don't click the link. i was fooled. the posting and comments above are sophisticated hacks to get you to click the link and be rickrolled. the tactic recently attempted here: http://bit.ly/3Xdrd
There is a problem with silicon-based life. Silicon is not as nearly versatile chemically as carbon is. It is highly doubtful silicon can sustain any meaningful biochemistry -at least, not by itself
These statements are all true... on Earth. Plenty of reactive silanes are possible. All known biochemistry is based on carbon, so of course silicon is not going to catalyze many biochemical reactions. But carbon-based reactions do not go so efficiently in the cold... Iron chemistries might have gone wild on Mars. Why not metal-based life (lots of metals form strong alloys)?
Carbon itself is highly unreactive. This is why pencils and diamond rings are allowed on airplanes. It needs bonded groups such as amines, hydroxyls, thiols, etc. to get any meaningful work done. Carbon is just the backbone.
We simply haven't tried every possible chemical reaction in all possible environmental conditions to know which reactions might be "spontaneous" on other planets. We can sure try and guess. However, chemists are surprised every day by reaction kinetics, behaviors, and mechanisms here on Earth. We still don't understand chemistry that well. So why do we need to stifle ideas of how things might evolve on other planets with vastly different experimental conditions?
We should be looking closer at Venus instead... it's nearby, lots of strong chemicals and lots of heat make for an intriguing place for reactions to take place. Moving far away from the Sun is misguided if we're looking for interesting chemistry...
Precisely. So there's little to no chance of finding anything on the *surface* of Titan, which is the only place we have a remote capability to look.
We would need deep sea autonomous vehicles or autonomous digging machines, none of which are within NASA's budget (because we've never built them successfully here on Earth). We've never looked near Earth's core for life either.
It's too cold where we're looking, and we don't have the capabilities to look deeper into the crust.
Moreover, we only ever look for "Earth-like" life elsewhere (read: carbon-based, organic), and have no capacity or machinery to discover or identify non-carbon-based life (silicon, or iron-based), whether it be on the surface or below.
It's a heavily flawed search, which is why it amazes me that we give them money to do it.
No... there couldn't. solar radiation was probably important for creating life as we know it, providing that critical energy input to build the first organic molecules. Titan is tooooo far away to get much radiation. Life could evolve there, but if it were a random event it would be MUCH slower than here on earth because it is so much colder over there. So we might have to wait a few more billion years.
And so by that rationale, we should be looking for remnants or indications of life on venus and mercury... or at least some interesting new molecular compounds.
I was amazed by J. Mervis's News of the Week story "U.S. output flattens, and NSF wonders why" (3 August, p. 582). Not by the conclusion that U.S. science productivity is flattening out, but because apparently nobody interviewed by the NSF could identify the reason. Had the question been posed of almost any working scientist I know, the simple and accurate answer would have been that the number of papers that are written is diminishing because scientists are able to spend less time writing papers! Instead, we spend ever-more time on the increasingly burdensome administrative requirements of conducting science legally, and on writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting grant applications as the NIH's pay line drops to catastrophically low levels. As the number of hours in a day is finite and unchanging, something has to give. If I didn't have to spend the rest of this month ignoring various half-complete manuscripts and rewriting a grant application, I'd be able to explain in more detail. John P. Moore Department of Microbiology and Immunology Weill Medical College Cornell University New York, NY 10065, USA
With Android completely open source, and likely to get a whole mess of developers (i.e. everyone), it would be in Apple's best interest to have an Android-compatible runtime on iPhone. If Apple doesn't do it themselves, hopefully the iPhone SDK will be open-enough that others can build it into the iPhone if Steve doesn't do it himself.
This would be a great opportunity for Steve Jobs to showcase the power of Mac OS X and objective-C by making hooks into the iPhone OS that Android applications can use seamlessly, or near seamlessly. Imagine a "Fat" or, to use the parlance of our times, "Universal" application that will run on both Android and iPhone. Sweet.
And here I thought seagate just released a hard drive that can run on electricity OR gasoline.
