As I responded to the other individual in this thread, stem cell research *and* embryonic stem cell research has been performed and funded directly by the federal government going back to 1963, possibly before. But the first published report in PubMed is in 1963. The Bush administration also made it impossible for any federally funded institution (read any university that receives *any* funding from the federal government) to keep any of those federal funds if they accept or perform any embryonic stem cell research with lines not explicitly approved by the administration. In other words, the types of institutions that would do the research are typically those that have the most to lose by performing the research under the Bush administration.
Given the recent discoveries regarding Woo Suk Hwang's research and what is known of adult stem cells, there is plenty of reason not to throw federal money at more research.
No doubt he was corrupt and a liar...... but we have those types in politics and all sorts of fields too. To judge an entire scientific community on the basis of one person's behavior is inappropriate. It would be like saying that because one person drove drunk or did illegal drugs, all US presidents are bad.
If embryonic stem cells were truly so promising, I would imagine that more companies would be pursuing them.
And they *are*. The problem is that they are doing it in other countries and there has been a significant brain drain from the US to those countries of scientists and their staff. These are high paying US jobs (and the resulting tax base) that have left the country.
OK, let's play that game. Quick search of PubMed for "embryonic stem cell" yields 21,581 articles and publications going back to ........ wait for it....... 1963.
BZZZZZZZZT! You lose.
Well, a quick search on PubMed for "stem cell" reveals 156,585 papers and publications going back to 1966. The vast majority of those papers were published by US funded bioscientists who received federal funding from the National Institutes of Health for their work.
i really dont see the problem with this. i mean no other pres spent money on embrionic stem cell research, clinton, bush 1, etc.
Ah, so you have *just* bought into the propaganda. As a bioscientist I am here to tell you that stem cell research has been funded for at least two decades by several "Presidents" through the National Institutes of Health. It has not, until Bush been explicitly mentioned as a cost center giving Bush the appearance of "funding" stem cell research and the political cachet (read empty) of being able to say that he was the first.
You should read a couple of books. 1) The World is Flat. 2) The Pentagon's New Map.
You are correct in thinking that the race for the Cold War is over. However, what you need to consider is that we are now in a global market competition for goods and services that will require innovation to stay on top. In fact, it could be argued that the Cold War was in reality an economic war that Communism lost (is still losing) because they cannot maintain the technology and information lead. Their infrastructure simply could not compete.
So, getting back on point: If we focus just on applied engineering, we will end up being the country where work is simply outsourced to because of cheaper labor. This is already happening to a great extent with the European and Japanese automobile companies who are building more of their products here because Americans work for less money than their counterparts in Germany and Japan. So, if you paid attention in history, economics and world history you would find that history has shown that those countries that define and maintain the technological edge will lead economically. Those countries that cease or fail to invest in long term strategies and educational investment wither away or at least fade to some extent behind another group/country that invests more in "brains".
I would actually say a lot of the R&D a lot of companies did back in the day did not help them as much as it should have. They would invent great things, but some other company would usually profit off of it. R&D is expensive and needs to be well-justified.
...... I could go on and on and on.
Your memory is not as long as mine then. HP became huge by investing in R&D. Apple and Adobe arguably became who they are because of investments in fonts and laser printers (not to mention software and industrial design). Yahoo and Google are who they are almost exclusively because of R&D. Before that we can certainly look back to GE, Siemens, Boeing, Corning etc...etc...etc.... All of these companies profited quite handsomely because of R&D, but I suspect you are thinking of companies who at some point in their management cycle started to focus on the short term rather than the long term and it cost 'em.
Today, computer science has plenty of R&D in industry, but mechanical engineering has to turn to defense simply because of the huge cost in making anything interesting.
Oh, please. I can think of a ton of things that do not cost a tremendous amount of money to engineer, yet are big money makers in their individual markets. Think glass and composites for a variety of things from buildings to aircraft to bicycles to skateboards. Think ceramics for many of the same structural applications and more (acoustics and many others). Think automobiles or hell, even bicycles. The last downhill mountain bike race (linked here) I attended had Honda downhill mountain bikes with automatic transmissions. Think applications in home construction. Think about
The technology that goes into modern warfare will trickle down into society in several years, similar to the way NASA worked 30 years ago. o. It's not an entirely terrible system, because no one but defense is really willing to spend the amount of money and defense is pretty universally agreed on as neccesary.
