Well - I guess you just answered your own question:-)
Okay - I'll bite for the benefit of the non-biologists (and yes - IAAB).
The second word is more correctly the "specific" or "trivial" epithet. I used "species" in my post to make the point that the generic and specific epithets are always single words.
In other words, not only is the binomial system case sensitive, but it uses spaces only to separate epithets. Also it is font sensitive (I might have my terminology wrong here) in that only generic, subgeneric, specific and subspecific epithets are italicised - or underlined when italics are not available.
Incidentally a couple of handy mnemonics for remembering the major taxa are:
King Phillip Collects Old Familiar Girls' Suspenders
Adams claimed that the name was supposed to sound like a really rude word (when Slartibartfast first appears he keeps saying that his name is unimportant but he eventually tells Arthur what it is).
Apparently the first version of the name was Phartiphukborlz and Adams just played around with it until he came up with something that sounded rude, but wasn't.
I'm British and I always make a point of using the Corby trouser press when staying in a hotel. It's the only time my trousers (not "pants", USAians) ever get ironed.
I have a theory that they are not provided by the hotel, but by a charitable society - a bit like the Gideon's but with trouser presses instead of Bibles.
Here in the UK there used to be an ad for Strepsil throat lozenges that featured Dai, a member of the local male-voice choir in a mining village in Wales. Dai has a sore throat and is worried that he can't sing but a friend recommends Strepsils and the ad culminates with Dai and his friends singing the name of the product in four-part harmony (all in a strong Welsh accent).
I was working in Ghana, West Africa for a few years in the mid/late '90s and they had refilmed the ad in a Ghanaian village, with all the men dressed in Kente robes, but kept the original Welsh male-voice choir soundtrack - the funniest thing I ever saw.
I have been using my Psion 3a for over eight years now. The hinges have broken twice in that time, necessitating trips to Pinnock Organiser Services for a new case. However, I keep persevering with it because of its phenomenal battery life. Eight-year old technology, does everything I need in a PIM and it runs for three months on a couple of AA cells.
I did try an Agenda VR3 (no url as Agenda Computing seem to have gone bust and the Softfield site seems only to link to 10.1.1.1!) but couldn't be bothered to change the batteries every few hours. I would be prepared to sacrifice some battery life for features such as colour screens, wireless connectivity etc. but surely it's possible to get a week or so out of a set of batteries? How do things like the Zaurus perfom in normal use?
Incidentally, while checking the url above I noticed that POS (yeh I know - unfortunate acronym) also sell a linux PDA, the Filewalker. Anyone have any experience of this?
I don't know - they opened Xscape just after I left Milton Keynes for Edinburgh to research my PhD.It's not a bad place to live but they weren't very hot on irony.
After all there are not many places that could, with a straight face, have allowed Cliff Richard to rollerskate around the shopping mall making the Wired for Sound video (google cache as the original page seems to have gone).
Of more interest to the Slashdot crowd is probably the nearby Bletchley Park of WWII Station X codebreaking fame. Well worth a visit if you're in the area.
But I think the ones at Milton Keynes may have been the prototype (again, I could be wrong) and they are certainly the ones that bear least resemblance to actual cows, albeit they are painted black and white to emphasise their cowness, rather than shocking pink like the one I just saw on the Cow Parade site.
Milton Keynes was the first place in Britain to build a multiplex cinema.. The Point opened in 1985, but (I have heard) is having to close as it is has been unable to compete against the new Xscape cinema/indoor ski/health centre.
Incidentally, Milton Keynes is also home to probably the world's only herd of concrete cows.
For a start, it is unlikely that a little sunlight would "literally" boil them (unless focussed with a lens). Specific heat capacity and boiling point of water, anybody?
And secondly, of course they have no spinal structure - they're invertebrates. Finally, what does one have to do with the other?
The funniest part is that the previous debate was all about the dangers of corned beef tins (you'll need to scroll down the page to "Food Containers: Safety".
Quotes include Baroness Sharples: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether ring-pull cans are safer than ordinary cans which are opened with a tin-opener? Which is safest?
Re:Why do you say AI is going nowhere?
