Tanubis - Slashdot User

Euler's Partition Function Theory Finished 117

Posted by Soulskill on Friday January 21, 2011 @05:29PM from the that-was-quick dept.

universegeek writes "Mathematician Ken Ono, from Emory, has solved a 250-year-old problem: how to exactly and explicitly generate partition numbers. Ono and colleagues were able to finally do this by realizing that the pattern of partition numbers is fractal (PDF). This pattern allowed them to find a finite, algebraic formula, which is like striking oil in mathematics."

Super Mario Bros. 3 Level Design Lessons 95

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday January 02, 2011 @07:36AM from the double-whistle-to-victory dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Significant Bits about how the early level design in Super Mario Bros. 3 gradually introduced players to the game without needing something as blatant and obtrusive as a tutorial: "Super Mario Bros. 3 contains many obvious design lessons that are also present in other games, e.g., the gradual layering of complexity that allows players to master a specific mechanic. What surprised me during my playthrough, though, was how some of these lessons were completely optional. The game doesn't have any forced hand-holding, and it isn't afraid of the player simply exploring it at his own pace (even if it means circumventing chunks of the experience)."

Comment It's not necessarily the applicants doing the post (Score 1) 398

by Tanubis on Sunday September 21, 2008 @01:05PM (#25094059) Attached to: 10 Percent of Colleges Check Applicants' Social Profiles

With Facebook, it's important to note that you don't actually have to be posting photos of yourself for them to end up online. It's become quite common in the younger generation for people to just take pictures and post them - often completely without the knowledge of the person who has their picture taken. If a person doesn't have facebook, often a profile is made for them just so people who post fanatically can tag them. It's not really the applicant's fault if an embarrassing photo ends up on the public internet this way. More and more, things that used to be private affairs are making it online and are available for the curious to look into.

Air Pollution Causes Sperm Mutations In Mice 53

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday January 15, 2008 @03:28AM from the are-you-pondering-what-i'm-pondering dept.

Reservoir Hill writes "Epidemiological studies in humans have suggested a link between air pollution and reduced male fertility, but such studies are often confounded by other lifestyle differences such as diet, genetic background, and economic class. Now a study of mice, reared in cages kept in a shed downwind of two steel mills and a busy highway in a Canadian city, showed a host of genetic changes compared to similarly housed mice breathing filtered air. DNA in the sperm of the mice in the polluted area contained 60% more mutations, had more strand breaks, and had more bases that had been chemically modified via the addition of a methyl group. Precisely how the pollution caused the DNA damage remains unclear but changes may be a more general response to particulate pollution. 'It's important to move this forward to the next step: determining whether there are any human corollaries to this,' says Jonathan Samet, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University."

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