I suspect that this is unlikely, and not because Nature is the answer to everything, but because I don't think that being made fun of for being behind makes 100% of those students work harder to make themselves smarter.
The real finding here provides dramatic support to the Nature side of the debate. Students that end up being identified as the most intelligent are those whose cortices (the site of higher cognitive thought) continue to develop for longer, hitting their peak much later than their less gifted counterparts. As such, two possible explanations jump to mind for why students whose cortical growth peaks latest are those which are the smartest: 1) the cortex simply develops for longer, or 2) these kids have had a much richer set of experiences by the time their cortices stop growing. In either case, the growth of the cortex is probably heavily determined by genetics, but presumably can be affected by Nurture to a certain extent.
Although I don't remember the details now, there was a study done somewhere in Europe about a decade ago on a sperm bank that accepted donations only from those men judged highly intelligent to try to figure out how much of the result childrens' intelligence was attributable to the biological father, and how much was due to the conditions in which each child was raised. These kids ended up having an unusually large number of prodigies, which suggests to me that Nature (for better or worse) plays the major role in determining intelligence. That being said, if you're a horrible parent, you'll screw life up for your kid, and he/she may never be able to realize his/her potential.
Agreed. I wondered why a physics professor would take the time to make an obvious and meaningless point such as this (I'm not trying to be mean here, just honest). But a Google and Stanford directory search reveals that he is NOT A PROFESSOR (which he never claimed, Slashdotters just assumed). He is an "Affiliate", which probably means that he's an employee. In fact, it appears that he is a patent examiner from Oakland, CA.
I was pointing out his employement as a patent examiner as an explanation of why he might not know all that much about general relativity, but I just now realized how ironic that is.
Perhaps someone should tell him that general relativity has already been invented. Physicists know that time has geometry---it is, after all, a part of spacetime, which has geometry.
With regard to his claim that GPS has unexplained anomalies, he may be right. However, GPS is based on the Schwarzschild metric, which assumes a non-spinning, point-like mass. The earth is neither of these. Accordingly, there will be small corrections due to the combined effect of earth's spin and its density profile. At present, we are unable to calculate those corrections (we've only solved some important special cases, because the math is so hard), but they almost certainly explain the GPS deviations.
Why is a company that chooses not to filter UV any more liable than a government that chooses not to install a giant pair of Oakley sunglasses over the entire U.S.? I agree that filtering UV is a very, very good idea, but I don't see why not doing so merits a lawsuit.
Incidentally, the most efficiency you can hope to acheive with a solar panel is around 10% or so, and even that's an optimistic estimate I believe.
The real difference is that quantum bits ("qubits") can exist in superpositions. Take some qubit, like the spin of nucleus (this is actually a pretty popular choice). Classically, it can point up or point down in a magnetic field. We call these orientations 0 and 1; accordingly, the spin stores the exact same information as a regular bit. Here's where the quantumness comes in: the 0 and 1 states can exist on top of each other, so that a spin is in a combination of the two states.
To imagine the potential utility of this superposition, consider this (somewhat artificial) example. To store the integers 0 through 7 on a classical computer, you'd need 8 sets of three bits (i.e., 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111). You can store the same set of integers on a SINGLE set of three qubits (i.e., 0/1 0/1 0/1). Why is that useful? Say you want to figure out which of those numbers plus 5 equals 10. Classically, you'd go through the possibilities one by one until you found a match. Quantum mechanically, you can do the operation, and the only state out of the superposition that survives is the 101 state. Pretty cool, huh?
What I was trying to point out, but evidently with little success, was that the article was hyping the discovery. It is certainly important (as you might gather from the fact that it is being published in Nature). The article, however, summarizes the physicists' findings but allows the reader to think that the "dark matter" that the article refers to is that really mysterious stuff that science fiction writers like to write about, not the less mysterious stuff that the physicists were actually talking about.
Dark matter isn't mysterious or unordinary. Dark matter is usually extremely cold but otherwise ordinary matter. Because it's so cold, it can't emit light, hence "dark" matter. So, while they did discover dark matter in the sense that most astrophysicists use the term, they did not discover the really weird stuff.
