This is a good example of fMRI based brain research reaching an erroneous conclusion due to lack of understanding of what the data represents. The "activation" is increased O2/CO2 transfer, assumed to be increased metabolism due to the cells working harder. That's quite right. However, this is taken to mean those cells are processing information in that region -- that the work known to be done by that region is being done. That's definitely not necessarily true. Within any region there's both excitatory activity (that area is doing its job -- it's turned on) and inhibitory activity (that regions is turned off). The fMRI can't tell the difference, and the researchers fail to even consider that their results show the latter.
Support for this assertion is the statement that part of the brain was supposedly expected to go "dormant" during a certain task or processing procedure. No part of the brain becomes dormant. All neurons have a resting rate of firing. The cells that make up the processing power of the cortex (pyramidal neurons) fire on the order of 10 Hz when they're doing "nothing". That "nothing" represents business as usual while other regions increase or decrease in throughput. There's no such thing as dormant, the only reasonable conclusion being that we don't know what is being done.
They conclude that since a region lights up, that means it's actively processing its preferred task. Specifically they say that the executive network -- complex problem solving -- is operating. During the period of signal acquisition, the waiting just prior to the button press, the subject is waiting for the cue. They are focusing attention on the target. In such as state of preparation high level processing is inhibited (supported by a large body of physiological research going back to Pavlov), not as they conclude, recruited. But by working from their erroneous assumption that what lights up works hard, they miss the fact that their results show exactly what everyone else always has, that the region is being actively inhibited, and shows it by lighting up on their fMRI.
In fact most of the lighting up seen on fMRI is probably such inhibitory activity. Most of the brain is spontaneously active, probably processing things in case they're needed. When such things are needed -- when that region is recruited -- it doesn't necessarily increase or decrease in activity. Rather the firing of the cells within the networks recruited synchronize their firing. Overall the firing rate, and therfore neural metabolism, the basis of fMRI signal, doesn't change much, if at all. The inhibitory activity comes and goes to actively synchronize or desynchronize regions being recruited or inhibited.
I've done both EEG and fMRI work with very similar designs, and with other physiological measures done in parallel. I've seen pretty much what they show. However, we started from the well supported position that the brain is always working, but works harder to both produce results and inhibit results. Failure of the latter results in cognitive overload and confusing of not contradictory results, in the "bottleneck" processing model, and was intended to examine effortful (top down, executive controlled) disattention (inhibiting of processing within a region or else inhibiting of results from that region). In our model, "off" is go and "on" is either more go or less go. This was the conclusion fMRI, and its result processing, statistical probability mapping, was intended for. TFA comes from the 'christmas tree lights' viewpoint, based on the technology (the map) rather than the brain (the terrain), that "on" is go and "off" is stop. This assumption is at odds with both the actual meaning of the measurement as well as a century of physiology and neural processing.
It's Spanish air, which is to say the air in Spain. Except it's not, it's a couple cities. But it's just the part of those cities that have more of the stuff we're measuring. What's next, a particular apartment building? But really it's Carlos's flat. Mostly in the bedroom. Under the bed. Down by the foot of it. In that box there. No not that one, the other one, the one with the drugs in it. Yeah that's it, that's the air in Spain.
It's that air in those areas of those cities which is the Spanish air, and it has drugs in it. So the air in Europe is laced with drugs. Of course that means earth's atmosphere contains cocaine. In other words it's the solar system, meaning our galaxy, so it's the universe that has drugs in it. It's all the same, right?
So nice of them to be so honest about overgeneralizing. Right there in the headline and summary it says one thing except no, it says something else. Thankfully this takes all the pressure off the author when it comes to pesky details like accuracy and precision and stuff, and lets us get right to the business of it being important and all. That important thingy is what makes it important. Just as long as it's it's important, such as being Spanish air rather than some air samples from the drug areas of a couple large cities, that makes it newsworthy here on dot. And by that I mean slash. Or maybe some of each, it doesn't really matter. Oh, wait, there's more to it than that. It needs to have something more than important stuff to get posted. It should have some words. Doesn't matter which ones, because what it means can change from one sentence to the next in order to make it worth reading.
The following is fairly negative, but is posed honestly, not as flamebait, troll or other such nonsense.
It seems to be becoming a standard/. format to raise a topic, pose a question, and then proceed to discuss the issue and/or raise more questions as though the answer to the first was affirmative. The result is something that looks like it belongs in Ask Slashdot, and makes sense mostly if you read it while nodding vigorously. The real answers to the questions could often be found by doing some real research on the subject, but that doesn't happen as it would disrupt the chain of wishful thinking. The same could be said of locating information disproving the imaginary thesis, but that's even less likely to occur.
Space science encompasses pretty much anything that goes on over that magical 100 km altitude, even studying things up there from down here as well as technology associated with such work. $10M/year could fund your traditionally fine radio telescope program. It could as easily apply to using that hardware to support a space based radio-location (ie. GPS) program or even satellite relayed telecommunications. $10M/year might be able to get stretched to develop a sounding rocket if you scrimped by using something like Indonesia's sugar based solid fuel motors. It could also get swallowed whole easily maintaining your existing launch sites and related infrastructure. $40M would cover the initial training of a shuttle mission specialist but not the technical training for a specific mission. Many space related projects could be funded by the budgeted amount, except a "space program", taken to mean something like an Aussie spam-in-a-can riding into the black in an Aussie capsule on top an Aussie booster -- a home grown manned space flight program. Ain't gonna happen for that amount. That amount over 4 years might be able to fund the development of an administration and engineering group capable of doing something like that at some later date for a much greater amount. Given such an organization, that amount/time frame could go to make good progress on the proposed Ausroc LCLV, but almost certainly not enough to finish it.
