When a company is playing the 'you didn't buy, you leased' shell game, that strikes me as an ideal place for open-source alternatives to step up to the plate. I'm aware of some that are under development, but when I was looking for a CAD program a few months ago I wasn't able to find one that was out of the development stages (and ended up using AutoCAD in another research group's lab). Does anyone know of a good open-source CAD program with GUI that's working now?
The unstated assumption in many posts (including this one) seems to be that simply by knowing science, a person can effectively teach it.
I take issue with this claim based on numerous and diverse observations, three of which I'll post today (then proceed to the coffee pot) - the presentations I've seen in my research group meetings (grad students, and I'll point out that grad students have more education than those with a BS, damaging the notion that more education in science = more ability to teach it) - the complaints of TA quality, and that complaining about courses taught by new faculty is nearly a pastime amongst undergraduates) - observing the transitional difficulties of grad students involved in the NSF GK-12 program (where grad students in STEM fields work alongside teachers to increase the teachers content knowledge - and I'll point out that unlike the previous examples, here the grad students have been given some education in how to teach, along with having a teacher working alongside them to swap expertise with)
The first year a teacher works with a curriculum, it's often all they can do to keep up; from experience, thorough knowledge of the subject mitigates this to some degree, but there's still lots of the 'they're not getting this' moments, and lacking experience, the science-BS teacher is still unable to 'monitor and adjust'. In year 2, the teacher typically overcompensates trying to correct their errors from the previous year, and while the course goes more smoothly, it's not what you would define as 'good' yet. In the third and fourth years, the teacher is comfortable with the material, and things start to go well (if you have someone skilled in the act of teaching and knowledgeable in the science content) - BUT, we're now at the end of this science-BS teacher's term. Time to start over again.
I certainly like the idea of a obtaining a debt-free BS and a guaranteed job after college, but without some form of training in the pedagogy of teaching (and a lengthier contract) I seriously doubt we'd see any gain in science learning among the students. It's thinking in the right direction, but the unchallenged assumption that 'if they know science, they can teach it' is toxic in this plan.
Yeah, I know that's the typical current usage - I'm thinking more about the future. It's good for both sides of the connection to authenticate in some way, and the current 'good' (I'm not arguing it's the best) way of doing that is for me to authenticate with something I know that's pre-provided to the server (password). The site authenticates to me with something I've preselected that it has - the security is in both sides having a preset choice from a large set, so it's unlikely that someone else can represent themselves as the 'true' site to me (being outside the loop, with too large a selection set for random chance to be very effective - though again, I'm not planning to debate the validity of the assumption-of-unlikeliness). I was visualizing some small number of objects being displayed to me by my site, one of which I pre-supplied (like handwriting, etc.), the others of which were distractors (to borrow from multiple choice exam terminology) - I identify the one that I supplied, making the image into a 2-way identification (with the advantage of effectively increasing my password by one value with n options). Though, now that I'm thinking about it, this is probably only a useful idea if the website doesn't insist on using its own image bank exclusively (i.e. I don't upload anything) - otherwise, I'm giving the interceptor site a better chance of randomly showing a 'card' that matches my preselection. Plus, the 'password-length' bonus is negated if there's an obvious quality/image type difference between my selection and the distractors - the different one is (obviously?) mine.
Ah, well. That's my idea more explicitly, since I've had 2 replies about it so far.
It's a bad call if it's the only authentication entry, but if it's in addition to something else it might be good. Many banks seem to be going for the 'something you know, and something you recognize' auth motif (banking as one example, where you recognize and identify a preselected word or graphic.) Maybe soon for really secure accounts, we'll have a fairly painless set of layers, ala: something you have - the random PIN cards, something you know - pword, something you i.d. - (handwriting/picture/word)?
Well, the engagement was supposed to be an amusing portion of the anecdote. There's humor in the image of two people arguing over backstage lighting - Shakespeare would have laid it out better than me, but I suppose that's why I'm a chemist.
The point (albeit not well laid out - I shot for some brevity and got incoherence o' plenty instead) was that I felt vindicated - I had predicted a level of overspecialization in a number of different fields that seemed ridiculous 7 years ago. Now, here's a more modern example that supports my viewpoint. MS has such a level of overspecialization that really smart guys are focusing on a level of minutiae (and lighting the backstage is concerned minutiae among my theatrical friends) such that they're not providing a consistent and integrated experience. They see the trees, not the forest. In the conversation I was describing, she took the viewpoint that no one would ever distance themselves so far from practicality, while I said that organizations typically allow the originally productive tendency to encourage specialization overstep its utility. And I think this is exactly what we're seeing in the development of Vista - they worried so much about 'lighting the backstage' that they forgot that the audience doesn't even see it, and that it gave marginal boost to the productivity of the 'cast'.
