18800514
submission
rubycodez writes:
A study of 2,400 students lead by Prof. Arum of NYU shows students gained no critical skills (critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing) after two years of college, and 36% gained none after four years. The study used the Collegiate Learning Assessment score, transcripts and surveys.
18758270
submission
rubycodez writes:
A wave of 2012 related hoopla has hit the internet, about the star that makes the "right shoulder" of Orion the hunter, Betelgeuse. Astronomer Phil Plait once again puts rumors to rest. The star will indeed explode as a type II supernova, and when it does it will be brighter than Venus on Earth though not as bright as the full moon. It will be visible in the night sky for weeks, as well as possibly be visible in the day sky for a short time. But that event could happen today, or 100,000 years from now or as much as a million years from now. Since Betelgeuse is over 600 light years away, its violent death will not harm Earth in any way, but definitely will provide a huge bonanza of scientific information about supernova. As geeks, we can only hope the core of Betelgeuse undergoes catastrophic failure in our lifetime.
18634798
submission
rubycodez writes:
Berkeley astronomer Sukanya Chakrabarti has detected perturbations in the gases surrounding our Milky Way and concludes there is a satellite "Galaxy X" 250,000 light years away that is mostly dark matter, but that may contain dwarf stars visible in infrared. She expects many more such dark matter satellites to the Milky Way to be discovered using her technique.
10976336
submission
rubycodez writes:
Oracle, having acquired Sun Microsystems including its Unix(tM), will no longer give away free Solaris licenses. Oracle also states that some features of its Oracle Solaris will not appear in OpenSolaris, which means OpenSolaris may start to die.
10458580
submission
rubycodez writes:
The scarcity of sunspots in the last three years might be explained by the Great Conveyor belts of the Sun moving at never before seen speed. It was until recently thought that faster motion of the plasma streams would cause higher solar activity, but instead this has coincided with a deep solar minimum. Even more puzzling is a second abnormality, that the bottom of the conveyor is moving at a record slow speed. Though not at all addressed in the article, if we understand so very little about the Sun, and have been so horribly wrong about predicting peak and weak cycles, what does that say about our ability to model climate, which after all is driven by the Sun?
9588148
submission
rubycodez writes:
Scientists, many not wearing the label "climatologist", are saying that climate change may not be happening at all. IPCC data might be tainted by weather station location. Article also gives reply by a lead scientist of IPCC that this has been accounted for in final report. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece
Not dealt with in article are two facts which might counter that IPCC author's claims, sea level has been in fact rising for thousands of years, and for much of that time at much greater rate than present very slow increase, his observations of last 50 years as being aberration could well be due to statistic noise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise . Arctic icecap cover might have turned a corner in 2008 and is growing each year. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/goddard_arctic_ice_mystery/
9371756
submission
rubycodez writes:
It has long been known that the internal pH of a spermatazoa governs how active it is, a sperm most increase its alkalinity to start swimming furiously. This normally happens deep in the female reproductive tract, and University of California scientists have found mechanism for the response. When a sperm encounters anandamide, which is a known neuron affecting endocannabinoid, it releases positively charged hydrogen ions, protons, from its pores. This raises the internal pH and triggers aggressive swimming. Interestingly, they hypothesize that cannabinoids in marijuana might have the same effect, causing sperm to prematurely become active and exhaust their energy reserves long before they reach egg territory. While not mentioned in the article it would seem that goddamned hippie-dad wannabes are advised to forgo the reefer for a time to ensure production of quality baby batter.
8844186
submission
rubycodez writes:
The anti-trust body of the EU, the European Commision has approved Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, believing competition would be preserved. It saw PostgreSQL as a viable independent alternative to MySQL and that market access to Java would not be restricted. Uncertainty about Sun's future has cost over a billion dollars in lost sales in the past year.
8626532
submission
rubycodez writes:
Three meteorites, including one that has been in a British museum for over a century, are going to be put under the electron microscope and ion microprobe by NASA. We're "very, very close to proving there is or has been life [on Mars]," said David McKay, chief of astrobiology at Johnson Space Center.
8374144
submission
rubycodez writes:
A veritable plethora of "dark energy" stories have recently infested slashdot, but two mathematicians have provided correction to Hubble constant and relation of red shift to luminosity. *Poof*, the need for mysterious fictitious "dark energy" completely disappears to explain the observed accelerating expansion of the universe. So the answer to the question of dark energy is much like the answer to bending spoons in the matrix, the first thing we must realize is that there is no dark energy.
8207644
submission
rubycodez writes:
USA Today reports that Russia wishes to start a new space project to deflect the asteroid 99942 Apophis, which instead of missing the earth as NASA claims, will certainly hit it by Russian calculations. They aren't going to let Bruce Willis blow it the hell up with nu-cu-lar weapons, instead planning on using "basic physics" to alter its trajectory.
7198138
submission
rubycodez writes:
Global Warming has stalled out, the Earth didn't get the memo about the models churned out by multi-billion dollar climate modelling supercomputers. And the truth is the touted temperature increases being massaged in various way for the last century might even be 0.0 degrees (pick any thermo unit you like). Maybe this is why there is a rush to get the U.S. to agree to punitive carbon taxes, trades and credits and climate protocols, before the facts become known.