You have, however, picked up on an important distinction. They found dark matter, but what they really need to find is dark energy. Dark energy is thought to comprise something like 70% of the energy of the universe, and yet, even today, it is a complete mystery.
In Constitutional terms, this is the correct ruling. Federal laws only extend to "interstate commerce," which these days is interpreted to mean "interstate anything."
I do see the sad humor in the government's hypocrisy, given their arguments in the FBI wiretapping case. However, the real outrage here is that there is no state law which clearly prohibits the interception of electronic signals.
Remember, folks, the states are supposed to take care of their own business. It's not always convenient, but it's how the Constitution gives primary power to state governments rather than the federal one.
Augmented reality is definitely cool, and it has a lot of useful applications. However, I don't think it's quite the same as visiting a place for yourself. That's not possible with Pompeii, but I don't think "Augmented Reality Tourism" can approach the majesty of seeing the Niagra Falls or the Pyramids at Giza for yourself. There's just something special about seeing things in real life.
I'm really sad that residents of Florida, Cuba, Haiti, and all those other hurricane-hit places will have to face more severe and more frequent hurricanes in the future. However, global warming is bigger than just Florida; as terrible as extra hurricanes are, this just might be the wake up call that the rest of the world (especially those of us in non-Kyoto countries) needs to really appreciate the significance of global warming. Maybe now people will realize that global warming isn't an issue put forth by tree-hugging hippies, but rather a serious concern with serious implications.
I don't know much about the particulars of what happened in those war games, but diesel and nuclear subs are very different. When operating, diesel subs are much more noisy than nuclear subs. However, diesel subs can turn off their engine and run completely silent. On the other hand, a nuclear reactor is always on. If you're trying to avoid detection, it's much better to be in a diesel sub.
It is still impressive that two US attack subs were sunk, but this isn't because US technology is behind. It's because an older technology has a single advantage (the ability to run noiseless for short periods of time) that can be exploited in close quarters to great advantage.
This is simply not the case, as I think most of us realize. We may all despise Microsoft, and we may all love Linux, but we're simply ignoring the truth if we think Linus Torvalds has been more influential than Bill Gates.
The issue is this: Linus may have ushered in the creation of a better product than Bill Gates. But quality doesn't necessarily correlate to influence. The very fact that the Linux-loving Slashdot crowd grumbles about how everyone uses MS even though Linux is better should be the first indication that Bill Gates is more important. He may be ugly, and he may have created the most evil company with the worst software, but his work has been influential. Without him and DOS/Windows, I'm not sure computers would have become a common household appliance until much later.
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Amen. 99% of anti-nuclear activists don't have a clue what they're talking about. I fondly remember the massive protests when hospitals debuted nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI). Never mind that the nuclear part of NMRI had nothing to do with nuclear reactions, the mere inclusion of the word was enough to spark large-scale protests. (At least until some guy had the clever idea of dropping the N from NMRI.)
Anyway, take from that history lesson what you will. Is nuclear energy perfect? No. Is it better than any other energy source out there (with the possible exception of wind)? Yes.
As a matter of public safety, TAKE ALL PINS OFF THE PROCESSOR. I'm speaking from experience. Though they're not strong enough to really draw blood, you can definitely feel 478 points of discomfort.
There was once a day that Bill Gates proclaimed that no user would ever require more than 8 kb of storage.
Given an extremely high-bandwidth connection to the internet may not be completely necessary, just like most people don't actually need a 512 mb video card or 4 gb of RAM. Well, with a little time, we will find ways to utilize all of these resources.
"The house is designed to be autonomous. It uses energy-efficient solar power as well as advanced systems for recycling and cleaning water. Another idea, now on the drawing board, is to include a system to remove pathogenic particles in the sub-micron range from the air."
I think this is the coolest part about the house, not the ultra-light composites. Think about never having to pay an utility bill again! Sure, you can do that for just about any house, but one that's built with self-sufficiency in mind is nice.
Your post has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but it also suggests that you don't click over to/. nearly often enough. Check out yesterday's article about SP2. There are plenty of reasons to yell and scream about Slashdot, but this is not one of them.
