Which may or may not be related to any societal benefit. A rating system with 100% compliance which causes no decrease in violence can not be accurately described as successful.
Wouldn't that be a reasonable indicator that whatever it is you are rating is quite possibly not the cause of the violence?
Hypothesis: We have X% of violence in children because Y is unregulated by age-restriction ratings. Experiment: Regulate Y by age-restriction ratings. Result: We still have X% of violence. Conclusion: Hypothesis is rejected.
Tentative interpretation: Y is not the (most significant) cause of violence in children. Further study along these lines recommended.
If you don't automatically accept that violent video games lead to violent behavior, then a rating system with 100% compliance can be successful by simply allowing parents to have a reasonable, standardized assessment of whether or not the content of a game is age-appropriate for their child. It can also be argued to be successful, because it may show that access to violent content or not in games does not significantly correlate to violent behavior.
It doesn't have to be the biggest crater. Just big enough. An impact of that magnitude would have major catastrophic effects on the whole planet.
And, for what it's worth, I think pretty much the entire northern hemisphere of Mars wins any "I've seen bigger" contest. Link (and a PDF link for those without Nature access)
I am not an astronomer, but it is my understanding (mainly from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot") that the asteroids are more likely leftovers from the formation of the solar system that, when caught between the gravity of the sun and tidal forces from Jupiter never got the chance to accrete into a planet. So, rather than being a destroyed planet, they are a planet that never was.
I don't know if there has been any new data to confirm or refute that hypothesis, though.
Not to discount the efforts of such companies, but I will be ready to get really excited about them and see the hope they offer when they actually put a person into orbit.
I'm sure it's coming, and I'm waiting, but I have a hard time getting excited about it until it happens. There won't be much, if any, profit from space for quite some time, and it's kind of hard to imagine modern corporations, with their short-sightedness and desire for immediate return, to actually commit and go through with such a huge investment.
If it happens, then GREAT. Seriously. But, for me, this is more of an "I'll believe it when I see it" situation.:-/
It has already happened. The USA sent a number of men to the moon.
And a great many of us were not alive when this happened. Along with GPP, I'd like to see another man on the Moon. Yes, the United States did it. Yes, we Americans briefly touched greatness. Yes, we took our first baby steps out into the next great frontier and the only real long term future for humanity. And then, like frightened or chastised children, we fled back to the safety of our mother's skirt and have remained there ever since.
I am not discounting at all the greatness achieved by unmanned exploratory missions. I think they are some of the finest achievements of humankind (We've sent probes out of the solar system!). But, I can't help but feel a thrill that some humans somewhere on the planet are actively working towards once again stepping away from our mother. And I wouldn't be able to help feeling some measure of pride to see that happen again. And I would be even more proud to see humans take further steps out into the solar system.
And, I couldn't care less if they are speaking Chinese when they do it.
I wish the director or producer or whoever would fix the implementation, though. Unlike Choose Your Own Adventure books, I'm finding it impossible in this so called "real life" thing to go back and try the other choice.:-/
*keeps finger on the page of the choice to post this or not, in case I want to go back and try the other way*
ok. One guy does not the scientific community make. What papers has this guy published? What journals has he appeared in? What books has he written? What research has he done?
Who is this guy other than a name and cheap youtube link?
Uh... quite a lot and quite a bit. He's an accomplished molecular biologist by all accounts. Here's a Google Scholar search for his name.
To name some of the journals and publications he's appeared in... - Nature - Science - Cell - Proceedings of the National Academy of Science - Annual Review of Biochemistry
It also appears that he has written a few books on the subject.
HOWEVER, it is important to note that the YouTube videos that have appeared are over-simplified and intended for the layman. But, make no mistake, the man has earned his place and has a good idea of what he is talking about.
You really shouldn't need to apologize for "geekiness" on Slashdot. If we can't reference and/or link to actual scientific research without apology, then something must be very wrong with this site.;)
That said, the paper you mentioned looks really interesting. AND, a Google Scholar search offers a link to a freely downloadable PDF for those of you, like myself, that don't have access to Nature.
