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Submission + - Study predicts 9% drop in salaries of new CS grads this year (sciencemag.org)

Jim_Austin writes: The first report on the class of 2015 from the respected National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), which conducts surveys of employers’ hiring intentions throughout the year, projects a 9% drop in the salaries of new computer science bachelor's degree graduates, from $67,300 in 2014 to $61,287 this year.

Submission + - Statistician Creates Mathematical Model to Predict The Future of Game of Thrones

KentuckyFC writes: One way of predicting the future is to study data about events in the past and build a statistical model that generates the same pattern of data. Statisticians can then use the model to generate data about the future. Now one statistician has taken this art to new heights by predicting the content of the soon-to-be published novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R R Martin. The existing five novels are the basis of the hit TV series Game of Thrones. Each chapter in the existing books is told from the point of view of one of the characters. So far, 24 characters have starred in this way. The statistical approach uses the distribution of characters in chapters in the first five books to predict the distribution in the forthcoming novels. The results suggest that several characters will not appear at all and also throw light on whether one important character is dead or not, following an ambiguous story line in the existing novels. However, the model also serves to highlight the shortcomings of purely statistical approaches. For example, it does not 'know' that characters who have already been killed off are unlikely to appear in future chapters. Neither does it allow for new characters that might appear. Nevertheless, this statistical approach to literature could introduce the process of mathematical modelling to more people than any textbook.

Submission + - What's Your College Degree Worth? (sciencemag.org)

Jim_Austin writes: A recent study by economist Douglas Webber calculates the lifetime earnings premium of college degrees in various broad areas, accounting for selection bias--that is, for the fact that people who already are likely to do well are also more likely to go to college. These premiums are not small. Science Careers got exclusive access to major-specific data, and published an article that tells how much more you can expect to earn because you got that college degree--for engineering, physics, computer science, chemistry, and biology majors.

Submission + - More on the Disposable Tech Worker (sciencemag.org) 1

Jim_Austin writes: At a press conference this week, in response to a question by a Science Careers reporter, Scott Corley, the Executive Director of immigration-reform group Compete America, argued that retraining workers doesn't make sense for IT companies. For the company, he argued, H-1B guest workers are a much better choice. "It's not easy to retrain people," Corley said. "The further you get away from your education the less knowledge you have of the new technologies, and technology is always moving forward."

Comment Not factual (Score 1) 153

Safety is about learning to do things with good technique. Surgeons learn good sterile technique--and many operations are improvisational. Precisely the same thing: If you know what you're doing, you can skillfully and safely handle the unexpected. The idea that safety in industry is about filling out forms is also false. Unfortunately it's a tale that many academic scientists repeatedly tell themselves, and it helps reinforce the (lazy) status quot. (I do not mean that people working in academic labs are lazy; as others have pointed out, they work too much. I'm saying that as a culture, academia is lazy about safety and messages like this reinforce that.) In industry, people learn good technique--just like the surgeon. They view safety considerations as a routine part of what they do. If you're a coder, I assume, you annotate your code, or structure it well. (Sorry, it's been decades since I did any significant coding, or had anything to do with it really.) In the lab you use good technique: sterility, controls, safety. It all fits together into the skill set that defines you as a professional and not some brilliant hack.

Submission + - Chemistry Students and Postdocs Take Safety Into Their Own Hands (sciencemag.org) 1

Jim_Austin writes: It's a scandal: Academic science labs are generally far less safe than labs in industry; one estimate says that people working in academic labs are 11x more likely to die than their industrial counterparts. A group of grad students and postdocs in Minnesota decided to address the issue had-on. With encouragement and funding from DOW, and some leadership from their department chairs, they're in the process of totally remaking their departments' safety cultures.

