I knew a Professor (of biomedical engineering) who suggested it would be best to teach introductory programming outside of any language. Teach the concepts in their most general, basic form before allowing an individual language to force understanding into an arbitrary syntax.

I first learned in C++, then later relearned and made extensive use of Visual Basic, then switched to Matlab, and now I'm just starting to learn Python. I personally had a very difficult time with C++ and found Visual Basic to be much easier to grasp. That is likely the result of many things, only one of which is the specific languages I experienced.

In my opinion what's more important than the first language you learn is that you learn a few languages early on, all at once - the more varied the better. Seems to work for learning statistical analyses.

This is usually the response I get from folks who have been through big storms (and sometimes zero earthquakes). At least with earthquakes, it's been my experience that people who've been through one are much less anxious about them than those who haven't. I suspect the same can be said for big storms. The main difference that comes up between earthquakes and storms is the predictability or prior warning. While it is certainly true that you can see a storm coming, I would guess that earthquake prone areas have a much smaller damage cost average over time compared to storm prone areas (both in lives and dollars).

Given that lots of people live in earthquake and storm prone areas, I suspect the differences in impact between these types of disasters are largely psychological. Perhaps people from parts of the world where fatalities to such things are more common would have a different sense of which was 'worse'. In the developed world, preparation and building codes have relegated potential disaster choice to a largely financial decision.

I was in Reno for the small swarm mentioned in the article; only a couple were even perceptible. I've also lived through a couple large earthquakes. I'd prefer little tremors all year round over the more damaging one-offs.

Of course, I'm also the type of person who would rather be in (another) earthquake than a tornado or hurricane (neither of which I've experienced). The devil you know, I suppose.

Perhaps intentionally, the blurb above completely ignores that Prof. Biznel's entire point is that we should be going after the asteroids that already pass close by. He wants us to play with these things, he just thinks it's a waste of money to send a probe far away to grab one when we could much more cheaply grab one that's already passing through. In order to have a decent chance of planning such a mission, we need to have a more complete survey of the asteroids that do pass close by which, he mentions, is already mandated by law (and we're not going to reach that goal at current spending levels).

As outlined here, it is the retinal pigmented epithelial (RPE) cells and/or photo-receptors that are being grown and transplanted here. The RPE cells are the supply source for the photo-receptors and comprise the far rear layer of the retina (the neurons of the retina are supplied by blood vessels at the front which you're looking through right now). The photo-receptors, while technically sensory neurons, don't project very far, so replacing them could conceivably restore sensitivity without disrupting the neural connections of the retina. Growing them with the proper alignment to the optics of the eye might be a challenge, though.

Replacing the whole retina is not yet feasible. The ganglion cells project through the optic nerve all the way to the middle of the brain - you can't just swap these out. The other neurons (amacrine, bipolar, horizontal, etc.) of the retina form very specific types of connections during development, and simply replacing these with new cells won't restore such connections. The RPE cells and photo-receptors are about the only thing that might be replaced to restore some lost sensitivity, and are also the easiest to reach surgically, being near the back.

The failures of this hospital in dealing with a novel and gravely serious situation are in no way indicative of remarkably incompetent individuals or sub-standard hospital policies.

Even the most complete training cannot provide experience. Day to day work in a hospital is boring and routine, and when faced with the unknown people are going to fall back on that routine, not what they were trained to do briefly and long ago. Nurses who haven't dealt much with explosive diarrhea or projectile vomiting won't have practice being meticulous about preventing splatter on every part of their skin or porous clothing. Simply telling someone to be careful and then sending them off unsupervised and unaided isn't terribly effective.

Hospitals cannot afford to maintain a full wardrobe of gear to deal with even one Ebola patient throughout the course of treatment, nor are they set up to dispose of that gear at the rate it piles up after use. Adequate supplies will need to be provided on a reactive (not proactive) basis. Protocols, however, simply assume that the gear is there and ready to be used by people well versed in their use. It doesn't do any good to have well thought out procedures in place if it isn't possible or practical to implement them.

People who blame the nurses, or the hospital, or the patient are holding them up to an unreasonable standard. These people are not special. They're not clowns and they're not villains. They're just normal folk reacting the way normal folk will, and neither the CDC nor anyone else has some magic wand to wave to prevent this exact same scenario from playing out the next time. It's unfortunate, but it is manageable and we should focus on making sure the right lessons are learned from it.

Some interesting viewing, somewhat related: http://www.ted.com/talks/atul_... http://thedailyshow.cc.com/vid...

Of course, a brief, public overview is going to lean towards zero tolerance. There are plenty of legal grey areas, and most folk aren't fully versed in copyright law nor would they knowingly violate such laws even if they might casually do so unknowingly. People in law enforcement know full well that absolute purity in the eyes of the law is very rare, and also strange. If they have a large enough applicant pool that they can take the rare ones who are both exceptionally qualified and squeaky clean, that's great, but otherwise I'm sure they'll bend a bit.