Australia has a decent record of booster and payload/program development and execution without having burdened itself with a top heavy centralized administration. Sites have been operating quite well on an independent basis. For instance, Woomera has operated 15 pads and launched well over 500 missions in the past half century without a hint of need for an oversight agency. It's fairly inactive now but could wind back up if needed for the Ausroc or similar projects. Other sites have similar records, and the cumulative national record is impressive (see http://www.astronautix.com/country/ausralia.htm ). It ain't broke. Don't fix it. Have the sense not to replicate programs long since superseded elsewhere, such as early (ie. Mercury and Gemini) NASA, when one could obtain far more for the money via partnering with present day US or Russian programs. Sure, you could develop a manned program, or you could put that money to better use and get more out of it, as you have been all along.
And please do your homework so you can jump past the leading questions rhetoric and approach it from a position that lends to more fruitful discussion. If the quoted figures are your actual budget, then it was discussed and voted on. That means your own representative politicritter was at least peripherally involved, and an inquiry in their direction could well provide much more solid information (or at least proposed intentions) than the referenced vagaries and attached hypotheticals.
Finally, a piece of synchronicity. As I was writing this the following fortune/tagline was at the bottom of the page: "Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it."
Bring on the comments about how so-and-so knows somebody's grandma that was so affected by smell xyz that something bad happened. Big whoop. Unless it's literally chemicals that are affecting your health, or an airborne pathogen, you don't need medical attention.
How about comments from the spouse of a US Army master sergeant (26 years, now retired) who can describe olfactory assault agents that cause "nausea and vomiting" (per TFA) so severe that the the target is disabled for days to weeks? The gastrointestinal system continues to react to anything ingested with physically debilitating spasms for days, and the sphincter and peristalsis musculatures is strained to such a degree that they can't function properly for weeks. Unless they are allowed to heal by providing hydration and nourishment by other means (ie. IV, as intubation instigates the same reactions) the repeated reactions prevent recovery and the subject can die of dehydration or even starvation. Survival can easily require medical attention. Some test animals were so affected psychologically despite less than fatal physiological damage that they refused food and water and died. Human reactions of this severity are only hypothesized as testing was not done to this extent. Toxic chemicals and pathogens are not the only the only causes of conditions that can require medical attention. Some of these agents are nothing more than high concentrations of otherwise nontoxic compounds resulting from natural processes. Having been discovered/created, these agents were not weaponized because of the concentration requirement. It was estimated that more casualties would occur due to production and handling up through delivery (situations of high concentration) than by most battle situations (situations where dispersion would rapidly lower concentrations) resulting in more friendly fire hits than target neutralization. She declines to pass along the specifics, but her training manuals describe the effects vividly.
In short, you're wrong; medical attention can be necessary from exposure to nontoxic, nonpathogen agents.
"It is claimed that this ranking system promotes the made up phrases 'coopertition' and 'gracious professionalism.'"
The ranking system is an excellent piece of game theory. In fact it's worth a Nobel prize. Specifically John Nash's. The system is based on the subset of the Nash Equilibrium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium in which the players cooperate to maximize overall success. It was characterized in the 'nobody go for the blond' scene in "A Beautiful Mind". Despite suffering from schizophrenia, Nash managed to get across a novel concept that contradicted the basic tenets of economics without making up goofy names.
No clue here as to production, but possibly in the references below. Anyone have access to these?
"A much denser state exists for deuterium, named D(-1). We call it ultra-dense deuterium. This is the inverse of D(1), and the bond distance is very small, equal to 2.3 pm. Its density is extremely large, >130 kg / cm3, if it can exist as a dense phase. Due to the short bond distance, D-D fusion is expected to take place easily in this material. See Ref. 179 below!"
183. S. Badiei, P. U. Andersson and L. Holmlid, "High-energy Coulomb explosions in ultra-dense deuterium: time-of-flight mass spectrometry with variable energy and flight length". Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 282 (2009) 70-76.
179. S. Badiei, P. U. Andersson and L. Holmlid, "Fusion reactions in high-density hydrogen: a fast route to small-scale fusion?" Int. J. Hydr. Energy 34 (2009) 487-495.
178. L. Holmlid, "Clusters HN+ (N = 4, 6, 12) from condensed atomic hydrogen and deuterium indicating close-packed structures in the desorbed phase at an active catalyst surface". Surf. Sci. 602 (2008) 3381â"3387.
176. S. Badiei and L. Holmlid, "Condensed atomic hydrogen as a possible target in inertial confinement fusion (ICF)". J. Fusion Energ. 27 (2008) 296â"300.
I don't see the necessity for brute force compression. H can be highly compressed while trapped in metal crystal lattice, such as in H saturated palladium. The individual energies are still high but due to being already in close proximity much of the squeezing has already been done. Such a lattice that can then be removed, dissolved, etc. might leave high density H droppings.
SGI doesn't need to be known as successful in order for the use of the name to be effective, it just has to be known to have a history. People are comfortable with continuity, assuming it means success and therefore reputability. Maintaining the old lines isn't even necessary. Just the name can serve the purpose.
AT&T has existed primarily as a brand name since the Ma Bell breakup of 1984. It gets slapped on top of the various mergers and partnerships involving SBC with more or less emphasis according to the project, to entice the partner into joining? to replace SBC's name on iffy projects? who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of the Bell Systems zombies.
Some Asian company apparently decided it needed such a brand recognition flag for its consumer electronics and began using the name DuMont. We had a DuMont TV. It was one of their last models. They never made it to the color era. I'm assuming they snatched the name because it's trademark had expired and never did a lot of research on the matter. Brand "recognition" would only apply to hobbyists and historians of early electronics and people well over 50 years old.
How pathetically egocentric to think an artificial structure could replace a natural one.