Isn't this old news? (pun not entirely intended)... A couple of the more prominent abiogenesis hypotheses have been based on this for most of the decade of not more. Here's a paper from 2003 that, while it has its flaws (some of which have been rectified, some of which have been completely rethought over the last 7 years) offers a fairly complete and very compelling hypothesis for how life may have originated at warm, alkaline thermal vents like those found at the Lost City thermal vent fields:
Martin, W. & Russell, M.J., 2003. On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 358(1429), 59-83; discussion 83-5. Available at: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/358/1429/59.abstract.
And here's a similar but competing hypothesis (still based on Fe/Ni-S, but with a different idea on the origins of membranes and cells):
Wächtershäuser, G., 2006. From volcanic origins of chemoautotrophic life to Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 361(1474), 1787-806; discussion 1806-8. Available at: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/361/1474/1787.abstract
The latter author has been writing papers about this hypothesis since 1992 (though I haven't read his first paper on the subject).
Point being, this doesn't seem to be a new thing, especially as summarized in the summary here and in the linked article. The original paper on which the article is based offers a bit more fundamental chemical details regarding the transition metals involved, and suggests good directions for experimental confirmation or refutation, but the overall idea remains pretty much the same, it seems. Still, it will be interesting to see what, if any, research and experiments result from this.
Keep in mind, this isn't the final vehicle design. This is just the first prototype, and they are sending up a crash test dummy. In the Something Awful thread I linked above, they talk about redesigning to make the position more feasible for a living person to go up in. The final rocket design is larger than the one they are preparing to test launch, which will have more room for better positions.
As for G-suits, I think they mentioned using the kind of flight suit that Chinese MiG pilots use. I'm sure a sealed helmet and an air-supply will also be included.
And it is likely that the Apple engineers got their ideas by looking at that particular app and asking themselves "what can we patent that's kind of like an extension of this app?"
Or, perhaps an Apple engineer saw the App and saw the name and thought "Hey, does it do this? Ah, no, the app is completely different. But, hey, this is a pretty cool idea. Let's see... implement it like this and do that like so and... Hey, does anyone have an App that does that? No? Hmmmm... let's see." "What are you doing, #Engineer?" "Hey, boss, check this out. Does this seem like a workable idea?" "Yeah, it does. Perhaps we should take steps to protect it before someone else comes up with it."
I.e. it's seems at least equally likely that a developer was just inspired by this app than that Apple has their developers tasked with looking for inspiration or patentable ideas from AppStore submissions.
Let me get it straight. Your need to earn money is more important than the right of all of the human kind to freely access information?
I have information in my head right now that you probably do not have. If I refuse to share any of this information with you for free (or just refuse because I don't want to share it with you), am I violating your rights?
Who honestly plays the single player version of L4D or L4D2?
I do. I have a sucky internet connection, and most of the people I want to play with are on the other side of the planet, so unless we get a time with low traffic and find a decent server somewhere in the middle, someone gets stuck with 400ms pings, which make L4D(2) worthless.
However, as a somewhat mindless zombie killing bit of stress relief, it is fine on the single player mode, and the characters can be quite amusing. Plus, they never shoot you in the face.;)
I like L4D(2) very much for both the multiplayer and the single player. Sometimes you don't want to deal with other people and just want to kill zombies. Sometimes you like the challenge of trying to get through a level on your own on Expert difficulty. Sometimes you don't want to deal with the idiots in pub games while your friends are all offline. While I agree that it doesn't really have a "strong" single player, it can still be quite an enjoyable single player experience. They actually did a good job of balancing that, rather than making it one of those games that is impossible or exceptionally boring to play on single player.
I remember reading about this in Sagan's "The Pale Blue Dot", and thought it was such an awesome idea. I'm looking forward to reading the original paper.:)
What came first? The molecule or the cell? The prion or the virus?
