Congress is made of men.... If they are not doing the will of the people, the people are not using enough boxes.
[Emphasis mine.]
Genius!
We need to hire prostitutes to sleep with these Congressmen. The sex workers will whisper the sweet nothings of copyright reform into the ears of those who thought they were getting a free ride (in more ways than one).
If the Congressmen aren't seduced into carrying out our will, then we'll also have dirt to use against them!
They're basically just packets of proteins containing genetic material.
Fixed that for you. Not all viruses use DNA as their genetic material; some use RNA.
You are correct in that they do not have a metabolism and need a host to reproduce. This experiment could be conducted on an enzyme for the same effect: Will the enzyme be functional before/during/after the experiment? Obviously a virus is more complicated than an enzyme, but as long as nothing is structurally damaged it will still "work" (or, as these scientists would like to say, "live").
So yes, they've changed their strategy to boost sales of the new PS3 by selling at a loss and intending to make up the money on game sales. How many people will buy several of these and never play games on them? Probably not too many, but where do you draw the line?
Stop acting like a kid who can't get what he wants.
This sounds like a load of trouble to me. I will certainly teach my children to spell and write properly before allowing them to own any texting-enabled device. Imagine a generation of people who learned texting before proper spelling and grammar. The horrors!
Well, the obvious jokes about trees on the moon and fake lunar landings have already been made, so I'll make a simple observation: The curators at the Dutch National Museum thought that a red rock the size of a fist was a moon rock?
I'm not a curator at a national museum, nor am I even an amateur geologist, but I'm pretty sure I would at least recognize that the rock described didn't look like any moon rock I had ever seen or heard about. It would be woefully sad if the piece of fossilized tree was one that you could still see the rings in.
Clearly, they never knew the demand for moon rocks, and thought that enormous pieces are handed out to foreign politicians all the time:
Each year an independent peer review panel evaluates new research proposals, and curators mail out about 400 lunar samples to 40 to 50 scientists worldwide. Almost all are less than one gram in size. "We donâ(TM)t hand them out, we only loan them," Mr. Allen said.
Yes, scientists studying moon rocks have to write research grants in order to borrow a piece less than one gram in size. Yet the Dutch prime minister was given a fist sized moon rock. Yeah, OK.
It would be great if there were a method to 'opt out' certain websites so that they don't come up when searching against history and bookmarks. If people go through the trouble to hid bookmarks deep into sub-sub-directories, I think they'll take the two minutes to unclick those from a long list of what is searched.
Which means that if what Dr. Elsila claims is true, Earth would have been bombarded by an insane number of comets to deliver enough amino acids to the area where life began. (Assuming that comet distribution across the surface of the Earth was somewhat random and not totally localized.)
There's still the problem of the life form being able to create its own amino acids, so a lot would have to 'fall from the sky' until the ability to synthesize them evolved.
At least, this would have to be the case if amino acids came exclusively (or near exclusively) from space.
They... found a mother and daughter who were naturally short sleepers. The women routinely function on about 6 hours of sleep a night; the average person needs 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep.
âoeWhen they wake up in morning, they feel they have slept enough,â Dr. Fu said.
These women feel they've had enough sleep, but that doesn't mean that they are fully rested and recovered from their previous day's activities. While I don't have access to the journal article, I would be interested in seeing whether mice or flies with the homologous mutation have shorter life spans or other problems that accrue over longer periods of time.
The AMNH is enormous; you could easily spend an entire day there, and you'd be hard-pressed to see everything in detail. It has the best dinosaur and primate sections I've ever seen.
The Mutter is just plain cool: a museum devoted to medical oddities, like the skeleton(s) of Cheng & Eng, the 'Siamese twins'. As a PhD-wielding developmental biologist and geneticist I was happy to see some medical information on the various diseases or developmental problems that are on display. Sadly, you cannot take photos; they prefer you purchase their (expensive) photo book.
Yeah, sure it was great for MS to support a product that was made obsolete 3 years ago by the release of IE7, and then doubly-obsolete by the release of IE8.
Do people really expect product support for a release of software 8 years old that has been superseded by two version upgrades? I hope not. Especially since they got it for 'free' with their operating system. (Ha!)
It's not that the notepads and pens they handed out to doctors cost too much, it's that the trade group representing drug companies voluntarily agreed to stop the practice.
And not only has ghostwriting been around forever, but the drug companies have long hired well-respected doctors as consultants (at high rates), or paid for them to give lectures (again, at high rates). These well-respected doctors (called 'Key Opinion Leaders') have considerable influence within their specialty.