While we're at it, let's slap a dome over the crater on Mount St. Helens and build a theme park under it. It can have 57 rides -- each named for one of the people killed when it blew up.
By the way, the comparison with Mt. Rushmore is misplaced. Those guys would probably have approved of the construction, particularly in regards with its location. The real travesty is carving up another mountain on sacred Lakota land to look like a famous Lakota warrior who died trying to keep out the invaders who wanted to dig holes all over the sacred land, and claiming that this earth moving project somehow "honored" him.
Look at the kinds of jobs people have gotten with a bachelors. If some of them have the kind of job you want, look at what it took them to get it. Do you have that? If not, look at the kinds of jobs people have gotten with a bachelors that you don't want. Are you willing to settle for that?
If you have a masters you can have the kind of job you wanted in the first group whether you have what they had or not. You can also repeat the process above for jobs people have gotten with a masters.
A representative of Sony Pictures wants us to use a Sony camcorder to film a piece of their movie on a Sony memory stick or tape, and transfer it to a blank Sony DVD using a Sony laptop for playback later through a Sony monitor or projector. Of course the reason is that they want the artists to get the money due them.
Of course the MPAA doesn't just represent Sony. All the players have or invest in companies that produce the recording and playback hardware and media.
Everyone who has conducted legitimate science, or expanded their medical knowledge, based on reading and/or referencing the fake journals, has been disserviced. The false information has been passed along and may continue since not all readers/users could ever be located. Science and medicine have been poisoned by this, and the damage can multiply. The publisher should print a final edition of each, containing only one article, saying that all previous work printed there is suspect at best. The problem could be somewhat mitigated if the editors of every other journal reviewed the articles they've printed to see if they contain references to those journals, and request the author(s) examine them for possible revision removing same. When the authors are no longer reachable the editors should do it.
This, like the 2005 announcement that the US would resume Pu production at a cost of XXX millions or billions, is an attempt to pack the pork barrel by begging for money under false pretense. Pu production is unnecessary. Per the 2002 SORT treaty the US is reducing its stock of strategic warheads by over 2000 devices between 2004 and 2012, about half being dismantled. The weapons grade Pu in them is a different ratio of isotopes than reactor grade. Still, 1000 warheads worth would yield a large stockpile of Pu for space probe power production. The dismantling is already planned and funded, so no additional start-up funds are needed.
This seems to be describing the Alcubierre drive. The Wikipedia article is much, much better than the crappy article linked to from the slashdot summary.
"Recent trials with newer, long-acting forms of injectable testosterone, which can be administered every 8 weeks, combined with progestogens, administered either orally or by long-acting implant, have yielded promising results and may soon result in the marketing of a safe, reversible, and effective hormonal contraceptive for men."
Male hormonal contraceptives: current status and future prospects. Amory JK. Department of Medicine, Center for Research in Reproduction and Contraception, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. Treat Endocrinol. 2005;4(6):333-41.
That's 4 years old, probably 5 given writing time. And it's a review article, meaning everything it talked about is older yet. So what's the news? Male contraceptive? No. Testosterone based? No. "In the works"? No. About all that's left is "The Chinese managed to replicate 5+ year old research." Getting slapped up on/. I can understand, but BBC should be ashamed. It took me all of 5 minutes to find this on PubMed, which is open access, so they could have too.
Most "classic" books are theoretical and sometimes philosophical in nature (insert plug for Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" here). How science is actually conducted, and how what's reported differs from what happens, is a matter of examining the facts surround scientific progress. Reporting of these things is extremely illuminating, surprising, sometimes even discouraging. But for anyone interested in real science in the real world, it's at least as necessary as all the other. The sole best work IMO examining this is Collins & Pinch's "The Golem". It's required reading in my 'history and system' and methodology classes.
"the influenza virus manages to dysregulate the immune system"
is very different from
"they also found a decreased response of toll-like receptors, which activate immune cell responses as a result of invading microbes."
The latter is not only an accurate accounting of the result, it doesn't overgeneralize the implications. The mechanism studied is only part of the highly complex immune system. The results do not suggest, as does the headline, that the entire immune system gets hosed.
What was discovered was vandalism -- an altered web page and deleted data. There's no evidence besides the vandals' word that anything was downloaded. The same source claims the backups were missing, and that they wanted ransom for return of the data. This is Rx tracking data, not financial or personal ID data.
If it had been personal data, and it'd been downloaded by real ID thieves, they would NOT have notified the world of the event immediately (in fact, while in progress) by defacing the site. They'd have wanted to get away clean and sell off the data if possible before the theft was noticed. And they'd have sold it rather than proving their stupidity by demanding ransom. If they couldn't sell it they'd trash it rather than risk getting caught.
The site collects data from Rx dispensing sites across the state. All the data exists elsewhere, making the claim of no backups irrelevant. This site simply puts in one place what's spread out and not commonly available, so other dispensing sites can know whether someone's getting too much controlled prescription meds. Everything that was deleted can be re-obtained from the same places it was gotten all along.
The incident is a HIPAA violation. The FBI investigates those as well as computer security issues, explaining their presence in light of the fact that no real damage was done. If it were an inside job, it wouldn't have been done because nothing of value was to be gained from that particular collection of data, and an insider would know that. From the inside there are far more valuable collections of data that could be had from that system, such as payment records for license fees of registered Virginia health professionals.
The presence of the FBI and the "neither confirm nor deny" response of Va DHP, and those facts being realted by WP, makes it seem like there's a story here. Not hardly.
They're hard to fire because the person(s) that would have do so are the person(s) who kept them on the job, and possibly even the ones that hired them. Firing the bad teacher on their own would mean having to recognize they'd fucked up. Someone further upstairs of from outside forcing them to do so would make that public knowledge.
humans can't possibly know when those species are dancing according to their own standards, or for that matter when they're doing something they'd consider to be other than dancing but fits the human criteria as a false positive.
