Maybe the USA should set up a department of cultural preservation. It could ban Non English languages, arrest the owners of Mexican and Chinese restraunts, Censor any media originating outside of the USA for content that is incompatable with American culture, and set up an approval process for any imported goods. That is pretty much what these assorted nations are doing in the name of preserving native cultures.
Eh, say what? If it is as the other poster says, that UNESCO want to allow subsidies, how can you make that into censorship and oppression?
There are many (democratic!) countries with small languages where it is very difficult to make a movie in the native language that make money. The market is simply very small. In order to have a local movie industry at all, some countries decide to sponsor movies makers. Do you really think that is market obstruction? Do you think that is censorship? How is that shutting out foreign restaurants?!
With so many confused comments in this thread, I think it is appropriate to link to the actual Nature paper. I think this abstract page is readable by everyone, sorry if you need a subscription. In that case, I offer the abstract
About 96% of the more than 4,800 living anuran species belong to the Neobatrachia or advanced frogs. Because of the extremely poor representation of these animals in the Mesozoic fossil record, hypotheses on their early evolution have to rely largely on extant taxa. Here we report the discovery of a burrowing frog from India that is noticeably distinct from known taxa in all anuran families. Phylogenetic analyses of 2.8 kilobases of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA unambiguously designate this frog as the sister taxon of Sooglossidae, a family exclusively occurring on two granitic islands of the Seychelles archipelago. Furthermore, molecular clock analyses uncover the branch leading to both taxa as an ancient split in the crown-group Neobatrachia. Our discovery discloses a lineage that may have been more diverse on Indo-Madagascar in the Cretaceous period, but now only comprises four species on the Seychelles and a sole survivor in India. Because of its very distinct morphology and an inferred origin that is earlier than several neobatrachian families, we recognize this frog as a new family.
I don't know what the linked-to story says, but the authors of the Nature paper says nothing like that. What they found was the when reconstructing an evolutionary tree based on molecular data, the new species had a lineages distinct from most other frogs and that its closest living relative is found on the Seychelles.
Re:SVG is not the future
on
GIMP goes SVG
·
· Score: 1
IE: the Notepad of browsers
Wow, that is such a great insult!
It is almost as if I have to go find/create an enemy to try it on.
Thanks! That was a succinct yet very informative explanation. The "learn more" link does not explain it as well as you just did, and I simply do not have time to read the papers.
This sounds really interesting, but I don't understand what you are really doing. And I even followed your links!
In what way does your instrumented apps differ from, say, "talkbacks" in Mozilla? I guess it is on a higher level than a core dump. Perhaps showing the programmer what buttons had been clicked recently and things like that?
Linux was honoured some years past by the Royal Technical Institute in Stockholm - I believe he received an honorary doctorate, but I might be wrong. It was at any rate the same body that gave GATES that doctor's hat the year after.
Yup, Linus and Bill has honorary doctorates at KTH. So does Richard M. Stallman. Quite a crew, huh? I hope they get together once in a while and discuss important matters!
This is what the actual paper in Current Biology by Kittler et al says:
A critical assumption is that the origin of body lice reflects the origin of clothing; it is possible that clothing existed for some time before lice exploited this new ecological niche, in which case the origin of clothing could be much more ancient than the origin of body lice. While we cannot exclude this possibility, the colonization of a new ecological niche usually occurs rapidly after it becomes available. Since modern humans and archaic humans such as Neandertals diverged about 250,000-500,000 years ago, in order to associate clothing with archaic humans, clothing would have had to exist for hundreds of thousands of years before the origin of body lice, which seems improbable. Moreover, archaeological evidence does not contradict an association of clothing specifically with modern humans, as the only tools that can be definitely associated with clothing, such as needles, are only about 40,000 years old.
So they certainly address the issue. These guys are not naive---The last author, Mark Stoneking, is a very experienced and respected investigator.
Their dating is actually 72000 +- 42000 years btw.
Well, this is some another company bashing it's competition - ooh, what big news.
I don't think he bashed it! To the contrary, Sinclair said:
I found it very enjoyable - a nice sensation once I got over the initial nervousness. It's very manoeuvrable, no trouble there at all. After a few minutes practice you can do anything you like.
Later in the article, he says it is not suitable for British sidewalks, but has applications elsewhere, and I think that is correct. It is a vehicle comparable to a bike and belongs on the street.