Disclosure: I arrange for doctors to work as consultants for drug companies.
It's surprising this guy didn't wake up in Guantanamo Bay one morning, considering there is a lot more evidence against him than some of the inmates there.
That's an interesting point. Similarly, I wonder if the conditions that NASA chooses to launch during are related to conditions that allow noctilucent cloud formation.
Not to diminish their accomplishments, but from TFA:
This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation. Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period - an estimated 40 femtoseconds - it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.
So this doesn't quite have as broad a nerd appeal as the summary would lead us to believe.
"Males may alter the velocity of sperm they allocate to copulations by strategically firing their left and right ejaculatory ducts, which can operate independently," they explained.
"I know what you're thinking. 'Did he fire one ejaculatory duct or two?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya?"
Does anyone know where they are getting 65 million year old mammal DNA?
They aren't using 65 million year old DNA. The authors are drawing conclusions about the size of the genome 65 million years ago from calculations of the rate at which mobile DNA elements have changed.
Can a full set of DNA really last that long?
It's unlikely, but possible. There has been recovery of dinosaur DNA, but not an entire genome.
Are all the assumptions for the very long extrapolations of LTRs valid?
Yes and no. The authors compared their observations to two different models. The observations fit somewhere in between both models, indicating that rates of change in genome size are not constant. This means that during time span A model one is correct but at time span B model two is correct.
It's interesting that the authors looked at the Fugu genome when determining 'shrinkage'. The Fugu genome has roughly the same number of genes as the human genome, but is only 1/8th the size, meaning it is quite 'cleaned up'.
In fact, this is especially interesting because the Fugu genome isn't exactly representative of fish genomes in general, as most fish genomes are several times longer than the Fugu genome, and presumably don't contain a proportionate increase in the number of genes. There are other fish genomes out there (zebrafish, tetraodon, etc), so why choose one that is so devoid of non-coding DNA?
Could someone explain how this "breakthrough might also one day enable computer users to retrieve information from a search engine with more confidentiality"? (Quoted from the article.)
From the article it seems as if this aids in the scanning and searching of encrypted data rather than securing anything. While this might ultimately benefit large corporations or governments hiring third parties to perform analyses, is it of any use to the rest of us?
Even a car analogy would be great. Umm, make that "acceptable".
And with a vague memory from high school you managed to disprove hundreds of scientists who spend all of their time studying the ocean as an ecosystem. Bravo.
In all seriousness, some of the media reports are over-hyped, but the concern of ocean acidification has been around for at least a decade and you'd think that someone would have raised your objection during that time. Are some proponents hysterical? Yes. Is their concern valid? Yes.
Regardless, are you willing to gamble that what we do now has no real impact on the planet? Furthermore, are you willing to gamble that if we don't begin to limit our footprint on the planet our descendants will do so?
For instance, the widespread pollution of rivers by industrial chemical plants occurred rampantly throughout the US. Then we realized, "Hey! We have an impact on the environment!" It was a hard-earned and costly lesson, which fortunately we managed to clean up, for the most part. It could be argued that we didn't know any better at the time. But I think we know better now, and to argue that we don't have an effect on our environment is negligent. To argue that there's nothing we can do and we'll let future generations sort it out (in the meantime the situation worsens and the population continues to increase, compounding the damage) is downright evil.
One item in the article that surprised me: the companies aren't offering information to their clients about diseases they are carriers for. For instance, it would add value to their service if clients knew they carried the gene for cystic fibrosis (a common genetic test).
It's either a huge oversight by the 'big three', or they think that their clients are so focused on themselves as to not really care about what diseases their children could inherit.
I can't see this venture returning capital on anything that remotely resembles "short term". As such, I envision only government entities or wealthy individuals uninterested in ROI funding a project such as this.
Honestly, what kind of question could there be about investors in this type of technology? I didn't see anything remotely relevant to a business plan in any of the links.
Slashdot Mirror
Where are the obligatory "beowulfcluster" tags and jokes already?
Sheesh, the standards around here sure are slipping.
Congress is made of men. ... If they are not doing the will of the people, the people are not using enough boxes.
[Emphasis mine.]
Genius!
We need to hire prostitutes to sleep with these Congressmen. The sex workers will whisper the sweet nothings of copyright reform into the ears of those who thought they were getting a free ride (in more ways than one).