Not sure if you want real answers to those or not, but obviously the molecule, and evidence suggests the prion. However, with prions your question doesn't quite make sense because it's not like viruses descended from prions. Prions are simply "rogue" proteins which force proteins that they come in contact with to conform to the same secondary structure (usually beta folded sheets). It is thought that amino acid chains probably formed (perhaps without any necessary "function") early during the origin of life, and were quite possibly prion-like. Here's an interesting paper about it:
Milner-White, E.J. & Russell, M.J., 2008. Predicting the conformations of peptides and proteins in early evolution. Biology direct, 3, 3. Available at: http://biology-direct.com/content/3/1/3.
And, obviously, since molecules are required to make cells (as cells are made up of molecules), the molecule would have to come first. There are some hypotheses about the origins of life suggesting that it is possible that most or all of of the biochemistry of early cells were in place before they even became cells. Here's a good starting point read about that:
Martin, W. & Russell, M.J., 2003. On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 358(1429), 59-83; discussion 83-5. Available at: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/358/1429/59.abstract.
Anyway, like I said, don't know if you were looking for possible answers to those questions, but I'm bored, and these papers are pretty interesting.;)
Sexual reproduction, in the way it exists with gametes and sexes, most likely owes nothing or at least very little to something like this. It seems like it might when one considers that the male gamete is basically a DNA package with a motor attached. However, it is more sensible for evolution of sex to have started with two possibly equal sized gametes, both providing DNA, nutrients, etc (basically everything that the egg now provides). A situation with such equality is unstable, however, so it would soon shift to one gamete becoming smaller and using less resources and the other gamete being larger and using more.
Richard Dawkins covers this very well in his first book, "The Selfish Gene", which, incidentally is a must read for anyone who really wants to have a decent understanding of evolution.:)
Well, it's not inside all of us, guessing by the article. It differs between all of us, and besides, people generally think of viruses as bad things. Bacteria, yes, but I can't really think of very useful viruses.
Bacteriophages can transfer new traits to bacteria, across species (and even across domains) and is a very important means of horizontal gene transfer. Sure, this may not be "useful" to us, who so often have to combat these new traits such as the various antibiotic resistances that arise, but it is certainly useful to the bacteria. Even in the article, they suggested that the helpfulness of these gut viruses is to the bacteria rather than directly to the human.
For people who study microbiology and especially microbiological evolution (for the record, I am not; I'm just an interested bystander), the idea of symbiotic viruses is not surprising.
Oh well... if anyone without access really wants to read the original paper, send me an email and I'll be happy to send you the PDF. Put something like "Slashdot - PNAS article PDF" in your subject line, please.
Hmmmm... that's really strange. Has anyone else been successful in accessing the full text? I poked around the PNAS site and didn't see anything about certain countries having access and others not. There is never a login page for me, though if I click on the subscribe link, it tells me the instructions to subscribe as if I'm not a subscriber (which I'm not).
Maybe the King of Thailand made a deal for Thailand to have access to early edition papers? I have no idea what's going on, but I have no problems accessing the full text PDF of this paper and pretty much any paper I have ever gone to read at PNAS. Weird.
Oddly, most of the sites I come across that are blocked are porn sites, and not many of them (i.e. it's not difficult to access porn as most sites are not blocked).
*ahem*
I mean sites that my friend comes across. Yeah, that's the ticket. Anyway, the blocks are easily avoided by proxy services, and they are really slow about blocking those. Although, anonymouse.org has recently (in the past few months) come under the block list.
Slashdot Mirror
Which may or may not be related to any societal benefit. A rating system with 100% compliance which causes no decrease in violence can not be accurately described as successful.
Wouldn't that be a reasonable indicator that whatever it is you are rating is quite possibly not the cause of the violence?
Hypothesis: We have X% of violence in children because Y is unregulated by age-restriction ratings.
Experiment: Regulate Y by age-restriction ratings.
Result: We still have X% of violence.
Conclusion: Hypothesis is rejected.
Tentative interpretation: Y is not the (most significant) cause of violence in children. Further study along these lines recommended.