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 1
If we were talking about fungi or bacteria, organisms which are able to enter a dormant/stationary phase of the life cycle, it wouldn't be too surprising that they could survive. But C. elegans just have a pretty basic (egg-->larva-->adult) life cycle
Not entirely true. Under ideal conditions the life cycle is egg-->L1 larva-->L2 larva-->L3 larva-->L4 larva--L5 adult but if conditions are not so good (overcrowding, lack of food etc.) Caenorhabditis can turn into something called a dauer larva which doesn't feed, doesn't move around much, and can survive for much longer.
You might like to know a little background to the reason the 6 PCs were in the school mentioned in the article.
The Ghanaian Ministry of Education contracted a British company, Philip Harris International, to set up a network of Science Resource Centres (SRC) in Ghana at a cost of some GBP19.75 million. The project involved the provision of science equipment, chemicals, PCs and even datalogging equipment to about 20% of Ghana's seondary schools.
Each SRC was supplied with a 45-seater school bus to transport students from satellite schols to the SRC for science practical lessons.
I was one of two installation engineers tasked with installing the science equipment and PCs in 110 schools in Ghana, including several in Accra, between 1995 and 1998. Each school received 6 PCs preinstalled with Windows 3.1, MS Office and a range of multimedia packages. The PCs were fitted with filters and adapted to better withstand the dusty conditions and uninterruptable power supply units and printers were supplied. Internet access in Ghana began to become available over the time I was there but this was too late to be incorporated into the project.
It is interesting that the author reports that in 1999 there were no staff capable of using the PCs. As part of the project, staff from Solihull College in the UK travelled toGhana and ran six residential training courses, each six weeks long and trained over 700 Ghanaian teachers in basic IT skills and the use of other equipment supplied to the SRCs. In addition, my colleague and I were available to give advice and technical support in Accra, and during our frequent travels round the country installing other centres. Teaching is not a prestigious career in Ghana and anecdotal evidence suggested at the time that at least some teachers, especially in rural areas, left the profession and used their new-found IT skills to find (relatively) more lucrative jobs in the city.
Slashdot Mirror
Well - I guess you just answered your own question :-)
Okay - I'll bite for the benefit of the non-biologists (and yes - IAAB).
The second word is more correctly the "specific" or "trivial" epithet. I used "species" in my post to make the point that the generic and specific epithets are always single words.
In other words, not only is the binomial system case sensitive, but it uses spaces only to separate epithets. Also it is font sensitive (I might have my terminology wrong here) in that only generic, subgeneric, specific and subspecific epithets are italicised - or underlined when italics are not available.
Incidentally a couple of handy mnemonics for remembering the major taxa are:
King Phillip Collects Old Familiar Girls' Suspenders
or
Kindly Put Condom On For Great Sex
to remember
Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species
I mentioned this in a comment on a previous story but nobody took much notice then.
The form of a Linnaean binomial is:
Genus species Surname (year)
Where Surname is the name of the person who coined the name. In the case of Linneaus this is usually abbreviated to L.
Obviously not many life scientists awake today.
The Linnaean binomial ("scentific name") should always be italicized, the generic name has a capital and the specific name doesn't.
So it should be:
Felis catus or Felis domesticus.
Pedantically yours,
Adams claimed that the name was supposed to sound like a really rude word (when Slartibartfast first appears he keeps saying that his name is unimportant but he eventually tells Arthur what it is).
Apparently the first version of the name was Phartiphukborlz and Adams just played around with it until he came up with something that sounded rude, but wasn't.
I'm British and I always make a point of using the Corby trouser press when staying in a hotel. It's the only time my trousers (not "pants", USAians) ever get ironed.
I have a theory that they are not provided by the hotel, but by a charitable society - a bit like the Gideon's but with trouser presses instead of Bibles.
Shouldn't that be "No disassemble number 5e-9"?
The wheels on my car can turn an infinite number of degrees. I thought that was the point of wheels.
I was working in Ghana, West Africa for a few years in the mid/late '90s and they had refilmed the ad in a Ghanaian village, with all the men dressed in Kente robes, but kept the original Welsh male-voice choir soundtrack - the funniest thing I ever saw.
I have been using my Psion 3a for over eight years now. The hinges have broken twice in that time, necessitating trips to Pinnock Organiser Services for a new case. However, I keep persevering with it because of its phenomenal battery life. Eight-year old technology, does everything I need in a PIM and it runs for three months on a couple of AA cells.
