You've hit several points here, but most importantly engineering is not purely about strength. It's about the right properties to perform for the least cost. FRP (I'm assuming carbon fibre, fibreglass etc) is expensive, difficult to recycle (sustainability is a major driver in todays' world) and - from an engineering point - it fails unpredictably. Steel/concrete fails predictably - it sags/stretches/cracks well befor the entire thing fold in half and kills people. You can monitor it. Fibre reinforced composities usually fail catastrophically, i.e. when the reach their failure load they just break apart, buckle, collapse completely. There is no stretch (elastic/plastic strain) or warning, just a failed structure.
For bridges there are other things to consider as well - how does the material handle dynamic loads (cars/trucks/trains driving over it)? Wind loads (major loading in civil applications)? What about harmonic oscillation modes (ever seen the movie of the concrete bridge behaving like a piece of paper in the wind)? can you make it in large enough sections? Do you need experts to lay FRP? How reliable are the material properties from section to section? etc etc etc It's a very rare engineering application that is all about strength.
Finally, how much does it cost for it to do the job? If steel/conrete can do the job you can pretty much bet it's going to be cheaper.
The CEO (and the entire board) is still accountable and if financial wrongs are found, the directors could be barred from being directors of any company. However successful Jobs might be, if he is legally barred, he can't be on the board (of any company). All speculation of course.
OK, I'm a mechanical engineer with a PhD myself, and have been in a similar position so I think I can provide some ideas and/or advise. I did a couple of postdocs after finishing, realised being in the lab was not what I wanted and am now working in technology transfer which I absolutely love.
Firstly, I think it is important to distinguish mechanical engineering (probably include civil engineering too) from computing/software/IT type engineering. I'm don't want to get into arguments about why and I'm not trying to be controversial or put anyone down, but I do think the CS situation is not particularly relevant.
One of the things I would ask is what you enjoyed about the PhD. Did you do genuine blue sky research? Or was it industrially relevant (was there an industrial collaborator)? What did you enjoy - was it being able to go down every avenue and just "try stuff" to see what happens? This kind of freedom to research only really happens in (1) academia or (2) very very large (and rich) companies who often have research labs encouraging this kind of research in the areas the company operates in, e.g GE healthcare (Germany), Rolls Royce have an aero/turbine research lab (UK/Europe), Ford have an environmental research lab (UK).
If you're looking for industrially relevant engineering research, which is based on commercial decisions and reasons, then look to industry.
One thing to keep in mind with academia is that many research groups have partnerships with industrial companies whose input can vary from anything to just simply providing cash/resources to actually genuinely driving the research direction based on the company strategy. Many large research groups have a person who might act as the liason with the engineering company, project managing the research and reporting progress to the company, effectively acting as a company voice within the research group.
From the article: 'Early clinical testing has confirmed the drug is fast-acting. Levels of amyloid dropped by 60 per cent within 24 hours of a single dose. It found also that PBT2 suppresses the impairment of memory function.
The article seems to be wrong - press releases on the Prana Biotechnology website indicate these results are from studies in mice.
More human studies begin in Sweden next month and Australians will join a major international trial of the drug next year.
If the data is from mice, then the above clinical trial is presumably a phase I clinical trial, which is designed to show safety and not efficacy. It could be a while before human data is available.
Of course, none of this will stop investors believing the article;-)
raid starts at 8:00 and at +/- 23:30 you can go to sleep.
(assuming you mean 8pm?) 5.5 hrs twice a week = 11 hrs per week
I'm sorry, but that's not "casual gaming". 2hrs/week at a push is what I'd call casual gaming. The type of thing you can pick up and play when you feel like it, not when it's scheduled.
Most insightful post on this thread. I couldn't agree more. Every time there is a patent story on slashdot your post should be automatically linked at the top.
This is in the DESCRIPTION of the patent. What they are actually (trying) to patent (this is a patent application, not a granted patent) is detailed in the CLAIMS. These are what you need to read, carefully, and probably with advice from a patent attorney.
Once a patent application has been published (usually at 12/18 months after filing), it then gets passed on to the patent office in each country to be examined. It is entirely possible that a patent has got to this stage without anyone "official" actually doing any kind of search for proior art or examination of the claims. There may have been an international search report, but this still doesn't mean that much.