I have no doubt about that, but after working with some folks in defense, I can tell you it is an inefficient system littered with middle managers and other parasites that each need the hard work of others to justify an existence. Furthermore, completely idiosyncratic and political decisions go into many defense related projects that end up on the cutting room floor for reasons completely unrelated to the performance of the defense project. Read about the XM-8 rifle system to understand what I mean. The dollars that go into black projects invest in technologies that are tied up for years, sometimes decades before ever being made available to the general public and often result in environmental and economic consequences that would be better managed in open, competitive environments. All told, I would much rather see those dollars go into education, basic science and open competition for even defense related projects.
Isn't academia a kind of nut ... ?
:-)
Oh, we're all just a little bit nuts here in academia.
too often we see academic and "pure research" that is way out of line with what is useful and really of value in the real world.
Well, that *is* the problem with myopia. i.e. not being able to predict the future (regardless of what Bill Joy might think), we don't really know a priori what are going to be useful or valuable technologies. Think about the basic research that brought us nylon, transistors, lasers, semiconductors, our pharmacopia, MRIs, etc...etc...etc... All of these technologies are brought to you by a myriad of basic science work that coalesced into a useful combination of technologies, any one of which by themselves were much less useful.
If you first do a year or two or real work in real industry, then go back to academia or fundamental research, you're more likely to have a far better appreciation of the industry and more likely to make valuable contributions.
I will tell you, that scenario very rarely happens. Although what does happen is that people come back to academia to change foci. For instance, we have an outstanding young graduate student who was a former Windows programmer at Microsoft that has come back to earn his PhD in neuroscience. He joined our lab to become part of a rarefied group of bioscientists who have competence in CS and biological arenas. I expect great things from him and he has already demonstrated a level of competence in creating useful tools not just for his research, but the wider neuroscience community as well.
On the other hand, Google labs *is* doing some amazingly creative and advanced work. They don't publish much, but that does not mean they are not doing the work. Yes, they may be small but you can't argue with results either as they have been tremendously productive. That *and* they reward their scientists by making their work financially worthwhile.
All of that said, I am not going to knock MS or IBM research labs as both of them are doing exciting work in a variety of fields both basic and applied.
I would not necessarily give up on academia. Granted, the last five years has been particularly hard on basic science research (especially in biosciences), but there are still good options for the best and brightest. In academia, you really need to have the PhD if you want the flexibility that you are looking for. That said, I've found academia to be a tremendously rewarding experience that does not preclude you from work in industry either. For instance, we've been exploring the commercialization of some of our technologies and I am pleased to say that you *can* have it all with academic environments and industrial aspirations. The trick is that you have to create your own company to do this or find an academic environment that will support independent commercialization.
With respect to industrial labs that do basic research, the pressure from any federally funded labs from the Bush administration has been away from basic research and towards applied research that has mirrored the trend in industry for the few years preceding this administration. Years ago there were more far thinking companies like Xerox, HP, SGI and Bell Labs, but they got lazy and were under more pressure from shareholders to focus more on short term profits and less on long term viability of the company. This effect has been reflected in the long term performance of each of these companies as their influence has withered away. There are some current companies that are starting to invest more of their dollars in true R&D which is being reflected in their performance, but i worry that the trend in this country is going to hurt our international viability in a variety of the sciences both commercial and academic.
P.S. The other thing that you should be aware of is that many industrial labs require some post-doctoral training period as well to obtain positions....... Of course it will depend upon the appointment, but a post doc is viewed as a useful thing not just in pure academia.
Finally: have you thought about the ethics of using your student loans in this way? Were the loans given to you in order to help you pay for your expenses as a student? Do you think it's okay to ask someone to loan you money for one thing and then use that money for something else? Isn't that a form of lying?