If you don't automatically accept that violent video games lead to violent behavior, then a rating system with 100% compliance can be successful by simply allowing parents to have a reasonable, standardized assessment of whether or not the content of a game is age-appropriate for their child. It can also be argued to be successful, because it may show that access to violent content or not in games does not significantly correlate to violent behavior.
It doesn't have to be the biggest crater. Just big enough. An impact of that magnitude would have major catastrophic effects on the whole planet.
And, for what it's worth, I think pretty much the entire northern hemisphere of Mars wins any "I've seen bigger" contest. Link (and a PDF link for those without Nature access)
I am not an astronomer, but it is my understanding (mainly from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot") that the asteroids are more likely leftovers from the formation of the solar system that, when caught between the gravity of the sun and tidal forces from Jupiter never got the chance to accrete into a planet. So, rather than being a destroyed planet, they are a planet that never was.
I don't know if there has been any new data to confirm or refute that hypothesis, though.
Not to discount the efforts of such companies, but I will be ready to get really excited about them and see the hope they offer when they actually put a person into orbit.
I'm sure it's coming, and I'm waiting, but I have a hard time getting excited about it until it happens. There won't be much, if any, profit from space for quite some time, and it's kind of hard to imagine modern corporations, with their short-sightedness and desire for immediate return, to actually commit and go through with such a huge investment.
If it happens, then GREAT. Seriously. But, for me, this is more of an "I'll believe it when I see it" situation. :-/
It has already happened. The USA sent a number of men to the moon.
And a great many of us were not alive when this happened. Along with GPP, I'd like to see another man on the Moon. Yes, the United States did it. Yes, we Americans briefly touched greatness. Yes, we took our first baby steps out into the next great frontier and the only real long term future for humanity. And then, like frightened or chastised children, we fled back to the safety of our mother's skirt and have remained there ever since.
I am not discounting at all the greatness achieved by unmanned exploratory missions. I think they are some of the finest achievements of humankind (We've sent probes out of the solar system!). But, I can't help but feel a thrill that some humans somewhere on the planet are actively working towards once again stepping away from our mother. And I wouldn't be able to help feeling some measure of pride to see that happen again. And I would be even more proud to see humans take further steps out into the solar system.
And, I couldn't care less if they are speaking Chinese when they do it.
I wish the director or producer or whoever would fix the implementation, though. Unlike Choose Your Own Adventure books, I'm finding it impossible in this so called "real life" thing to go back and try the other choice. :-/
*keeps finger on the page of the choice to post this or not, in case I want to go back and try the other way*
ok. One guy does not the scientific community make. What papers has this guy published?
What journals has he appeared in?
What books has he written?
What research has he done?
Who is this guy other than a name and cheap youtube link?
Uh... quite a lot and quite a bit. He's an accomplished molecular biologist by all accounts. Here's a Google Scholar search for his name.
To name some of the journals and publications he's appeared in...
- Nature
- Science
- Cell
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Annual Review of Biochemistry
It also appears that he has written a few books on the subject.
HOWEVER, it is important to note that the YouTube videos that have appeared are over-simplified and intended for the layman. But, make no mistake, the man has earned his place and has a good idea of what he is talking about.
You really shouldn't need to apologize for "geekiness" on Slashdot. If we can't reference and/or link to actual scientific research without apology, then something must be very wrong with this site. ;)
That said, the paper you mentioned looks really interesting. AND, a Google Scholar search offers a link to a freely downloadable PDF for those of you, like myself, that don't have access to Nature.
I'm looking forward to reading this. :)
Isn't this old news? (pun not entirely intended)... A couple of the more prominent abiogenesis hypotheses have been based on this for most of the decade of not more. Here's a paper from 2003 that, while it has its flaws (some of which have been rectified, some of which have been completely rethought over the last 7 years) offers a fairly complete and very compelling hypothesis for how life may have originated at warm, alkaline thermal vents like those found at the Lost City thermal vent fields:
Martin, W. & Russell, M.J., 2003. On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 358(1429), 59-83; discussion 83-5. Available at: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/358/1429/59.abstract.