I work at a medical university (the Karolinska Institute in Sweden), but as a programmer. What a nice place you must work at since it seems to have infinite funding for interesting projects.
The nice thing about commercial research is that when there is an end product it becomes interesting and is worth "wasting" time, money, people and resources on.
I'd like to see most medications tested for at least 2 generations before being released -- it wouldn't halt everything, but it might stop a reoccurance of Thalidimide...
Whether you like it or not, drug development is a commercial decision. Getting a drug to market costs in the order of $600 million and takes around 7-15 years. Remember that unless this company has products on the market (there aren't actually that many market approved drugs around, so basically nobody except the big pharma companies) it is making no revenue during this time. Patents last 20 years, so a drug company then has maybe 5-13 years to make money from the drug to recover R&D costs.
This is why drugs are developed for highly profitable markets, say $500million/yr (e.g. insulin, heart disease, cancer, aids etc) - it's just not worth it commercially to spend that amount of money and time on a small, select disease population, no matter how crippling the disease or how urgent the clinical need is. And if pharma companies don't produce these drugs and put them through clinical trials, nobody else will - not government, not universities.
Of the 10-15 year development and approval process, probably 7 years is in clinical trials. If you extended this to 2 generations, you would instantly kill off the entire drug development industry and NOBODY would ever develop these drugs.
I am very much in favor of a service like this that students can use for free, legally from any computer lab, for any physics/chemistry/etc. experiments. I personally don't care if my homework is moderately secure or heavily secure.
I know this is taking the discussion a little off track, but your experimental data and notes may not be yours to disclose. Universities in particular are increasingly starting to realise they have to treat research and disclosure from a commercial viewpoint.
Getting a bit more pedantic, from a patenting point of view putting your data on a server (google's in this case) that is publicly accessible would probably count as disclosure.
While I could see this being implemented on a local intranet, I am very wary of putting my information on someone elses server, and I could imagine a business would be too.
Great points and may I say up front how great these articles are.
I agree wholeheartedly with your priorities in saving a story, so I won't go on about them. Here's the only two changes I would make.
1. I like the editorial opinions/questions at the end of the story blurb and I fully agree they should stay. What I don't like is when they are biased and/or obvious flamebait. This accomplished two things. Firstly, you (the editor/slashdot) lose credibility and it just doesn't look professional. Secondly, you incite the trolls which detracts from the discussion, not adds to it which is really the whole point of an editorial comment. Ask a question, give an interesting comment on the linked story (encouraging others to actually RTFM!), give your opinion on a product (lame:) ). These all add to the discussion, and that's the great part of slashdot stories.
2. I think grammar/spelling should have more importance than it is given. Bad spelling and bad grammar just looks unprofessional. Ok, slashdot is not the wall street journal or the new york times, but it does have credibility in it's field. There are some really interesting scientific discussions on here that attract world experts who genuinely know the complexities of subjects many others can't even spell. Bad spelling/grammar in the story blurb undermines all of this credibility and professionalism.
Firstly, get a grip mate, I only made a comment, not a personal attack on your credibility.
Having said that - it's not the free text, it's the fact that every ball bowled and shot played is logged. A player's (team/ground/etc) career/innings/whatever can be analysed and compared down to the n-th degree. I'd be really surprised if baseball can match the statistics cricket generates, the game lives and breathes statistics.
That is an amzing treasure trove of information, even for casual fans.
Baseball hasn't got anything on cricket as far as statistics go. Have a look at statsguru http://stats.cricinfo.com/guru. Pretty much every ball ever bowled is documented these days and has been for quite some time.
I have to agree with you, but I do think most of the patenting that brings bad press is to do with software in some way or other. I think the whole system is much more set up for physical science/engineering style inventions. There is a lot of mis-understanding out there about what patents/trademark/copyright do and are supposed to protect (and how they work). I include the average slashdotter in that too, though you can hardly blame anyone - the details of IP are very complex field.
No no no, that's Old MacDonald you're thinking of. The Mr MacDonald referred to here runs a fast food business and dresses in a clown costume. Emminently more credible I think you'll agree.
