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Comment Re:Fair enough I suppose (Score 1) 196

by Nanosapien (#41977513) Attached to: UW Imposes 20-Tweet Limit On Live Events
Exaggerate much? I never said that they have -no- focus on their education, only that maybe resources that are usually spent on non-academic programs could go to fund the actual academic programs. An example is the University of Florida where the computer science department is being reduced, but the football program's funding is increased. Having sports programs competing with academic programs in academic institutions for funding screws up a university's priorities. Compare the funding of the sports programs versus department funding. Or how many research programs or slots they're able to fund. Sports programs may be profitable, but is that really how we want to run our academic institutions? Like a business? I liked the way that schools in Germany had separated their academic programs from their athletic programs. That way the schools never confused their priorities in giving people top quality education. Just something to think about instead of trying to be sarcastic and narrowly-focused.

Comment Re:Fair enough I suppose (Score 2) 196

by Nanosapien (#41967193) Attached to: UW Imposes 20-Tweet Limit On Live Events

They understand the 'modern world' perfectly well. They also understand things like 'exclusive contracts' and 'source of income'.

What the 'modern world' needs to learn is that just because you have the ability to do something doesn't mean it is right to do that thing, or that doing that thing has no long-term negative effects. Yes, some idiot can tweet the entire play-by-play. But what do you think will happen to UW's basketball program when it no longer is a source of revenue (or loses even more money than it does now, if that is the case)?

Maybe if their basketball and other sports programs are no longer a source of revenue, the university will go back to focusing on education.
Science

Submission + - Skyrmions being looked at to improve computing energy-efficiency (physorg.com)

Submitted by Nanosapien
Nanosapien writes: From Physorg:
A new phenomenon might make computing devices faster, smaller and much more energy-efficient. Moving so-called skyrmions needs 100,000 times smaller currents than existing technologies and the number of atoms needed for a data bit could be reduced significantly. Now a team of physicists from the Technische Universitaet Muenchen and the University of Cologne developed a simple electronic method for moving and reading these skyrmion data bits. The journal Nature Physics reports on their results.
Medicine

Submission + - New vaccine is effective against all major strains of hepatitis C (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: Although the existence of hepatitis C had been postulated in the 1970s, it wasn't until 1989 that a team led by Michael Houghton identified the virus. Often being asymptomatic, it is estimated between 130 — 170 million people worldwide are infected with the virus that can lead to scarring of the liver and cirrhosis. Although treatment with medication is available, it isn't effective in all cases and between 20 to 30 percent of those infected with hepatitis C develop some form of liver disease. Now Houghton and a team at the University of Alberta have developed a vaccine from a single strain that is effective against all known strains of the disease.
Biotech

Submission + - Synthetic cell membrane brings creation of fully a (gizmag.com)

Submitted by cylonlover
cylonlover writes: The cell membrane is one of the most important components of a cell because it separates the interior from the environment and controls the movement of substances in and out of the cell. In a move that brings mankind another step closer to being able to create artificial life forms from scratch, chemists from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and Harvard University have created artificial self-assembling cell membranes using a novel chemical reaction. The chemists hope their creation will help shed light on the origins of life.

Submission + - Everything you thought you knew about learning is (wired.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Taking notes during class? Topic-focused study? A consistent learning environment? According to Robert Bjork, director of the UCLA Learning and Forgetting Lab, distinguished professor of psychology, and massively renowned expert on packing things in your brain in a way that keeps them from leaking out, all are three are exactly opposite the best strategies for learning.
Security

Submission + - The Cost of US Security

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The Atlantic reports that as we mark Osama bin Laden's death, what's striking is how much he cost our nation and how little we've gained from our fight against him. By conservative estimates, bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down. "What do we have to show for that tab," ask Tim Fernholz and Jim Tankersley. "Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty; soaring oil prices partially attributable to the global war on bin Laden's terrorist network; and a chunk of our mounting national debt." In 2004 bin Laden explicitly compared the US fight to the Afghan incursion that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union during the Cold War. "We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy," said bin Laden adding that that every dollar spent by al-Qaida in attacking the US has cost Washington $1m in economic fallout and military spending. Considering that we've spent one-fifth of a year's gross domestic product--more than the entire 2008 budget of the United States government--responding to his 2001 attacks, he may have been onto something."
EU

Submission + - Hungary Grants Personhood to Fetuses (euractiv.com)

Submitted by Nanosapien
Nanosapien writes: Hungary's new constitution, in addition to being drafted on the iPad, includes an amendment granting full personhood rights to fetuses from the moment of conception in "a eulogy to the country's Christian roots and past greatness". Also of note was allowing parents the ability to cast votes on behalf of their children, rewarding families who have more children.
Medicine

Miniature Human Livers Grown In Lab 154

Posted by Soulskill from the less-filling-tastes-great dept.
Zothecula writes "In the quest to grow replacement human organs in the lab, livers are no doubt at the top of many a barfly's wish list. With its wide range of functions that support almost every organ in the body and no way to compensate for the absence of liver function, the ability to grow a replacement is also the focus of many research efforts. Now, for the first time, researchers have been able to successfully engineer miniature livers in the lab using human liver cells."

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