That'll teach me to write an anecdote to support an abstracted analogy before my requisite pot of coffee. Ah, well - screw the karma. I was amused, and if people won't enjoy my joke alongside me, well, it's never stopped me before!
Years back, I had a girlfriend who was studying theater (yes, there's a point coming...) At the time, she was taking a class people around the department mysteriously called BSL. One day, I was hanging out in the green room, talking to some mutual friends about how the sciences have become so specialized that subdisciplines are often unaware of advances in other subdisciplines. She came in part way through the conversation, and out of no where, I brought up BSL (which somewhere along the way I had decided was Back Stage Lighting) as an example of how extreme specialization within a field can eventually lead to its paralysis unless it has some critical mass of generalists. She finally started jumping up and down, yelling at me, dismissing the whole argument because BSL actually meant Basic Stage Lighting. I stood by my cautionary tale though - eventually (unless the case is actively prevented) I suspect that in the world of Theater Architecture there will be a guy who is renowned in his field as an extraordinary designer of lighting systems for the stage wings, prop areas, etc.
She got so mad when I brought up this prediction from that day forward that I think it contributed to the cancellation of the wedding. Still, it turns out I was right. Microsoft has their own BSL department, working on Sound Dialogs and Shut Down Option Menus. (Feels good that BSL is once again something more than a private joke!)
Great site - on a slight tangent (still phone spammers, just not recruiters) the worst offender they have listed is a 'think of the children' group trying to raise money to effect televosion and movies. They have a straw-man poll set up at http://www.dove.org/opinionpoll_takeit.asp intended to show all of society as pining for a family values movement to save us. If you want to increase the sample size they're exposed to, visit the link and add yourself - just don't use a real number (or probably, an email address you care about!)
I'll bite with a semi-redundant reply... The key difference between the two (for me) is Google. When I need to find a good $free windows program, I do a search, get a few reviews, and decide what I want. When I'm in the Synaptic (I think that's the name...) program, I'm faced with the 'what the hell does that one do' issue - there's no information about the program. When I shop for a book, I'd like to be able to look at the dust jacket teaser ALONG with the title, because in the end titles (and program names) like to be clever (for example, GIMP - if you're a neophyte, you tell ME what that one does!)
I may be wrong - there might be more info available inside Synaptic, but I've never seen it. This is one reason I just haven't bothered spending any time inside my laptop's linux installation. I still need to learn it (for personal and professional reasons), but I have other things I need to do. I've got to learn Spanish in the next year, prepare courses I'll be teaching in 4 weeks, write and defend my thesis, etc. - life's too short.
I suppose one could reply that I can still have Synaptic open alongside Firefox/google, and that's true. But we're basically right back where we started, but with the extra 'find the name I'm looking for in the list' step. Ah, well - no easy answers.
In the science education disciplines, they are called 'student OPINION surveys" by anyone who has studied them - specifically because they indicate only how good of an opinion the student has of the instructor. This has been shown to be influenced by many factors, most of which actually supersede 'value added to learning'. If you think the Sci Ed folks are simply being apologists, consider a parallel example: medicine. Malpractice claim rates for doctors who spend more time with their patients drop drastically. This is independent of how good a doctor is (as measured by various criteria - survivability, actual mishaps, etc.) Simply by being perceived as more personable and interested in the patient, the patient assumes skill and evaluates them accordingly. This occurs frequently in education as well - teachers who are personable and easy are scored far better than teachers who challenge their students and make them think. Slashdotters may have a higher proportion of folks who like their education to be thorough, but the wider population chooses Easy, especially when they won't be judged for the choice (i.e. anonymous surveys) or when they aren't asked for a truly reflective consideration of the class (again, anonymous surveys as typically written). That said, I'm currently in a teaching fellowship that puts Ph.D. STEM (Sci Tech Eng Math) students into K-12 classrooms, and in my 3 years I've frequently seen the principal drop by. I've been in a wide cross-section of urban schools in Pittsburgh, some high performing, and some which were closed due (in part) to systemic issues. One thing I've never run into is a teacher who didn't care (though some were quite poor science teachers) and didn't put in a lot of time. Teaching efficacy is far more difficult to accurately track than most folks think (and much harder to MEANINGFULLY quantitate) than most new STEM folks anticipate naively (myself included!)
