cerebis - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Don't Forget Our Pollution Exports (Score 1) 432

by cerebis on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @08:37PM (#31592038) Attached to: China Hits Back At Google

Not only are we exporting unskilled labor, we're exporting our pollution!

It's worse than that, since the manufacturing done at higher emission standards would mean less pollution for the same product. As this would inevitably be at a higher cost, consumption would go down and products would reflect that tendency via feedback. Factor in this effect for the entire supply chain from raw materials and energy to finished product.

Supersizing the "Last Supper" 98

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday March 23, 2010 @12:38PM from the a-meal-fit-for-a-king-of-kings dept.

gandhi_2 writes "A pair of sibling scholars compared 52 artists' renditions of 'The Last Supper', and found that the size of the meal painted had grown through the years. Over the last millennium they found that entrees had increased by 70%, bread by 23%, and plate size by 65.6%. Their findings were published in the International Journal of Obesity. From the article: 'The apostles depicted during the Middle Ages appear to be the ascetics they are said to have been. But by 1498, when Leonardo da Vinci completed his masterpiece, the party was more lavishly fed. Almost a century later, the Mannerist painter Jacobo Tintoretto piled the food on the apostles' plates still higher.'"

Food Activist's Life Becomes The Life of Brian 165

Posted by samzenpus on Monday March 22, 2010 @03:34PM from the you-are-all-individuals dept.

krou writes "After food activist and author Raj Patel appeared on The Colbert Report to promote his latest book, things seemed to be going well, until he began to get inundated with emails asking if he was 'the world teacher.' In events ripped straight from The Life of Brian, it would seem that Raj Patel's life story ticks all the boxes necessary to fulfill prophecies made by Benjamin Creme, founder of religious sect Share International. After the volume of emails and inquiries got worse, Patel eventually wrote a message on his website stating categorically that he was not the Messiah. Sure enough, 'his denial merely fanned the flames for some believers. In a twist ripped straight from the script of the comedy classic, they said that this disavowal, too, had been prophesied.'"

Android 2.1 Finally Makes It To Droid 132

Posted by timothy on Wednesday March 17, 2010 @02:30PM from the for-all-your-robot-needs dept.

MrSmith0011000100110 writes "The lovely people over at AndroidCentral have broken the announcement that Android 2.1 is finally coming to the Motorola Droid, with actual proof on Verizon's Droid support page (PDF). I don't know about my Droid brethren, but I'm pretty excited to see the new series of Android ROMs for the Droid phone that are based on a stock Android 2.1. As most of us know, the existing 2.1 ROMs can be buggy as hell and either running vanilla 2.1 or a custom ROM; but this phone is still a tinkerer's best friend."

Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child 331

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday November 24, 2009 @07:07PM 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 454 Sequencer isn't ~that~ bad. (Score 1) 239

by cerebis on Monday January 05, 2009 @05:03PM (#26334961) Attached to: New Method To Revolutionize DNA Sequencing

The 454 pyro-sequencer currently produces 400bp reads, not 20bp. Granted, that's still a fair bit shorter than this experimental tech claims, but it's also a commercialized product you can actually buy right now. I think it would only be fair to quote current performance figures.

Huge Arctic Ice Shelf Breaks Off 736

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @07:09PM from the getting-warmer dept.

knarfling writes "CNN is reporting that a chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic. Just last month 21 square miles of ice broke free from the Markham Ice Shelf. Scientists are saying that Ellesmere Island has now lost more than 10 times the ice that was predicted earlier this summer. How long before the fabled Northwest Passage is a reality?"

The 5 Most Laughable Terms of Service On the Net 399

Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 03, 2008 @05:47PM from the until-you-cry dept.

nicholas.m.carlson writes "According to these five terms of service and EULA, Google owns any content you create using its Chrome browser and can filter your Gmail messages if it likes. Facebook says it can sell its users' uploaded images as stock photography. YouTube can keep footage of your kids forever, even after you've deleted it from the site. And AOL can ban you for using vulgar language on AIM. Funny, right? That's why Valleywag calls them 'The 5 most laughable terms of service on the Net.'" Reader dlaudel writes, regarding the previously-mentioned Google EULA for Chrome, "According to Ars Technica, Google's EULA for Chrome was just copy-and-pasted from its EULA for other services, a practice that is apparently common at Google."

Comment Marketing aside, keep it in perspective. (Score 2, Informative) 82

by cerebis on Monday April 02, 2007 @09:14PM (#18581697) Attached to: New Science Of Metagenomics to Transform Modern Microbiology?

I'm not sure whether the above post should be marked "astroturfing" but it sure reads a little too positive.

454's sequencing technology is a welcomed addition to existing technologies, but don't believe the hype, particularly when the person talking has stock options.

The analysis of genomic sequencing data (metagenomics or otherwise) is highly benefited by large contiguous pieces or ideally whole contiguous genomes. Related to this and more fundemental is the fact that the shorter the pieces of DNA spat out by a machine the harder the problem of assembling them into larger contiguous chunks. This is due in part to the combinatorics of an alphabet made up of only 4 symbols but mainly the fact that genomic DNA contains many repeat structures even in lower organisms.

Without going into detail, it suffices to say that the longer the pieces (or "reads") produced by a sequencing machine, the easier the problem. Add to this the realities of sequencing errors and throw in metagenomics where you may have many organisms with almost the same genome, the problem gets quite hard.

Currently the large sequencing facilties that use 454 machines use them to complement their existing machines which produce 3-10 times longer reads (depending on who's talking). There are in fact papers investigating the ideal ratio of reads produced by new and old technologies.

Another factor to keep in mind is that, although the new high-throughput technologies (454 is the first to market, but not the only player) hold alot of promise, a large part of their appeal was going to be an enormous cost reduction. The problem is, so far that part of the equation hasn't met expectation. They are quite costly to run due to the cost of consumables and those prices are set by the manufacturer.

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