"Intelligent people are Linux Desktop's key to success"
"Intelligent people" are not the majority of internet users, or even email users. The majority of the market just wants the application to look pretty and work. They don't want to configure anything - moving the mouse to the start button is enough of a challenge thanks. They don't want to have to remember keys, etc etc. And to be perfectly honest, they shouldn't have to. It should "just work" (TM). Until the linux community understands this, it will never genuinely compete with windows or macos as the OS for Joe Average.
This place has become ridiculously closed-minded in the last year re: MS vs Google (if that even exists?). Sorry to say and I'm sure you realise you're preaching to the wrong crowd there, but I fully agree with you.
MS is a business, they exist to make money for their shareholders. Google is a business, they exist to make money for their shareholders. Yes, in the end it really is that simple. The only way a CEO can make a really genuine difference in terms of business being less about the bottom line is when they own the company, like Richard Branson does with Virgin (I think?).
I've always wondered why the global scientific community doesn't do more replication of data as part of peer review.
One of the problems is that most journal papers do not provide enough information to actually repeat the experiments. Often there's a small, insignificant (!) but completely critical bit of information missing that prevents someone doing this. Even a reviewer probably wouldn't actually notice unless they are intimately familiar with that field and are actually working through the paper in great detail.
Taking a slightly cynical viewpoint, it all stems from turning universities (and research) into a business, making it accountable. Grant money has become the be all and end all of research. To get grants you need papers. So publications are all that matters.
Not to mention the significant proportion of internet users who still don't have access to broadband.
Assuming it works as it implies - does it mean I have to connect to the internet to use the word processor? If not, that's surely going to be one hell of a download to use the app offline.
Most importantly, is it practical for (big) business?
Mr Warren said he was a "little overcome" by the award.
"It is nice to be officially recognised and it gives some sort of a stamp of approval, but we believed it within a few months because it was so bloody obvious," he told reporters.
Slashdot Mirror
You've hit several points here, but most importantly engineering is not purely about strength. It's about the right properties to perform for the least cost. FRP (I'm assuming carbon fibre, fibreglass etc) is expensive, difficult to recycle (sustainability is a major driver in todays' world) and - from an engineering point - it fails unpredictably. Steel/concrete fails predictably - it sags/stretches/cracks well befor the entire thing fold in half and kills people. You can monitor it. Fibre reinforced composities usually fail catastrophically, i.e. when the reach their failure load they just break apart, buckle, collapse completely. There is no stretch (elastic/plastic strain) or warning, just a failed structure.
For bridges there are other things to consider as well - how does the material handle dynamic loads (cars/trucks/trains driving over it)? Wind loads (major loading in civil applications)? What about harmonic oscillation modes (ever seen the movie of the concrete bridge behaving like a piece of paper in the wind)? can you make it in large enough sections? Do you need experts to lay FRP? How reliable are the material properties from section to section? etc etc etc It's a very rare engineering application that is all about strength.
Finally, how much does it cost for it to do the job? If steel/conrete can do the job you can pretty much bet it's going to be cheaper.
The CEO (and the entire board) is still accountable and if financial wrongs are found, the directors could be barred from being directors of any company. However successful Jobs might be, if he is legally barred, he can't be on the board (of any company). All speculation of course.
OK, I'm a mechanical engineer with a PhD myself, and have been in a similar position so I think I can provide some ideas and/or advise. I did a couple of postdocs after finishing, realised being in the lab was not what I wanted and am now working in technology transfer which I absolutely love.
Firstly, I think it is important to distinguish mechanical engineering (probably include civil engineering too) from computing/software/IT type engineering. I'm don't want to get into arguments about why and I'm not trying to be controversial or put anyone down, but I do think the CS situation is not particularly relevant.
One of the things I would ask is what you enjoyed about the PhD. Did you do genuine blue sky research? Or was it industrially relevant (was there an industrial collaborator)? What did you enjoy - was it being able to go down every avenue and just "try stuff" to see what happens? This kind of freedom to research only really happens in (1) academia or (2) very very large (and rich) companies who often have research labs encouraging this kind of research in the areas the company operates in, e.g GE healthcare (Germany), Rolls Royce have an aero/turbine research lab (UK/Europe), Ford have an environmental research lab (UK).
If you're looking for industrially relevant engineering research, which is based on commercial decisions and reasons, then look to industry.