The word "dance" is a human word, it means whatever humans want it to. Thus it doesn't matter what another species "thinks" - if we say they are dancing, then they are dancing.
Well the. It doesn't matter what you think. If I say something, that's what it is. Thus, I'm always right and you're always wrong. Did I get it right?
Actually, that's the sort of arrogant attitude that's been used throughout the centuries for one group to enforce its classification and thought systems on others, by marginalizing and dehumanizing them. I'm not saying you're that way, because I don't know you. But I recognize the attitude as an echo of the many things I've read with regards to warfare and colonization.
Sure, "dance" is a human word. Being a "word" it absolutely must be. That doesn't mean other species don't have a congruent concept.
Animism On the Dance Floor
on
Parrots Can Dance
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
On behalf of the rest of the animal world:
"only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs"
Including humans? They are animals you know.
The assertion is made due to tests designed and carried out by humans using criteria based on human standards. In species specific behavior, humans can't possibly know when those species are dancing according to their own standards, or for that matter when they're doing something they'd consider to be other than dancing but fits the human criteria as a false positive.
Another species might well classify most if not all of human dancing as pre-mating ritual, as do some humans. And why not both, escaping from species-specific standards? This would make mating ritual to be dance in thousands of species.
Of course, like many recent articles, they have to make YouTude into some sort of oracle with the material qualitatively different, in order to make it more relevant. It's not. It's just easier than collecting data on your own.
Who ever wrote the article should get canned. Same with everyone up the administrative chain that let it go out.
If what they said was true, and computers had more problems and errors when there was less network capacity available, the no computers could work at all unless they were connected to the net.
Proof otherwise is trivial and can be obtained by anyone reading this.
One can assume most generously that the author can't tell a computer from the net. Any other assumption makes them look worse. Still, the best is bad enough that they've sunk any reputation they had.
Left foot a half step in front, toes pointed towards target. Right foot a half step behind, toes at 90 degrees. Knees straight but not locked. Take aim. Breathe in, breathe out, stop breathing but don't hold your breath. Squeeze the trigger, don't pull it.
It's ridiculous to assume that if you're attacked using a certain weapon, that's the only weapon you can defend with. Just because there's not a great deal of collateral damage doesn't mean the intended damage wasn't done and wasn't serious. If say, the power grid was disabled, we're not going to care by what means, we're going to make sure the attacker is made unable to attack more.
If it hasn't happened yet, it will. I suspect it already has, but only among the organized crime groups associated with botnets and other malware.
Oh, and I'm kidding in the first paragraph. You can't fight cyber anything efficiently with a rifle. Efficient would be a cruise missile with a conventionally armed EMP device. Better still, on the horizon (!) is delivery of small payloads like an EMP device via rapid deployment suborbital launch platforms and stealth reentry bodies that appear as small meteors until low altitude when they veer horizontal towards the target, only second before detonation. Ultrasonic vehicles with scramjets are superbly suited for this.
It is not an OS update. It claims to be an integral part of the OS, but as the result of lawsuits, as well as the many available "stand alone" versions of previous "integral parts of the operating system", it has been proven that IE was written to make it appear to be so but in fact was not.
It's release via automatic update is not, as they claim, more convenient. It is more convenient to initiate your own download when you choose to that to have to start to download this fairly "required" software when abd because you're told to, then cancel or delay that download.
That process is the normal one for refusing an automatic update download. It is not, as the headline states (with an exclamation mark no less) an IE8 Blocker Toolkit.
Simply put, Microsoft is lying about these things. If they're lying about these, what else are they lying about? Anything?
Well, for one, they're faking the popularity of related searches/links on IEBlog. The "Tags" box lists related items with different sizes of fonts. Elsewhere these are usually generated by user searches, the larger the font, the more often requested. However, the links from these are hard coded to constant items which frequently have nothing to do with IE. Some of them contain a single line blurb such as a statement from an IE development team member saying they're going to tell you something, but haven't posted that promised nugget in months since their first statement.
Let's say I'm your car's mechanic. I've been been charging you for your car's muffler bearing. I keep telling you it's a necessary part of the motor, even though there are plenty of people driving around with no muffler bearing, but rather an entirely different and optional piece of equipment, like a Kentucky Gofaster (that's a raccoon tail on the radio antenna) that does the same thing better. But I'm also insisting that it's my muffler bearing, not yours, and you're only paying for my permission for you to use it. Now I tell you that for your convenience I'm going to put your car up on the rack, start to replace your muffler bearing with a new, chrome plated muffler bearing, which you can then choose not to have installed. What would you do? Nod your head and say "uuuuuuuh, yep, uh huh, put her on up there bub", or find a mechanic who doesn't lie to you and try to sell you a "required" piece of equipment that's not required?
But wait! There's more! With this new chrome plated muffler bearing you will only be able to have certain things done at my garage, unlike your old muffler bearing which allowed you to have anything done at my garage. Last I checked, there were parts of msn.com that wouldn't work with IE8.
NOW how much would you pay? Call in the next 15 minutes and we won't charge you anything, except you'll have to have our Genuine Advantage mechanic take a look at it monthly to make sure you haven't fiddled with it to make it look like you own it rather than it still being our property installed on your car. And if you don't call in the next 15 minutes, we'll call you and make the same offer again, because it's for your own good. We promise.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a good example of fMRI based brain research reaching an erroneous conclusion due to lack of understanding of what the data represents. The "activation" is increased O2/CO2 transfer, assumed to be increased metabolism due to the cells working harder. That's quite right. However, this is taken to mean those cells are processing information in that region -- that the work known to be done by that region is being done. That's definitely not necessarily true. Within any region there's both excitatory activity (that area is doing its job -- it's turned on) and inhibitory activity (that regions is turned off). The fMRI can't tell the difference, and the researchers fail to even consider that their results show the latter.