I did try an Agenda VR3 (no url as Agenda Computing seem to have gone bust and the Softfield site seems only to link to 10.1.1.1!) but couldn't be bothered to change the batteries every few hours. I would be prepared to sacrifice some battery life for features such as colour screens, wireless connectivity etc. but surely it's possible to get a week or so out of a set of batteries? How do things like the Zaurus perfom in normal use?
Incidentally, while checking the url above I noticed that POS (yeh I know - unfortunate acronym) also sell a linux PDA, the Filewalker. Anyone have any experience of this?
who weel he frag next?
;-)
And Steve Irwin has been French since when?
What's more, there's a two player version available.
So it is. How poetic.
:-)
Maybe I should try reading the article in future.
I don't know - they opened Xscape just after I left Milton Keynes for Edinburgh to research my PhD.It's not a bad place to live but they weren't very hot on irony.
After all there are not many places that could, with a straight face, have allowed Cliff Richard to rollerskate around the shopping mall making the Wired for Sound video (google cache as the original page seems to have gone).
Of more interest to the Slashdot crowd is probably the nearby Bletchley Park of WWII Station X codebreaking fame. Well worth a visit if you're in the area.
I stand corrected.:-)
But I think the ones at Milton Keynes may have been the prototype (again, I could be wrong) and they are certainly the ones that bear least resemblance to actual cows, albeit they are painted black and white to emphasise their cowness, rather than shocking pink like the one I just saw on the Cow Parade site.
Milton Keynes was the first place in Britain to build a multiplex cinema.. The Point opened in 1985, but (I have heard) is having to close as it is has been unable to compete against the new Xscape cinema/indoor ski/health centre.
Incidentally, Milton Keynes is also home to probably the world's only herd of concrete cows.
Who the heck moderated this as "informative"?
For a start, it is unlikely that a little sunlight would "literally" boil them (unless focussed with a lens). Specific heat capacity and boiling point of water, anybody?
And secondly, of course they have no spinal structure - they're invertebrates. Finally, what does one have to do with the other?
Hi! I'm the Orifice Assistant.
You appear to be trying to wipe your bum...
Quotes include Baroness Sharples: My Lords, can the noble Lord say whether ring-pull cans are safer than ordinary cans which are opened with a tin-opener? Which is safest?
When did you first know that AI is going nowhere?
Stanislaw Lem, not Lew.
Clarke predicted geostationery satellites, not GPS.
Not entirely true. Under ideal conditions the life cycle is egg-->L1 larva-->L2 larva-->L3 larva-->L4 larva--L5 adult but if conditions are not so good (overcrowding, lack of food etc.) Caenorhabditis can turn into something called a dauer larva which doesn't feed, doesn't move around much, and can survive for much longer.
You might like to know a little background to the reason the 6 PCs were in the school mentioned in the article.
The Ghanaian Ministry of Education contracted a British company, Philip Harris International, to set up a network of Science Resource Centres (SRC) in Ghana at a cost of some GBP19.75 million. The project involved the provision of science equipment, chemicals, PCs and even datalogging equipment to about 20% of Ghana's seondary schools.
Each SRC was supplied with a 45-seater school bus to transport students from satellite schols to the SRC for science practical lessons.
I was one of two installation engineers tasked with installing the science equipment and PCs in 110 schools in Ghana, including several in Accra, between 1995 and 1998. Each school received 6 PCs preinstalled with Windows 3.1, MS Office and a range of multimedia packages. The PCs were fitted with filters and adapted to better withstand the dusty conditions and uninterruptable power supply units and printers were supplied. Internet access in Ghana began to become available over the time I was there but this was too late to be incorporated into the project.
It is interesting that the author reports that in 1999 there were no staff capable of using the PCs. As part of the project, staff from Solihull College in the UK travelled toGhana and ran six residential training courses, each six weeks long and trained over 700 Ghanaian teachers in basic IT skills and the use of other equipment supplied to the SRCs. In addition, my colleague and I were available to give advice and technical support in Accra, and during our frequent travels round the country installing other centres. Teaching is not a prestigious career in Ghana and anecdotal evidence suggested at the time that at least some teachers, especially in rural areas, left the profession and used their new-found IT skills to find (relatively) more lucrative jobs in the city.