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Comment Nothing to see here, move along (Score 1) 828

by allawalla (#33088552) Attached to: What's Wrong With the American University System
Personally I don't see anything wrong with the system. If you want an expensive certificate to get you in with the good ol' boys go to harvard or yale, if you want a good education at a good price, go to your local state college, and if you want something in-between it is there as well. Not any different than buying a cable. Its the expectation that everyone needs to go to Yale or Harvard, that's the problem.
Medicine

Submission + - Using Software to Reduce CT Scan Radiation (ibtimes.com)

Submitted by RedEaredSlider
RedEaredSlider writes: The risk from CT scans is very low, but in 2009 a patient filed a class action suit against Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. The patient, Trevor Rees, complained he suffered symptoms of radiation poisoning after a scan. The FDA has also issued warnings that some CT scans may expose patients to higher levels of radiation, though it only recommended that hospitals review their protocols and training.

In the wake of the Cedar-Sinai suit, a group at the Mayo clinic decided to look at ways to cut back the radiation patients get. Dr. Cynthia McCollough, who led the research, said they found that with a more sophisticated algorithm for analyzing images, they could cut down the amount of time the patient is in the scanner and the intensity of the X-rays. ...At the University of California San Diego, Xun Jia and his group turned to video game processing. Jia's research was focused on cone beam scans, which are used in treating cancer.

Jia's team wrote an algorithm for graphic processing unit platforms, which process the image data in parallel, greatly reducing the time it takes to about two minutes. GPUs were originally designed for rendering video games, but Jia found that they are just as useful for CT image processing.

Submission + - Would You Drive a Foam Car? A 100-MPG Foam Car? (foxnews.com)

Submitted by Velcroman1
Velcroman1 writes: Would you drive a car made out of foam? What if it got 100 miles to the gallon and could save lives? It's called the Spira4u, and it's one of the more curious vehicles that are competing for the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize, a competition to see who can design the best 100-miles-per-gallon car. The SPira was unfortunately eliminated Sunday evening from the competition, but the manufacturer still hopes to build it; he believes the vehicle could be produced commercially for just $3,000. And if the company can sell 20,000 or more per year, the price could be cut in half.

Comment judging speed after exiting the highway (Score 1) 636

by allawalla (#32451786) Attached to: Guess My Speed and Give Me a Ticket, In Ohio
Ever notice how slow 45 is when you exit the interstate after traveling at 70 for an hour? Its is pretty well established that people adjust their perception of their speed to the rate they have been traveling. This should also apply to people judging someone else's speed. How do they account for that? Does the office need to have been still for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, before making the call? Were they working a school zone an hour ago?

Comment Re:Ummm, sample size? (Score 1) 586

by allawalla (#31676106) Attached to: Magnetism Can Sway Man's Moral Compass
Statistics are a wonderful thing... barring bad design or the possibility that they repeated the experiment until they got a good result, inferential stats says it is a solid result. If anything, seeing an effect with small N suggests that it is more likely to be actually significant instead of just statistically significant.
Earth

Permanent Undersea Homes Soon; Temporary Ones Now 122

Posted by timothy from the meet-our-butcher-dexter dept.
MMBK writes "Dennis Chamberland is one of the world's preeminent aquanauts. He's worked with NASA to develop living habitats and underwater plant growth labs, among other cool things. His next goal is establishing the world's first permanent underwater colony. This video gets to the heart of his project, literally and figuratively, as most is shot in his underwater habitat, Atlantica, off the coast of Key Largo, FL. The coolest part might be the moon pool, the room you swim into underwater."
Space

Signs of Water Found On Saturnian Moon Enceladus 79

Posted by Soulskill from the moon-names-that-make-me-hungry dept.
Matt_dk writes "Scientists working on the Cassini space mission have found negatively charged water ions in the ice plume of Enceladus. Their findings, based on analysis from data taken in plume fly-throughs in 2008 and reported in the journal Icarus, provide evidence for the presence of liquid water, which suggests the ingredients for life inside the icy moon. The Cassini plasma spectrometer, used to gather this data, also found other species of negatively charged ions including hydrocarbons."
Mars

Mars Images Reveal Evidence of Ancient Lakes 128

Posted by timothy from the older-I-get-the-wetter-mars-was dept.
Matt_dk writes "Spectacular satellite images suggest that Mars was warm enough to sustain lakes three billion years ago, a period that was previously thought to be too cold and arid to sustain water on the surface, according to research published today in the journal Geology. Earlier research had suggested that Mars had a warm and wet early history but that between 4 billion and 3.8 billion years ago, before the Hesperian Epoch, the planet lost most of its atmosphere and became cold and dry. In the new study, the researchers analysed detailed images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently circling the red planet, and concluded that there were later episodes where Mars experienced warm and wet periods."

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