Yeah, add into that the # of Americans who didn't drive as they were overseas fighting "wars", didn't drive because their cars were destroyed by hurricanes, or didn't drive because they were in line waiting for Revenge of the Sith, and you've probably got the whole decrease covered.
Plus, while SUV's are largely luxury & never taken off-road vehicles many families with more than 2 kids would consider the minivan an essential vehicle for sane travel. They really should not be considered together.
Looking at the writeup from Nature. They clearly state that these results point to maybe a 0.5% difference among individuals, or 99.5% identical. That's 20X less variation than this crap article would have you believe.
The actual research deals with CNV's = copy number variants. So for a given stretch of DNA, different people in a population might have that region duplicated or triplicated which does not really allow them to make anything different, but it might alter the levels of expression of those genes. As this DNA is found in multiple copies it had largely been believed to have a low number of genes, as is the case of most highly repeated DNA, but the researchers have evidence that these repeated domains do contain a large number of unique genes.
In a short summary/analogy: Some people are 8 feet tall. Some people are 4 feet tall. Therefore, people vary in height by 200%.
It's obvious to see the failed logic in that case, that's the same thing here, just because 10% might potentially be variable, that doesn't mean any single person even exists at each extreme.
If your idea of a northern latitude is Ohio I think you should unfold the top of your map because you're not even halfway up from the equator to the pole. Heck, I live at 53 degrees north and I don't consider it a northern latitude.
With a userid of 3561, I think he has been around slashdot long enough to know the Basic Ins & Outs of his System. So I wouldn't assume he's being tricked by some flashy screen.
There's this thing called a pinhole camera, it's a relatively new advance. By allowing this pinhole of light in with the proper equipment just enough light could be absorbed to allow the user to navigate. Of course there would be a visible pinhole floating in space, but could you reliably pick it out at a distance of more than a few feet?
I'm sorry, did you teach this to 4th year genetics students this semester? No? Well, I did teach this for a couple lectures this year, and while I have simplified the process to make it understandable to non-biologists I will assure you I am pretty right on the money.
The standard CODIS set of 13 microsatellites has been in use since 1997, not really that recent if you ask me.
Birthday paradox... yes, only 365 possibilities, a good chance of collisions, CODIS database, a quintillion combinations (not counting people with very rare alleles) not quite the same thing.
The science behind using it is VERY sound, problems only arise with the people who collect and test the samples.
DNA fingerprinting basically measures the number of repeat units at ~13 different locations in the genome. As you have 2 copies of your chromosomes you esentially get a unique 26 digit code. Looking at just one of the repeat locations, let's say the normal range is 8 to 12 repeats, so you can be an 8,8 8,9 8,10, 8,11 8,12 9,9 9,10, 9,11 9,12 10,10 10,11 10,12 11,11 11,12 or 12,12 (so there are 15 possibilities seen in the population, with generally similar frequencies for each). The chance of matching your sample with any randomly selected unknown will be 1 in 15, but if we go up to 13 different markers we have (1/15)^13 which gives a chance of any 2 UNRELATED individuals matching being about 1 in a quadrillion (more people than have ever lived, and likely ever will live). This means a match is a definite match, this doesn't mean evidence wasn't planted or some such conspiracy crap, but a match is a match, no chance of a collision like with 2 people having O- blood.
The "new" stuff here is that they have come up with software which will allow the system to extract 2 sets of "seial numbers" from one reaction. Like having 2 fingerprints on top of one another and seperating them to determine the swirls. They also are claiming a more sensitive technique which will allow for smaller or partially degraded samples to be tested, but this is probably just tweaking the experimental protocol.
Smell is not just chemoattraction. Plants also grow in the direction of sunlight, does that mean they can see? They grow away from gravity, does that mean they can feel?
Costs owed for excessive bandwidth = $400,000,000 Current value of impending lawsuits =$900,000,000 Payoffs to various politicians, judges and law enforcement = $150,000,000 Net value = $50,000,000*
* = value does not take into account private jets, ferarris, on-the-job chefs, Bawls dispensers or boardroom lapdances.
It was a great game, but I think I was a bit too young to do very well at it. I usually got about as far as the 3rd or 4th level, vulcan ring, then would get my ass beat by some knight. Nothing like hunt & peck typing a l a l a l a l a l a l and then realizing you somehow had made a mistake and were typing l a l a l a l a Or hearing that whiff whiff whiff of all the attacks you typed in after you defeated a blob. So how did the game even end? I'd really like to know.
From your link: There are two astronauts, Gregory C. Johnson and Gregory H. Johnson. Both are pilots, both started in 1998. Did NASA get some help from aliens to make a clone or something?
More pointless than war in Iraq, and more deadly if you're an American. (Something like 7% of astronauts have died on the job, a significantly higher death rate than the US military.)