Submission + - The Postdoc: A Special Kind of Hell (sciencemag.org)

Jim_Austin writes: In a very funny column, Adam Ruben reviews the disadvantages and, well, the disadvantages of doing a postdoc, noting that "The term "postdoc" refers both to the position and to the person who occupies it. (In this sense, it's much like the term "bar mitzvah.") So you can be a postdoc, but you can also do a postdoc, which unfortunately isn't as sexual as it sounds."

Submission + - The Neuroscientist Who Discovered He Was a Psychopath

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: Joseph Stromberg writes at the Smithsonian that one afternoon in October 2005, neuroscientist James Fallon was sifting through thousands of PET scans to find anatomical patterns in the brain that correlated with psychopathic tendencies in the real world. “Out of serendipity, I was also doing a study on Alzheimer’s and as part of that, had brain scans from me and everyone in my family right on my desk," writes Fallon. “I got to the bottom of the stack, and saw this scan that was obviously pathological." When he looked up the code, he was greeted by an unsettling revelation: the psychopathic brain pictured in the scan was his own. When he underwent a series of genetic tests, he got more bad news. “I had all these high-risk alleles for aggression, violence and low empathy,” he says, such as a variant of the MAO-A gene that has been linked with aggressive behavior. It wasn’t entirely a shock to Fallon, as he’d always been aware that he was someone especially motivated by power and manipulating others. Additionally, his family line included seven alleged murderers, including Lizzie Borden, infamously accused of killing her father and stepmother in 1892. Many of us would hide this discovery and never tell a soul, out of fear or embarrassment of being labeled a psychopath. Perhaps because boldness and disinhibition are noted psychopathic tendencies, Fallon has gone in the opposite direction, telling the world about his finding in a TED Talk, an NPR interview and now a new book published last month, The Psychopath Inside. “Since finding all this out and looking into it, I’ve made an effort to try to change my behavior,” says Fallon. “I’ve more consciously been doing things that are considered ‘the right thing to do,’ and thinking more about other people’s feelings.”

Submission + - Glut in Stolen Identities Forces Price Cut (darkreading.com)

CowboyRobot writes: The price of a stolen identity has dropped as much as 37 percent in the cybercrime underground: to $25 for a U.S. identity, and $40 for an overseas identity. For $300 or less, you can acquire credentials for a bank account with a balance of $70,000 to $150,000, and $400 is all it takes to get a rival or targeted business knocked offline with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS)-for-hire attack. Meanwhile, ID theft and bank account credentials are getting cheaper because there is just so much inventory (a.k.a. stolen personal information) out there. Bots are cheap, too: 1,000 bots go for $20, and 15,000, for $250.

Comment For me, faster (Score 1) 488

My immediate impression, on my 4S, was that it was much snappier. Also, my voice quality went from unacceptable to great. I realize that's almost certainly a coincidence--something happened on my network at the same time, or something--but that was my experience. As for speed though, no question: My iPhone 4S got faster. Jim

Submission + - They found the God particle--what now? (sciencemag.org)

Jim_Austin writes: Teams of hundreds of young scientists--including many grad students and postdocs--staffed the Large Hadron Collider and helped make one of the most important scientific discoveries in recent decades. Now they must compete for just a handful of jobs.

Submission + - Note to Self: NEVER Do This (sciencemag.org)

Jim_Austin writes: A note inadvertently left in the "supplemental information" of a journal article appears to instruct a subordinate scientist to fabricate data.

Comment Doesn't make business sense (Score 1) 166

Many of the posters below are missing the point--which is that the greedy terms of service make a potentially useful service--like Google Docs--useless for any serious purpose. For example, I would like to use Google Docs in an international online publishing venture. But I can't, because of the TOS. Specifically, while for Google Docs section 11.1 is amended in a way that makes it (borerline) acceptable), section 11.2 remains: >>11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services. (and, yes, they actually misspelled "license" in their terms of service.) I'm sure they have their reasons, but these terms are unacceptable for my professional use. So, with regret, I don't use it. Assuming that Google has produced this service in the interest of making a profit, they've lost my business.

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