For the same reason that a gallon of gasoline costs $1.49 and nine tenths. If they were to sell the hard drive for $6000, I'm sure a lot of people would think "Hmm, $6000 is a lot of money" even though it's only a dollar more. Something about that first digit tends to affect consumer decisions.
Connected to the net in the conference room, I was getting news through Slashdot because most of the major media websites were down
Maybe that's because hordes of people like you were constantly clicking on the links to CNN from/., causing the biggest/. effect in the history of mankind.
Actually, special relativity was widely read about. The only problem was that it was published in, I think, the Annals of Physics (the actual title is German).
Einstein's GR, however, was much less widely read, even though its importance was widely recognized. If somebody published a paper in quantum mechanics in the 1930s, a lot of people read it because their work was contingent on it. GR, however, just sort of popped out of nowhere, and since it hadn't existed before, Einstein's future audience was still in graduate school.
I'm all for free software and everything, but this article seems a little ridiculous at points. For example, it says the following:
"The whole idea of software patents is a bit strange, really. A traditional patent is for a mechanical invention that may have taken a long time to design, produce and bring to market, and provides protection for the original inventor while eventually allowing their ideas to enter the public domain.
Software, however, is mercurial. A good programming idea may only be useful for a few months and, even after the dotcom crash, it's still the case that after a couple of years generally there is a complete generational change in the tools, techniques and even programming languages used."
Despite my unreserved support for OSS, I can recognize a tenuous argument when I see one. Software development takes time and effort, just like the development of mechanical devices.
It can't possibly filter out all chemicals but water. As stated, the filter allows urea through -- logic dictates that there might be plenty of other harmful substances that make it through as well. More directly, think about something like H2S, which has very similar properties to water. H2S is very bad for you.
Not that I think there are rivers of H2S flowing in the world. But no filter is perfect, and there is certainly some risk. The best way to clean water is still heating it up.
Slashdot Mirror
I suspect that this is unlikely, and not because Nature is the answer to everything, but because I don't think that being made fun of for being behind makes 100% of those students work harder to make themselves smarter.
The real finding here provides dramatic support to the Nature side of the debate. Students that end up being identified as the most intelligent are those whose cortices (the site of higher cognitive thought) continue to develop for longer, hitting their peak much later than their less gifted counterparts. As such, two possible explanations jump to mind for why students whose cortical growth peaks latest are those which are the smartest: 1) the cortex simply develops for longer, or 2) these kids have had a much richer set of experiences by the time their cortices stop growing. In either case, the growth of the cortex is probably heavily determined by genetics, but presumably can be affected by Nurture to a certain extent.
Although I don't remember the details now, there was a study done somewhere in Europe about a decade ago on a sperm bank that accepted donations only from those men judged highly intelligent to try to figure out how much of the result childrens' intelligence was attributable to the biological father, and how much was due to the conditions in which each child was raised. These kids ended up having an unusually large number of prodigies, which suggests to me that Nature (for better or worse) plays the major role in determining intelligence. That being said, if you're a horrible parent, you'll screw life up for your kid, and he/she may never be able to realize his/her potential.
Agreed. I wondered why a physics professor would take the time to make an obvious and meaningless point such as this (I'm not trying to be mean here, just honest). But a Google and Stanford directory search reveals that he is NOT A PROFESSOR (which he never claimed, Slashdotters just assumed). He is an "Affiliate", which probably means that he's an employee. In fact, it appears that he is a patent examiner from Oakland, CA.
I was pointing out his employement as a patent examiner as an explanation of why he might not know all that much about general relativity, but I just now realized how ironic that is.
Perhaps someone should tell him that general relativity has already been invented. Physicists know that time has geometry---it is, after all, a part of spacetime, which has geometry. With regard to his claim that GPS has unexplained anomalies, he may be right. However, GPS is based on the Schwarzschild metric, which assumes a non-spinning, point-like mass. The earth is neither of these. Accordingly, there will be small corrections due to the combined effect of earth's spin and its density profile. At present, we are unable to calculate those corrections (we've only solved some important special cases, because the math is so hard), but they almost certainly explain the GPS deviations.
They have a bunch of wild animals in Washington, too.
