Comment SkiFree (Score 2, Interesting) 145
There were so many fun little things tied into this game. Cool tricks for points. Setting trees on fire. Knocking over people. And of course, the surprise monster ending!
Comment BacteriOphage (Score 3, Informative) 139
It's properly spelled bacteriophage--which are viruses of bacteria. These viruses make bacteria 'explode' so that newly replicated virions are released into the environment.
Submission + - Darwin gets a fresh boost (uottawa.ca)
plasmidmap writes: On the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of Species, a team of evolutionary biologists from the University of Ottawa and the University of Aarhus have taken another look at the theory, and once again Darwin comes off looking pretty good. The researchers watched evolution in action in a rapidly growing fungus. The goal of the work was to understand how adaptations that allow an organism to out-compete and out-reproduce its kin are built up from occasional mutations in DNA sequences. To see what was happening--step by step--the researchers examined mutations over the course of 800 generations in two different sized fungal populations made up of more than 100 fungi lineages. The experimental results revealed that almost all the evolving lines adapted using just a few mutations. 'Darwin was right about natural selection, but it doesn't need to be as slow as he thought. Adaptation can happen quickly because just a few mutations are involved and of the largest benefits tend to happen early on,' states principal investigator, Dr. Rees Kassen. The research demonstrates that it should not be a surprise to see rapid adaptation in nature, whether it be to novel antibiotics in our hospitals or of viruses to new hosts. The key is for natural populations to adapt quickly enough to avoid being on the wrong end of natural selection. Read the article in PLoS Biology (open access).
Submission + - Brain scans used in murder sentencing (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes: For what may be the first time, fMRI scans of brain activity have been used as evidence in the sentencing phase of a murder trial. Defense lawyers for an Illinois man convicted of raping and killing a 10-year-old girl used the scans to argue that their client should be spared the death penalty because he has a brain disorder. Some experts say the scans are irrelevant because they were taken 20+ years after the crimes were committed. Others point out that the scans are only being considered because the sentencing phase of a trial has less stringent standards about evidence than those for evidence used to establish a defendant's innocence or guilt.
Comment Risky behaviour (Score 2, Interesting) 258
One mechanism that could account for this is "risky behaviour", which is flu-vaccinated people being less concerned about being in contact with symptomatic people due to their perceived protection through the vaccine. Since the regular flu vaccine does not protect against "swine flu", vaccinated people are more likely to get it. The flip-side being unvaccinated people go out of their way to stay away from symptomatic people, and so are less likely to contract it.
Submission + - Mexico decriminalizes small-scale drug possession 4
Professor_Quail writes: Mexico enacted a controversial law Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging free government treatment for drug dependency. The law sets out maximum "personal use" amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution when the law goes into effect Friday.
Comment Senior author (Score 2, Informative) 121
The senior author is a professor at the university I attend--he is a super nice guy and does very interesting non-zombie related research too.
Comment Re:I remember that UI style (Score 2, Informative) 617
Ahh GeoWorks, the "OS" that was on my first computer. The ribbon does remind me of GeoWorks somewhat, although I think that GeoWorks did it better.
Comment Darwin Pond--What Spore should have been like (Score 4, Informative) 160
I've always thought that Darwin Pond was a cool piece of free (beer) software that could be used to teach evolution. It's a simulation game with swimming organisms that compete for food and mates. There's even assortative mating built in.
What's great about it is there's no fixed goal, it's completely up to the player--maybe you want to try to breed fast swimmers or cool moving swimmers. You can watch the abundance of types change through time, try out your own "designed" types or introduce random mutations into the population.
I would recommend games like this.
Comment I wish... (Score 1, Interesting) 199
That something like this had been around when I was a kid!
Comment We are the Borg... (Score 3, Funny) 99
Resistance is futile.
Comment Re:Slow news day? (Score 3, Insightful) 138
If you think about it from an evolutionary point of view, trust is an excellent adaptation for a social species. Being trusting is the sort of thing that might not work so well for a given individual but works out for the species in the long run.
Except evolution acts on individuals, not species. In order for trust to evolve, individuals must gain benefit from it.
It's like cuteness. What's the evolutionary purpose of finding creatures with infantile features and proportions cute? Easy: it's so we don't murder our young. If those little darlings didn't worm their way into our hearts at first sight, it's for damn sure they wouldn't make it through the third night of random crying, feeding, and diaper changes.
It's so we don't eat our own children, which would remove our genes from the population.
Comment Re:ReGenesis? (Score 1) 315
Sandstrom would have solved this already. Then he would have had a flash back to releasing Spanish flu and have to go get drunk in China again.
(But really, this does read like a ReGenesis plot! Everything I know about influenza I learned from ReGenesis.)
Comment Summer of '07 (Score 1) 739
Learned to convert integer to string
R command line was heaven
Typing till my fingers were red
It was the summer of 2007
Installed Dapper Drake for school
For a project that was real hard
Set up gedit for typesetting
LaTeX documents look best by far
Oh when I look back now
Hardware problems seemed to take for ever
And if I'd had the choice
I would not have bought a Broadcom wireless card
Those were the best days of my life
Why won't my mp3 files play?
Why do I have to apt-get and then install?
I can't figure out how to set my resolution
Gotta learn this system by fall
Tedious tasks made fast
By learning how to script in bash
But Nautilus freezes on me
Every time I open the Trash!
Those were the best days of my life
Back in the summer of 2007
Googling errors messages
Ubuntu community helpful
I needed to reinstall
I guess nothing can last forever, forever, no
And now at version 9.04
Look at everything that's come and gone
Sometimes when I think about ol' 6.06
Wonder how I stuck with it so long
Now my desktop runs only Ubuntu
But my laptop still dualboots Vista
Once projector support is 100%
Then I'll say hasta la vista
These are the best days of my life
It's the summer of 2009
Comment Re:I tried to access the floppy drive (Score 3, Funny) 739
Windows is like a drug addiction. Sometimes it takes several tries to kick it.
More like Windows is a bad stain-- it might take several washes to get it out!