People love the idea of tying teacher pay to efficacy, but this idea is not new and has failed every time. I'm a scientist first, so rather than doing a bunch of hand-waving, here's a few quick e-citations: "History of Teacher Pay and Incentive Reforms" Protsik, Jean http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/s ervlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED452600 "Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem: Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive" Murnane, Richard J., Cohen, David K. http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/s ervlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED380894 There are plenty of peer-reviewed examples out there, too, but I'm short on time (after writing all of this) and I'll leave it to those interested to track them down. In short, the literature says merit pay is neither a new idea nor an effective one, based on its attempted implementations worldwide from 1710 to date. There are ideas on how it might be made to work, and reasons given when each of the many attempts failed, but in the end the controversy centers around this: how can teaching/learning be meaningfully measured and attributed to individual teachers? If you can solve this question, you've got an excellent career in politics ahead, and I invite you to fix the Middle East while you're at it.
This part week, Spider-Man turned from being a good guy to a bad guy, the Green Goblin turned from a bad guy to a good guy, and Sandman turned from a hardened criminal to a crybaby asking for forgiveness.
Just because MS went from bad guy to good guy in this story does not mean you too will make 10 trillion dollars.
"how exactly would this involuntary servitude have any bearing on affirming or defending our rights?" - Your Comment
"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense." - Amendment IV, Bill of Rights
That's how - by sitting on a jury, so are upholding your right to be tried by one. This is, after all, a participatory republic (non-standard term intentionally used to avoid the inevitable and obligatory participatory democracy vs republic argument.)
The summary is slightly misleading, but this disconnect has big implications for the reader's understanding (imho)...
I can name plenty of chemical reactions that are complete on the femtosecond scale, and while speed helps, that's certainly not the whole picture. What matters is how mismatched the energy levels between the reactant and the product are. When transitioning between energy levels, either energy is transferred out of the system by nonradiative release (heat), luminescence, photofragmentation, or transfer to a chemical partner - this last case is what the article is referring to. Getting to an energy level which can react is going to result in a heat deposition for at least some photons because any photon of a higher energy than the reacting state must deposit some of that energy just to be able to react at all.
The squiggly lines show possible heat depositions - the molecule starts in the ground state, absorbs a photon (the yellow up arrow), then relaxes to the excited state. This excited state then does whatever it's going to do. If 100% of the time under a set of conditions (i.e. a quantum yield of 1.00), the excited molecule follows a particular pathway we call that perfectly efficient. In the specific example of photosynthesis, this means that all of the absorbing chlorophylls transfer the energy along the photosynthetic pathway (I'm lumping all the subsequent processes together here). It does not mean that 100% of the energy got transferred along the way - there will always be some photon that deposits more energy than the reacting state has, meaning some energy will be converted to heat.
In short form (if you didn't feel like reading all this): efficiency in this case refers primarily to how often the molecule dumps its energy into photosynthesis instead of all to heat, luminescence, etc. It's not referring to the energy throughput, as some photons will always be an imperfect energy match, and the extra energy will end up as heat.
Yep - I hate summaries like this one. When I read anything of the format "use of (technology format/type) in lectures and meetings actually makes (some negative outcome)", I like to substitute "paper" for the technology to show the absurdity of the comment. TFA is actually about _the correct way_ to use the tool, not saying the tool is bunk.
That's going to be a tough request - considering the name only shows 7 citations (one of which is this patent) in Scifinder Scholar (a chem. lit. database). Below is the abstract for the patent, though... He (Sean McGrady)is the only author, title = "Hydrogen storage materials comprising gallium", and it's a 2006 Eur. Pat. Appl. Full test at: http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP16 72087&F=0&QPN=EP1672087
"Hydrogen storage materials which are solid metal alloys in their hydrided state and liq. metal alloys in their dehydrided state, thereby facilitating their recharging by reaction with hydrogen gas. In a preferred embodiment, the material has the formula M3GaH6, where M is an alkali metal like Lithium or Natrium."