Just *think* of the marketing: "Seagate's new 6 cylinder 4 platter 240 hp* 500 GB drive runs just 25 Gbpg (gigabits per gallon)** and goes 0->5400 in 3.85 seconds"
*1 horsepower = the counting power of 1 horse brain
**1 gigabit = 1 billion bits.
Well, they were explaining it with a pumping system, so I do not think it would progressively puncture the skin and then be removed (as this would REALLY cause an immune response... repeated high friction and slicing and dicing of the cells in the way), and it would be difficult to also include a high precision alignment system (you would not want the needles going in at an angle because then they might not ever reach their target depth) for repeated punctures. The size of the needles would be such that it would be really hard to sense the puncture... think of a mosquito, which usually goes undetected by the host. What they are proposing is actually a few hundred to a thousand mosquito-sized needles, so hopefully they would not hurt when puncturing.
Interesting question, but gold is 100% biocompatible, and will NOT ever be rejected by the body. Unlike silver, there have never been reports of gold eliciting an immune response (which is why gold teeth were so common a few hundred years ago, and gold continues to be used for dental applications). There are gold nanoparticles that you can drink as a cocktail that are supposed to promote your health, and also don't forget excellent drinks like Goldschlager: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschläger
or decorative, edible gold leaf that decorates meals at expensive restaurants: http://itotd.com/articles/477/edible-gold/
So, in short, gold will not ever cause an immune response. Depending on the size of the nanoparticles, it will be cleared by the liver and kidneys over time, and excreted.
The main problem (most of the physical fabrication issues have been overcome) is that almost any material used to fabricate the needles will quickly be recognized by the immune system, which will not only attempt to push the needles out but will also form a "fibrotic capsule" around the needles, preventing them from dispensing drug. How does HP intend to get around these problems? Smoke and Mirrors! This is the grand challenge of transdermal drug delivery, and it doesn't look like HP has gotten much further at all.
Additionally, I don't know about the (rest of the) heathens out there, but I wouldn't want needles permanently implanted in my arm, leaving my insides exposed to the outsides (and how do they plan to control backflow [i.e. bleeding] or prevent blood clots from blocking the needles, by the way??).
A much more promising approach for transdermal drug delivery is actually ballistic injection of (gold) (micro or nano) particles through the skin that are decorated with the drug of interest. This is reminiscent of Star Trek because it's an old idea that is based on some solid science. It might even be possible to use this for ballistic injection of DNA for vaccines, without having any of the drawbacks as described above for microneedles. Ask Dr. Google or see: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/7218/19491/00900385.pdf
and even better:
http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v5/n12/full/nri1728.html
You also have to keep in mind that the skin MUST be properly disinfected before either microneedles are implanted or ballistic injection is performed, otherwise you may introduce bacteria or other nasties into you deeper dermal layers (does anyone remember flesh eating bacteria?).
anyone running the OpenSSH daemon can change their sshd_config file (if they haven't done already) to include the following: PermitRootLogin no This will make the same changes you described.
This is true. Unfortunately, the users we are worrying about here do not know what a "daemon" is, much less where its configuration file resides or how to edit it properly.
...lots of people have a blank password. I've seen it countless times in a windows environment.
Let's say user A has a blank password, and runs as root. Said user also turns on SSH. Say hello to remote access for anyone who knows your IP, and goodbye to your computer (unless he simply installs a trojan as root... what fun!).
Interestingly, OS X allows you to enable and disable the ability to login as root as needed. Logging in as root by default is disabled (though commands can obviously be run as root with su).
Slashdot Mirror
Here's an official video overview from University of Pennsylvania: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VHFlwJQIkE
don't click the link. i was fooled. the posting and comments above are sophisticated hacks to get you to click the link and be rickrolled. the tactic recently attempted here: http://bit.ly/3Xdrd
These statements are all true... on Earth. Plenty of reactive silanes are possible. All known biochemistry is based on carbon, so of course silicon is not going to catalyze many biochemical reactions. But carbon-based reactions do not go so efficiently in the cold... Iron chemistries might have gone wild on Mars. Why not metal-based life (lots of metals form strong alloys)?