And here's a similar but competing hypothesis (still based on Fe/Ni-S, but with a different idea on the origins of membranes and cells):
Wächtershäuser, G., 2006. From volcanic origins of chemoautotrophic life to Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 361(1474), 1787-806; discussion 1806-8. Available at: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/361/1474/1787.abstract
The latter author has been writing papers about this hypothesis since 1992 (though I haven't read his first paper on the subject).
Point being, this doesn't seem to be a new thing, especially as summarized in the summary here and in the linked article. The original paper on which the article is based offers a bit more fundamental chemical details regarding the transition metals involved, and suggests good directions for experimental confirmation or refutation, but the overall idea remains pretty much the same, it seems. Still, it will be interesting to see what, if any, research and experiments result from this.
Keep in mind, this isn't the final vehicle design. This is just the first prototype, and they are sending up a crash test dummy. In the Something Awful thread I linked above, they talk about redesigning to make the position more feasible for a living person to go up in. The final rocket design is larger than the one they are preparing to test launch, which will have more room for better positions.
As for G-suits, I think they mentioned using the kind of flight suit that Chinese MiG pilots use. I'm sure a sealed helmet and an air-supply will also be included.
I caught this story on Fark, and they linked to a really good thread over on the Something Awful forums with posts directly from these people.
We've made the world's amateur largest space rocket
If you don't want to read all 17 pages, just skim through looking for posts by user frumpykvetchbot.
This is completely awesome, and I wish them the best of luck with the test launch this weekend. :D
And it is likely that the Apple engineers got their ideas by looking at that particular app and asking themselves "what can we patent that's kind of like an extension of this app?"
Or, perhaps an Apple engineer saw the App and saw the name and thought "Hey, does it do this? Ah, no, the app is completely different. But, hey, this is a pretty cool idea. Let's see... implement it like this and do that like so and... Hey, does anyone have an App that does that? No? Hmmmm... let's see." "What are you doing, #Engineer?" "Hey, boss, check this out. Does this seem like a workable idea?" "Yeah, it does. Perhaps we should take steps to protect it before someone else comes up with it."
I.e. it's seems at least equally likely that a developer was just inspired by this app than that Apple has their developers tasked with looking for inspiration or patentable ideas from AppStore submissions.
Just a thought.
Let me get it straight. Your need to earn money is more important than the right of all of the human kind to freely access information?
I have information in my head right now that you probably do not have. If I refuse to share any of this information with you for free (or just refuse because I don't want to share it with you), am I violating your rights?
Who honestly plays the single player version of L4D or L4D2?
I do. I have a sucky internet connection, and most of the people I want to play with are on the other side of the planet, so unless we get a time with low traffic and find a decent server somewhere in the middle, someone gets stuck with 400ms pings, which make L4D(2) worthless.
However, as a somewhat mindless zombie killing bit of stress relief, it is fine on the single player mode, and the characters can be quite amusing. Plus, they never shoot you in the face. ;)
I like L4D(2) very much for both the multiplayer and the single player. Sometimes you don't want to deal with other people and just want to kill zombies. Sometimes you like the challenge of trying to get through a level on your own on Expert difficulty. Sometimes you don't want to deal with the idiots in pub games while your friends are all offline. While I agree that it doesn't really have a "strong" single player, it can still be quite an enjoyable single player experience. They actually did a good job of balancing that, rather than making it one of those games that is impossible or exceptionally boring to play on single player.
For those without access to Nature, a Google Scholar search turns up a freely downloadable PDF of the full article.
PDF Link
I remember reading about this in Sagan's "The Pale Blue Dot", and thought it was such an awesome idea. I'm looking forward to reading the original paper. :)
What came first? The molecule or the cell? The prion or the virus?