I'm really wary of this either/or approach. We need both! To use an analogy - an army with either only front line troops or logistics/occupation forces will hold no new ground. The pure research folks push forward the front, and the integrated science and engineering folks make the connections that solidify the progress made to date. There's space enough for all of us (being a basic scientist myself who also crosses the line into looking for applicability).
Right... because bloggers generally have the background to evaluate science. If I wrote a summary of how nuclear magnetic resonance works (sure, we can slightly bias which direction the poles of an atom's nucleus point with a magnet!) plenty of them would scoff. That's why scientists believe in PEER review - the person reviewing the work should be well enough grounded in the work to have an opinion based in all the nuance of the discipline. That's why it works out sooo well when the Legislative or Executive branch decide to get involved in deciding what 'good science' is (after all, since global warming is only a slight bias in a long-term streak of temperature data, there's no reason to believe in it...)
From what I've seen of their work (and it's not much) they aren't saying "omg were so sykik!", they're saying "here's data that's anomalous and not adequately explained by existing theories". Whether you buy their argument or not, these folks aren't trying to sell snake oil to cure the gout, they're following up on something they find interesting. That's the great thing about science - we let folks go off the reservation. In the end though, it's good to be skeptical of their results, just like we are when we hear about cold fusion.
I will say I'm not betting my laptop on their results. An inability to find peer-reviewed funding streams certainly says that no matter if your hypothesis is right or wrong, you've been unable to articulate your research convincingly. I won't join in the chorus of mockers though - their intent doesn't seem to be deception, so they're doing science some (small?) service.
There's lies, damned lies, and statistics. We know the XIAA loves all three, but lets add rationality to the firestorm with a game of "Translate the Statistics".
"MPAA analysis of counterfeit copies of recently released movies on DVD seized throughout the world reveals that more than 90 percent can be sourced back to theatrical camcording. As of August 2006, MPAA had documented 179 member company titles that had been stolen in this manner since 2004, providing the source copies for pirate DVDs discovered in the markets of 46 other countries on every inhabited continent. In 2005, 23 percent of camcords worldwide were sourced to Canada."
179 titles Camcorded 90% of Pirate DVD's from Cam.s = 161 total -- % Yar'd = 11.5 23% of camcords from Canada = 37 -- % Yar'd = 2.6
% Yar'd = value/1400
i.e. 37 movies over a 3 year span were originally recorded by camcorder, and can be found somewhere in the world. A very compelling case for whatever special rights the XIAA is currently demanding of the government. Pfft.
Only if it's credible that the armed citizenry right (1) know how to use them (2) be able to use them in a crisis situation and (3) actually use them. Even if (1) and (2) are met in a 9/11-type situation, (3) is problematic.
I can personally say that yes, I can overcome all three dificulties you bring up.
Have you given a thought to what discharging a firearm on an airplane at 30,000 feet might do if you puncture the hull of the plain and depressurize the cabin?
You mean potential hypothermia, nausea, toothaches, and sinus-popping? Yes, I have, and those aren't very scary. If you're referring to the plane suddenly crumpling or people flying out a now-missing chunk of plane, you need to perform a bit more research. I'll cite the survivability of WWII planes with (much larger than pistol caliber) holes in their skins, and the episode of Mythbusters where they debunked this Hollywood architype for good measure.
Ironically, my issue is lack of control due to too fine of control... Whenever VLC's the active window, my mouse speed is roughly halved. I'm looking through the prefs now, but no cause yet.
Correct. As a chemist, I know what harm chemistry can cause - illegal pharmaceuticals, explosives, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on publically accessible chemistry texts, to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Correct. As a firearm owner, I know what harm firearms can cause - killings, accidental shootings, property damage, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on publically accessible repair manuals, to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Correct. As a driver, I know what harm poor driving can cause - vehicular homicide, property damage, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on access to automobiles, driving instruction literature, etc., to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Congressmen should maintain an exemption to all of the above, to ensure they can oversee said systems, and protect the workings of our great society. Public oversight should not be necessary, as I have full trust in the state.
Slashdot Mirror
When a company is playing the 'you didn't buy, you leased' shell game, that strikes me as an ideal place for open-source alternatives to step up to the plate. I'm aware of some that are under development, but when I was looking for a CAD program a few months ago I wasn't able to find one that was out of the development stages (and ended up using AutoCAD in another research group's lab). Does anyone know of a good open-source CAD program with GUI that's working now?
The unstated assumption in many posts (including this one) seems to be that simply by knowing science, a person can effectively teach it.