Somebody mod this up. I have points, but have already posted in this discussion.
The idea with the stock market for me has always been long term investing, but I do agree with you that there *are* risks. For instance, the first three stocks I invested in were CSCO, AOL and AAPL. CSCO and AOL performed astronomically well until March of 2000 when I lost my ass of them. AAPL was so so until they sorta bottomed out a few years ago when I bought at a low. Since then, AAPL has performed better than most tech stocks. My problem early on was lack of diversification, but a properly balanced portfolio will prevent losses while trying to ensure continued growth. Of course most folks I know lost their back sides since 2000 including me and it's taken me until now to get back where I was in early 2000. There are concerns with slowing of the economy, but oil stocks have performed spectacularly well with unbelievable (some might say criminal) earnings over the past little while. So, there are always places to make money in the stock market.
For university students the first thing is to live frugally, the next thing is to pay off debts and the third thing is to save.
Actually that depends. Our current house has gone up in value by about 30% over the past year and in many other places in the country, while houses are depreciating, undeveloped land in skyrocketing in value. The goal with real estate, like all investments, is to invest wisely and do your research.
The *first* thing I would encourage you to do is live frugally. You don't need a car for many places in the country you would go to college. You don't need the latest and greatest computers or TVs or goodies and the more money you can save now, the more it will help you out. It was tough while I was an undergrad, but everything I could was saved and invested in some stocks which over time have paid off.
For most folks, I'd have to say mutual funds or real estate right now although the stock market usually performs at about 10% or better depending....
One of the coolest things about the Apple I and Apple ][ was that Apple Computer included the schematics for *all* of the motherboard and CPU design. Everything was documented so that users could build interfaces with both the software and the hardware with a minimum of fuss. So, even though Amit Singh calls the manual included with the Apple ][ as a "preliminary manual, it was remarkably complete.
Despite how far we've come, there are time I really miss my old Apple ][.
I would find that a true delta configuration would be unlikely as there would be little evolutionary advantage to developing an inherently less stable "wing" configuration for the low speed flying that this creature would be doing.
....... unlikely in this creature.
The whole reason that flight engineers started adopting the delta wing configuration is that it allowed the shockwave for supersonic flight to be better controlled flight by moving the leading edge of the wing back behind the terminus. This is great for high speed flight, but miserable for low speed flight as it requires very high stall speeds that would be
Furthermore, if one looks at just about any flying creature now or in the past, the leading edge of their "wing" has always been protected by bone, feather or both. To have an unprotected membrane as the leading edge of the "wing" that could be easily damaged would be devastating to the aerodynamic properties and the overall fitness of the organism. From these reasons, I would be much more likely to believe the first alternative reconstruction of Sharovipteryx mirabilis where the membranes could be protected and even gathered up when not in use, a function that would not be possible with standard articulation of the bones as presented in the figures of Dykes representation.
Say what you want about blogging, but I've found it very useful to keep friends and family in touch with what I am doing. The fact that some people have found my blog content applicable to their interests says that others may find the content to be interesting. It has resulted invitations for me to speak at seminars, or ask me to consult or even to purchase pictures presented on my blog. Most times I've turned these offers down because of time constraints, but on some occasions I have accepted or granted permissions to reproduce articles/images.
All in all I would say that the benefits of keeping a blog have exceeded the costs and if you maintain that friends do not let friends blog, then perhaps you are hanging out with the wrong crowd. I for one would not want to keep company with folks that prevent one from succeeding, but would rather have friends that encourage success.
Well, it's interesting in that I've asked a couple of folks here (a Scott and a Welshman) and they both said with an "e". I have always spelled it without the "e", but that's the way I was taught. So, that combined with this publication reference I have from 1989 suggests that at least some folks think it's proper. While others here on Slashdot are more adamant about it being spelled without the "e". The original article referenced for this post spelled it with an "e" and other BBC articles on mosquitos have spelled it with an "e", so $#!^ if I know. I am just a neurobiologist, not an English major and was trusting my handy little American/Canadian/British publication manual to be correct when I made the original post.