Support for this assertion is the statement that part of the brain was supposedly expected to go "dormant" during a certain task or processing procedure. No part of the brain becomes dormant. All neurons have a resting rate of firing. The cells that make up the processing power of the cortex (pyramidal neurons) fire on the order of 10 Hz when they're doing "nothing". That "nothing" represents business as usual while other regions increase or decrease in throughput. There's no such thing as dormant, the only reasonable conclusion being that we don't know what is being done.
They conclude that since a region lights up, that means it's actively processing its preferred task. Specifically they say that the executive network -- complex problem solving -- is operating. During the period of signal acquisition, the waiting just prior to the button press, the subject is waiting for the cue. They are focusing attention on the target. In such as state of preparation high level processing is inhibited (supported by a large body of physiological research going back to Pavlov), not as they conclude, recruited. But by working from their erroneous assumption that what lights up works hard, they miss the fact that their results show exactly what everyone else always has, that the region is being actively inhibited, and shows it by lighting up on their fMRI.
In fact most of the lighting up seen on fMRI is probably such inhibitory activity. Most of the brain is spontaneously active, probably processing things in case they're needed. When such things are needed -- when that region is recruited -- it doesn't necessarily increase or decrease in activity. Rather the firing of the cells within the networks recruited synchronize their firing. Overall the firing rate, and therfore neural metabolism, the basis of fMRI signal, doesn't change much, if at all. The inhibitory activity comes and goes to actively synchronize or desynchronize regions being recruited or inhibited.
I've done both EEG and fMRI work with very similar designs, and with other physiological measures done in parallel. I've seen pretty much what they show. However, we started from the well supported position that the brain is always working, but works harder to both produce results and inhibit results. Failure of the latter results in cognitive overload and confusing of not contradictory results, in the "bottleneck" processing model, and was intended to examine effortful (top down, executive controlled) disattention (inhibiting of processing within a region or else inhibiting of results from that region). In our model, "off" is go and "on" is either more go or less go. This was the conclusion fMRI, and its result processing, statistical probability mapping, was intended for. TFA comes from the 'christmas tree lights' viewpoint, based on the technology (the map) rather than the brain (the terrain), that "on" is go and "off" is stop. This assumption is at odds with both the actual meaning of the measurement as well as a century of physiology and neural processing.
Which absurdum shall we reducto it to?
It's Spanish air, which is to say the air in Spain. Except it's not, it's a couple cities. But it's just the part of those cities that have more of the stuff we're measuring. What's next, a particular apartment building? But really it's Carlos's flat. Mostly in the bedroom. Under the bed. Down by the foot of it. In that box there. No not that one, the other one, the one with the drugs in it. Yeah that's it, that's the air in Spain.
It's that air in those areas of those cities which is the Spanish air, and it has drugs in it. So the air in Europe is laced with drugs. Of course that means earth's atmosphere contains cocaine. In other words it's the solar system, meaning our galaxy, so it's the universe that has drugs in it. It's all the same, right?
So nice of them to be so honest about overgeneralizing. Right there in the headline and summary it says one thing except no, it says something else. Thankfully this takes all the pressure off the author when it comes to pesky details like accuracy and precision and stuff, and lets us get right to the business of it being important and all. That important thingy is what makes it important. Just as long as it's it's important, such as being Spanish air rather than some air samples from the drug areas of a couple large cities, that makes it newsworthy here on dot. And by that I mean slash. Or maybe some of each, it doesn't really matter. Oh, wait, there's more to it than that. It needs to have something more than important stuff to get posted. It should have some words. Doesn't matter which ones, because what it means can change from one sentence to the next in order to make it worth reading.
The following is fairly negative, but is posed honestly, not as flamebait, troll or other such nonsense.
It seems to be becoming a standard /. format to raise a topic, pose a question, and then proceed to discuss the issue and/or raise more questions as though the answer to the first was affirmative. The result is something that looks like it belongs in Ask Slashdot, and makes sense mostly if you read it while nodding vigorously. The real answers to the questions could often be found by doing some real research on the subject, but that doesn't happen as it would disrupt the chain of wishful thinking. The same could be said of locating information disproving the imaginary thesis, but that's even less likely to occur.
Space science encompasses pretty much anything that goes on over that magical 100 km altitude, even studying things up there from down here as well as technology associated with such work. $10M/year could fund your traditionally fine radio telescope program. It could as easily apply to using that hardware to support a space based radio-location (ie. GPS) program or even satellite relayed telecommunications. $10M/year might be able to get stretched to develop a sounding rocket if you scrimped by using something like Indonesia's sugar based solid fuel motors. It could also get swallowed whole easily maintaining your existing launch sites and related infrastructure. $40M would cover the initial training of a shuttle mission specialist but not the technical training for a specific mission. Many space related projects could be funded by the budgeted amount, except a "space program", taken to mean something like an Aussie spam-in-a-can riding into the black in an Aussie capsule on top an Aussie booster -- a home grown manned space flight program. Ain't gonna happen for that amount. That amount over 4 years might be able to fund the development of an administration and engineering group capable of doing something like that at some later date for a much greater amount. Given such an organization, that amount/time frame could go to make good progress on the proposed Ausroc LCLV, but almost certainly not enough to finish it.
