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Comment: Re:college (Score 1) 448

by daknapp (#37511094) Attached to: Accent Monitoring: Innovation Or Rights Violation?

Of course the answer is that this isn't really about the quality of teaching, it's about xenophobia.

Your mind-reading ability is astonishing! Somehow you are able to get into the minds of the people involved and you know their motivation! Have you ever considered running for office?

Actually, there is a very good psychological term for what you are doing here. It's called projection. Since you would do this from some xenophobic motivation, you assume that everyone else must, as well, since it's impossible to imagine people who think differently than you do.

Comment: Re:Einstein replied "Check your measurements, son" (Score 3, Interesting) 1088

by daknapp (#37485282) Attached to: CERN Experiment Indicates Faster-Than-Light Neutrinos

It's worth pointing out that the mass of neutrinos has never been directly measured. The "mass" to which we refer is the mass required for a mixing matrix between the neutrino flavors. A more exotic definition of "mass" would be required if the current experimental result were to hold, in such a way that neutrinos wouldn't have "mass" in the sense to which we refer today.

That's all speculative, of course, but the important point is, again, that the neutrino mass has never been directly measured. I know. I tried.

Comment: Re:What kind of distance? (Score 1) 279

by daknapp (#32683838) Attached to: Best Way To Publish an "Indie" Research Paper?

Been a long time since I looked into it. He may have a novel implementation of the Vicenty formulae. A computational geometry paper may publish it, but probably it is easier (and less burocratic) to do so on a smaller conference.

The Vincenty formula is just a truncated series expansion. it's fast and pretty stable except near antipodal points. It has plenty of accuracy for real-world applications. Any improvement would need to be in speed or in stability for antipodal points.

Earth

Breaking the Squid Barrier 126

Posted by timothy
from the calimari-for-the-5000 dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Steve O'Shea of Auckland, New Zealand is attempting to break the record for keeping deep sea squid alive in captivity, with the goal of being able to raise a giant squid one day. Right now, he's raising the broad squid, sepioteuthis australis, from egg masses found in seaweed. This is a lot harder than it sounds, because the squid he's studying grow rapidly and eat only live prey, making it hard for them to keep the squid from becoming prey themselves. If his research works out, you might one day be able to visit an aquarium and see giant squid."

Comment: Re:When... (Score 1) 599

by daknapp (#31133236) Attached to: Gov't Proposes "National Climate Service" For the US

Since real scientists don't use pejoratives like "denialist" in referring to those with whom they disagree, one is forced to conclude that you have not actually educated yourself at all, and that you are not interested in the science at all.

You might want to educate yourself a little more about science before posting nonsense like this.

Medicine

Brain Surgery Linked To Sensation of Spirituality 380

Posted by timothy
from the applied-psychology dept.
the3stars writes "'Removing part of the brain can induce inner peace, according to researchers from Italy. Their study provides the strongest evidence to date that spiritual thinking arises in, or is limited by, specific brain areas. This raises a number of interesting issues about spirituality, among them whether or not people can be born with a strong propensity towards spirituality and also whether it can be acquired through head trauma." One critic's quoted response: "It's important to recognize that the whole study is based on changes in one self-report measure, which is a coarse measure that includes some strange items."
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."

"If the code and the comments disagree, then both are probably wrong." -- Norm Schryer

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