161783362
submission
Captain Chad writes:
I first heard about Google here on Slashdot. At the time I was using AltaVista for web searches, but Google immediately proved its superiority. Now 20+ years later I struggle with Google's latest system. It appears to be interpreting the perceived intent of my search request instead of using the very specific keywords I provide. I'm often getting results that aren't on the same topic as what I'm looking for, and adding more keywords seems to make it worse. Even using double quotes doesn't help much any more. Google Search has become too "intelligent" for me to use effectively.
So I'm looking for a replacement search engine, one that searches for what I tell it to search for, like Google used to do. With that in mind, what search engine(s) do you recommend?
31653925
submission
Sekrimo writes:
I recently came across this excellent article on an interesting advantage to writing documentation. While the author acknowledges that developers often write documentation so that others may better understand their code, he claims that documenting can also be a useful way to find bugs before they ever become an issue. Taking the time to write this documentation helps to ensure that you've thought through every aspect of your program fully, and cleared up any issues that may arise.
30833517
submission
ananyo writes:
Exposure to germs in childhood is thought to help strengthen the immune system and protect children from developing allergies and asthma, but the pathways by which this occurs have been unclear. Now, researchers have identified a mechanism in mice that may explain the role of exposure to microbes in the development of asthma and ulcerative colitis, a common form of inflammatory bowel disease .
The researchers show that in mice, exposure to microbes in early life can reduce the body’s inventory of invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells, which help to fight infection but can also turn on the body, causing a range of disorders such as asthma or inflammatory bowel disease (abstract).
The study supports the 'hygiene hypothesis', which contends that such auto-immune diseases are more common in the developed world where the prevalence of antibiotics and antibacterials reduce children’s exposure to microbes.
