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Comment Re:Accidental overdose? (Score 1) 385

by thegameiam (#38417530) Attached to: The Painkiller That Saves Money But Costs Lives

Absolutely true. I recently had a trauma which redefined my pain scale - it used to be that kidney stones and the EMG were the 9, while the spinal taps were about a 7. Now those are both 6, and the torsion was the 9. I only call it not a 10 because I have a particularly vivid imagination, and a 10 sounds like being drawn and quartered while alive, for instance...

Comment Re:So what's the word, people. (Score 2, Interesting) 390

by thegameiam (#33736718) Attached to: Stuxnet Worm Claimed To Be Devastating In Iran

well said, with very minor nitpick: s/other Arab/Arab/ - whether Iraq is an Arab country (or Persian country) depends on who you ask, but I don't know of anyone with any knowledge of Iranian history who would call Iran an Arab country.

I have no knowledge of who's responsible for the worm, but Steve Bellovin wrote about it very intelligently.

Comment Re:Technology / Hacking Laws (Score 1) 432

by thegameiam (#33177578) Attached to: Ex-SF Admin Terry Childs Gets 4-Year Sentence

I live in Washington DC, and the jury selection process here does not exclude a lot of typical cases (eg lawyers: we have a lot per capita, and the remaining pool wouldn't be big enough). This led to me being on a medical malpractice case regarding a plaintiff who suffered from a condition that I myself have (tinnitus). I like to think that I rendered fair service anyway, but it's still a bit distressing.
Math

First Self-Replicating Creature Spawned In Conway's Game of Life 241

Posted by Soulskill from the emergent-gameplay dept.
Calopteryx writes "New Scientist has a story on a self-replicating entity which inhabits the mathematical universe known as the Game of Life. 'Dubbed Gemini, [Andrew Wade's] creature is made of two sets of identical structures, which sit at either end of the instruction tape. Each is a fraction of the size of the tape's length but, made up of two constructor arms and one "destructor," play a key role. Gemini's initial state contains three of these structures, plus a fourth that is incomplete. As the simulation progresses the incomplete structure begins to grow, while the structure at the start of the tape is demolished. The original Gemini continues to disassemble as the new one emerges, until after nearly 34 million generations, new life is born.'"
Biotech

Nanowires Inject Molecules Into Living Cells 45

Posted by samzenpus from the just-a-little-pinch dept.
TechRev_AL writes "A scientist at Harvard University has developed a clever trick for manipulating the insides of living cells. Hongkun Park grows cells on top of nanowires so that the wires poke into them like needles, which allows molecules to be delivered inside them. To use the nanowires to deliver molecules, Park's team first treats them with a chemical that would allow molecules to bind relatively weakly to the surface of the nanowires. Then they coat the wires with a molecule or combination of molecules of interest. When cells are impaled on the nanowires, the molecules are released into the cells' interior. This gallery of images shows the cells growing on top of the nanowires."
Math

Man Uses Drake Equation To Explain Girlfriend Woes 538

Posted by samzenpus from the less-math-more-social-science dept.
artemis67 writes "A man studying in London has taken a mathematical equation that predicts the possibility of alien life in the universe to explain why he can't find a girlfriend. Peter Backus, a native of Seattle and PhD candidate and Teaching Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick, near London, in his paper, 'Why I don't have a girlfriend: An application of the Drake Equation to love in the UK,' used math to estimate the number of potential girlfriends in the UK. In describing the paper on the university Web site he wrote 'the results are not encouraging. The probability of finding love in the UK is only about 100 times better than the probability of finding intelligent life in our galaxy.'"

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The best book on programming for the layman is "Alice in Wonderland"; but that's because it's the best book on anything for the layman.

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