I take issue with this claim based on numerous and diverse observations, three of which I'll post today (then proceed to the coffee pot)
- the presentations I've seen in my research group meetings (grad students, and I'll point out that grad students have more education than those with a BS, damaging the notion that more education in science = more ability to teach it)
- the complaints of TA quality, and that complaining about courses taught by new faculty is nearly a pastime amongst undergraduates)
- observing the transitional difficulties of grad students involved in the NSF GK-12 program (where grad students in STEM fields work alongside teachers to increase the teachers content knowledge - and I'll point out that unlike the previous examples, here the grad students have been given some education in how to teach, along with having a teacher working alongside them to swap expertise with)
The first year a teacher works with a curriculum, it's often all they can do to keep up; from experience, thorough knowledge of the subject mitigates this to some degree, but there's still lots of the 'they're not getting this' moments, and lacking experience, the science-BS teacher is still unable to 'monitor and adjust'. In year 2, the teacher typically overcompensates trying to correct their errors from the previous year, and while the course goes more smoothly, it's not what you would define as 'good' yet. In the third and fourth years, the teacher is comfortable with the material, and things start to go well (if you have someone skilled in the act of teaching and knowledgeable in the science content) - BUT, we're now at the end of this science-BS teacher's term. Time to start over again.
I certainly like the idea of a obtaining a debt-free BS and a guaranteed job after college, but without some form of training in the pedagogy of teaching (and a lengthier contract) I seriously doubt we'd see any gain in science learning among the students. It's thinking in the right direction, but the unchallenged assumption that 'if they know science, they can teach it' is toxic in this plan.
Yeah, I know that's the typical current usage - I'm thinking more about the future. It's good for both sides of the connection to authenticate in some way, and the current 'good' (I'm not arguing it's the best) way of doing that is for me to authenticate with something I know that's pre-provided to the server (password). The site authenticates to me with something I've preselected that it has - the security is in both sides having a preset choice from a large set, so it's unlikely that someone else can represent themselves as the 'true' site to me (being outside the loop, with too large a selection set for random chance to be very effective - though again, I'm not planning to debate the validity of the assumption-of-unlikeliness). I was visualizing some small number of objects being displayed to me by my site, one of which I pre-supplied (like handwriting, etc.), the others of which were distractors (to borrow from multiple choice exam terminology) - I identify the one that I supplied, making the image into a 2-way identification (with the advantage of effectively increasing my password by one value with n options). Though, now that I'm thinking about it, this is probably only a useful idea if the website doesn't insist on using its own image bank exclusively (i.e. I don't upload anything) - otherwise, I'm giving the interceptor site a better chance of randomly showing a 'card' that matches my preselection. Plus, the 'password-length' bonus is negated if there's an obvious quality/image type difference between my selection and the distractors - the different one is (obviously?) mine.
Ah, well. That's my idea more explicitly, since I've had 2 replies about it so far.
It's a bad call if it's the only authentication entry, but if it's in addition to something else it might be good. Many banks seem to be going for the 'something you know, and something you recognize' auth motif (banking as one example, where you recognize and identify a preselected word or graphic.) Maybe soon for really secure accounts, we'll have a fairly painless set of layers, ala: something you have - the random PIN cards, something you know - pword, something you i.d. - (handwriting/picture/word)?
Well, the engagement was supposed to be an amusing portion of the anecdote. There's humor in the image of two people arguing over backstage lighting - Shakespeare would have laid it out better than me, but I suppose that's why I'm a chemist.
The point (albeit not well laid out - I shot for some brevity and got incoherence o' plenty instead) was that I felt vindicated - I had predicted a level of overspecialization in a number of different fields that seemed ridiculous 7 years ago. Now, here's a more modern example that supports my viewpoint. MS has such a level of overspecialization that really smart guys are focusing on a level of minutiae (and lighting the backstage is concerned minutiae among my theatrical friends) such that they're not providing a consistent and integrated experience. They see the trees, not the forest. In the conversation I was describing, she took the viewpoint that no one would ever distance themselves so far from practicality, while I said that organizations typically allow the originally productive tendency to encourage specialization overstep its utility. And I think this is exactly what we're seeing in the development of Vista - they worried so much about 'lighting the backstage' that they forgot that the audience doesn't even see it, and that it gave marginal boost to the productivity of the 'cast'.
