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Comment Re:From the original Nature article... (Score 2, Interesting) 90

This was along the lines of my first thought. These large RNAs could just be leftover from some sort of viral infection. Especially considering viral genes can jump in and out of the genome depending on the phase of infections. This could be analogous to the idea that the mitochondria and chloroplast were small bacteria like organisms that were engulfed by a larger cell and then became symbiotic. These large RNAs could be providing some sort of biological advantage and have become "part" of the organism.

Comment Re:It Works If The Professor Made the Slides (Score 1) 467

I agree completely with this. I have taught several courses using about 70-80% of the lecture with PowerPoint slides. I make every slide myself - though I do use text figures if they are good (only about half are). I have varied with the amount text on the slides going from 85% of what I'm going to say to less than 20% - for the most it really depends on the topic how much you need, but most students like the amount somewhere in the middle. That way when they look at the slides it's easier to remember what I was talking about. I now also put up my slides ahead of time, so every student can print them out and take notes on them - so that they pay attention to me - and not just try to copy everything down (of course many still do that - erggg. What is funny is when I find out they copy down my mostly bad jokes). Now for research presentations - I totally go with the minimal approach. You are there to here ME talk about MY research - not be bored with reading my slides. Lots of pictures - few words other than the title and labels on the slide.

Comment Pyrimidine to Uracil = Pretty Easy (Score 1) 264

As an Anonymous Coward mentioned down below, the chemistry of oxidising pyrimidine to uracil is utterly trivial. No chemist would be even slightly surprised that it happens after illumination by UV light. This brings us no closer to understanding the origins of life than we were 100 years ago.

I was thinking the same thing. Converting Pyrimidine to Uracil is simply adding a few oxygen atoms in the right places. Now if they only got uracil (or at least a significant majority) as a product that would be something. It's like shooting red paintballs at a target, followed by yellow paintballs and then being amazed that you see a lot of orange!

Submission + - Dyson invents $300 bladeless fan (ft.com)

Crash McBang writes: In his neverending search for solutions for which there are no problems, James Dyson has invented a $300 bladeless fan , which goes on sale in the US and Australia this coming Tuesday. US wintertime fan users, rejoice! Australian fan users rejoice even more as summer is just around the corner!

Comment Re:Speaking as a chemist (Score 1) 229

Hmm I'd like to see more details - anyway it would be a 2s (not 1s) and a 2p orbital that were imaged, but Carbon has 2 electrons in a 2s orbital and 2 electrons in 2 different 2p orbitals so why do these images look the way they do? Shouldn't all the orbitals be overlapping? It sounds like they did some sort of excitation - so maybe we are seeing a higher level excited electron orbital - which means that maybe it would be a 3s or 3p?
Google

Submission + - CADIE: the first AI tasked-array system (google.com) 1

zigmeister writes: "It seems that Google has unleashed CADIE: Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity. They explain it best:

Research group switches on world's first "artificial intelligence" tasked-array system. For several years now a small research group has been working on some challenging problems in the areas of neural networking, natural language and autonomous problem-solving. Last fall this group achieved a significant breakthrough: a powerful new technique for solving reinforcement learning problems, resulting in the first functional global-scale neuro-evolutionary learning cluster. Since then progress has been rapid, and tonight we're pleased to announce that just moments ago, the world's first Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE) was switched on and began performing some initial functions. It's an exciting moment that we're determined to build upon by coming to understand more fully what CADIE's emergence might mean, for Google and for our users. So although CADIE technology will be rolled out with the caution befitting any advance of this magnitude, in the months to come users can expect to notice her influence on various google.com properties. Earlier today, for instance, CADIE deduced from a quick scan of the visual segment of the social web a set of online design principles from which she derived this intriguing homepage. These are merely the first steps onto what will doubtless prove a long and difficult road. Considerable bugs remain in CADIE'S programming, and considerable development clearly is called for. But we can't imagine a more important journey for Google to have undertaken. For more information about CADIE see this monograph, and follow CADIE's progress via her YouTube channel and blog.

Incidentally she was unleashed at 11:59 PM on March 31, 2009. So perhaps Google was behind Conficker after all..."

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