hessian - Slashdot User

Submission + - Musicians support piracy, think it more profitable than music biz (jester-records.com)

Submitted by

hessian

on Friday December 14, 2012 @01:11AM

hessian writes: "The harsh reality is that too many prey on us – in a hostile environment – we have no other choice than to rise up.

We have no beef with "curious cats" who tune in on unauthorized channels, download torrents etc. Such undertakings serve a similar purpose to that of labels and distributors – from which we see such a minuscule yield anyway. Forget about it.

We encourage all conscientious music fans to buy their music direct from artists whenever that is possible, in the future. It will help more than you know."

Submission + - Study finds epigenetics, not genetics, underlies homosexuality (eurekalert.org)

Submitted by

hessian

on Tuesday December 11, 2012 @10:42AM

hessian writes: "Epigenetics – how gene expression is regulated by temporary switches, called epi-marks – appears to be a critical and overlooked factor contributing to the long-standing puzzle of why homosexuality occurs.

According to the study, published online today in The Quarterly Review of Biology, sex-specific epi-marks, which normally do not pass between generations and are thus "erased," can lead to homosexuality when they escape erasure and are transmitted from father to daughter or mother to son."

Submission + - Native Americans and Northern Europeans More Closely Related Than Previously Tho (newswise.com)

Submitted by

hessian

on Friday December 07, 2012 @07:13PM

hessian writes: "Using genetic analyses, scientists have discovered that Northern European populations—including British, Scandinavians, French, and some Eastern Europeans—descend from a mixture of two very different ancestral populations, and one of these populations is related to Native Americans. This discovery helps fill gaps in scientific understanding of both Native American and Northern European ancestry, while providing an explanation for some genetic similarities among what would otherwise seem to be very divergent groups. This research was published in the November 2012 issue of the Genetics Society of America’s journal GENETICS"

Submission + - Black boxes in cars raise privacy concerns (foxnews.com)

Submitted by

hessian

on Friday December 07, 2012 @07:05PM

hessian writes: "In the next few days, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is expected to propose long-delayed regulations requiring auto manufacturers to include event data recorders — better known as "black boxes" — in all new cars and light trucks. But the agency is behind the curve. Automakers have been quietly tucking the devices, which automatically record the actions of drivers and the responses of their vehicles in a continuous information loop, into most new cars for years.

Data collected by the recorders is increasingly showing up in lawsuits, criminal cases and high-profile accidents. Massachusetts Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray initially said that he wasn't speeding and that he was wearing his seat belt when he crashed a government-owned car last year. But the Ford Crown Victoria's data recorder told a different story: It showed the car was traveling more than 100 mph and Murray wasn't belted in."

Submission + - Ten Simple Rules for the Open Development of Scientific Software (ploscompbiol.org)

Submitted by

hessian

on Friday December 07, 2012 @06:53PM

hessian writes: "Open-source software development has had significant impact, not only on society, but also on scientific research. Papers describing software published as open source are amongst the most widely cited publications (e.g., BLAST [1], [2] and Clustal-W [3]), suggesting many scientific studies may not have been possible without some kind of open software to collect observations, analyze data, or present results. It is surprising, therefore, that so few papers are accompanied by open software, given the benefits that this may bring.

Publication of the source code you write not only can increase your impact [4], but also is essential if others are to be able to reproduce your results. Reproducibility is a tenet of computational science [5], and critical for pipelines employed in data-driven biological research. Publishing the source for the software you created as well as input data and results allows others to better understand your methodology, and why it produces, or fails to produce, expected results. Public release might not always be possible, perhaps due to intellectual property policies at your or your collaborators' institutes; and it is important to make sure you know the regulations that apply to you. Open licensing models can be incredibly flexible and do not always prevent commercial software release [5]."

Submission + - Genome-wide studies establish that human intelligence is heritable (nih.gov)

Submitted by

hessian

on Thursday November 29, 2012 @04:21PM

hessian writes: "General intelligence is an important human quantitative trait that accounts for much of the variation in diverse cognitive abilities."

Submission + - The dictionary is wrong – science can be a religion too (guardian.co.uk) 1

Submitted by

hessian

on Tuesday November 20, 2012 @10:44PM

hessian writes: "Scientific and religious explanations come together in an odd way at Stonehenge and similar monuments. They can be interpreted as megalithic calendars, or devices for astronomical prediction, as well as ritual burying grounds – and the reason we can reconstruct them as gigantic observatories is precisely that we can calculate today exactly what would have emerged from calculations done 4,000 years ago.