If the Congressmen aren't seduced into carrying out our will, then we'll also have dirt to use against them!
They're basically just packets of proteins containing genetic material.
Fixed that for you. Not all viruses use DNA as their genetic material; some use RNA.
You are correct in that they do not have a metabolism and need a host to reproduce. This experiment could be conducted on an enzyme for the same effect: Will the enzyme be functional before/during/after the experiment? Obviously a virus is more complicated than an enzyme, but as long as nothing is structurally damaged it will still "work" (or, as these scientists would like to say, "live").
Would the same be true for a bacterium?
Are you surprised given that Sony has acknowledged it will sell the PS3 slim at a loss?
So yes, they've changed their strategy to boost sales of the new PS3 by selling at a loss and intending to make up the money on game sales. How many people will buy several of these and never play games on them? Probably not too many, but where do you draw the line?
Stop acting like a kid who can't get what he wants.
This sounds like a load of trouble to me. I will certainly teach my children to spell and write properly before allowing them to own any texting-enabled device. Imagine a generation of people who learned texting before proper spelling and grammar. The horrors!
Well, the obvious jokes about trees on the moon and fake lunar landings have already been made, so I'll make a simple observation: The curators at the Dutch National Museum thought that a red rock the size of a fist was a moon rock?
I'm not a curator at a national museum, nor am I even an amateur geologist, but I'm pretty sure I would at least recognize that the rock described didn't look like any moon rock I had ever seen or heard about. It would be woefully sad if the piece of fossilized tree was one that you could still see the rings in.
Clearly, they never knew the demand for moon rocks, and thought that enormous pieces are handed out to foreign politicians all the time:
Each year an independent peer review panel evaluates new research proposals, and curators mail out about 400 lunar samples to 40 to 50 scientists worldwide. Almost all are less than one gram in size. "We donâ(TM)t hand them out, we only loan them," Mr. Allen said.
Yes, scientists studying moon rocks have to write research grants in order to borrow a piece less than one gram in size. Yet the Dutch prime minister was given a fist sized moon rock. Yeah, OK.
It would be great if there were a method to 'opt out' certain websites so that they don't come up when searching against history and bookmarks. If people go through the trouble to hid bookmarks deep into sub-sub-directories, I think they'll take the two minutes to unclick those from a long list of what is searched.
This is exactly what I was thinking.
Which means that if what Dr. Elsila claims is true, Earth would have been bombarded by an insane number of comets to deliver enough amino acids to the area where life began. (Assuming that comet distribution across the surface of the Earth was somewhat random and not totally localized.)
There's still the problem of the life form being able to create its own amino acids, so a lot would have to 'fall from the sky' until the ability to synthesize them evolved.
At least, this would have to be the case if amino acids came exclusively (or near exclusively) from space.
This film should vault Neill Blomkamp into sci-fi stardom, on par with George Lucas and the Wachowski Brothers (of Matrix fame).
If you have to tell Slashdotters who the Wachowski brothers are, then they haven't achieved "sci-fi stardom", have they?
They ... found a mother and daughter who were naturally short sleepers. The women routinely function on about 6 hours of sleep a night; the average person needs 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep.
âoeWhen they wake up in morning, they feel they have slept enough,â Dr. Fu said.
These women feel they've had enough sleep, but that doesn't mean that they are fully rested and recovered from their previous day's activities. While I don't have access to the journal article, I would be interested in seeing whether mice or flies with the homologous mutation have shorter life spans or other problems that accrue over longer periods of time.
My two favorites are the American Museum of Natural History in NYC and the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.
The AMNH is enormous; you could easily spend an entire day there, and you'd be hard-pressed to see everything in detail. It has the best dinosaur and primate sections I've ever seen.
The Mutter is just plain cool: a museum devoted to medical oddities, like the skeleton(s) of Cheng & Eng, the 'Siamese twins'. As a PhD-wielding developmental biologist and geneticist I was happy to see some medical information on the various diseases or developmental problems that are on display. Sadly, you cannot take photos; they prefer you purchase their (expensive) photo book.
Yeah, sure it was great for MS to support a product that was made obsolete 3 years ago by the release of IE7, and then doubly-obsolete by the release of IE8.
Do people really expect product support for a release of software 8 years old that has been superseded by two version upgrades? I hope not. Especially since they got it for 'free' with their operating system. (Ha!)
It's not that the notepads and pens they handed out to doctors cost too much, it's that the trade group representing drug companies voluntarily agreed to stop the practice.
