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Corporations Hiring Hooky Hunters 610

Posted by samzenpus from the taking-a-personal-detective-day dept.
No longer satisfied with your crinkled doctor's note, a growing number of corporations are hiring "Hooky Detectives." Private investigator Rick Raymond says he's staked out bowling alleys, pro football games, weddings and even funerals looking for people using sick days. From the article: "Such techniques have become permissible at a time when workers are more likely to play hooky. Kronos, a workforce productivity firm in Chelmsford, Mass., recently found that 57 percent of salaried employees take sick days when they're not sick — almost a 20 percent increase from statistics gathered between 2006 and 2008."
Programming

Submission + - Should undergraduates be taught Fortran? (walkingrandomly.com)

Submitted by
Mike Croucher
Mike Croucher writes: "Despite the fact that it is over 40 years old, Fortran is still taught at many Universities to students of Physics, Chemistry, Engineering and more as their first ever formal introduction to programming. According to this article this shouldn't be happening anymore since there are much better alternatives such as Python that would serve a physical science undergraduate much better. There may come a time in some researcher's lives where they need Fortran but this time isn't in 'programming for chemists 101'. What do people in the slashdot community think?"
Space

Submission + - Earth could collide with other planets

Submitted by
Smivs
Smivs writes: "The BBC are reporting an article in Nature magazine in which Astronomers calculate there is a tiny chance that Mars or Venus could collide with Earth — though it would not happen for at least a billion years. The finding comes from simulations to show how orbits of planets might evolve billions of years into the future. But the calculated chances of such events occurring are tiny. Writing in the journal Nature, a team led by Jacques Laskar shows there is also a chance Mercury could strike Venus and merge into a larger planet. Professor Laskar of the Paris Observatory and his colleagues also report that Mars might experience a close encounter with Jupiter — whose massive gravity could hurl the Red Planet out of our Solar System."
Space

Submission + - Junior-Sized Supernova Discovered by New York Teen (spacefellowship.com)

Submitted by
Matt_dk
Matt_dk writes: "In November 2008, Caroline Moore, a 14-year-old student from upstate New York, discovered a supernova in a nearby galaxy, making her the youngest person ever to do so. Additional observations determined that the object, called SN 2008ha, is a new type of stellar explosion, 1000 times more powerful than a nova but 1000 times less powerful than a supernova. Astronomers say that it may be the weakest supernova ever seen."

Comment So their measurement of the Hubble constant is 69 (Score 1) 102

by boot_img (#28271817) Attached to: Measuring the Hubble Constant Better

According to the article "the astronomers determined that the galaxy UGC 3789 is 160 million light-years from Earth". This translates to 49 Mpc. According to NED, the velocity (in the Cosmic Microwave Background frame) is 3385 km/s.

Therefore this measurement of the Hubble parameter is then 3385/49 = 69 km/s/Mpc.

(Unfortunately the article does not quote an uncertainty on the 49 Mpc measurement. Because of peculiar velocities, I would estimate that there is at least a 300 km/s uncertainty on the 3385 km/s velocity. )

Comment Re:What? (Score 1) 163

by boot_img (#27657979) Attached to: Physicists Propose New Kind of Quantum Tunneling

MoND does a good job of explaining rotation curves of spiral galaxies, but that's about it. It fails on the scales of clusters of galaxies, as even its proponents acknowledge. Nor does it make useful predictions for the growth of large-scale structure.

I have no idea what you mean when you say it explains the same things as the "String Hypothesis."

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