Soybean seeds, as in this article, are not hybrids, they're inbred varieties. Same thing with wheat. Still mostly the same with rice, though there is hybrid rice, but it's not nearly as common as inbred rice.

Corn is a hybrid because hybrid vigor offers so much better performance and it's easy to detassle so you have female-only plants to be pollenated by neighboring plants.

I won't address other plants, but as far as I'm aware, corn is the only major crop that is a hybrid.

Plants that reproduce the same year after year are likely to be inbreds that is not equal to heirloom. I can think of plenty of rice varieties that are modern mega-varieties that have displaced older landraces, neither one is a hybrid.

In the US it's not common to save seeds year after year because the quality offered by seed companies is better. To effectively save and clean seed can be done, but the time and equipment required usually means it's more efficient to buy new seed every year. This differs from crop to crop and by country/region. But in this case, I disagree with the assumption that farmers "regularly" propagate, sow, harvest and save seeds (in the US).

Sadly, I'm not sure if this was satire or meant to be a real post.

"A full ride", please define.

While I earned my PhD most of my fellow students in the department were foreign and they struggled as much or more than I did to pay tuition, rent, buy food, etc. on the stipend that we were given.

Most of them wished to stay in the US once they finished their work. I, as a US citizen chose to leave.

One question.

How do you loose a phone in a bar? It's an inanimate object, or so I'd suppose.

C'mon, this is /. We're supposed to be an educated crowd here.

Are you sure you're using a Nokia phone?

That's one of the best features about my N9, off-line maps.

Hell, even my N97 Mini has this feature. There is no need to be connected at all, assuming you downloaded the maps prior to use.

Red Hat 7.3
Yoper
Mandrake
OpenSuSE
Slackware
Ubuntu
CrunchBang
Mint
Arch
Ubuntu

I flirted with other more obscure distros along the way, had one on a netbook and something else on my main workstation, etc. Lately I've taken to just using Ubuntu these days on my workstation. I can compile the stuff I really care about for optimization (R), everything else is easily available and it just works on my Dell workstation. At home I've gone over to Mac for my photography and just the whole ecosystem.

I'm puzzled by this comment. Isn't increased efficiency leading to higher biological output from plants?

Plant one hectare of inbred corn, and one hectare of hybrid corn. Fertilize and control pests in exactly the same way and you're telling me the biological output of hybrid corn isn't greater?

Yes, Facebook did just retreat from HTML 5. However, the difference there is that they were attempting to support how many different hardwares, screen resolutions, browsers, etc.

Mozilla here can work with it because they are vertically integrated. They can optimize the apps for their phone alone, not worrying about other phones' screen sizes, resolutions, processors, etc. That's not to say it's not still risky. HTML5 is scarcely grown up, IMO.

Except we didn't have this attitude toward electricity and telephone. We made sure that everyone was brought up to par with everyone else in rural areas.

I'm sorry to see that we have this attitude toward Internet connections now. What has happened since the Rural Electrification Act that we find it acceptable to say "they chose to live there, therefore should go without"?

Thanks for that information, I misunderstood the bands that T-Mobile used.

To add to your list of international devices that work with AT&T, the Nokia N9 will as well (from personal experience last month).

Pentaband would be the best. I'm not sure if the Nexus phones are equipped as such or not. I know Nokia makes some that are.

If it doesn't get 3G on AT&T it should on T-Mobile, should it not?

I just bought one of their SIM cards with their $45 unli everything plan and popped it into my Nokia N9 when I was back in the States for a few weeks recently.

Process was straightforward enough to set it up. I had decent coverage (AT&T, YMMV), unlimited everything was nice to have. Unsure what experience the previous poster had with their 3G speeds. I found it to be quite speedy. Able to watch YouTube, etc. as fast or faster than my connection at home in the Philippines.

Overall, if I were living in the States, I'd surely go with this company as I like my phones unlocked and without the bloatware of the mobile companies.

Even at that, I'll still use them when I return the US so that I have a mobile number where friends and family can reach me, while I'm there.

Is is that you didn't look or just aren't willing to?

CBS News

I like the idea, but, how do you fund this effort? I don't see the article making any mention of this.

We all spend our time writing grants now to support our own research and have little enough time to do it. Now we're expected to do someone else's research? I suppose it's a bit like reviewing articles, if you want to publish, you should review. However, this takes much more time, effort and money to do.