And not only has ghostwriting been around forever, but the drug companies have long hired well-respected doctors as consultants (at high rates), or paid for them to give lectures (again, at high rates). These well-respected doctors (called 'Key Opinion Leaders') have considerable influence within their specialty.
Disclosure: I arrange for doctors to work as consultants for drug companies.
It's surprising this guy didn't wake up in Guantanamo Bay one morning, considering there is a lot more evidence against him than some of the inmates there.
That's an interesting point. Similarly, I wonder if the conditions that NASA chooses to launch during are related to conditions that allow noctilucent cloud formation.
Not to diminish their accomplishments, but from TFA:
This turned the aluminium nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation.
Whilst the invisible effect lasted for only an extremely brief period - an estimated 40 femtoseconds - it demonstrates that such an exotic state of matter can be created using very high power X-ray sources.
So this doesn't quite have as broad a nerd appeal as the summary would lead us to believe.
"Males may alter the velocity of sperm they allocate to copulations by strategically firing their left and right ejaculatory ducts, which can operate independently," they explained.
"I know what you're thinking. 'Did he fire one ejaculatory duct or two?' Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya?"
Does anyone know where they are getting 65 million year old mammal DNA?
They aren't using 65 million year old DNA. The authors are drawing conclusions about the size of the genome 65 million years ago from calculations of the rate at which mobile DNA elements have changed.
Can a full set of DNA really last that long?
It's unlikely, but possible. There has been recovery of dinosaur DNA, but not an entire genome.
Are all the assumptions for the very long extrapolations of LTRs valid?
Yes and no. The authors compared their observations to two different models. The observations fit somewhere in between both models, indicating that rates of change in genome size are not constant. This means that during time span A model one is correct but at time span B model two is correct.
It's interesting that the authors looked at the Fugu genome when determining 'shrinkage'. The Fugu genome has roughly the same number of genes as the human genome, but is only 1/8th the size, meaning it is quite 'cleaned up'.
In fact, this is especially interesting because the Fugu genome isn't exactly representative of fish genomes in general, as most fish genomes are several times longer than the Fugu genome, and presumably don't contain a proportionate increase in the number of genes. There are other fish genomes out there (zebrafish, tetraodon, etc), so why choose one that is so devoid of non-coding DNA?
Here's the actual scientific paper, rather than the blog.
Could someone explain how this "breakthrough might also one day enable computer users to retrieve information from a search engine with more confidentiality"? (Quoted from the article.)
From the article it seems as if this aids in the scanning and searching of encrypted data rather than securing anything. While this might ultimately benefit large corporations or governments hiring third parties to perform analyses, is it of any use to the rest of us?
Even a car analogy would be great. Umm, make that "acceptable".
And with a vague memory from high school you managed to disprove hundreds of scientists who spend all of their time studying the ocean as an ecosystem. Bravo.
In all seriousness, some of the media reports are over-hyped, but the concern of ocean acidification has been around for at least a decade and you'd think that someone would have raised your objection during that time. Are some proponents hysterical? Yes. Is their concern valid? Yes.
Regardless, are you willing to gamble that what we do now has no real impact on the planet? Furthermore, are you willing to gamble that if we don't begin to limit our footprint on the planet our descendants will do so?
For instance, the widespread pollution of rivers by industrial chemical plants occurred rampantly throughout the US. Then we realized, "Hey! We have an impact on the environment!" It was a hard-earned and costly lesson, which fortunately we managed to clean up, for the most part. It could be argued that we didn't know any better at the time. But I think we know better now, and to argue that we don't have an effect on our environment is negligent. To argue that there's nothing we can do and we'll let future generations sort it out (in the meantime the situation worsens and the population continues to increase, compounding the damage) is downright evil.
By the way, it's already been published that even if the earth doesn't warm from human CO2, ocean acidification will still be a problem.
One item in the article that surprised me: the companies aren't offering information to their clients about diseases they are carriers for. For instance, it would add value to their service if clients knew they carried the gene for cystic fibrosis (a common genetic test).
It's either a huge oversight by the 'big three', or they think that their clients are so focused on themselves as to not really care about what diseases their children could inherit.
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
I can't see this venture returning capital on anything that remotely resembles "short term". As such, I envision only government entities or wealthy individuals uninterested in ROI funding a project such as this.
Honestly, what kind of question could there be about investors in this type of technology? I didn't see anything remotely relevant to a business plan in any of the links.