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Comment Ok, let me get this straight: (Score 2, Insightful) 135

by Hartree (#49254635) Attached to: Wikipedia Entries On NYPD Violence Get Some Edits From Headquarters

You set up an open access, anyone can edit, system like Wikipedia, and you're surprised when people edit it when they might have a vested interest?

This is the very reason why Wikipedia is a poor source on some political or controversial issues. Usually it's better for some of the technical issues, but not always.

It's a powerful tool, but trying to make it something that it's not, a guaranteed to be unbiased source, is a bit unrealistic.

Submission + - Humans may harbor more than 100 genes from other organisms (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: You’re not completely human, at least when it comes to the genetic material inside your cells. You—and everyone else—may harbor as many as 145 genes that have jumped from bacteria, other single-celled organisms, and viruses and made themselves at home in the human genome. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which provides some of the broadest evidence yet that, throughout evolutionary history, genes from other branches of life have become part of animal cells.

Submission + - Newly discovered sea creature was once the largest animal on Earth (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by sciencehabit
sciencehabit writes: Almost half a billion years ago, the largest animal on Earth was a 2-meter-long, helmet-headed sea creature that fed on some of the ocean’s tiniest prey. The newly described species is one of the largest arthropods yet discovered, a class of animals that includes spiders and crabs. The well-preserved remains of the multisegmented creature are providing clues about how subsequent arthropods’ legs may have evolved from the dozens of stubby flaps used to propel this beast through the water.

Submission + - Senolytics: A New Class of Drugs With the Potential to Slow the Aging Process (gizmag.com)

Submitted by Zothecula
Zothecula writes: It's a cruel irony that when we're young we want to be older, but when we're older we want to be younger. While few would advocate research into ways to make kids grow up faster, there are plenty of efforts underway looking to forestall the rigors of age. The latest cause for hope in this area comes in the form of a new class of drugs called senolytics, which have been shown to dramatically slow the aging process in animal models.

Submission + - Scotland Yard Chief: Put CCTV in every home (dailymail.co.uk)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Homeowners should consider fitting CCTV to trap burglars, the country's most senior police officer declared yesterday. Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said police forces needed more crime scene footage to match against their 12million images of suspects and offenders. And he called on families and businesses to install cameras at eye level – to exploit advances in facial recognition technology.

Submission + - China's Arthur C. Clarke

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Joshua Rothman has a very interesting article in The New Yorker about Liu Cixin, China’s most popular science-fiction writer, author of thirteen books who has retained his day job as a computer engineer with a State-run power plant in a remote part of Shanxi province, because it helps him to stay grounded, enabling him to "gaze at the unblemished sky" as many of his co-workers do. In China, Cixin is about as famous as William Gibson in the United States and Cixin is often compared to Arthur C. Clarke, whom he cites as an influence. Rothman writes that American science fiction draws heavily on American culture, of course—the war for independence, the Wild West, film noir, sixties psychedelia—and so humanity’s imagined future often looks a lot like America’s past. For an American reader, one of the pleasures of reading Liu is that his stories draw on entirely different resources.

For example, in “The Wages of Humanity,” visitors from space demand the redistribution of Earth’s wealth, and explain that runaway capitalism almost destroyed their civilization. In “Taking Care of Gods,” the hyper-advanced aliens who, billions of years ago, engineered life on Earth descend from their spaceships; they turn out to be little old men with canes and long, white beards. “We hope that you will feel a sense of filial duty towards your creators and take us in,” they say. "I doubt that any Western sci-fi writer has so thoroughly explored the theme of filial piety," writes Rothman. In another story, “The Devourer,” a character asks, “What is civilization? Civilization is devouring, ceaselessly eating, endlessly expanding.” But you can’t expand forever; perhaps it would be better, another character suggests, to establish a “self-sufficient, introspective civilization.” "At the core of Liu’s sensibility," concludes Rothamn, "is a philosophical interest in the problem of limits. How should we react to the inherent limitations of life? Should we push against them or acquiesce?"

Comment Re:Hmmm .... (Score 1) 127

by Hartree (#49180829) Attached to: Physicists Gear Up To Catch a Gravitational Wave

If it shortened all dimensions equally and at the same time everywhere, it would be difficult. But you're looking for a difference in shortening (or lengthening) of one arm of the detector (or the test masses in that arm) relative to the other.

It's a bit waves on the surface of a pond. Sometimes, they expand equally in all directions and form a circular pattern. Sometimes they are different in different directions. This can detect that difference.

Even if the wave is symmetric in all directions, the squeezing/stretching can reach the arms of the detector at different times, just like the points on a circular ripple will reach the short at different times.

Now, of course this is assuming that the waves travel at a certain finite speed (the speed of light as far as we know). If they traveled instantly so the change was everywhere all at once, things would be different.

But, we have pretty solid reasons to believe that they don't travel instantly: That Nobel prize in 1993, I mentioned for example. The amount of energy lost in gravity waves was that of a traveling wave of finite speed, not something that traveled instantly.

Comment Re:Hmmm .... (Score 1) 127

by Hartree (#49177527) Attached to: Physicists Gear Up To Catch a Gravitational Wave

True. Its more like neutrino astronomy in that respect. But fewer people know about that (and I couldn't come up with a good car analogy to make it Slashdot compatible. ;) ).

Assuming we detect them, being able to do spectroscopy (frequency measurements) and intensity measurements over extended periods to determine rise and fall times of events should be a powerful tool.

Comment Re:Hmmm .... (Score 2) 127

by Hartree (#49177465) Attached to: Physicists Gear Up To Catch a Gravitational Wave

Thanks for pointing it out. My info was a bit old.

Looks like they put components of H2 in storage and are thinking about using it for LIGO-India. I'd heard of the LIGO-India idea, but hadn't known it would use some of Hanford's equipment.

Another detector at a long distance from the others would greatly improve the ability to localize the source. Let's hope they can get it built and not just have it remain a proposal.

Comment Re:Hmmm .... (Score 5, Informative) 127

by Hartree (#49176253) Attached to: Physicists Gear Up To Catch a Gravitational Wave

There are two more detectors at the Hanford Washington site. A primary one like at Livingston, and a secondary one that's half the length.

Also, there is an European experiment in Italy, called Virgo. It's currently being upgraded to similar sensitivity to the other 3.

When they are all working, it will allow the detection to not only be verified, but the time of the events at each detector will let them triangulate the location the wave originated from.

We're pretty darn sure of gravitational waves, as a Nobel prize was awarded in 1993 for showing that the slowing of a binary pulsar was just the right amount to account for the gravitational waves it would generate.

These detectors will let us do gravitational wave astronomy much like we do with light and radio waves now.

The huge news would be if they get all of them working with their maximum sensitivity and didn't detect anything. That would mean something was very wrong with their assumptions.

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