That'll teach me to write an anecdote to support an abstracted analogy before my requisite pot of coffee. Ah, well - screw the karma. I was amused, and if people won't enjoy my joke alongside me, well, it's never stopped me before!
Years back, I had a girlfriend who was studying theater (yes, there's a point coming...) At the time, she was taking a class people around the department mysteriously called BSL. One day, I was hanging out in the green room, talking to some mutual friends about how the sciences have become so specialized that subdisciplines are often unaware of advances in other subdisciplines. She came in part way through the conversation, and out of no where, I brought up BSL (which somewhere along the way I had decided was Back Stage Lighting) as an example of how extreme specialization within a field can eventually lead to its paralysis unless it has some critical mass of generalists. She finally started jumping up and down, yelling at me, dismissing the whole argument because BSL actually meant Basic Stage Lighting. I stood by my cautionary tale though - eventually (unless the case is actively prevented) I suspect that in the world of Theater Architecture there will be a guy who is renowned in his field as an extraordinary designer of lighting systems for the stage wings, prop areas, etc.
She got so mad when I brought up this prediction from that day forward that I think it contributed to the cancellation of the wedding. Still, it turns out I was right. Microsoft has their own BSL department, working on Sound Dialogs and Shut Down Option Menus. (Feels good that BSL is once again something more than a private joke!)
Great site - on a slight tangent (still phone spammers, just not recruiters) the worst offender they have listed is a 'think of the children' group trying to raise money to effect televosion and movies. They have a straw-man poll set up at http://www.dove.org/opinionpoll_takeit.asp intended to show all of society as pining for a family values movement to save us. If you want to increase the sample size they're exposed to, visit the link and add yourself - just don't use a real number (or probably, an email address you care about!)
Ah, good to know. I'll have to give it another look (eventually)...
I'll bite with a semi-redundant reply... The key difference between the two (for me) is Google. When I need to find a good $free windows program, I do a search, get a few reviews, and decide what I want. When I'm in the Synaptic (I think that's the name...) program, I'm faced with the 'what the hell does that one do' issue - there's no information about the program. When I shop for a book, I'd like to be able to look at the dust jacket teaser ALONG with the title, because in the end titles (and program names) like to be clever (for example, GIMP - if you're a neophyte, you tell ME what that one does!)
I may be wrong - there might be more info available inside Synaptic, but I've never seen it. This is one reason I just haven't bothered spending any time inside my laptop's linux installation. I still need to learn it (for personal and professional reasons), but I have other things I need to do. I've got to learn Spanish in the next year, prepare courses I'll be teaching in 4 weeks, write and defend my thesis, etc. - life's too short.
I suppose one could reply that I can still have Synaptic open alongside Firefox/google, and that's true. But we're basically right back where we started, but with the extra 'find the name I'm looking for in the list' step. Ah, well - no easy answers.
In the science education disciplines, they are called 'student OPINION surveys" by anyone who has studied them - specifically because they indicate only how good of an opinion the student has of the instructor. This has been shown to be influenced by many factors, most of which actually supersede 'value added to learning'. If you think the Sci Ed folks are simply being apologists, consider a parallel example: medicine. Malpractice claim rates for doctors who spend more time with their patients drop drastically. This is independent of how good a doctor is (as measured by various criteria - survivability, actual mishaps, etc.) Simply by being perceived as more personable and interested in the patient, the patient assumes skill and evaluates them accordingly. This occurs frequently in education as well - teachers who are personable and easy are scored far better than teachers who challenge their students and make them think. Slashdotters may have a higher proportion of folks who like their education to be thorough, but the wider population chooses Easy, especially when they won't be judged for the choice (i.e. anonymous surveys) or when they aren't asked for a truly reflective consideration of the class (again, anonymous surveys as typically written). That said, I'm currently in a teaching fellowship that puts Ph.D. STEM (Sci Tech Eng Math) students into K-12 classrooms, and in my 3 years I've frequently seen the principal drop by. I've been in a wide cross-section of urban schools in Pittsburgh, some high performing, and some which were closed due (in part) to systemic issues. One thing I've never run into is a teacher who didn't care (though some were quite poor science teachers) and didn't put in a lot of time. Teaching efficacy is far more difficult to accurately track than most folks think (and much harder to MEANINGFULLY quantitate) than most new STEM folks anticipate naively (myself included!)
s ervlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED452600s ervlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED380894
People love the idea of tying teacher pay to efficacy, but this idea is not new and has failed every time. I'm a scientist first, so rather than doing a bunch of hand-waving, here's a few quick e-citations:
"History of Teacher Pay and Incentive Reforms" Protsik, Jean
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/
"Merit Pay and the Evaluation Problem: Why Most Merit Pay Plans Fail and a Few Survive" Murnane, Richard J., Cohen, David K.