One thing to keep in mind with academia is that many research groups have partnerships with industrial companies whose input can vary from anything to just simply providing cash/resources to actually genuinely driving the research direction based on the company strategy. Many large research groups have a person who might act as the liason with the engineering company, project managing the research and reporting progress to the company, effectively acting as a company voice within the research group.
Hope that helps a little.
From the article: 'Early clinical testing has confirmed the drug is fast-acting. Levels of amyloid dropped by 60 per cent within 24 hours of a single dose. It found also that PBT2 suppresses the impairment of memory function.
;-)
The article seems to be wrong - press releases on the Prana Biotechnology website indicate these results are from studies in mice.
More human studies begin in Sweden next month and Australians will join a major international trial of the drug next year.
If the data is from mice, then the above clinical trial is presumably a phase I clinical trial, which is designed to show safety and not efficacy. It could be a while before human data is available.
Of course, none of this will stop investors believing the article
raid starts at 8:00 and at +/- 23:30 you can go to sleep.
(assuming you mean 8pm?) 5.5 hrs twice a week = 11 hrs per week
I'm sorry, but that's not "casual gaming". 2hrs/week at a push is what I'd call casual gaming. The type of thing you can pick up and play when you feel like it, not when it's scheduled.
Most insightful post on this thread. I couldn't agree more. Every time there is a patent story on slashdot your post should be automatically linked at the top.
This is in the DESCRIPTION of the patent. What they are actually (trying) to patent (this is a patent application, not a granted patent) is detailed in the CLAIMS. These are what you need to read, carefully, and probably with advice from a patent attorney.
Once a patent application has been published (usually at 12/18 months after filing), it then gets passed on to the patent office in each country to be examined. It is entirely possible that a patent has got to this stage without anyone "official" actually doing any kind of search for proior art or examination of the claims. There may have been an international search report, but this still doesn't mean that much.
The nice thing about commercial research is that when there is an end product it becomes interesting and is worth "wasting" time, money, people and resources on.
I'd like to see most medications tested for at least 2 generations before being released -- it wouldn't halt everything, but it might stop a reoccurance of Thalidimide...
Whether you like it or not, drug development is a commercial decision. Getting a drug to market costs in the order of $600 million and takes around 7-15 years. Remember that unless this company has products on the market (there aren't actually that many market approved drugs around, so basically nobody except the big pharma companies) it is making no revenue during this time. Patents last 20 years, so a drug company then has maybe 5-13 years to make money from the drug to recover R&D costs.
This is why drugs are developed for highly profitable markets, say $500million/yr (e.g. insulin, heart disease, cancer, aids etc) - it's just not worth it commercially to spend that amount of money and time on a small, select disease population, no matter how crippling the disease or how urgent the clinical need is. And if pharma companies don't produce these drugs and put them through clinical trials, nobody else will - not government, not universities.
Of the 10-15 year development and approval process, probably 7 years is in clinical trials. If you extended this to 2 generations, you would instantly kill off the entire drug development industry and NOBODY would ever develop these drugs.
I am very much in favor of a service like this that students can use for free, legally from any computer lab, for any physics/chemistry/etc. experiments. I personally don't care if my homework is moderately secure or heavily secure.
I know this is taking the discussion a little off track, but your experimental data and notes may not be yours to disclose. Universities in particular are increasingly starting to realise they have to treat research and disclosure from a commercial viewpoint.
Getting a bit more pedantic, from a patenting point of view putting your data on a server (google's in this case) that is publicly accessible would probably count as disclosure.
While I could see this being implemented on a local intranet, I am very wary of putting my information on someone elses server, and I could imagine a business would be too.
Hooray, someone on slashdot who understands the patent system!
Great points and may I say up front how great these articles are.
:) ). These all add to the discussion, and that's the great part of slashdot stories.
I agree wholeheartedly with your priorities in saving a story, so I won't go on about them. Here's the only two changes I would make.