These days, competition is from untrained college students in Central Europe. All too often a Romanian student who "knows Hungarian" bids a couple of pennies per word, far under the going rate and far too little for my wife to consider as reasonable pay. The resultant translation sucks, but that's to be expected from someone who not only isn't trained as a translator, but also doesn't not have a good command of either languages in question (Hungarian and English).
But this is why your wife eventually will face competition from computers. Computer translations may suck, but if it is good enough (for instance, comparable to the untrained foreign students), then there will be applications for them.
I don't think computers will replace human translators anytime soon, but a lot of routine translations could become useful very soon. Furthermore, a human translator could probably find a half decent translation to be a good starting point. Why do all that typing by hand, when some thoughtful editing is all that is necessary?
while an integrated Bayesian filtering mechanism might function better, in practice it's probably not worth the individual user's time to set up and train.
I'll have to say that, to me, Mozilla's Baysian filtering was "just there" and worked well almost instantly! The only setup you might want to add is to redirect spam to Trash or a special directory after a while. It is extremely intuitive to train the filter, and the icon's are natural and interactive. The only thing I miss is a toolbar button to move spam-marked email to Trash: Right now I have to go through a menu, which is not as immediate as I might want it.
I am a more or less a power user though, but I honestly think my parents would be able to use Mozilla's filtering!
They can now precisely identify 75% of your DNA. Your DNA defines a great deal about you. Everything from shoe size and peins size to emotional temperment and what diseases you are likely to suffer from.
They do not record the whole genome from a person. That is actually not practical to do today. It still takes a good deal of resources to do anything like that in one year. There is no way that anyone even will suggest to do that the next few years.
What is recorded is the distance, on the chromosomes, between certain markers. Since there are length variability of regions containing repeated substrings, then combination of 10 or so marker distances makes for a pretty good signature. I think the exclusion capability of forensic DNA fingerprints is about 1 in 10^6, i.e., the chance that someone has a certain signature is one in a million. As far as I know, there is no known correlation of this markers with any known trait. And given the nature of this markers, I think it would be pretty surprising if one was found. DNA fingerprints are no more of a privacy invasion than regular fingerprints.
I started programming on a Sinclair Spectrum as a teenager and that threw me into a life of computing. It was great! I certainly programmed more than I played games on that machine.
Only a few years back a colleague brought up this very issue, and we agreed that it looked really bad. Apparently, freshmen in college back in the Spectrum days performed better in introductory programming courses.
However, I think that since then things, or at least opportunities, have improved: I am thinking of Lego Mindstorms, perhaps combined with NQC, a simple C-like language for Lego's computer brick. This kit is simply marvelous in playability, and had I had that kit as a boy, I am sure that I would have learned programming at least as well as with my Spectrum.
I don't believe this has improved freshmen's programming abilitites though, but perhaps with time?
As others have pointed out already, Linux and all its programming environments will probably provide very good starting points these days. I have for instance seen Java introductions that are more accessible than what we had in the early eighties!
...but at least we get the month-day in the right order. "11-9" for September 11th is like writing forty two "24".
Thing is, we in Sweden both say and write what corresponds to "11th September", so we think it is kinda backwards. And I suspect there are other languages doing the same. I can for the life of me not remember how the Germans do it. Remember, most of Europe does not *gasp* have English as their first language!
I think this should be researched with other people than yourself and your wife... Some will have a far worse success rate than 91%. Whenever I watch my dad punch in a password, it is as he has never seen the keys before. I am pretty sure that this idea would make him really frustrated.
Personally, I am really used to punch in my password(s) and I would not be surprised if other could imitate me simply by trying to input it very efficiently. I guess I would be able to obfuscate my password with some pauses, but I would probably make it more difficult for myself to get it right in the process.
I do science and I have benefitted from optimized BLAS libraries (on x86 chips as it happens) both when using a program for semidefinite programming and running Octave scripts. A colleague of mine gave a talk just yesterday, mentioning how easy it had been setting something up using Perl and PDL, which apparently is built ontop of BLAS. I think the GSL is also using BLAS if it is available.
You simply do not necessarily need to work directly with BLAS (and LAPACK for that matter) to enjoy the fruits of excellent optimization!