Why is a company that chooses not to filter UV any more liable than a government that chooses not to install a giant pair of Oakley sunglasses over the entire U.S.? I agree that filtering UV is a very, very good idea, but I don't see why not doing so merits a lawsuit.
Incidentally, the most efficiency you can hope to acheive with a solar panel is around 10% or so, and even that's an optimistic estimate I believe.
The real difference is that quantum bits ("qubits") can exist in superpositions. Take some qubit, like the spin of nucleus (this is actually a pretty popular choice). Classically, it can point up or point down in a magnetic field. We call these orientations 0 and 1; accordingly, the spin stores the exact same information as a regular bit. Here's where the quantumness comes in: the 0 and 1 states can exist on top of each other, so that a spin is in a combination of the two states. To imagine the potential utility of this superposition, consider this (somewhat artificial) example. To store the integers 0 through 7 on a classical computer, you'd need 8 sets of three bits (i.e., 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, 111). You can store the same set of integers on a SINGLE set of three qubits (i.e., 0/1 0/1 0/1). Why is that useful? Say you want to figure out which of those numbers plus 5 equals 10. Classically, you'd go through the possibilities one by one until you found a match. Quantum mechanically, you can do the operation, and the only state out of the superposition that survives is the 101 state. Pretty cool, huh?
I am an astrophysicist.
t ml#cosmologicalconstantproblem/.
What I was trying to point out, but evidently with little success, was that the article was hyping the discovery. It is certainly important (as you might gather from the fact that it is being published in Nature). The article, however, summarizes the physicists' findings but allows the reader to think that the "dark matter" that the article refers to is that really mysterious stuff that science fiction writers like to write about, not the less mysterious stuff that the physicists were actually talking about.
And, by the way, dark energy (which indeed is horribly named) is a huge mystery. Ask a particle physicist to calculate the vacuum energy density and he will give you an answer that is incorrect by many, many, MANY orders of magnitude. See http://www.site.uottawa.ca:4321/astronomy/index.h
Dark matter isn't mysterious or unordinary. Dark matter is usually extremely cold but otherwise ordinary matter. Because it's so cold, it can't emit light, hence "dark" matter. So, while they did discover dark matter in the sense that most astrophysicists use the term, they did not discover the really weird stuff.
You have, however, picked up on an important distinction. They found dark matter, but what they really need to find is dark energy. Dark energy is thought to comprise something like 70% of the energy of the universe, and yet, even today, it is a complete mystery.
In Constitutional terms, this is the correct ruling. Federal laws only extend to "interstate commerce," which these days is interpreted to mean "interstate anything."
I do see the sad humor in the government's hypocrisy, given their arguments in the FBI wiretapping case. However, the real outrage here is that there is no state law which clearly prohibits the interception of electronic signals.
Remember, folks, the states are supposed to take care of their own business. It's not always convenient, but it's how the Constitution gives primary power to state governments rather than the federal one.
Augmented reality is definitely cool, and it has a lot of useful applications. However, I don't think it's quite the same as visiting a place for yourself. That's not possible with Pompeii, but I don't think "Augmented Reality Tourism" can approach the majesty of seeing the Niagra Falls or the Pyramids at Giza for yourself. There's just something special about seeing things in real life.
I'm really sad that residents of Florida, Cuba, Haiti, and all those other hurricane-hit places will have to face more severe and more frequent hurricanes in the future. However, global warming is bigger than just Florida; as terrible as extra hurricanes are, this just might be the wake up call that the rest of the world (especially those of us in non-Kyoto countries) needs to really appreciate the significance of global warming. Maybe now people will realize that global warming isn't an issue put forth by tree-hugging hippies, but rather a serious concern with serious implications.
I don't know much about the particulars of what happened in those war games, but diesel and nuclear subs are very different. When operating, diesel subs are much more noisy than nuclear subs. However, diesel subs can turn off their engine and run completely silent. On the other hand, a nuclear reactor is always on. If you're trying to avoid detection, it's much better to be in a diesel sub.
It is still impressive that two US attack subs were sunk, but this isn't because US technology is behind. It's because an older technology has a single advantage (the ability to run noiseless for short periods of time) that can be exploited in close quarters to great advantage.
