TaeKwonDood - Slashdot User

Submission + - ATLAS Results: One Or Two Higgs ? (mozilla.org)

Submitted by TaeKwonDood on Friday December 14, 2012 @11:22AM

TaeKwonDood writes: An LHC physicist writes:

ATLAS has a very nice signal of H-> in a total of 17.8/fb of collision data. You can make no mistake here: that is a new resonance for sure.Now let us instead turn to the H->ZZ->four lepton decay mode.Here the signal strength is more in agreement with the standard model prediction, but the best-fit mass (123.5 GeV) is significantly lower than the fit 126.5 GeV of the gamma-gamma mode!

What is going on ?

Submission + - American Kids & Science Education: The Exaggerated 'Dismal' Claims (usatoday.com) 2

Submitted by TaeKwonDood on Monday June 04, 2012 @01:51PM

TaeKwonDood writes: We've all seen the stories about how 'dismal' science education in America is. It turns out that it's kind of a straw man. America has long led the world in science but the 'average' score for Americans on standardized tests has never been good. Instead, every 2 years American kids get better but we keep being told things are terrible. Here is why.

Submission + - Solar Power Is Booming - Why Do We Want To Kill It? (forbes.com)

Submitted by TaeKwonDood on Wednesday March 28, 2012 @04:02PM

TaeKwonDood writes: Solar power is booming. Imports from China were a tepid $21 million in 2005 but in 2011 installations totaled nearly $2.7 billion. That’s a huge win. And just as advocates for solar power had hoped, a larger market drove down prices. Solar energy cost has declined by two-thirds in the last four years, meaning it will soon start to close in on fossil fuels.

There's just one problem. Now the government wants to kill it.

Submission + - Moon younger than previously thought (news.ku.dk) 2

Submitted by TaeKwonDood on Wednesday August 17, 2011 @01:54PM

TaeKwonDood writes: Analysis of a piece of lunar rock brought back to Earth by the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 has shown that the Moon may be much younger than previously believed.

Submission + - Revealed - The First Ad Campaign For Monkeys (science20.com)

Submitted by TaeKwonDood on Monday June 27, 2011 @05:53PM

TaeKwonDood writes: Does sex sell for monkeys the way it does humans? Apparently so. And researchers are now hoping sexy billboards can cause monkeys to prefer a flavor of Jell-O they otherwise do not.

Submission + - Finally, Sadomasochism Gets Its Own Science Study (scientificblogging.com)

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Thursday April 02, 2009 @11:33PM

TaeKwonDood writes: "You might think throwing out the occasional titillating article title is part of some grand media strategy. Discover is famous for whoring themselves out for page views with articles like Bizarre Aquatic Creatures Are Secretly Lesbian Necrophiliacs and Scientific American gets into the act with Rough Sex at 40,000 Leagues Under the Sea, which got them additionally ridiculed because that is about 30X greater than the radius of the Earth, but there are occasionally real articles that aren't all tramped up and just happen to deal with sex; some of it even kinky. All of it involving cortisol. The difficulty? Kinky people are okay with being monitored and they don't always realize what 'control' means in a scientific context, but they sure don't like to stick within the study parameters."

Submission + - American Adults 'Flunk' Basic Science Literacy (scientificblogging.com)

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Thursday March 12, 2009 @11:19PM

TaeKwonDood writes: "Do you want the bad news first or the good news? Okay, the good news, you can get bad news first watching CNN. The good news is that 80% of Americans think science knowledge is 'very important' to our future. The bad news is most of those people also think it's up to someone else to get knowledgeable. Only 15% actually know how much of the planet is covered in water and over 40% think dinosaurs and humans cavorted together like in some sort of 'Land Of The Lost' episode. What to do? Pres. Obama thinks merit pay for teachers makes sense. Yes, it will enrage the teachers union but it might inspire better people to go into science teaching. It's either that or accept that almost 50% of Americans won't know how long a year is."

Submission + - Got undesirable evolution? Reverse it! (sciencecodex.com)

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Tuesday March 03, 2009 @08:46PM

TaeKwonDood writes: "Your granddad's approach to fishing — throw the little 'uns back — may have hurt their evolution, but we can reverse that, says a group of researchers, with a change of policy. Fish have been 'reprogramming' themselves to be smaller and live longer. Welcome to evolutionary dynamics, Lamarck. But, no, they are serious. And it can be fixed within 12 generations. What do the smart people out there think about this? Are they using the term 'evolution' the wrong way?"

