Forgot your password?

Close
typodupeerror

Comment: Re:From a phsychological point of view... (Score 5, Insightful) 686

by clovis (#30480400) Attached to: Not Enough Women In Computing, Or Too Many Men?

Women act more based on emotions and feelings than guys do, whereas guys will act on logic and black & white facts

Nope.
I used to think this 40 years ago, which is about when I started my IT career (with 8 years off to teach physics.)
My observation is that in general, men are much much more likely to get emotional in a business setting when there are differences of opinion. The way that they express emotion, from raised voices, blustering, filibustering to even stomping out of the room are somehow found to be socially acceptable. Men are the first to start emoting and are often the only ones. I've found that it is quite rare for a female to express emotion while in a business/professional setting and usually only after extreme provocation. On the other hand, it's almost a matter of course for men, especially those in or seeking to be management.

Is there anyone who is not aware that that raising your voice, shaking your head, pointing fingers, crossing arms etc are expressions of emotional behaviors?

Science

Aussie Scientists Find Coconut-Carrying Octopus 205

Posted by timothy
from the concealed-carry-in-australian-waters dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from an AP report: "Australian scientists have discovered an octopus in Indonesia that collects coconut shells for shelter — unusually sophisticated behavior that the researchers believe is the first evidence of tool use in an invertebrate animal. The scientists filmed the veined octopus, Amphioctopus marginatus, selecting halved coconut shells from the sea floor, emptying them out, carrying them under their bodies up to 65 feet (20 meters), and assembling two shells together to make a spherical hiding spot. ... 'I was gobsmacked,' said Finn, a research biologist at the museum who specializes in cephalopods. 'I mean, I've seen a lot of octopuses hiding in shells, but I've never seen one that grabs it up and jogs across the sea floor. I was trying hard not to laugh.'"
Image

Zombie Pigs First, Hibernating Soldiers Next 193

Posted by samzenpus
from the fattening-up-on-brains dept.
ColdWetDog writes "Wired is running a story on DARPA's effort to stave off battlefield casualties by turning injured soldiers into zombies by injecting them with a cocktail of one chemical or another (details to be announced). From the article, 'Dr. Fossum predicts that each soldier will carry a syringe into combat zones or remote areas, and medic teams will be equipped with several. A single injection will minimize metabolic needs, de-animating injured troops by shutting down brain and heart function. Once treatment can be carried out, they'll be "re-animated" and — hopefully — as good as new.' If it doesn't pan out we can at least get zombie bacon and spam."
Open Source

Linux Kernel 2.6.32 Released 195

Posted by CmdrTaco
from the download-compile-reboot-repeat dept.
diegocg writes "Linus Torvalds has officially released the version 2.6.32 of the Linux kernel. New features include virtualization memory de-duplication, a rewrite of the writeback code faster and more scalable, many important Btrfs improvements and speedups, ATI R600/R700 3D and KMS support and other graphic improvements, a CFQ low latency mode, tracing improvements including a 'perf timechart' tool that tries to be a better bootchart, soft limits in the memory controller, support for the S+Core architecture, support for Intel Moorestown and its new firmware interface, run-time power management support, and many other improvements and new drivers. See the full changelog for more details."

Comment: Re:Mental maps... (Score 1) 289

by clovis (#29446189) Attached to: On-Body Circuits Create New Sense Organ

The reason we give directions in terms like "drive west for .3 miles, then angle SE for another 1.7 miles before turning east" is that they're useless instructions. No one knows which way is west when they're lost. This is done so that the other male will be exhausted before you intercept him again. At that point it's easier to take his women, beer, and food (although not necesarily in that order).

Medicine

This Is Your Brain On Magnets — Or Maybe Not 59

Posted by Soulskill
from the it's-going-south dept.
conspirator23 writes "Jon Hamilton of National Public Radio brings us a story about 'voodoo correlations' in fMRI studies that seek to learn more about emotional states, personality, and social cognition in the human brain. Many of us outside the scientific community have been treated to fascinating images of brain activity and corresponding explanations about how the images reveal which portions of the brain are engaged in certain kinds of thinking. But these images are not actual snapshots; they are visualizations of data generated by repeated scans during experiments. Flaws in the statistical methods used by researchers can result in false images with a variety of inaccuracies. Yet the images produced are so vivid and engaging that even other neuroscientists can be misled by them."

Where do you go to get anorexia? -- Shelley Winters