The main difference is that they need to use the same astronauts over and over again because they are highly trained, and they either have a safe mission or a deadly catastrophe. Soldiers on the other hand are easily replaced (it's not like there are only 10 people in the world to do the job) and way more likely to get non-lethally injured. It is stupid to make the comparison looking at a sample of a couple hundred astronauts to millions of soldiers. If you want ridiculous comparisons, 8 Presidents out of 43 have died in office, that is a nearly 20% chance you will die if you become President, now who would be stupid enough to want to take that risk?
The problem is, they aren't always learning. The first class I taught, a 3rd year developmental biology class(very interesting to some, but very hard and therefore boring to others), had 38 students in it. I put up my powerpoint lectures within a day after class, so everyone had the opportunity to view them and "get the information from other places". Quickly, class attendance dropped to an average of 20-25 students per class (yes, it was an 8am class) and come midterm time guess what happened? Of the 16 students who failed the midterm, 13 of them never came to class. It was almost as if just coming to class regularly made all the difference. If I had not put my lectures up, and the students had been forced to come to class, I am sure I wouldn't have had to fail so many students. Sadly the course was only offered every 2 years and was a requirement for all Biology majors, so some students had to change their degree based on this one class.
Most people learn much better having something explained in person (even if it is explained to a group) than if they have to learn it themselves. There are exceptions, but you can't deny the facts.
Ever been to an international conference? Sometimes people miss the first or last day because of travel, sometimes planes just don't want to work on your schedule, especially if there is only one flight home a day. If they truly wanted to get a majority opinion they would have ensured that the vote be taken smack-dab in the middle when the greatest number of attendees were present. This isn't a political election which can be redone in 2 to 4 years, hopefully the decision they make will last for decades, but if they have such high hopes of a lasting definition then they better damn well take the necessary measures to ensure they do indeed have the majority opinion of the majority of scientists, not just a small group.
Just out of curiosity, do you laugh at "Everybody loves Raymond"? Does anybody?
From what I could tell, with my wife and I being married young (19 & 20), and most of our friends up til a couple years ago being single. You have to be married for years to get the jokes, because only after being married for years do you get the reality of the jokes (because you've been there), even if the situations are a bit exaggerated.
Slashdot Mirror
They aren't out to save people, they're out to save humanity. If they can do it sooner, rather than later, isn't that better for everybody?
Yeah, add into that the # of Americans who didn't drive as they were overseas fighting "wars", didn't drive because their cars were destroyed by hurricanes, or didn't drive because they were in line waiting for Revenge of the Sith, and you've probably got the whole decrease covered.
Plus, while SUV's are largely luxury & never taken off-road vehicles many families with more than 2 kids would consider the minivan an essential vehicle for sane travel. They really should not be considered together.
Soviets and East Germany were not Nazis, they were communists. Just thought I would point that out.
Looking at the writeup from Nature. They clearly state that these results point to maybe a 0.5% difference among individuals, or 99.5% identical. That's 20X less variation than this crap article would have you believe. The actual research deals with CNV's = copy number variants. So for a given stretch of DNA, different people in a population might have that region duplicated or triplicated which does not really allow them to make anything different, but it might alter the levels of expression of those genes. As this DNA is found in multiple copies it had largely been believed to have a low number of genes, as is the case of most highly repeated DNA, but the researchers have evidence that these repeated domains do contain a large number of unique genes. In a short summary/analogy:
Some people are 8 feet tall.
Some people are 4 feet tall.
Therefore, people vary in height by 200%.
It's obvious to see the failed logic in that case, that's the same thing here, just because 10% might potentially be variable, that doesn't mean any single person even exists at each extreme.
If your idea of a northern latitude is Ohio I think you should unfold the top of your map because you're not even halfway up from the equator to the pole. Heck, I live at 53 degrees north and I don't consider it a northern latitude.
With a userid of 3561, I think he has been around slashdot long enough to know the Basic Ins & Outs of his System. So I wouldn't assume he's being tricked by some flashy screen.
There's this thing called a pinhole camera, it's a relatively new advance. By allowing this pinhole of light in with the proper equipment just enough light could be absorbed to allow the user to navigate. Of course there would be a visible pinhole floating in space, but could you reliably pick it out at a distance of more than a few feet?
When I was a kid I used to be able to finish Super Mario Bros on the nintendo playing with my feet! Of course, I was using one of these.
I'm sorry, did you teach this to 4th year genetics students this semester? No? Well, I did teach this for a couple lectures this year, and while I have simplified the process to make it understandable to non-biologists I will assure you I am pretty right on the money.
The standard CODIS set of 13 microsatellites has been in use since 1997, not really that recent if you ask me.
Birthday paradox... yes, only 365 possibilities, a good chance of collisions, CODIS database, a quintillion combinations (not counting people with very rare alleles) not quite the same thing.
The science behind using it is VERY sound, problems only arise with the people who collect and test the samples.
2 of the sets are on one chromosome, the other 11 are each on different chromosomes, so they assort independently.