Australia has a decent record of booster and payload/program development and execution without having burdened itself with a top heavy centralized administration. Sites have been operating quite well on an independent basis. For instance, Woomera has operated 15 pads and launched well over 500 missions in the past half century without a hint of need for an oversight agency. It's fairly inactive now but could wind back up if needed for the Ausroc or similar projects. Other sites have similar records, and the cumulative national record is impressive (see http://www.astronautix.com/country/ausralia.htm ). It ain't broke. Don't fix it. Have the sense not to replicate programs long since superseded elsewhere, such as early (ie. Mercury and Gemini) NASA, when one could obtain far more for the money via partnering with present day US or Russian programs. Sure, you could develop a manned program, or you could put that money to better use and get more out of it, as you have been all along.
And please do your homework so you can jump past the leading questions rhetoric and approach it from a position that lends to more fruitful discussion. If the quoted figures are your actual budget, then it was discussed and voted on. That means your own representative politicritter was at least peripherally involved, and an inquiry in their direction could well provide much more solid information (or at least proposed intentions) than the referenced vagaries and attached hypotheticals.
Finally, a piece of synchronicity. As I was writing this the following fortune/tagline was at the bottom of the page: "Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it."
Bring on the comments about how so-and-so knows somebody's grandma that was so affected by smell xyz that something bad happened. Big whoop. Unless it's literally chemicals that are affecting your health, or an airborne pathogen, you don't need medical attention.
How about comments from the spouse of a US Army master sergeant (26 years, now retired) who can describe olfactory assault agents that cause "nausea and vomiting" (per TFA) so severe that the the target is disabled for days to weeks? The gastrointestinal system continues to react to anything ingested with physically debilitating spasms for days, and the sphincter and peristalsis musculatures is strained to such a degree that they can't function properly for weeks. Unless they are allowed to heal by providing hydration and nourishment by other means (ie. IV, as intubation instigates the same reactions) the repeated reactions prevent recovery and the subject can die of dehydration or even starvation. Survival can easily require medical attention. Some test animals were so affected psychologically despite less than fatal physiological damage that they refused food and water and died. Human reactions of this severity are only hypothesized as testing was not done to this extent. Toxic chemicals and pathogens are not the only the only causes of conditions that can require medical attention. Some of these agents are nothing more than high concentrations of otherwise nontoxic compounds resulting from natural processes. Having been discovered/created, these agents were not weaponized because of the concentration requirement. It was estimated that more casualties would occur due to production and handling up through delivery (situations of high concentration) than by most battle situations (situations where dispersion would rapidly lower concentrations) resulting in more friendly fire hits than target neutralization. She declines to pass along the specifics, but her training manuals describe the effects vividly.
In short, you're wrong; medical attention can be necessary from exposure to nontoxic, nonpathogen agents.
"It is claimed that this ranking system promotes the made up phrases 'coopertition' and 'gracious professionalism.'"
The ranking system is an excellent piece of game theory. In fact it's worth a Nobel prize. Specifically John Nash's. The system is based on the subset of the Nash Equilibrium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium in which the players cooperate to maximize overall success. It was characterized in the 'nobody go for the blond' scene in "A Beautiful Mind". Despite suffering from schizophrenia, Nash managed to get across a novel concept that contradicted the basic tenets of economics without making up goofy names.
"...to let astronomers peer back to the beginning of the Cosmos."
I remember that. It had music by Vangelis and a Seyfert galaxy in the forward view screen.
No clue here as to production, but possibly in the references below. Anyone have access to these?
"A much denser state exists for deuterium, named D(-1). We call it ultra-dense deuterium. This is the inverse of D(1), and the bond distance is very small, equal to 2.3 pm. Its density is extremely large, >130 kg / cm3, if it can exist as a dense phase. Due to the short bond distance, D-D fusion is expected to take place easily in this material. See Ref. 179 below!"
183. S. Badiei, P. U. Andersson and L. Holmlid, "High-energy Coulomb explosions in ultra-dense deuterium: time-of-flight mass spectrometry with variable energy and flight length". Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 282 (2009) 70-76.
179. S. Badiei, P. U. Andersson and L. Holmlid, "Fusion reactions in high-density hydrogen: a fast route to small-scale fusion?" Int. J. Hydr. Energy 34 (2009) 487-495.
178. L. Holmlid, "Clusters HN+ (N = 4, 6, 12) from condensed atomic hydrogen and deuterium indicating close-packed structures in the desorbed phase at an active catalyst surface". Surf. Sci. 602 (2008) 3381â"3387.
176. S. Badiei and L. Holmlid, "Condensed atomic hydrogen as a possible target in inertial confinement fusion (ICF)". J. Fusion Energ. 27 (2008) 296â"300.
I don't see the necessity for brute force compression. H can be highly compressed while trapped in metal crystal lattice, such as in H saturated palladium. The individual energies are still high but due to being already in close proximity much of the squeezing has already been done. Such a lattice that can then be removed, dissolved, etc. might leave high density H droppings.
SGI doesn't need to be known as successful in order for the use of the name to be effective, it just has to be known to have a history. People are comfortable with continuity, assuming it means success and therefore reputability. Maintaining the old lines isn't even necessary. Just the name can serve the purpose.
AT&T has existed primarily as a brand name since the Ma Bell breakup of 1984. It gets slapped on top of the various mergers and partnerships involving SBC with more or less emphasis according to the project, to entice the partner into joining? to replace SBC's name on iffy projects? who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of the Bell Systems zombies.
Some Asian company apparently decided it needed such a brand recognition flag for its consumer electronics and began using the name DuMont. We had a DuMont TV. It was one of their last models. They never made it to the color era. I'm assuming they snatched the name because it's trademark had expired and never did a lot of research on the matter. Brand "recognition" would only apply to hobbyists and historians of early electronics and people well over 50 years old.
Hubris
Bastardization
Self-aggrandizement
How pathetically egocentric to think an artificial structure could replace a natural one.