This is simply not the case, as I think most of us realize. We may all despise Microsoft, and we may all love Linux, but we're simply ignoring the truth if we think Linus Torvalds has been more influential than Bill Gates.
The issue is this: Linus may have ushered in the creation of a better product than Bill Gates. But quality doesn't necessarily correlate to influence. The very fact that the Linux-loving Slashdot crowd grumbles about how everyone uses MS even though Linux is better should be the first indication that Bill Gates is more important. He may be ugly, and he may have created the most evil company with the worst software, but his work has been influential. Without him and DOS/Windows, I'm not sure computers would have become a common household appliance until much later.
Amen. 99% of anti-nuclear activists don't have a clue what they're talking about. I fondly remember the massive protests when hospitals debuted nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI). Never mind that the nuclear part of NMRI had nothing to do with nuclear reactions, the mere inclusion of the word was enough to spark large-scale protests. (At least until some guy had the clever idea of dropping the N from NMRI.)
Anyway, take from that history lesson what you will. Is nuclear energy perfect? No. Is it better than any other energy source out there (with the possible exception of wind)? Yes.
Beowulf cluster of plants... I believe that's called a "garden".
As a matter of public safety, TAKE ALL PINS OFF THE PROCESSOR. I'm speaking from experience. Though they're not strong enough to really draw blood, you can definitely feel 478 points of discomfort.
There was once a day that Bill Gates proclaimed that no user would ever require more than 8 kb of storage.
Given an extremely high-bandwidth connection to the internet may not be completely necessary, just like most people don't actually need a 512 mb video card or 4 gb of RAM. Well, with a little time, we will find ways to utilize all of these resources.
"The house is designed to be autonomous. It uses energy-efficient solar power as well as advanced systems for recycling and cleaning water. Another idea, now on the drawing board, is to include a system to remove pathogenic particles in the sub-micron range from the air."
I think this is the coolest part about the house, not the ultra-light composites. Think about never having to pay an utility bill again! Sure, you can do that for just about any house, but one that's built with self-sufficiency in mind is nice.
Text spiraling in at a million miles per hour! Now if only I can figure out how to connect that 4,000 watt subwoofer, I can add sound effects!
Your post has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but it also suggests that you don't click over to /. nearly often enough. Check out yesterday's article about SP2. There are plenty of reasons to yell and scream about Slashdot, but this is not one of them.
For the same reason that a gallon of gasoline costs $1.49 and nine tenths. If they were to sell the hard drive for $6000, I'm sure a lot of people would think "Hmm, $6000 is a lot of money" even though it's only a dollar more. Something about that first digit tends to affect consumer decisions.
Connected to the net in the conference room, I was getting news through Slashdot because most of the major media websites were down
/., causing the biggest /. effect in the history of mankind.
Maybe that's because hordes of people like you were constantly clicking on the links to CNN from
Actually, special relativity was widely read about. The only problem was that it was published in, I think, the Annals of Physics (the actual title is German).
Einstein's GR, however, was much less widely read, even though its importance was widely recognized. If somebody published a paper in quantum mechanics in the 1930s, a lot of people read it because their work was contingent on it. GR, however, just sort of popped out of nowhere, and since it hadn't existed before, Einstein's future audience was still in graduate school.
I'm all for free software and everything, but this article seems a little ridiculous at points. For example, it says the following:
"The whole idea of software patents is a bit strange, really. A traditional patent is for a mechanical invention that may have taken a long time to design, produce and bring to market, and provides protection for the original inventor while eventually allowing their ideas to enter the public domain.
Software, however, is mercurial. A good programming idea may only be useful for a few months and, even after the dotcom crash, it's still the case that after a couple of years generally there is a complete generational change in the tools, techniques and even programming languages used."
Despite my unreserved support for OSS, I can recognize a tenuous argument when I see one. Software development takes time and effort, just like the development of mechanical devices.
It can't possibly filter out all chemicals but water. As stated, the filter allows urea through -- logic dictates that there might be plenty of other harmful substances that make it through as well. More directly, think about something like H2S, which has very similar properties to water. H2S is very bad for you.
Not that I think there are rivers of H2S flowing in the world. But no filter is perfect, and there is certainly some risk. The best way to clean water is still heating it up.