sertsa - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Distance learning. (Score 2, Funny) 317

by sertsa on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @06:11PM (#26440207) Attached to: MIT Moves Away From Massive Lecture Halls

Being a professor myself I would point out that in my freshman level classes rarely is the front of the class full.

In my 10 years of teaching I've noticed as the students get older they tend to sit closer. I don't know if it's their sight, hearing, or interest-level, but I like to think it's the last possibility. ;-)

Not surprisingly as a group the older students tend to do better than their younger "peers."

Hmmmmmmm....

Old Materials Resurface For "Prebiotic Soup" 263

Posted by kdawson on Friday October 17, 2008 @10:12AM from the do-not-clean-out-the-fridge dept.

AliasMarlowe writes "Stanley Miller performed the famous experiments in the 1950s showing that amino acids and other building blocks for biomolecules could be produced by passing lightning through a mix of simple hydrocarbons, water vapor, and ammonia (thought at the time to approximate the Earth's early atmosphere). Other experiments approximated the environment around volcanic eruptions, but those results were not published. Following his death last year, a former student discovered the materials from those experiments, in labelled vials. Analysis of this material indicates that the conditions around volcanic eruptions (still thought to be representative of such events in the early Earth) resulted in a higher yield of amino acids than the simple lightning experiments, and resulted in a greater variety of amino acids." Pharyngula has a discussion of the Science paper, including a graph of the amino acids produced.

Submission + - Zombie Attack at Hierakonpolis

Submitted by sertsa on Thursday November 08, 2007 @11:44AM

sertsa writes: In an article just published by the Archaeological Institute of America Archaeologists are hypothesizing that the formation of ancient Egypt is linked to recurrent Predynastic zombie attacks due to outbreaks of Solanum virus.

From the very beginning of Predynastic research, Sir W.M. Flinders Petrie reported several headless, but seemingly intact, burials during his famous excavations at Naqada in 1895. Further excavations at Gerzeh and other sites revealed more of these curious burials, but no satisfactory explanation could be proposed at the time. More recently, excavations in the non-elite cemetery at Hierakonpolis (HK43), undertaken from 1996 to 2004, have uncovered more of these strange headless burials in addition to 21 individuals whose cervical vertebrae bear cut marks indicative of complete decapitation. The individuals include men and women ranging in age from 16 to 65. The number and the standard position of the cut marks (usually on the second-fourth cervical vertebrae; always from the front) indicate an effort far greater than that needed simply to cause the death of a normal (uninfected) person. The standard position also indicates these are not injuries sustained during normal warfare.

I've got my pub scoped out!

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