While we're at it, let's slap a dome over the crater on Mount St. Helens and build a theme park under it. It can have 57 rides -- each named for one of the people killed when it blew up.
By the way, the comparison with Mt. Rushmore is misplaced. Those guys would probably have approved of the construction, particularly in regards with its location. The real travesty is carving up another mountain on sacred Lakota land to look like a famous Lakota warrior who died trying to keep out the invaders who wanted to dig holes all over the sacred land, and claiming that this earth moving project somehow "honored" him.
Look at the kinds of jobs people have gotten with a bachelors. If some of them have the kind of job you want, look at what it took them to get it. Do you have that? If not, look at the kinds of jobs people have gotten with a bachelors that you don't want. Are you willing to settle for that?
If you have a masters you can have the kind of job you wanted in the first group whether you have what they had or not. You can also repeat the process above for jobs people have gotten with a masters.
The items change but the names remain the same:
A representative of Sony Pictures wants us to use a Sony camcorder to film a piece of their movie on a Sony memory stick or tape, and transfer it to a blank Sony DVD using a Sony laptop for playback later through a Sony monitor or projector. Of course the reason is that they want the artists to get the money due them.
Of course the MPAA doesn't just represent Sony. All the players have or invest in companies that produce the recording and playback hardware and media.
Everyone who has conducted legitimate science, or expanded their medical knowledge, based on reading and/or referencing the fake journals, has been disserviced. The false information has been passed along and may continue since not all readers/users could ever be located. Science and medicine have been poisoned by this, and the damage can multiply. The publisher should print a final edition of each, containing only one article, saying that all previous work printed there is suspect at best. The problem could be somewhat mitigated if the editors of every other journal reviewed the articles they've printed to see if they contain references to those journals, and request the author(s) examine them for possible revision removing same. When the authors are no longer reachable the editors should do it.
This, like the 2005 announcement that the US would resume Pu production at a cost of XXX millions or billions, is an attempt to pack the pork barrel by begging for money under false pretense. Pu production is unnecessary. Per the 2002 SORT treaty the US is reducing its stock of strategic warheads by over 2000 devices between 2004 and 2012, about half being dismantled. The weapons grade Pu in them is a different ratio of isotopes than reactor grade. Still, 1000 warheads worth would yield a large stockpile of Pu for space probe power production. The dismantling is already planned and funded, so no additional start-up funds are needed.
This seems to be describing the Alcubierre drive. The Wikipedia article is much, much better than the crappy article linked to from the slashdot summary.
It is the Alcubierre drive. Another good summary is from Analog, November 1996: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw81.html
"Recent trials with newer, long-acting forms of injectable testosterone, which can be administered every 8 weeks, combined with progestogens, administered either orally or by long-acting implant, have yielded promising results and may soon result in the marketing of a safe, reversible, and effective hormonal contraceptive for men."
Male hormonal contraceptives: current status and future prospects. Amory JK. Department of Medicine, Center for Research in Reproduction and Contraception, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. Treat Endocrinol. 2005;4(6):333-41.
That's 4 years old, probably 5 given writing time. And it's a review article, meaning everything it talked about is older yet. So what's the news? Male contraceptive? No. Testosterone based? No. "In the works"? No. About all that's left is "The Chinese managed to replicate 5+ year old research." Getting slapped up on /. I can understand, but BBC should be ashamed. It took me all of 5 minutes to find this on PubMed, which is open access, so they could have too.
Most "classic" books are theoretical and sometimes philosophical in nature (insert plug for Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" here). How science is actually conducted, and how what's reported differs from what happens, is a matter of examining the facts surround scientific progress. Reporting of these things is extremely illuminating, surprising, sometimes even discouraging. But for anyone interested in real science in the real world, it's at least as necessary as all the other. The sole best work IMO examining this is Collins & Pinch's "The Golem". It's required reading in my 'history and system' and methodology classes.
"the influenza virus manages to dysregulate the immune system"
is very different from
"they also found a decreased response of toll-like receptors, which activate immune cell responses as a result of invading microbes."
The latter is not only an accurate accounting of the result, it doesn't overgeneralize the implications. The mechanism studied is only part of the highly complex immune system. The results do not suggest, as does the headline, that the entire immune system gets hosed.
"replaced the homepage with a ransom demand."
What was discovered was vandalism -- an altered web page and deleted data. There's no evidence besides the vandals' word that anything was downloaded. The same source claims the backups were missing, and that they wanted ransom for return of the data. This is Rx tracking data, not financial or personal ID data.
If it had been personal data, and it'd been downloaded by real ID thieves, they would NOT have notified the world of the event immediately (in fact, while in progress) by defacing the site. They'd have wanted to get away clean and sell off the data if possible before the theft was noticed. And they'd have sold it rather than proving their stupidity by demanding ransom. If they couldn't sell it they'd trash it rather than risk getting caught.
The site collects data from Rx dispensing sites across the state. All the data exists elsewhere, making the claim of no backups irrelevant. This site simply puts in one place what's spread out and not commonly available, so other dispensing sites can know whether someone's getting too much controlled prescription meds. Everything that was deleted can be re-obtained from the same places it was gotten all along.
The incident is a HIPAA violation. The FBI investigates those as well as computer security issues, explaining their presence in light of the fact that no real damage was done. If it were an inside job, it wouldn't have been done because nothing of value was to be gained from that particular collection of data, and an insider would know that. From the inside there are far more valuable collections of data that could be had from that system, such as payment records for license fees of registered Virginia health professionals.
The presence of the FBI and the "neither confirm nor deny" response of Va DHP, and those facts being realted by WP, makes it seem like there's a story here. Not hardly.