Carbon itself is highly unreactive. This is why pencils and diamond rings are allowed on airplanes. It needs bonded groups such as amines, hydroxyls, thiols, etc. to get any meaningful work done. Carbon is just the backbone.
We simply haven't tried every possible chemical reaction in all possible environmental conditions to know which reactions might be "spontaneous" on other planets. We can sure try and guess. However, chemists are surprised every day by reaction kinetics, behaviors, and mechanisms here on Earth. We still don't understand chemistry that well. So why do we need to stifle ideas of how things might evolve on other planets with vastly different experimental conditions?
We should be looking closer at Venus instead... it's nearby, lots of strong chemicals and lots of heat make for an intriguing place for reactions to take place. Moving far away from the Sun is misguided if we're looking for interesting chemistry...
Precisely. So there's little to no chance of finding anything on the *surface* of Titan, which is the only place we have a remote capability to look.
We would need deep sea autonomous vehicles or autonomous digging machines, none of which are within NASA's budget (because we've never built them successfully here on Earth). We've never looked near Earth's core for life either.
It's too cold where we're looking, and we don't have the capabilities to look deeper into the crust.
Moreover, we only ever look for "Earth-like" life elsewhere (read: carbon-based, organic), and have no capacity or machinery to discover or identify non-carbon-based life (silicon, or iron-based), whether it be on the surface or below.
It's a heavily flawed search, which is why it amazes me that we give them money to do it.
No... there couldn't. solar radiation was probably important for creating life as we know it, providing that critical energy input to build the first organic molecules. Titan is tooooo far away to get much radiation. Life could evolve there, but if it were a random event it would be MUCH slower than here on earth because it is so much colder over there. So we might have to wait a few more billion years.
And so by that rationale, we should be looking for remnants or indications of life on venus and mercury... or at least some interesting new molecular compounds.
... and SLACware is back!
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/318/5852/913b
Speaking Out About U.S. Science Output
I was amazed by J. Mervis's News of the Week story "U.S. output flattens, and NSF wonders why" (3 August, p. 582). Not by the conclusion that U.S. science productivity is flattening out, but because apparently nobody interviewed by the NSF could identify the reason. Had the question been posed of almost any working scientist I know, the simple and accurate answer would have been that the number of papers that are written is diminishing because scientists are able to spend less time writing papers! Instead, we spend ever-more time on the increasingly burdensome administrative requirements of conducting science legally, and on writing, rewriting, and re-rewriting grant applications as the NIH's pay line drops to catastrophically low levels. As the number of hours in a day is finite and unchanging, something has to give. If I didn't have to spend the rest of this month ignoring various half-complete manuscripts and rewriting a grant application, I'd be able to explain in more detail.
John P. Moore
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Weill Medical College
Cornell University
New York, NY 10065, USA
$10 says the army unwittingly installs Windows on these new macs... ...
With Android completely open source, and likely to get a whole mess of developers (i.e. everyone), it would be in Apple's best interest to have an Android-compatible runtime on iPhone. If Apple doesn't do it themselves, hopefully the iPhone SDK will be open-enough that others can build it into the iPhone if Steve doesn't do it himself.
This would be a great opportunity for Steve Jobs to showcase the power of Mac OS X and objective-C by making hooks into the iPhone OS that Android applications can use seamlessly, or near seamlessly. Imagine a "Fat" or, to use the parlance of our times, "Universal" application that will run on both Android and iPhone. Sweet.
LOL... some hybrid. sheesh.
And here I thought seagate just released a hard drive that can run on electricity OR gasoline.
Just *think* of the marketing: "Seagate's new 6 cylinder 4 platter 240 hp* 500 GB drive runs just 25 Gbpg (gigabits per gallon)** and goes 0->5400 in 3.85 seconds"
*1 horsepower = the counting power of 1 horse brain **1 gigabit = 1 billion bits.
