Oori - Slashdot User

Comment Re:Stone Soup [and virtual machines] (Score 1) 608

by Oori on Tuesday June 24, 2008 @10:59PM (#23928351) Attached to: Cool/Weird Stuff To Do On a Cluster?

Let me second that. I work in NeuroImaging at Uchicago, and since we were given cluster and TeraGrid access we got neuroimaging folks using R and SWIFT (Grid parallel workflow language), and High Energy Physics folks implementing their signal analysis methods on neuroimaging data. They used to say that physical distance (in yards) is a good prediction of collaboration potential in academic departments. These days, sharing a computer cluster seems to achieve a similar thing. But, if you are asking how you can contribute, try setting up your system to load virtual machines on each node -- If you can get that going you'll find many potential users that couldn't bother with adapting their code to the cluster, but would be glad to load an image and run a job in it.

Submission + - Scientists identify cognitive basis of l33tspeak

Submitted by Oori on Tuesday February 26, 2008 @11:06AM

Oori writes: Researchers in Spain were curious enough to study how the cognitive system represents l33tspeak. In their work, R34D1NG W0RD5 W1TH NUMB3R5, Perea, Andoni,and Carreiras show that readers create regularized representations from words like M4T3R14L that are similar to those of the original word (MATERIAL). Conclusion: leet digits are coded as letters. Article can be accessed at www.uv.es/~mperea/leet1.pdf.
Abstract follows:
Letter identities and number identities are usually thought to imply different cortical mechanisms. Specifically, the left fusiform gyrus responds more to letters than to digits (T. A. Polk et al., 2002). However, a widely circulated statement on the internet illustrates that it is possible to use numbers (leet digits) as parts of words, 4ND TH3 R35ULT1NG S3NT3NC3 C4N B3 R34D W1TH0UT GR34T 3FF0RT. Two masked priming lexical decision experiments were conducted to determine whether leet digits produce (automatic) lexical activation. Results showed that words are identified substantially faster when they are preceded by a masked leet word (M4T3R14L-MATERIAL) than when they are preceded by a control condition with other letters or digits. In addition, there was only a negligible advantage of the identity condition over the related leet condition. This leet-priming effect is not specific to numbers: A prime in which leet digits are replaced by letter-like symbols (MTR!L-MATERIAL) facilitates word processing to the same degree as an identity prime. Therefore, the cognitive system regularizes the shape of the leet digits and letter-like symbols embedded in words with very little cost.

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