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/
There are plenty of peer-reviewed examples out there, too, but I'm short on time (after writing all of this) and I'll leave it to those interested to track them down. In short, the literature says merit pay is neither a new idea nor an effective one, based on its attempted implementations worldwide from 1710 to date. There are ideas on how it might be made to work, and reasons given when each of the many attempts failed, but in the end the controversy centers around this: how can teaching/learning be meaningfully measured and attributed to individual teachers? If you can solve this question, you've got an excellent career in politics ahead, and I invite you to fix the Middle East while you're at it.
This part week, Spider-Man turned from being a good guy to a bad guy, the Green Goblin turned from a bad guy to a good guy, and Sandman turned from a hardened criminal to a crybaby asking for forgiveness.
Just because MS went from bad guy to good guy in this story does not mean you too will make 10 trillion dollars.
Hence the "democracy vs republic" distinction. I was obviously right on at least one count: the argument is both inevitable and obligatory...
"how exactly would this involuntary servitude have any bearing on affirming or defending our rights?"
- Your Comment
"In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense."
- Amendment IV, Bill of Rights
That's how - by sitting on a jury, so are upholding your right to be tried by one. This is, after all, a participatory republic (non-standard term intentionally used to avoid the inevitable and obligatory participatory democracy vs republic argument.)
The summary is slightly misleading, but this disconnect has big implications for the reader's understanding (imho)...
j ablonski.gif Unfortunately, this scheme doesn't show photofragmentation or energy transfer to another molecule, but I'm in a rush so it'll do.
I can name plenty of chemical reactions that are complete on the femtosecond scale, and while speed helps, that's certainly not the whole picture. What matters is how mismatched the energy levels between the reactant and the product are. When transitioning between energy levels, either energy is transferred out of the system by nonradiative release (heat), luminescence, photofragmentation, or transfer to a chemical partner - this last case is what the article is referring to. Getting to an energy level which can react is going to result in a heat deposition for at least some photons because any photon of a higher energy than the reacting state must deposit some of that energy just to be able to react at all.
http://www.monos.leidenuniv.nl/smo/basics/images/
The squiggly lines show possible heat depositions - the molecule starts in the ground state, absorbs a photon (the yellow up arrow), then relaxes to the excited state. This excited state then does whatever it's going to do. If 100% of the time under a set of conditions (i.e. a quantum yield of 1.00), the excited molecule follows a particular pathway we call that perfectly efficient. In the specific example of photosynthesis, this means that all of the absorbing chlorophylls transfer the energy along the photosynthetic pathway (I'm lumping all the subsequent processes together here). It does not mean that 100% of the energy got transferred along the way - there will always be some photon that deposits more energy than the reacting state has, meaning some energy will be converted to heat.
In short form (if you didn't feel like reading all this): efficiency in this case refers primarily to how often the molecule dumps its energy into photosynthesis instead of all to heat, luminescence, etc. It's not referring to the energy throughput, as some photons will always be an imperfect energy match, and the extra energy will end up as heat.
Yep - I hate summaries like this one. When I read anything of the format "use of (technology format/type) in lectures and meetings actually makes (some negative outcome)", I like to substitute "paper" for the technology to show the absurdity of the comment. TFA is actually about _the correct way_ to use the tool, not saying the tool is bunk.
Still haven't gotten over Thunderdome, eh?
That's going to be a tough request - considering the name only shows 7 citations (one of which is this patent) in Scifinder Scholar (a chem. lit. database). Below is the abstract for the patent, though... He (Sean McGrady)is the only author, title = "Hydrogen storage materials comprising gallium", and it's a 2006 Eur. Pat. Appl. Full test at:6 72087&F=0&QPN=EP1672087
http://v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=EP1
"Hydrogen storage materials which are solid metal alloys in their hydrided state and liq. metal alloys in their dehydrided state, thereby facilitating their recharging by reaction with hydrogen gas. In a preferred embodiment, the material has the formula M3GaH6, where M is an alkali metal like Lithium or Natrium."
Give a quick Google - terms = "hello boss" coffee. Yes, you can buy cans of coffee. I'd add a link, but I haven't had my own yet, so I won't.
