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User: wherrera

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  1. Well, let us look at the ---primordial--- pie. on Can Primordial Black Holes Alone Account For Dark Matter? · · Score: 2, Informative

    See this link: Content of the Universe 2016

    So, the problem is that there is so much of it, you would think we'd see it perturbing stallar orbits more, it it were concentated in many, many discrete points of star gravitational influence. There would be a lot more stars orbiting pulsar type objects, perhaps?

    A real cosmologist would know the odds of the galaxy looking the way it does if all the extra mass were in scattered black holes of a certain size. Probably low.

  2. Lavabit, assuming the calendar years fit the redacted docs.

  3. Re:Not bad, looks like a clean record to me. on World Anti-Doping Agency Says It Was Hacked By Russia (theverge.com) · · Score: 1

    This willful display of continued ignorance as to the different kinds of steroids does prove my point above.

  4. Re:Not bad, looks like a clean record to me. on World Anti-Doping Agency Says It Was Hacked By Russia (theverge.com) · · Score: 2

    Too bad almost none of the commentators understand common facts about sports physiology and pharmacology. For example, the CORTICOsteroids given the tennis players for injuries would tend to make them weaker, not stronger (it is the ANDROGEN type steroids that are used by dopers), And it's dubious that Ritalin would help a gymnast, though it might an endurance athlete.

  5. Not bad, looks like a clean record to me. on World Anti-Doping Agency Says It Was Hacked By Russia (theverge.com) · · Score: 0

    Looking at the details, it looks like the positives in the US database were related to treament of injuries plus one gymnast with an ADHD diagnosis. Whereas, as far as we can tell, the Russian athletes were being dosed with more conventional doping agents that have no general use in Russia for non-athletes, and were forbidden to be tested for exactly that reason.

    So I see the hack results as so far posted as a vindication for the US Olympic teams. Either they were remarkably clean or they were unusually good at hiding any doping that actually went on. Upright living (and avoiding doing vandalism if you are a swimmer) can be an excellent defense against scandal.

  6. Like Al Gore on Why You May Not Like Ted Cruz's Face, According To Science (qz.com) · · Score: 1

    Some said that Gore's Botox treatment of his aging forehead and crowsfeet wrinkles made his facial expressions look fake on TV, and lost him many thousands of votes in the presidential election.

  7. Why not use google and a calculator yourself? Anyway,

    see here for counts: http://www.cattlerange.com/cat...

    Biggest cow states: Texas and Nebraska.

    Cattle in Texas plus cattle in Nebraska: 11,700,000 + 6,250,000 = 17,950,000
    Methane output per year per cow per Google: about 95 kg per year, or 8 kg per month

    Therefore, Texas plus Nebraska cattle make about 143,600,000 kg = 143,000 metric tons of methane per month. And there are a lot more cattle in other Western states.

    The spill was of 98,000 tons, or 98,000,000 kg. ...you are welcome :)

  8. Where's the beef? on Damage Report: LA Methane Leak Is One of the Worst Disasters In US History (inhabitat.com) · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd suspect there is more methane released by the cattle on the ranches of the US West in a month than was released by this background noise blip of a "disaster".

  9. Same as the ITunes DRM cat-and-mouse game on Apple Is Said To Be Working On an iPhone Even It Can't Hack (nytimes.com) · · Score: 1

    Remember back in the Jobs days when Apple sold music with digital rights (mis)management? Back then, they would re-update iTunes to re-encrypt every time the music player's encryption dll was (re)cracked.

    So now it's a new decade, but same old same old cat-and-mouse game, except that:

    This time it's Apple doing the cat and mouse game with its own people :).

  10. Re:I have a bridge to sell you, says Mr. Oliphant on Grisly Find Suggests Humans Inhabited Arctic 45,000 Years Ago (sciencemag.org) · · Score: 2

    That those prehistoric people were probably at least as intelligent as the average slashdotter, and they likely spent decades testing, reviewing, debating, and verbally sharing various hunting skills. It's likely that they had many ways of crippling or killing large game other than the ones we can see by marks left on old bones.

  11. Re:2000 kilometers *south* of the North Pole? on Grisly Find Suggests Humans Inhabited Arctic 45,000 Years Ago (sciencemag.org) · · Score: 1

    Here's the google map of the Yenisei Gulf in Russia:

    https://www.google.com/maps/@7...