I also had trouble believing some claims in the article because of remembering the early NMT networks. However, the article seems to really be about handheld mobile phones, and I am not sure when the first truly handhelds for NMT came out. I remember those systems with a special unit to lug around to which your reciever was connected. They were most appropriately put in a car, and would only look dorky for a yuppie to bring to a bar...
You've gotten it so wrong. Scientists are definately dreaming of using stem cells in treatments. The reason that stem cells are interesting is that they have not been specialized yet. That is, they can still turn into a brain cell, kidney cell, whatever cell. It is true though that scientist are currently studying how this happens. The process is not yet very understood.
And since you can get hearts, kidney, and other organs from other people without them being rejected (although that comes with a little help from drugs), I don't see why other peoples stem cells necessarily would be rejected by the body.
Actually, I am not at all sure that stem cells are easier to study in general. After all, it is only in recent years that so-called cell lines, self-growing cell populations, have been constructed. If you are looking for easy to use cell-lines, I think you go to cancer cells: They have a tendency to grow without much encouragement!
This statement is of course far too general to be true. How about Simon Singh for a quick proof that what you say is wrong? And he is definately not alone, but I'd agree on that there are not that many scientist becoming journalists. On the other hand, there are science journalists that definately are good at their trade. Maybe you should reconsidering what media you are tapping into?
And for scientist giving crap interviews: I have interviewed (once, I am/was an amateur) and talked to some brilliant professors at my local school that are quite verbal and engaging. I envy them! There is a huge range in how good scientists are at describing and publicisizing their work, but I believe that there is in general and underestimated resource out there for bringing science to the people (tm)!
You could come to Sweden on vacation and go on the Inlandsbanan ("the inland railway") for an old fashioned railway experience. Beside several options for travelling a long way with old trains, there are places where you can rent/borrow a trolley and safely go long ways. There are about one train per day on these tracks.
I have not done this myself, but there is plenty of information on the Internet about it. Of course, you may have wanted this on a different continent...
I don't think anyone simple claimed a patenet on a gene, because you had and have to claim a utility of it. What happened was that people/companies found a gene or even a small part of a gene, sent it to a patent office and claimed "Uh, this is a gene, and, like, we could cure cancer or something with it, so we want to patent that any other use of it." The support for the utility did not have to be very good and the patent would still go through. The applicant may in reality not have a clue about the gene more than that it was most likely a gene and it looked like something else that people knew might be used for something, at least in worm or fly or some other model organism...
So it was more like people said "I want to patent the use of gravity to cure cancer. I have no idea how to go about with it, but darn it I am the one to prosper from it would a use someday appear!"
They do a lot of research on northern lights up at Esrange, so I imagine this is developed to be able to retrieve loads of info from research equipment without having to bring back the equipment and depending on it has not landed in a stream.
But I agree that is not a big selling killer application!
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, say what? If it is as the other poster says, that UNESCO want to allow subsidies, how can you make that into censorship and oppression?
There are many (democratic!) countries with small languages where it is very difficult to make a movie in the native language that make money. The market is simply very small. In order to have a local movie industry at all, some countries decide to sponsor movies makers. Do you really think that is market obstruction? Do you think that is censorship? How is that shutting out foreign restaurants?!
I don't know what the linked-to story says, but the authors of the Nature paper says nothing like that. What they found was the when reconstructing an evolutionary tree based on molecular data, the new species had a lineages distinct from most other frogs and that its closest living relative is found on the Seychelles.
Wow, that is such a great insult!
It is almost as if I have to go find/create an enemy to try it on.
It sounds like a very cool and clever project!
In what way does your instrumented apps differ from, say, "talkbacks" in Mozilla? I guess it is on a higher level than a core dump. Perhaps showing the programmer what buttons had been clicked recently and things like that?
Yup, Linus and Bill has honorary doctorates at KTH. So does Richard M. Stallman. Quite a crew, huh? I hope they get together once in a while and discuss important matters!
Not very accurate at all and the authors of the original research paper says that too. The estimate the present is actually 72000+-42000 years.
Their dating is actually 72000 +- 42000 years btw.
Of course they use Emacs, everything else is madness. No, the real question is: Are they using GNU Emacs or XEmacs?