Not sure if you want real answers to those or not, but obviously the molecule, and evidence suggests the prion. However, with prions your question doesn't quite make sense because it's not like viruses descended from prions. Prions are simply "rogue" proteins which force proteins that they come in contact with to conform to the same secondary structure (usually beta folded sheets). It is thought that amino acid chains probably formed (perhaps without any necessary "function") early during the origin of life, and were quite possibly prion-like. Here's an interesting paper about it:
Milner-White, E.J. & Russell, M.J., 2008. Predicting the conformations of peptides and proteins in early evolution. Biology direct, 3, 3. Available at: http://biology-direct.com/content/3/1/3.
And, obviously, since molecules are required to make cells (as cells are made up of molecules), the molecule would have to come first. There are some hypotheses about the origins of life suggesting that it is possible that most or all of of the biochemistry of early cells were in place before they even became cells. Here's a good starting point read about that:
Martin, W. & Russell, M.J., 2003. On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 358(1429), 59-83; discussion 83-5. Available at: http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/358/1429/59.abstract.
Anyway, like I said, don't know if you were looking for possible answers to those questions, but I'm bored, and these papers are pretty interesting. ;)
Sexual reproduction, in the way it exists with gametes and sexes, most likely owes nothing or at least very little to something like this. It seems like it might when one considers that the male gamete is basically a DNA package with a motor attached. However, it is more sensible for evolution of sex to have started with two possibly equal sized gametes, both providing DNA, nutrients, etc (basically everything that the egg now provides). A situation with such equality is unstable, however, so it would soon shift to one gamete becoming smaller and using less resources and the other gamete being larger and using more.
Richard Dawkins covers this very well in his first book, "The Selfish Gene", which, incidentally is a must read for anyone who really wants to have a decent understanding of evolution. :)
Well, it's not inside all of us, guessing by the article. It differs between all of us, and besides, people generally think of viruses as bad things. Bacteria, yes, but I can't really think of very useful viruses.
Bacteriophages can transfer new traits to bacteria, across species (and even across domains) and is a very important means of horizontal gene transfer. Sure, this may not be "useful" to us, who so often have to combat these new traits such as the various antibiotic resistances that arise, but it is certainly useful to the bacteria. Even in the article, they suggested that the helpfulness of these gut viruses is to the bacteria rather than directly to the human.
For people who study microbiology and especially microbiological evolution (for the record, I am not; I'm just an interested bystander), the idea of symbiotic viruses is not surprising.
Oops. I spoke too soon on that previous. PNAS offers free access to many developing countries, including Thailand. List here:
http://www.pnas.org/misc/faq.shtml#developing
Oh well... if anyone without access really wants to read the original paper, send me an email and I'll be happy to send you the PDF. Put something like "Slashdot - PNAS article PDF" in your subject line, please.
Hmmmm... that's really strange. Has anyone else been successful in accessing the full text? I poked around the PNAS site and didn't see anything about certain countries having access and others not. There is never a login page for me, though if I click on the subscribe link, it tells me the instructions to subscribe as if I'm not a subscriber (which I'm not).
Maybe the King of Thailand made a deal for Thailand to have access to early edition papers? I have no idea what's going on, but I have no problems accessing the full text PDF of this paper and pretty much any paper I have ever gone to read at PNAS. Weird.
durhurrr... I can access from both work and home.
I'm not at a university. And, I can access PNAS from both work and school and download at will. Maybe the National Academy of Sciences hates Canada? ;)
Ummm... the full text of the PNAS article does NOT require a subscription. Just click the "Full Text (PDF)" link.
Or at least, I have access using no logins and accessing via a standard ISP in Thailand. :-/
It's not blocked yet. I live in Bangkok.
Oddly, most of the sites I come across that are blocked are porn sites, and not many of them (i.e. it's not difficult to access porn as most sites are not blocked).
*ahem*
I mean sites that my friend comes across. Yeah, that's the ticket. Anyway, the blocks are easily avoided by proxy services, and they are really slow about blocking those. Although, anonymouse.org has recently (in the past few months) come under the block list.
But now that Rupert Murdoch has endorsed it, I'm more interested in checking out alternatives.
Wow. You let your interests be manipulated by the opinions of others so easily? :-/