Well, they were explaining it with a pumping system, so I do not think it would progressively puncture the skin and then be removed (as this would REALLY cause an immune response... repeated high friction and slicing and dicing of the cells in the way), and it would be difficult to also include a high precision alignment system (you would not want the needles going in at an angle because then they might not ever reach their target depth) for repeated punctures. The size of the needles would be such that it would be really hard to sense the puncture... think of a mosquito, which usually goes undetected by the host. What they are proposing is actually a few hundred to a thousand mosquito-sized needles, so hopefully they would not hurt when puncturing.
Interesting question, but gold is 100% biocompatible, and will NOT ever be rejected by the body. Unlike silver, there have never been reports of gold eliciting an immune response (which is why gold teeth were so common a few hundred years ago, and gold continues to be used for dental applications). There are gold nanoparticles that you can drink as a cocktail that are supposed to promote your health, and also don't forget excellent drinks like Goldschlager:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldschläger
or decorative, edible gold leaf that decorates meals at expensive restaurants:
http://itotd.com/articles/477/edible-gold/
So, in short, gold will not ever cause an immune response. Depending on the size of the nanoparticles, it will be cleared by the liver and kidneys over time, and excreted.
Transdermal drug delivery has been around for ages, as well as microfabricated needles. For a recent state-of-the-art, see:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/100/24/13755
The main problem (most of the physical fabrication issues have been overcome) is that almost any material used to fabricate the needles will quickly be recognized by the immune system, which will not only attempt to push the needles out but will also form a "fibrotic capsule" around the needles, preventing them from dispensing drug. How does HP intend to get around these problems? Smoke and Mirrors! This is the grand challenge of transdermal drug delivery, and it doesn't look like HP has gotten much further at all.
Additionally, I don't know about the (rest of the) heathens out there, but I wouldn't want needles permanently implanted in my arm, leaving my insides exposed to the outsides (and how do they plan to control backflow [i.e. bleeding] or prevent blood clots from blocking the needles, by the way??).
A much more promising approach for transdermal drug delivery is actually ballistic injection of (gold) (micro or nano) particles through the skin that are decorated with the drug of interest. This is reminiscent of Star Trek because it's an old idea that is based on some solid science. It might even be possible to use this for ballistic injection of DNA for vaccines, without having any of the drawbacks as described above for microneedles. Ask Dr. Google or see:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/7218/19491/00900385.pdf
and even better:
http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v5/n12/full/nri1728.html
You also have to keep in mind that the skin MUST be properly disinfected before either microneedles are implanted or ballistic injection is performed, otherwise you may introduce bacteria or other nasties into you deeper dermal layers (does anyone remember flesh eating bacteria?).
you can download the whole thing as .mp3 where it has an iPod icon.
what's next in this sequence: mini, nano, ...
I can't wait for iPod Pico and iPod Femto.
Marketing: "Infinitely Small"
EXCELLENT...
Anyone wanna bet Google will implement its own *better* version of AOL's SmarterChild?
Even better...
When will this guy start in on Google's version?
anyone running the OpenSSH daemon can change their sshd_config file (if they haven't done already) to include the following: PermitRootLogin no This will make the same changes you described.
This is true. Unfortunately, the users we are worrying about here do not know what a "daemon" is, much less where its configuration file resides or how to edit it properly.
...lots of people have a blank password. I've seen it countless times in a windows environment.
Let's say user A has a blank password, and runs as root. Said user also turns on SSH. Say hello to remote access for anyone who knows your IP, and goodbye to your computer (unless he simply installs a trojan as root... what fun!).
Interestingly, OS X allows you to enable and disable the ability to login as root as needed. Logging in as root by default is disabled (though commands can obviously be run as root with su).
... for automatic networking, now we have Bonjour. What the hell?
Quoth Phil Schiller, Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing:
"It's so easy to use, we don't even know what to call it."
Why not send him on the first expedition to observe a black hole. If he bounces back, he was right.