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Video shows the greying of scientists in the US->

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes "A video created by the office for extramural research at the NIH shows that the percentage of young (36 and under) biomedical research faculty in the US dropped from 18% to 6% since 1980. Also, it takes much longer for a researcher to set up a funded lab. This means less young blood in research, and that more funds are allocated to well-established labs rather then to promote younger — and perhaps more innovative — researchers."
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Science

Tonight is the Meaning of Life-> 1

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes "A recent article in Journal of Biomolecular structure and Dynamics proposes to define life by semantic voting: "The denitions of life are more than often in conict with one another. Undeniably, however, most of them do have a point, one or another or several, and common sense suggests that, probably, one could arrive to a consensus, if only the authors, some two centuries apart from one another, could be brought together. One thing, however, can be done – sort of voting in absentia – asking which terms in the denitions are the most frequent and, thus, perhaps, reecting the most important points shared by many." The author arrives at a six word definition, as explained here."
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Science

Gut bacteria can control diabetes->

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes "Insulin resistance is the harbringer of metabolic syndrome. Insulin resistance is when the body cannot use insulin effectively. As a result, blood sugar and fat levels rise. Therein lies the path to morbid obesity, diabetes, stroke, and heart problems. A group of Brazilian researchers have taken a strain of mice normally known to be immune to insulin resistance, and made them insulin resistant (pre-diabetic) by changing their gut bacteria. They then gave the mice antibiotics, and by changing their gut bacteria again, reversed the process curing them of the disease. Their research shows just how influential the bacteria living in our gut can be on our health."
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Space

Vast Web of Dark Matter Mapped->

Submitted by
astroengine
astroengine writes "Astronomers from the University of British Columbia and University of Edinburgh have created a vast cosmic map revealing an intricate web of dark matter and galaxies spanning a distance of one billion light-years. This is the largest map of its kind and demonstrates that this large-scale web stretches across the universe in all directions. The results of this groundbreaking discovery were presented at the American Astronomical Society conference in Austin, Texas on Monday."
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Open source business model turning into a liabilit

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "As the owner of a successful 10yr old open source company that sells support and add-ons to accompany its popular free offerings (millions of downloads), we have started noticing a disturbing trend recently. Because we fund new development from these revenue streams, naturally we don't offer free "real-time" (chat/telephone) support, but we do provide a manual, professional video tutorials and
forums where our support staff happily answer questions throughout the day free of charge. The problem we have started to see is that people will download our free product, then also demand free chat/telephone support to help them install and set it up. When we politely redirect these requests to our forums, or paid support options, our staff are often being verbally assaulted and accused of carrying out some sort of scam among other expletives. In addition to that we are noticing an increased number of negative reviews on the download/review sites claiming that we don't offer support for our product, which has started to have a direct affect on our bottom line. While our overall paying customer satisifaction level is extremely high, its gotten to the point where we are considering abondoning the free product altogether as it seems to be doing more harm than good. Have other similar companies experienced this issue? What would be a better way to handle support for a free product that is still economically viable?"

Comment: Cool, but not cool as it initially seems (Score 1) 1

by Shipud (#38637614) Attached to: Salmon DNA Used in Data Storage Device
Reading the original paper: http://apl.aip.org/resource/1/applab/v99/i25/p253301_s1?view=fulltext it seems the researchers utilized the affinity of DNA to metal to create a sandwich of DNA film between 2 electrodes. They are not using the biological storage capability of DNA: i.e. the ability of DNA to store information as a string of nucleotides. Still nice though.
Science

Research data: share early and share often->

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes "Holland was recently in the news when a psychology professor in Tilburg University was found to have committed large-scale fraud over several years.
Now, another Dutch psychologist is suggesting a way to avert these sort of problems, namely by "sharing early and sharing often", since fraud may start with small indiscretions due to career-related pressure to publish. In Wilchert's study, he requested raw data from the authors of some 49 papers. He found that the authors’ reluctance to share data was associated with "more errors in the reporting of statistical results and with relatively weaker evidence (against the null hypothesis). The documented errors are arguably the tip of the iceberg of potential errors and biases in statistical analyses and the reporting of statistical results. It is rather disconcerting that roughly 50% of published papers in psychology contain reporting errors and that the unwillingness to share data was most pronounced when the errors concerned statistical significance.""
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Science

The Dead Sea is more alive than ever->

Submitted by Shipud
Shipud writes "The Dead Sea, that with a 33% salinity is one of the most extreme environments on earth, has been found to be more alive than previously imagined. A groups of Israeli and German scientists have discovered freshwater springs deep in the Dead Sea. The springs are about 30m deep, and lie in of large craters 30m in diameter. Preliminary analyses of samples collected in the craters suggest that the springs’ bacterial communities are very diverse—akin to what you’d find living on rocks in a regular saltwater sea (3.5% salinity). The top of the springs’ rocks are covered with green biofilms, which use both sunlight and sulfide—naturally occurring chemicals from the springs—to survive. Exclusively sulfide-eating bacteria coat the bottoms of the rocks in a white biofilm. Not only have the organisms evolved in such a harsh environment, the scientists speculate that the bacteria can somehow cope with sudden fluxes in fresh water and saltwater that naturally occur as water currents shift around the springs."
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Power

Paris Launches World's First Electric Car Share Pr->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday Paris took a big step towards clean transportation as it launched the world's first electric car share program. Created by Vincent Bollore, the Autolib electric car-share is modeled off the city’s popular bike share system, and it will be the largest program of its kind in the world. By December the program will include 250 electric vehicles, and it’s planned to expand in 2012 if the first leg of the project is successful."
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Do not clog intellect's sluices with bits of knowledge of questionable uses.