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Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331

Posted by samzenpus from the snack-is-going-to-be-on-the-floor-today dept.
Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."

Comment Re:Copying MS? (Score 1) 158

by Headrick (#30055354) Attached to: Google Gives the Gift of Free Airport Wi-Fi

In general I agree with your comment but I don't think it's completely foolish to get to the airport early and a number of people (like me) live in one of the covered airports and will be traveling soon. I tend to arrive at the airport a couple hours early, get through security, and find a decent place to have a meal and a drink or two. I'm much less stressed and will enjoy the free wifi.

So yeah, maybe it's a bit of grandstanding but it's not useless for many thousands of people.

Comment Re:What about suicide (Score 1) 512

by Headrick (#29225545) Attached to: Depression May Provide Cognitive Advantages

It is my understanding that in general truly depressed people do not kill themselves. It is too much effort for them. Even getting out of bed is an effort. This is why anti-depressants come with suicide warnings -- not because they cause suicidal thoughts directly but because they give the depressed enough motivation to actually off themselves.

Comment Re:I have an idea. (Score 3, Interesting) 247

by Headrick (#28998299) Attached to: Poor Passwords A Worse Problem Than Poor Antivirus

Agreed, but unfortunately it's not that easy. I just started a new job and got my AMEX corporate card in the mail today. The online account had a maximum password length of 8 characters with no special characters allowed. A phrase would never work when we have companies that are still limiting their passwords to 8 characters.
The Internet

Malcolm Gladwell Challenges the Idea of "Free" 206

Posted by kdawson from the crying-out-from-a-world-of-hurt dept.
An anonymous reader brings us another bump on the bumpy road of Chris Anderson's new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price, which we discussed a week ago. Now the Times (UK) is reporting on a dustup between Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. Recently Gladwell reviewed, or rather deconstructed, Anderson's book in the New Yorker. Anderson has responded with a blog post that addresses some, but by no means all, of Gladwell's criticisms, and The Times is inclined to award the match to Gladwell on points. Although their reviewer didn't notice that Gladwell, in setting up the idea of "Free" as a straw man, omitted a critical half of Stewart Brand's seminal quote.
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Kids Score 40 Percent Higher When They Get Paid For Grades 716

Posted by samzenpus from the show-them-the-money dept.
A large number of schools participating in a pay-for-grades program have seen test scores in reading and math go up by almost 40 percentage points. The Sparks program will pay seventh-graders up to $500 and fourth-graders as much as $250 for good performance on 10 assessment tests. About two-thirds of the 59 schools in the program improved their scores by margins above the citywide average. "It's an ego booster in terms of self-worth. When they get the checks, there's that competitiveness -- 'Oh, I'm going to get more money than you next time' -- so it's something that excites them," said Rose Marie Mills, principal at MS 343 in Mott Haven. Critics, who are unaware that most college students don't become liberal arts majors, argue that paying kids corrupts the notion of learning for education's sake alone.
Communications

Submission + - GPS systems could crash next year (crn.com)

Submitted by mstipe
mstipe writes: Thanks in part to a lack of oversight, a government agency Wednesday warned that unless the U.S. Air Force is able to acquire new satellites soon, the Global Positioning Systen may crash by next year, wreaking havoc with the public and military operations.

According to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), an overhaul of the 20-year-old system has been delayed until November, putting it three years behind schedule. The project is also over budget by $870 million from the original cost estimate of $729 million, for a total of approximately $1.6 billion.

"If the Air Force does not meet its schedule goals for development of GPS IIIA satellites, there will be an increased likelihood that in 2010, as old satellites begin to fail, the overall GPS constellation will fall below the number of satellites required to provide the level of GPS service that the U.S. government commits ," the GAO stated in its report.
Math

New Pattern Found In Prime Numbers 509

Posted by Soulskill from the benford-and-sons dept.
stephen.schaubach writes "Spanish Mathematicians have discovered a new pattern in primes that surprisingly has gone unnoticed until now. 'They found that the distribution of the leading digit in the prime number sequence can be described by a generalization of Benford's law. ... Besides providing insight into the nature of primes, the finding could also have applications in areas such as fraud detection and stock market analysis. ... Benford's law (BL), named after physicist Frank Benford in 1938, describes the distribution of the leading digits of the numbers in a wide variety of data sets and mathematical sequences. Somewhat unexpectedly, the leading digits aren't randomly or uniformly distributed, but instead their distribution is logarithmic. That is, 1 as a first digit appears about 30% of the time, and the following digits appear with lower and lower frequency, with 9 appearing the least often.'"

Comment Re:One. Always. (Score 3, Informative) 503

by Headrick (#27668759) Attached to: My primary computer has N screens, with N being ...

Mod parent up. I have six screens connected to four computers all running Synergy so I can use a single keyboard and mouse. One Windows machine for office stuff, a dual head Linux as my primary development machine, a dual head Windows as my Windows dev box, and my MacBook Pro. Multiple desktops for the Linux and Mac. Downside: no realistic way to use the old "compiling" excuse to slack off ;)

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