I don't think he bashed it! To the contrary, Sinclair said:
Later in the article, he says it is not suitable for British sidewalks, but has applications elsewhere, and I think that is correct. It is a vehicle comparable to a bike and belongs on the street.But this is why your wife eventually will face competition from computers. Computer translations may suck, but if it is good enough (for instance, comparable to the untrained foreign students), then there will be applications for them.
I don't think computers will replace human translators anytime soon, but a lot of routine translations could become useful very soon. Furthermore, a human translator could probably find a half decent translation to be a good starting point. Why do all that typing by hand, when some thoughtful editing is all that is necessary?
I'll have to say that, to me, Mozilla's Baysian filtering was "just there" and worked well almost instantly! The only setup you might want to add is to redirect spam to Trash or a special directory after a while. It is extremely intuitive to train the filter, and the icon's are natural and interactive. The only thing I miss is a toolbar button to move spam-marked email to Trash: Right now I have to go through a menu, which is not as immediate as I might want it.
I am a more or less a power user though, but I honestly think my parents would be able to use Mozilla's filtering!
They do not record the whole genome from a person. That is actually not practical to do today. It still takes a good deal of resources to do anything like that in one year. There is no way that anyone even will suggest to do that the next few years.
What is recorded is the distance, on the chromosomes, between certain markers. Since there are length variability of regions containing repeated substrings, then combination of 10 or so marker distances makes for a pretty good signature. I think the exclusion capability of forensic DNA fingerprints is about 1 in 10^6, i.e., the chance that someone has a certain signature is one in a million. As far as I know, there is no known correlation of this markers with any known trait. And given the nature of this markers, I think it would be pretty surprising if one was found. DNA fingerprints are no more of a privacy invasion than regular fingerprints.
You are way off.
Only a few years back a colleague brought up this very issue, and we agreed that it looked really bad. Apparently, freshmen in college back in the Spectrum days performed better in introductory programming courses.
However, I think that since then things, or at least opportunities, have improved: I am thinking of Lego Mindstorms, perhaps combined with NQC, a simple C-like language for Lego's computer brick. This kit is simply marvelous in playability, and had I had that kit as a boy, I am sure that I would have learned programming at least as well as with my Spectrum.
I don't believe this has improved freshmen's programming abilitites though, but perhaps with time?
As others have pointed out already, Linux and all its programming environments will probably provide very good starting points these days. I have for instance seen Java introductions that are more accessible than what we had in the early eighties!
Thing is, we in Sweden both say and write what corresponds to "11th September", so we think it is kinda backwards. And I suspect there are other languages doing the same. I can for the life of me not remember how the Germans do it. Remember, most of Europe does not *gasp* have English as their first language!
Personally, I am really used to punch in my password(s) and I would not be surprised if other could imitate me simply by trying to input it very efficiently. I guess I would be able to obfuscate my password with some pauses, but I would probably make it more difficult for myself to get it right in the process.
But more research on this would be fun to see.
You simply do not necessarily need to work directly with BLAS (and LAPACK for that matter) to enjoy the fruits of excellent optimization!
Could they not just dump the phones then and only sell ad space on simple boards?
When did the first handhelds arrive in NMT?
And since you can get hearts, kidney, and other organs from other people without them being rejected (although that comes with a little help from drugs), I don't see why other peoples stem cells necessarily would be rejected by the body.
Actually, I am not at all sure that stem cells are easier to study in general. After all, it is only in recent years that so-called cell lines, self-growing cell populations, have been constructed. If you are looking for easy to use cell-lines, I think you go to cancer cells: They have a tendency to grow without much encouragement!
And for scientist giving crap interviews: I have interviewed (once, I am/was an amateur) and talked to some brilliant professors at my local school that are quite verbal and engaging. I envy them! There is a huge range in how good scientists are at describing and publicisizing their work, but I believe that there is in general and underestimated resource out there for bringing science to the people (tm)!
You could come to Sweden on vacation and go on the Inlandsbanan ("the inland railway") for an old fashioned railway experience. Beside several options for travelling a long way with old trains, there are places where you can rent/borrow a trolley and safely go long ways. There are about one train per day on these tracks.
I have not done this myself, but there is plenty of information on the Internet about it. Of course, you may have wanted this on a different continent...
So it was more like people said "I want to patent the use of gravity to cure cancer. I have no idea how to go about with it, but darn it I am the one to prosper from it would a use someday appear!"
But I agree that is not a big selling killer application!