1. I like the editorial opinions/questions at the end of the story blurb and I fully agree they should stay. What I don't like is when they are biased and/or obvious flamebait. This accomplished two things. Firstly, you (the editor/slashdot) lose credibility and it just doesn't look professional. Secondly, you incite the trolls which detracts from the discussion, not adds to it which is really the whole point of an editorial comment. Ask a question, give an interesting comment on the linked story (encouraging others to actually RTFM!), give your opinion on a product (lame
2. I think grammar/spelling should have more importance than it is given. Bad spelling and bad grammar just looks unprofessional. Ok, slashdot is not the wall street journal or the new york times, but it does have credibility in it's field. There are some really interesting scientific discussions on here that attract world experts who genuinely know the complexities of subjects many others can't even spell. Bad spelling/grammar in the story blurb undermines all of this credibility and professionalism.
Firstly, get a grip mate, I only made a comment, not a personal attack on your credibility.
Having said that - it's not the free text, it's the fact that every ball bowled and shot played is logged. A player's (team/ground/etc) career/innings/whatever can be analysed and compared down to the n-th degree. I'd be really surprised if baseball can match the statistics cricket generates, the game lives and breathes statistics.
That is an amzing treasure trove of information, even for casual fans.
Baseball hasn't got anything on cricket as far as statistics go. Have a look at statsguru http://stats.cricinfo.com/guru. Pretty much every ball ever bowled is documented these days and has been for quite some time.
I have to agree with you, but I do think most of the patenting that brings bad press is to do with software in some way or other. I think the whole system is much more set up for physical science/engineering style inventions. There is a lot of mis-understanding out there about what patents/trademark/copyright do and are supposed to protect (and how they work). I include the average slashdotter in that too, though you can hardly blame anyone - the details of IP are very complex field.
No no no, that's Old MacDonald you're thinking of. The Mr MacDonald referred to here runs a fast food business and dresses in a clown costume. Emminently more credible I think you'll agree.
It's all part of the recent move toward editorial professionalism ...
"Intelligent people are Linux Desktop's key to success"
"Intelligent people" are not the majority of internet users, or even email users. The majority of the market just wants the application to look pretty and work. They don't want to configure anything - moving the mouse to the start button is enough of a challenge thanks. They don't want to have to remember keys, etc etc. And to be perfectly honest, they shouldn't have to. It should "just work" (TM). Until the linux community understands this, it will never genuinely compete with windows or macos as the OS for Joe Average.
"There are but three true sports - bullfighting, mountain climbing, and motor-racing. The rest are merely games." -- Ernest Hemingway
Google is into search technology, Microsoft is into everything profitable in the desktop market.
Google is a company, they exist to make profit for their shareholders.
Microsoft is a company, they exist to make profit for their shareholders.
They may use different strategies to make the profit, but to think otherwise is being naive IMO.
This place has become ridiculously closed-minded in the last year re: MS vs Google (if that even exists?). Sorry to say and I'm sure you realise you're preaching to the wrong crowd there, but I fully agree with you.
MS is a business, they exist to make money for their shareholders. Google is a business, they exist to make money for their shareholders. Yes, in the end it really is that simple. The only way a CEO can make a really genuine difference in terms of business being less about the bottom line is when they own the company, like Richard Branson does with Virgin (I think?).
I've always wondered why the global scientific community doesn't do more replication of data as part of peer review.
One of the problems is that most journal papers do not provide enough information to actually repeat the experiments. Often there's a small, insignificant (!) but completely critical bit of information missing that prevents someone doing this. Even a reviewer probably wouldn't actually notice unless they are intimately familiar with that field and are actually working through the paper in great detail.
Taking a slightly cynical viewpoint, it all stems from turning universities (and research) into a business, making it accountable. Grant money has become the be all and end all of research. To get grants you need papers. So publications are all that matters.
Not to mention the significant proportion of internet users who still don't have access to broadband.
Assuming it works as it implies - does it mean I have to connect to the internet to use the word processor? If not, that's surely going to be one hell of a download to use the app offline.
Most importantly, is it practical for (big) business?
Australia led the way instead of being the global village idiot.
;-)
Richard Alston's resigned then has he?
(Seriously - I've been out of the country for 5 years)
Possibly the best quote from a scientist ever (my emphasis):
From another BBC article
Mr Warren said he was a "little overcome" by the award.
"It is nice to be officially recognised and it gives some sort of a stamp of approval, but we believed it within a few months because it was so bloody obvious," he told reporters.