DNA fingerprinting basically measures the number of repeat units at ~13 different locations in the genome. As you have 2 copies of your chromosomes you esentially get a unique 26 digit code. Looking at just one of the repeat locations, let's say the normal range is 8 to 12 repeats, so you can be an 8,8 8,9 8,10, 8,11 8,12 9,9 9,10, 9,11 9,12 10,10 10,11 10,12 11,11 11,12 or 12,12 (so there are 15 possibilities seen in the population, with generally similar frequencies for each). The chance of matching your sample with any randomly selected unknown will be 1 in 15, but if we go up to 13 different markers we have (1/15)^13 which gives a chance of any 2 UNRELATED individuals matching being about 1 in a quadrillion (more people than have ever lived, and likely ever will live). This means a match is a definite match, this doesn't mean evidence wasn't planted or some such conspiracy crap, but a match is a match, no chance of a collision like with 2 people having O- blood.
The "new" stuff here is that they have come up with software which will allow the system to extract 2 sets of "seial numbers" from one reaction. Like having 2 fingerprints on top of one another and seperating them to determine the swirls. They also are claiming a more sensitive technique which will allow for smaller or partially degraded samples to be tested, but this is probably just tweaking the experimental protocol.
This is no new test, just tweaks and algorithms.
I really need a second display to view my MP3's.... of wait... aren't those audio files?
Smell is not just chemoattraction. Plants also grow in the direction of sunlight, does that mean they can see? They grow away from gravity, does that mean they can feel?
Costs owed for excessive bandwidth = $400,000,000
Current value of impending lawsuits =$900,000,000
Payoffs to various politicians, judges and law enforcement = $150,000,000
Net value = $50,000,000*
* = value does not take into account private jets, ferarris, on-the-job chefs, Bawls dispensers or boardroom lapdances.
Who will save us from these robots once the evil Dr Wily takes control?
Megaman!
(seriously, anyone else think it looks like this one?
It was a great game, but I think I was a bit too young to do very well at it. I usually got about as far as the 3rd or 4th level, vulcan ring, then would get my ass beat by some knight. Nothing like hunt & peck typing a l
a l
a l
a l
a l
a l
and then realizing you somehow had made a mistake and were typing l a
l a
l a
l a
Or hearing that whiff whiff whiff of all the attacks you typed in after you defeated a blob. So how did the game even end? I'd really like to know.
From your link: There are two astronauts, Gregory C. Johnson and Gregory H. Johnson. Both are pilots, both started in 1998. Did NASA get some help from aliens to make a clone or something?
The main difference is that they need to use the same astronauts over and over again because they are highly trained, and they either have a safe mission or a deadly catastrophe. Soldiers on the other hand are easily replaced (it's not like there are only 10 people in the world to do the job) and way more likely to get non-lethally injured. It is stupid to make the comparison looking at a sample of a couple hundred astronauts to millions of soldiers. If you want ridiculous comparisons, 8 Presidents out of 43 have died in office, that is a nearly 20% chance you will die if you become President, now who would be stupid enough to want to take that risk?
If they didn't have mass they wouldn't bend their paths around large gravity wells, but they do.
The problem is, they aren't always learning. The first class I taught, a 3rd year developmental biology class(very interesting to some, but very hard and therefore boring to others), had 38 students in it. I put up my powerpoint lectures within a day after class, so everyone had the opportunity to view them and "get the information from other places". Quickly, class attendance dropped to an average of 20-25 students per class (yes, it was an 8am class) and come midterm time guess what happened? Of the 16 students who failed the midterm, 13 of them never came to class. It was almost as if just coming to class regularly made all the difference. If I had not put my lectures up, and the students had been forced to come to class, I am sure I wouldn't have had to fail so many students. Sadly the course was only offered every 2 years and was a requirement for all Biology majors, so some students had to change their degree based on this one class.
Most people learn much better having something explained in person (even if it is explained to a group) than if they have to learn it themselves. There are exceptions, but you can't deny the facts.
Don't bother discussing any implications or great ramifications, it's just another viral ad.
Ever been to an international conference? Sometimes people miss the first or last day because of travel, sometimes planes just don't want to work on your schedule, especially if there is only one flight home a day. If they truly wanted to get a majority opinion they would have ensured that the vote be taken smack-dab in the middle when the greatest number of attendees were present. This isn't a political election which can be redone in 2 to 4 years, hopefully the decision they make will last for decades, but if they have such high hopes of a lasting definition then they better damn well take the necessary measures to ensure they do indeed have the majority opinion of the majority of scientists, not just a small group.
From what I could tell, with my wife and I being married young (19 & 20), and most of our friends up til a couple years ago being single. You have to be married for years to get the jokes, because only after being married for years do you get the reality of the jokes (because you've been there), even if the situations are a bit exaggerated.
My hypothesis has finally been proven! While geeks remain unpopular, pizza and lesbians are steadily gaining in popularity.