They're hard to fire because the person(s) that would have do so are the person(s) who kept them on the job, and possibly even the ones that hired them. Firing the bad teacher on their own would mean having to recognize they'd fucked up. Someone further upstairs of from outside forcing them to do so would make that public knowledge.
humans can't possibly know when those species are dancing according to their own standards, or for that matter when they're doing something they'd consider to be other than dancing but fits the human criteria as a false positive.
The word "dance" is a human word, it means whatever humans want it to. Thus it doesn't matter what another species "thinks" - if we say they are dancing, then they are dancing.
Well the. It doesn't matter what you think. If I say something, that's what it is. Thus, I'm always right and you're always wrong. Did I get it right?
Actually, that's the sort of arrogant attitude that's been used throughout the centuries for one group to enforce its classification and thought systems on others, by marginalizing and dehumanizing them. I'm not saying you're that way, because I don't know you. But I recognize the attitude as an echo of the many things I've read with regards to warfare and colonization.
Sure, "dance" is a human word. Being a "word" it absolutely must be. That doesn't mean other species don't have a congruent concept.
On behalf of the rest of the animal world:
"only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs"
Including humans? They are animals you know.
The assertion is made due to tests designed and carried out by humans using criteria based on human standards. In species specific behavior, humans can't possibly know when those species are dancing according to their own standards, or for that matter when they're doing something they'd consider to be other than dancing but fits the human criteria as a false positive.
Another species might well classify most if not all of human dancing as pre-mating ritual, as do some humans. And why not both, escaping from species-specific standards? This would make mating ritual to be dance in thousands of species.
Of course, like many recent articles, they have to make YouTude into some sort of oracle with the material qualitatively different, in order to make it more relevant. It's not. It's just easier than collecting data on your own.
Who ever wrote the article should get canned. Same with everyone up the administrative chain that let it go out.
If what they said was true, and computers had more problems and errors when there was less network capacity available, the no computers could work at all unless they were connected to the net.
Proof otherwise is trivial and can be obtained by anyone reading this.
One can assume most generously that the author can't tell a computer from the net. Any other assumption makes them look worse. Still, the best is bad enough that they've sunk any reputation they had.
"some dinosaurs survived the extinction event(s)"
If some dinosaurs hadn't survived it/them, we wouldn't have birds.
Left foot a half step in front, toes pointed towards target. Right foot a half step behind, toes at 90 degrees. Knees straight but not locked. Take aim. Breathe in, breathe out, stop breathing but don't hold your breath. Squeeze the trigger, don't pull it.
It's ridiculous to assume that if you're attacked using a certain weapon, that's the only weapon you can defend with. Just because there's not a great deal of collateral damage doesn't mean the intended damage wasn't done and wasn't serious. If say, the power grid was disabled, we're not going to care by what means, we're going to make sure the attacker is made unable to attack more.
If it hasn't happened yet, it will. I suspect it already has, but only among the organized crime groups associated with botnets and other malware.
Oh, and I'm kidding in the first paragraph. You can't fight cyber anything efficiently with a rifle. Efficient would be a cruise missile with a conventionally armed EMP device. Better still, on the horizon (!) is delivery of small payloads like an EMP device via rapid deployment suborbital launch platforms and stealth reentry bodies that appear as small meteors until low altitude when they veer horizontal towards the target, only second before detonation. Ultrasonic vehicles with scramjets are superbly suited for this.
It is not critical.
It is not an OS update. It claims to be an integral part of the OS, but as the result of lawsuits, as well as the many available "stand alone" versions of previous "integral parts of the operating system", it has been proven that IE was written to make it appear to be so but in fact was not.
It's release via automatic update is not, as they claim, more convenient. It is more convenient to initiate your own download when you choose to that to have to start to download this fairly "required" software when abd because you're told to, then cancel or delay that download.
That process is the normal one for refusing an automatic update download. It is not, as the headline states (with an exclamation mark no less) an IE8 Blocker Toolkit.
Simply put, Microsoft is lying about these things. If they're lying about these, what else are they lying about? Anything?
Well, for one, they're faking the popularity of related searches/links on IEBlog. The "Tags" box lists related items with different sizes of fonts. Elsewhere these are usually generated by user searches, the larger the font, the more often requested. However, the links from these are hard coded to constant items which frequently have nothing to do with IE. Some of them contain a single line blurb such as a statement from an IE development team member saying they're going to tell you something, but haven't posted that promised nugget in months since their first statement.
Let's say I'm your car's mechanic. I've been been charging you for your car's muffler bearing. I keep telling you it's a necessary part of the motor, even though there are plenty of people driving around with no muffler bearing, but rather an entirely different and optional piece of equipment, like a Kentucky Gofaster (that's a raccoon tail on the radio antenna) that does the same thing better. But I'm also insisting that it's my muffler bearing, not yours, and you're only paying for my permission for you to use it. Now I tell you that for your convenience I'm going to put your car up on the rack, start to replace your muffler bearing with a new, chrome plated muffler bearing, which you can then choose not to have installed. What would you do? Nod your head and say "uuuuuuuh, yep, uh huh, put her on up there bub", or find a mechanic who doesn't lie to you and try to sell you a "required" piece of equipment that's not required?
But wait! There's more! With this new chrome plated muffler bearing you will only be able to have certain things done at my garage, unlike your old muffler bearing which allowed you to have anything done at my garage. Last I checked, there were parts of msn.com that wouldn't work with IE8.
NOW how much would you pay? Call in the next 15 minutes and we won't charge you anything, except you'll have to have our Genuine Advantage mechanic take a look at it monthly to make sure you haven't fiddled with it to make it look like you own it rather than it still being our property installed on your car. And if you don't call in the next 15 minutes, we'll call you and make the same offer again, because it's for your own good. We promise.