Submission + - Why LEDs don't beat CFLs, though they should (scientificblogging.com)

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Tuesday December 30, 2008 @06:36PM

TaeKwonDood writes: "LEDs don't beat CFLs in the home yet but it's not simply because PG&E is getting rich making people feel like they are helping the environment buying CFLs made in China that are shipped to the US using a lot more fossil fuels than they save. It's a problem of indication versus illumination. But some new discoveries are going to change all that."

Submission + - Would you let a Nobel prize winner fix education? (livescience.com)

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Saturday July 26, 2008 @06:55PM

TaeKwonDood writes: "Carl Wieman is the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in Physics but what he cares most about is fixing science education. And he can do it. But the real issue is, can someone who went through 20 years of science education as a student, lived his life in academia since then and even got a Nobel prize get a fair shake from bureaucrats who like education the way it is — flawed and therefore always needing more money?"

Submission + - It sounds crazy, but cancer may be cured (scientificblogging.com)

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Saturday June 28, 2008 @04:20PM

TaeKwonDood writes: "Nothing was hyped as curing cancer like the Human Genome Project and it turned out to be really just step one to even understanding how cancer starts. So one more 'cancer cured' claim is rightfully subject to skepticism but researchers at Wake Forest have a treatment that has been 100% effective in mice — and now they get to do a human clinical trial. 20 years from now, we may think of cancer the way we think of polio, and granulocytes will be the David that killed the cancer Goliath. Let's hope it's not just cancer resistant mice in our future."

Submission + - This ain't your daddy's cellulose paper (sciencemag.org)

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Monday June 09, 2008 @07:27PM

TaeKwonDood writes: "Sure, all paper is made of cellulose but paper processing makes large, fragile fibers that break pretty easily. At the nanoscale level, those same cellulose fibers in papers are quite strong and researchers in Sweden have kept the fibers small, resulting in 'nanopaper' with almost twice the tensile strength of cast iron. Plus, cellulose is the is the most abundant organic compound on the planet, meaning it is cheap to use compared to other exotic, expensive-to-produce options. Take that, carbon nanotubes!"

Submission + - Holodeck 1.0 - HoloVizio 3D Makes Its Debut (scientificblogging.com) 1

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Sunday June 08, 2008 @05:20PM

TaeKwonDood writes: "Star Trek: The Next Generation's holodeck allowed crewmembers to walk through their childhood home, re-enact famous historical events or watch performances of famous plays. If leisure time permitted they could also learn new skills or execute training drills by simulating surgery, flight, and engine repairs. Virtual life seemed pretty good on TV but it's still just science fiction for us. However, last year researchers took the first steps towards it with the COHERENT project, an EU-funded research project to create a commercial, true 3-D display. They could have called it Holodeck 1.0. They went with HoloVizio instead."

Submission + - RepRap - A Machine That Prints 3D Copies Of Itself (scientificblogging.com)

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Wednesday June 04, 2008 @12:42AM

TaeKwonDood writes: "Automated machines have been around for decades. They have basically been dumb devices that do simple assembly tasks. But RepRap takes that a step further because, instead of assembling pre-fabricated parts, it creates 3-D objects by printing them — squirting molten plastic in layers — and then building them up as the plastic solidifies. It works on coat hooks, door handles and now it can even make working copies ... of itself. The miracle of additive fabrication, coming soon to a robotic overlord near you."

Submission + - 'Patchwork' DNA - Genome Of Platypus Decoded (scientificblogging.com)

Submitted by

TaeKwonDood

on Wednesday May 07, 2008 @05:49PM

TaeKwonDood writes: "Is it reptile, bird or mammal? Some of each. Does it have venom, lay eggs and lactate? Yes. Upon discovery in 1798, fellow scientists thought it was for an episode of "Thou hast been Punk'd" but this Australia native, on home on land and in water, is real and, finally, it gets its own decoded genome. It's no surprise the DNA is as messed up as the critter itself."

Slashdot Top Deals