Yet to call Stonehenge a purely scientific enterprise is clearly wrong. When you consider the immense labour and complex social organisation required to put all those stones in place, you could be inspired to ask "where would the sun have risen at midsummer 3235 BC". But surely the much more interesting question is why this question should have been thought so important in that culture."

Submission + - Cancer can teach us about our own evolution (guardian.co.uk)

Submitted by

hessian

on Sunday November 18, 2012 @04:58PM

hessian writes: "Cancer, it seems, is embedded in the basic machinery of life, a type of default state that can be triggered by some kind of insult. That suggests it is not a modern aberration but has deep evolutionary roots, a suspicion confirmed by the fact that it is not confined to humans but is widespread among mammals, fish, reptiles and even plants. Scientists have identified genes implicated in cancer that are thought to be hundreds of millions of years old. Clearly, we will fully understand cancer only in the context of biological history."

Submission + - You Can't Say That on the Internet (nytimes.com) 1

Submitted by

hessian

on Sunday November 18, 2012 @10:26AM

hessian writes: "A BASTION of openness and counterculture, Silicon Valley imagines itself as the un-Chick-fil-A. But its hyper-tolerant facade often masks deeply conservative, outdated norms that digital culture discreetly imposes on billions of technology users worldwide.

What is the vehicle for this new prudishness? Dour, one-dimensional algorithms, the mathematical constructs that automatically determine the limits of what is culturally acceptable."

Submission + - Euro zone falls into second recession since 2009 (reuters.com)

Submitted by

hessian

on Thursday November 15, 2012 @08:54PM

hessian writes: "The euro zone debt crisis dragged the bloc into its second recession since 2009 in the third quarter despite modest growth in Germany and France, data showed on Thursday.

The French and German economies both managed 0.2 percent growth in the July-to-September period but their resilience could not save the 17-nation bloc from contraction as the likes of The Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Austria shrank."

Submission + - Court rules against Polish rocker who tore up Bible (reuters.com)

Submitted by

hessian

on Friday November 09, 2012 @05:13PM

hessian writes: "Poland's Supreme Court opened the way on Monday for a blasphemy verdict against a rock musician who tore up a Bible on stage, a case that has pitted deep Catholic traditions against a new desire for free expression.

Adam Darski, front man with a heavy metal group named Behemoth, ripped up a copy of the Christian holy book during a concert in 2007, called it deceitful and described the Roman Catholic church as "a criminal sect".

(They were good once: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3mkPVznv6c )"

Submission + - Decisions based on instinct have surprisingly positive outcomes (aftau.org)

Submitted by

hessian

on Friday November 09, 2012 @05:11PM

hessian writes: "In a behavioral experiment, Prof. Marius Usher of Tel Aviv University's School of Psychological Sciences and his fellow researchers found that intuition was a surprisingly powerful and accurate tool. When forced to choose between two options based on instinct alone, the participants made the right call up to 90 percent of the time"

Submission + - Constant technology use may hamper kids' ability to learn (nytimes.com)

Submitted by

hessian

on Saturday November 03, 2012 @02:11PM

hessian writes: "Scholars who study the role of media in society say no long-term studies have been done that adequately show how and if student attention span has changed because of the use of digital technology. But there is mounting indirect evidence that constant use of technology can affect behavior, particularly in developing brains, because of heavy stimulation and rapid shifts in attention."

Submission + - Stereotypes are more valid than most social psychological hypotheses. (psychologytoday.com)

Submitted by

hessian

on Saturday November 03, 2012 @01:40PM

hessian writes: "That stereotype accuracy — the correspondence of stereotype beliefs with criteria — is one of the largest relationships in all of social psychology. The correlations of stereotypes with criteria range from .4 to over .9, and average almost .8 for cultural stereotypes (the correlation of beliefs that are widely shared with criteria) and.5 for personal stereotypes (the correlation of one individual's stereotypes with criteria, averaged over lots of individuals). The average effect in social psychology is about .20. Stereotypes are more valid than most social psychological hypotheses."

Submission + - Pollution from Megacities Decreases Air Quality in the U.S. (healthline.com)

Submitted by

hessian

on Friday November 02, 2012 @03:53PM

hessian writes: "China is a leader in manufacturing, but it is also releasing enough emissions to significantly increase U.S. air pollution, says a new report by the World Meteorological Association (WMA).

The WMA study examined air pollution and its migration from megacities around the world (those with populations greater than 10 million). The findings support earlier claims that air and ground water pollution is both a local and regional problem, as well as one that requires global solutions, such as the need for consistent international air quality standards that are not yet in place. Worse, increases in air pollution are expected to increase along with projected population growth in those same cities, many of them in developing countries.

Note: article is from Oct 22; I'm just slow (as in Granny in a Rambler, not kids who eat paste)."

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