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Medicine

Space Radiation May Alter Astronauts' Neurons 73

sciencehabit writes: NASA hopes to send the first round-trip, manned spaceflight to Mars by the 2030s. If the mission succeeds, astronauts could spend several years potentially being bombarded with cosmic rays—high-energy particles launched across space by supernovae and other galactic explosions. Now, a study in mice suggests these particles could alter the shape of neurons, impairing astronauts' memories and other cognitive abilities. In the prefrontal cortex, a brain region associated with executive function, a range of high-level cognitive tasks such as reasoning, short-term memory, and problem-solving, neurons had 30% to 40% fewer branches, called dendrites, which receive electrical input from other cells.

Submission + - New PHP micro framework available on every PHP server (purephp.tk)

greywire writes: PurePHP is a new micro framework for PHP that will be available on every LAMP stack server, everywhere, starting right now. PurePHP features the lowest overhead and fastest run time of any framework, ever. The learning curve is also easier than any other framework. In short, no other PHP framework can beat it in sheer efficiency and availability!

Comment Not the best article.. (Score 1) 323

but there are a few gems in it.

I kinda get what they are saying.

From own experience as parent with three kids:

child #1: no disciplinary method ever worked effectively, period (spanks, timeouts, taking objects or privileges away, etc). Currently this child has severe entitlement issues and feels nothing is her fault. She passes the psychopath test with flying colors. at 16, she's in psychiatric care after professing suicidal ideation and superficial attempts.

child #2. A thoughtful, empathetic and generous girl of 9 who sometimes floods emotionally and has big tantrums. She clearly has suffered from abuse from child #1. When she has tantrums, its like her neural pathways become scrambled and the only way to bring her back to rational behavior is with a quick spank, which seems to "reset" her system. After which she is rational, remorseful and loving again. Timeouts and take aways generally work.

child #3. a big hearted loving boy at 7 years old who is very physical and intense but also cerebral. Spanking does not work, simply sending him into an animal like rage as depicted in the article with hissing, biting, etc. The only way to snap him out of his tantrums is to get him to think about the puzzling nature of things at which point his higher level reasoning takes over from his reptilian brain.

All three children completely different. all of them super inteligent. all of them with ideas about how to fix things, inventing, or helping society.

Anecdotally alone, I would say spanking generally does not work as a discipline method, but can be helpful as a pysiological tool. Its all about teachable moments and above all repetition! Reinforce the neural pathways with the positive influence you want, over and over until it sticks.

For instance, the bedtime. You dont coddle them all night long but you dont just ignore the crying either... you just keep putting them back to bed. they know they arent abandoned, but at the same time they know (eventually) they arent going to "win". Its a lot more work. With a baby you make contact but then put him down. With an older child, you can rationalize a bit.

Comment DSNP.. (Score 1) 269

Very interesting but abandoned low level protocol for distributed social networking.

Uses encryption and trust relationships which can be granted/withdrawn. There was a document describing it, but I cant find it on the net anymore, but the sourcecode is on github. It just needs somebody to set up an easy to access front end.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...

Comment Re:Maybe it's learning style? (Score 5, Insightful) 786

If we're looking for a reason, I think this is the best one I've heard so far.

The thing about the media being the cause I think is wrong, that was just an effect.

The cause I think is spot on, that males are competitive and in general more solitary (damn that testosterone), and females are more apt to be concerned with social aspects. In the late 70's and 80s computers became much more accessible to those competitive loners (nerd stereotyping here).

Which is to say, its not that females can't do it, or that males are better at it (insert whatever you want for it), its just that they are quite possibly just not interested as much. Before the advent of Personal Computers, computing was mostly prevalent in an academic setting, which is more social..

Comment Re: No new macbook pro (Score 1) 355

I see I've been moderated funny but I'm actually not kidding. I've been deliberating over whether to get a new high end laptop or get a nice tablet and just move mostly to cloud services. Why bother setting up Web servers and databases etc locally when you can fire them up in the cloud? And I despise working with photoshop anyway, I just want to code..

I went through a similar transition from desktop to laptop.

It's time.

Comment Social networking is the Singularity (Score 1) 196

"one individual who would choose as his life's work the signaling, on a cosmic scale, of how he was getting along"

well, that certainly wouldn't be a problem for humans. There are already plenty of humans who make it their lifes work the signaling of how they are getting along. And if they could do it on a cosmic scale, they would.

It stands to reason that any sufficiently advanced alien race would reach a point where they invent their version of facebook. It also stands to reason that the invention of the social network is also probably the Singularity that marks the downfall of said civilization...

The Military

DARPA Funds Harvard's Soft Exoskeletal Suit 29

An anonymous reader writes: The military and private contractors have been toying with exoskeletal combat suits for a while, but Harvard's Wyss Institute has a new take on the concept. Rather than using a hard metal frame and the massively overpowered mechanical servos necessary to move it, the Soft Exosuit is a lightweight mesh of webbing combined with a series of strain sensors and basic microprocessors. "The suit mimics the action of leg muscles and tendons when a person walks, and provides small but carefully timed assistance at the leg joints without restricting the wearer's movement." The suit continually monitors its wearer's body position, movement, and muscular strain, providing small amounts of targeted support. The team has now received $2.9 million in funding from DARPA to refine the suit's design. They say they'll be working on medical applications for the suit as well as military ones.
Transportation

For $1.5M, DeepFlight Dragon Is an "Aircraft for the Water" 76

Zothecula writes No one with red blood in their veins buys a sports car and hands the keys to a chauffeur, so one of the barriers to truly personal submarining has long been the need for a trained pilot, not to mention the massive logistics involved in transporting, garaging and launching the underwater craft ... until now. Pioneering underwater aviation company DeepFlight is set to show an entirely new type of personal submarine at the 2014 Monaco Yacht Show next week, launching the personal submarine era with a submersible that's reportedly so easy to pilot that it's likely to create a new niche in the tourism and rental market.

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