    If you use the Google Maps measure distance feature to measure distance to 90,0 on the map you get about 2000 km.

  12. "the primary intended beneficiary is the public" on Google Books Wins Again (documentcloud.org) · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is why the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement should never be ratified.

  13. Re:Warming on NOAA: Global Warming 'Pause' Never Happened · · Score: 1

    That comment's off by over a factor of 10:

    (1 / 0.114) = 8.77 decades per degree or 87.7 years per degree.

  14. One word: on Computer Chips Made of Wood Promise Greener Electronics · · Score: 1

    Bugs. Bugs eat cellulose.

  15. Re:Here's the real news about the Pd cure on Bats' White-Nose Syndrome May Be Cured · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the correction and reference. The original news posting is fluff, without any reference to the biological literature, so I though the cure was new enough to be seen in a one-year search radius, and missed the 2012 paper--my bad.

  16. Here's the real news about the Pd cure on Bats' White-Nose Syndrome May Be Cured · · Score: 3, Informative

    The article referred to in the original news above is fluff. Here's the actual publication being used to effect a probiotic cure for the bats:

    http://journals.plos.org/ploso...

  17. The Harvard law of Animal Behavior on Studying the Roots of Individuality · · Score: 1

    Harvard law of animal behavior:

    When stimulations are repeatedly applied under precisely controlled conditions the animal reacts as it damn well pleases

    See here:

    http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/...

  18. HIPPA never had a "P" for privacy. on When You're the NFL Commish, Getting E-Medical Record Interoperability's a Cinch · · Score: 1

    The original HIPPA law was called the "HIPAA: Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act" but the portability never happened.

  19. Warming may increase average world rainfall. on Linking Drought and Climate Change: Difficult To Do · · Score: 1

    See: http://www.engineeringtoolbox....

    Since the water carrying ability of saturated air goes up with temperature, there should be a trend toward heavier rainfall with temperature increases. Of course, places that are in a "rain shadow" like most deserts would not be expected to benefit as much as places near large bodies of water.

  20. To the wielder of the fMRI hammer.... on fMRI Data Reveals How Many Parallel Processes Run In the Brain · · Score: 1

    ...to the one using the hammer, there is a tendency for everything to look like a nail. Identifying fMRI correlates may not actually indicate the number of cognitive components in play, any more than counting the number and location of gasoline stations tells us much detail of what people in a city are doing. At most, it gives us some useful hints.

  21. So use a unique online student email. on Privacy Vulnerabilities In Coursera, Including Exposed Student Email Addresses · · Score: 2

    I think most students who are savvy enough to use Coursera ought to be able to create a student-only email account for the purpose.

  22. electrodes take up space in the brain regions on A Better Way To Make Mind-Controlled Prosthetic Limbs · · Score: 2

    The only way this could work is if the electrodes can be made much,much thinner than paper thin, and even then they might irritate nearby tissue. It's a huge technical challenge. Better to use a smaller electrode surface area and train the patient to signal to the electrodes.

  23. The exact details of the home's location matter. on Figuring Out Where To Live Using Math · · Score: 1

    The topography of the zoning and building layout matter. Consider two neighborhoods which are 2-mile squares in shape. One neighborhood has a commercial district in a single corner, the other neighborhood has two such districts at opposite corners of its square. The second neighborhood may score twice as walkable, but what matters to the home's individual walkableness is how close it sits to one of those districts, since you presumably want to walk to the store and to an office in a corner that has a commercial district.

    Choose a place you would like to walk, shop and work, then find a home located within a walking distance from those places, and you may have MANY good options, more than your zone-based averaging will reveal.

  24. unavoidable? on Privacy Oversight Board Gives NSA Surveillance a Pass · · Score: 1

    "The NSA cannot completely eliminate 'about' communications from its collection without also eliminating a significant portion of the 'to/from' communications that it seeks."

    Almost all the US population and much of the rest of the world's people seen as.. just bycatch?

  25. slashdot covered one answer last month--- on Ninety-Nine Percent of the Ocean's Plastic Is Missing · · Score: 1

    It's becoming plastiglomerate! See: http://www.geosociety.org/gsat...