43025867
submission
ewenc writes:
Mercenary computer coders are helping scientists cope with the deluge of data pouring out of research labs. A contest to write software to analyse immune-system genes garnered more than 100 entries, including many that vastly outperformed existing programs. The US$6,000 contest was launched by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Business School, both in Boston, Massachusetts. TopCoder.com, a community of more than 400,000 coders who compete in programming competitions, hosted the contest. The results are described in a letter published this week in Nature Biotechnology.
5212081
submission
ewenc writes:
A series of tattoos belonging to Otzi the 5300 year-old Tyrolean Iceman are made of soot, reports New Scientist. Mountain climbers discovered Otzi's mummified body in the Austrian-Italian alps in 1991. What's left of his skin was littered with simple cross and line markings.
Electron microscopy and spectroscopy now show that Otzi's tats are made of double-bonded carbon indicative of soot, as well as silicate crystals that probably came from rocks surrounding a fire pit. Full disclosure: I work for New Scientist.
5071345
submission
ewenc writes:
A computer technique can tell the difference between ancient Greek inscriptions created by different artisans, a feat that ordinarily consumes years of human scholarship, reports New Scientist.
A team of Greek computer scientists created the program after a scholar challenged them to attribute 24 inscriptions to their rightful cutter. The researchers scanned the tablets and constructed an average shape for several Greek letters in every tablet. After comparing the average letters between different tablets, they correctly attributed the inscriptions to six stone-cutters.
Full disclosure: I work for New Scientist.
1711743
story
ewenc writes
"A psychology study of hundreds of people waiting for front-row access to U2 concerts points to the best ways to cut in line and not get caught. 'Super-fans' are most irked by queue-jumpers. People were equally peeved whether someone cut in front or behind, and cutters who jumped beside a friend were less likely to attract scorn."