I'm really wary of this either/or approach. We need both! To use an analogy - an army with either only front line troops or logistics/occupation forces will hold no new ground. The pure research folks push forward the front, and the integrated science and engineering folks make the connections that solidify the progress made to date. There's space enough for all of us (being a basic scientist myself who also crosses the line into looking for applicability).
Right... because bloggers generally have the background to evaluate science. If I wrote a summary of how nuclear magnetic resonance works (sure, we can slightly bias which direction the poles of an atom's nucleus point with a magnet!) plenty of them would scoff. That's why scientists believe in PEER review - the person reviewing the work should be well enough grounded in the work to have an opinion based in all the nuance of the discipline. That's why it works out sooo well when the Legislative or Executive branch decide to get involved in deciding what 'good science' is (after all, since global warming is only a slight bias in a long-term streak of temperature data, there's no reason to believe in it...)
From what I've seen of their work (and it's not much) they aren't saying "omg were so sykik!", they're saying "here's data that's anomalous and not adequately explained by existing theories". Whether you buy their argument or not, these folks aren't trying to sell snake oil to cure the gout, they're following up on something they find interesting. That's the great thing about science - we let folks go off the reservation. In the end though, it's good to be skeptical of their results, just like we are when we hear about cold fusion.
I will say I'm not betting my laptop on their results. An inability to find peer-reviewed funding streams certainly says that no matter if your hypothesis is right or wrong, you've been unable to articulate your research convincingly. I won't join in the chorus of mockers though - their intent doesn't seem to be deception, so they're doing science some (small?) service.
There's lies, damned lies, and statistics. We know the XIAA loves all three, but lets add rationality to the firestorm with a game of "Translate the Statistics".
"MPAA analysis of counterfeit copies of recently released movies on DVD seized throughout the world reveals that more than 90 percent can be sourced back to theatrical camcording. As of August 2006, MPAA had documented 179 member company titles that had been stolen in this manner since 2004, providing the source copies for pirate DVDs discovered in the markets of 46 other countries on every inhabited continent. In 2005, 23 percent of camcords worldwide were sourced to Canada."
179 titles Camcorded
90% of Pirate DVD's from Cam.s = 161 total -- % Yar'd = 11.5
23% of camcords from Canada = 37 -- % Yar'd = 2.6
% Yar'd = value/1400
i.e. 37 movies over a 3 year span were originally recorded by camcorder, and can be found somewhere in the world. A very compelling case for whatever special rights the XIAA is currently demanding of the government. Pfft.
Only if it's credible that the armed citizenry right (1) know how to use them (2) be able to use them in a crisis situation and (3) actually use them. Even if (1) and (2) are met in a 9/11-type situation, (3) is problematic.
I can personally say that yes, I can overcome all three dificulties you bring up.
Have you given a thought to what discharging a firearm on an airplane at 30,000 feet might do if you puncture the hull of the plain and depressurize the cabin?
You mean potential hypothermia, nausea, toothaches, and sinus-popping? Yes, I have, and those aren't very scary. If you're referring to the plane suddenly crumpling or people flying out a now-missing chunk of plane, you need to perform a bit more research. I'll cite the survivability of WWII planes with (much larger than pistol caliber) holes in their skins, and the episode of Mythbusters where they debunked this Hollywood architype for good measure.
Ironically, my issue is lack of control due to too fine of control... Whenever VLC's the active window, my mouse speed is roughly halved. I'm looking through the prefs now, but no cause yet.
Correct. As a chemist, I know what harm chemistry can cause - illegal pharmaceuticals, explosives, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on publically accessible chemistry texts, to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Correct. As a firearm owner, I know what harm firearms can cause - killings, accidental shootings, property damage, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on publically accessible repair manuals, to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Correct. As a driver, I know what harm poor driving can cause - vehicular homicide, property damage, etc. And so, I demand an immediate crackdown on access to automobiles, driving instruction literature, etc., to ensure a brighter tomorrow.
Congressmen should maintain an exemption to all of the above, to ensure they can oversee said systems, and protect the workings of our great society. Public oversight should not be necessary, as I have full trust in the state.
Wait, you're telling me that Craigslist, Myspace, and MoveOn.org have different audiences? Say it ain't so!
Thank the gods that Mark Foley has been bridging the gap between the Congressional Record and the A/S/L generation...