bjarthur123 - Slashdot User

Comment Give postdocs a career, not empty promises (Score 1) 487

by bjarthur123 on Tuesday April 26, 2011 @04:22PM (#35946486) Attached to: Reform the PhD System or Close It Down

here's a related article: Give postdocs a career, not empty promises the author advocates letting a much smaller fraction of PhDs continue on to post-docs, forcing the rest into industry, and then keeping on those post-docs who don't make the cut to faculty as career non-tenure-track scientists. makes sense to me.

Comment income tax vs. GDP (Score 1) 732

by bjarthur123 on Sunday March 27, 2011 @02:40PM (#35631476) Attached to: Friends Don't Let Geek Friends Work In Finance

relatedly, here is data to show that top marginal tax bracket does NOT correlate with GDP: http://www.slate.com/id/2245781/

Decades-Old Soviet Reflector Spotted On the Moon 147

Posted by Soulskill on Monday April 26, 2010 @05:16PM from the always-in-the-last-place-you-look dept.

cremeglace writes "No one had seen a laser reflector that Soviet scientists had left on the moon almost 40 years ago, despite years of searching. Turns out searchers had been looking kilometers in the wrong direction. On 22 April, a team of physicists finally saw an incredibly faint flash from the reflector, which was ferried across the lunar surface by the Lunokhod 1 rover. The find comes thanks to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which last month imaged a large area where the rover was reported to have been left. Then the researchers, led by Tom Murphy of the University of California, San Diego, could search one football-field-size area at a time until they got a reflection."

Google Street View Shoots the Same Woman 43 Times 106

Posted by samzenpus on Monday April 26, 2010 @03:22PM from the get-your-face-out-there dept.

Geoffrey.landis writes "Terry Southgate discovered that his wife Wendy appears on the Google Street View of his neighborhood not once or twice but a whopping 43 times. From the article: 'It seems as if the Street View car simply followed the same route as Wendy and Trixie. However, Wendy was a little suspicious that the car was doing something on the "tricksie" side. Several of the Street View shots show Wendy looking with some concern towards the car that was, well, to put it politely, crawling along the curb. "I didn't know what it was doing. It was just driving round very, very slowly," Wendy told the Sun.' The next best thing to being a movie star — a Street View star!"

Secret Service Runs At "Six Sixes" Availability 248

Posted by timothy on Friday February 26, 2010 @08:56PM from the only-need-half-as-many dept.

PCM2 writes "ABC News is reporting that the US Secret Service is in dire need of server upgrades. 'Currently, 42 mission-oriented applications run on a 1980s IBM mainframe with a 68 percent performance reliability rating,' says one leaked memo. That finding was the result of an NSA study commissioned by the Secret Service to evaluate the severity of their computer problems. Curiously, upgrades to the Service's computers are being championed by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who says he's had 'concern for a while' about the issue."

Why the First Cowboy To Draw Always Gets Shot 398

Posted by timothy on Thursday February 04, 2010 @04:00PM from the more-guns-less-crime dept.

cremeglace writes "Have you ever noticed that the first cowboy to draw his gun in a Hollywood Western is invariably the one to get shot? Nobel-winning physicist Niels Bohr did, once arranging mock duels to test the validity of this cinematic curiosity. Researchers have now confirmed that people indeed move faster if they are reacting, rather than acting first."

NASA Tests All-Composite Prototype Crew Module 67

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 26, 2010 @12:25PM from the just-don't-try-to-take-a-slap-shot-with-it dept.

coondoggie writes "With an eye toward building safer, lighter and tougher spacecraft, NASA said today its prototype space crew module made up of composite materials handled tests simulating structural stresses of launch and atmospheric reentry. The idea behind NASA's Composite Crew Module project is to test new structural materials for possible future NASA spacecraft. According to NASA, composite materials are being looked at because they are stiff and lightweight and can be formed into complex shapes that may be more structurally efficient. In space travel, where every additional pound of weight drives costs higher, any weight savings provides increased payload capacity and potentially reduces mission expense."

Comment integral fast reactors, why not? (Score 1) 647

by bjarthur123 on Sunday July 06, 2008 @05:12PM (#24077407) Attached to: 550 Metric Tons of Uranium Removed From Iraq

slightly off topic, but, can anyone tell me why we (ie the world in general) don't build breeder reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor? according to this guy, they are (1) just as safe as the pressurized-water reactors we use now, but (2) hardly produce any radioactive waste at all, so no disposal problems, and (3) thereby also leave nothing to promote proliferation of WMDs. seems to me this reactor design addresses most of the problems people have with fission for electricity.

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