Comment Re:It's easy to overthink even in the simplest cas (Score 1) 394
Correct syntax would be (command1; command2) | command3, which is what was described in Meriahven's post.
Submission + - Scientists Confirm Decay Rate Constancy (nist.gov)
As_I_Please writes: Scientists at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology and Purdue University have ruled out neutrino flux as a cause of previously observed fluctuations in nuclear decay rates. From the article:
Researchers
... tested this by comparing radioactive gold-198 in two shapes, spheres and thin foils, with the same mass and activity. Gold-198 releases neutrinos as it decays. The team reasoned that if neutrinos are affecting the decay rate, the atoms in the spheres should decay more slowly than the atoms in the foil because the neutrinos emitted by the atoms in the spheres would have a greater chance of interacting with their neighboring atoms. The maximum neutrino flux in the sample in their experiments was several times greater than the flux of neutrinos from the sun. The researchers followed the gamma-ray emission rate of each source for several weeks and found no difference between the decay rate of the spheres and the corresponding foils.
The paper can be found here on arXiv
.
Slashdot has previously covered the original announcement and followed up with the skepticism of other scientists.
Comment Re:Uh (Score 1) 830
The difficulty in truly understanding the genome is that it's both program and data.
Wait, the brain is a LISP machine?
I'll show myself out.
Comment Don't defend Stacy Snyder (Score 1) 329
Stacy Snyder was not denied a teaching credential solely for posting a picture on MySpace. You can read the reasons in the judge's decisions (PDF).
Starting on page 6, Mid-Placement Evaluations, we find Ms. Snyder:
- had “problems with discipline and also with content”
- "had difficulty maintaining a formal teaching manner"
- was "ignorant of basic grammar, punctuation, spelling, and usage"
- on several
- left too many students behind as a result of ineffective lessons.
- efforts to “share her personal life” with the students crossed into “unprofessionalism.”
- told an English class that her Valentines Day had been “ruined” when she encountered her former husband while dining out with her boyfriend.
As for the MySpace photo, it would have been less of a problem if Ms. Snyder had not directed her students to visit her MySpace page (something else she was instructed not to do (page 8)). The photo, along with a letter of apology featuring many grammar mistakes, was the last straw that led to Ms. Snyder without a teaching credential.
Surely, there are better examples of people being harmed by inadvertent disclosures on the internet.
Comment Re:bad title (Score 1) 429
Do you have any comment on Bayesian statistics? Would using that have better results?
Comment Re:Remember, slashdot is run by rich white guys (Score 1) 191
I've never understood this argument. Listing prices helps a consumer make a choice about what to buy, but in health care, there often isn't a choice. Can it really make a difference to know what an appendectomy costs? It's not like you can opt for a cheaper treatment if you can't afford the one that cures you. Market solutions only work if a consumer has a choice about what to buy.
Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 205
Actually, no. The paper manuscript or the digital file belongs to you. The content, i.e., the copyright, belongs to the letter writer. If you publish a letter or email (or even show it to someone else), the letter sender can sue you for copyright violation. Granted, there are fair use exceptions, but you cannot publish, in whole or in substantial part, any letter you receive without the author's permission. http://www.publaw.com/biography.html
Comment Re:don't believe it (Score 2, Insightful) 539
When a bacteria gets in your bloodstream your don't consciously perceive it, but still your brains sends those white cells to the battle. So there you have a brain connection to reality that conscious can't perceive.
In addition, this process was undocumented & "unknown" for almost all know human history, but it always existed. How many brain processes do you think are still undocumented & unmeasured - but exist?
The brain is not involved in immune responses.
As for your second point, who cares what scientists didn't know centuries ago? We know a great deal right now!
Comment The excitement of science (Score 1) 799
For physics and astronomy, nobody better demonstrates the excitement to be found in science than Neil deGrasse Tyson.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ai-VvboPnA
For brain science: V.S. Ramachandran. He works with the weirdest neurological disorders. Phantom limbs, split brains, and people who feel that they have one limb too many.
Comment Re:Sipping From a Firehose (Score 1) 214
Not being pedantic really helps one to not be ignored. You could have read GP's comment as {less stupid} people instead of less {stupid people}. Or, you could realize that there is no lack of precision in GP's post. See: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/003775.html
And finally, just to annoy you some more, there's a split infinitive in the first sentence of this post.
