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Comment Re:How stupid can you get? (Score 4, Insightful) 227

This is one area where automatic grading will cause massive skill decrease, as no auto-grader can actually assess contents.

My thoughts exactly.
Auto graders could check spelling and grammar, and to some extent plagiarism, but without a human reviewing the content, students will learn be gaming the algorithms from day 1.

Comment ViaCord (Score 5, Informative) 321

My son was born a little over a year ago, and I selected ViaCord as a cord blood bank. We evaluated a few, and they seemed to be more competent than other options. It's important to get the "collection kit" up front, and have it with you in the hospital... at least in my case, the hospital does not provide any of the supplies. Also, your wife will need to make sure that the OB/GYN is aware ahead of time about your decision to store the blood.

Comment Best Practice (Score 4, Insightful) 164

From TFA:

“We’ve got the wrong model here. I think we’ve got this model for cyber that says, ‘We’re going to develop a system where we’re not attacked.’ I think we have to go to a model where we assume that the adversary is in our networks. It’s on our machines, and we’ve got to operate anyway. We have to protect the data anyway."

Its nice to see the DoD finally catching up with basic best software practices.

Comment Re:Stop listening to observational studies (Score 2) 132

I thought the exact same thing. I'm usually pretty skeptical of any "wonder drug" claims, so I tried "following the money" to see if it was funded by Bayer or something similar, and I noticed the abstract said:

This surely means that this study probably consisted of data mining, and that's about it. That's enough to establish correlation, but correlation != causation.

Comment Re:Hactivists == cybercriminals (Score 3, Insightful) 150

But the motivation determines if it is a crime in the first place.

Kill someone with malice, got to prison, kill someone in self defense, no prob.

I don't think this article was talking about homicide.
What motivation would make it legal to hack a government or corporate system and stealing personal data?

Comment Re:There's Your Problem Right There (Score 1) 1108

No, it's not. Gravity is readily observable. It's a little different, although admittedly still surprising.

Evolution has also been observed in quite a few cases. Here is one example of a strain of e coli evolving a new functional trait in a lab. Also, antibiotic resistance of diseases are as a result of evolutionary pressures.

Locusts primarily walk only with the two anterior pairs of legs, and hop with the posterior pair.

Nope. Have you ever seen one walk? They step with the front four, and push with the back two. The gait is different, but they definitely use all 6 to walk.

Facebook

Submission + - Yahoo Sues Facebook Over 10 Patents

An anonymous reader writes: As expected, Yahoo today filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Facebook. The online giant is claiming the social networking giant infringes on 10 of its patents. Yahoo is hoping to secure some portion of Facebook’s revenues moving forward.

"Yahoo! has invested substantial resources in research and development through the years, which has resulted in numerous patented inventions of technology that other companies have licensed," a Yahoo spokesperson told AllThingsD. "These technologies are the foundation of our business that engages over 700 million monthly unique visitors and represent the spirit of innovation upon which Yahoo! is built. Unfortunately, the matter with Facebook remains unresolved and we are compelled to seek redress in federal court. We are confident that we will prevail."

Submission + - Daily Serving of Red Meat Raises Risk of Early Death

smoothjazz writes: Eating a serving of red meat a day significantly increases the risk of premature death from diabetes, heart disease or cancer, according a new comprehensive study published on Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The longitudinal study, with a follow-up of up to 28 years, consisted of 121,342 American men and women, and found that each additional serving of red meat, both processed and unprocessed, was associated increased risk of all-cause premature death, with a higher risk linked to processed meats, according to Dr. Frank Hu of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and his research team.
Science

Submission + - Cyborg snails make their own electricity

ananyo writes: Researchers have implanted tiny biofuel cells that extract electrical power from the glucose and oxygen in the snail’s blood (http://www.nature.com/news/cyborg-snails-power-up-1.10210). Munching mainly on carrots, the cyborg snails live for around half a year and generate electricity whenever their implanted electrodes are hooked up to an external circuit (abstract http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/ja211714w).
Researchers have created battery-powered microcircuits with sensors and radio antennae before and implanted them into various bugs and creepy-crawlies so that the creatures could gather information about their surroundings for environmental monitoring or military purposes. But batteries are probably too bulky and short-lived to power prolonged missions, which is where the idea of tapping into the creatures’ own metabolism comes in. In the snails, biofuel cells provide a steady dribble of power for months (albeit they would not get far even in that time!). Other teams are working with cockroaches and trying to store up the electricity in capacitors to release it in bursts. Meanwhile, the researchers aim to move on to animals larger than snails, as their metabolism will provide more power. Next up: cyborg lobsters.

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