maddiekate - Slashdot User

Why Science Is a Lousy Career Choice 694

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday April 25, 2011 @01:13PM from the science-keeps-blinding-me dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "President Obama had a town hall meeting at Facebook's headquarters last week and said that he wanted to encourage females and minorities to pursue STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). However, Pastabagel writes that the need for American students to study STEM is one of the tired refrains in modern American politics and that plenty of people already study science, but they don't work in science. 'MIT grads are more likely to end up in the financial industry, where quants and traders are very well compensated, than in the semiconductor industry where the spectre of outsourcing to India and Asia will hang over their heads for their entire career.' Philip Greenspun adds that science can be fun, but considered as a career, science suffers by comparison to the professions and the business world. 'The average scientist that I encounter expresses bitterness about (a) low pay, (b) not getting enough credit or references to his or her work, (c) not knowing where the next job is coming from, (d) not having enough money or job security to get married and/or have children,' writes Greenspun. 'Pursuing science as a career seems so irrational that one wonders why any young American would do it.'"

Submission + - Apple: We 'must have' comprehensive location data

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 23, 2011 @05:38PM

An anonymous reader writes: Apple's iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, the iPhone 4, and iPad models are also keeping track of consumers whereabouts. Mac computers running Snow Leopard and even Windows computers running Safari 5 are being watched. But the question is why? "To provide the high quality products and services that its customers demand, Apple must have access to the comprehensive location-based information," Apple says.

Mystery of the 'Chupacabra' May Be Solved 94

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 23, 2010 @07:01AM from the letting-it-live-on-in-my-heart dept.

rhettb writes "The mystery of the legendary chupacabra, a beast said to drain the blood of domestic animals at night, has been solved, according to a University of Michigan scientist. Biologist Barry O'Connor says that most chupacabra sightings are probably linked to coyotes with mange, a disease caused by the same species of mite that triggers scabies in humans. Severe cases of mange cause hair loss and thickening of skin in wild dogs and can lead to bacterial skin infections that produce a foul odor characteristic of the 'chupacabra.' Wombats and squirrels are also susceptible to mange, suggesting that chupacabra are found in trees and Down Under."

Hard-to-Read Fonts Improve Learning 175

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 23, 2010 @04:20AM from the slashdot-design-philosophy-revealed dept.

arkenian writes "Difficult-to-read fonts make for better learning, according to scientists. The finding is about to be published in the international journal Cognition. Researchers at Princeton University employed volunteers to learn made-up information about different types of aliens — and found that those reading harder fonts recalled more when tested 15 minutes later. The article goes on to note a second test in a real school environment: 'Keen to see if their findings actually worked in practice, the Princeton University team then tested their results on 222 students aged between 15 and 18 at a secondary school in Chesterfield, Ohio.'... 'Students given the harder-to-read materials scored higher in their classroom assessments than those in the control group. This was the case across a range of subjects — from English, to Physics to History.'"

Comment Re:All sorts of things get transplanted... (Score 1) 146

by maddiekate on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @10:07PM (#33969304) Attached to: Woman Develops Peanut Allergy After Lung Transplant

Don't they match bone marrow types so that you will not reject it? I thought that your type and Rh had to match, along with a few other things.

Comment Re:Not just allergies (Score 1) 146

by maddiekate on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @10:01PM (#33969258) Attached to: Woman Develops Peanut Allergy After Lung Transplant

You cannot pass on food allergies with a blood donation. Have fun saving lives.

Woman Develops Peanut Allergy After Lung Transplant 146

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @01:15PM from the no-extra-charge dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A woman in need of a lung transplant got her new lungs from someone with a peanut allergy who died of anaphylactic shock. Seven months after the surgery, the woman was at an organ transplant support group when she ate a peanut butter cookie and had a violent allergic reaction. So how had the woman's new lungs brought along a peanut allergy? A blog post dives into the medical details and explains that immune cells in the donated lungs couldn't have lived in the new body for long enough to cause the reaction... however, if they encountered an allergen (i.e. something peanuty) shortly after being transplanted, they could have trained the woman's native immune cells to respond."

UK-Developed 'DNA Spray' Marks Dutch Thieves With Trackable Water 191

Posted by timothy on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @05:00AM from the prepare-for-the-post-riot-shower dept.

eldavojohn writes "In Rotterdam, there's a new technology in place that dispenses a barely visible mist over those around it and alerts the police. The purpose? To tag robbers and link them back to the scene of the crime. From the article, 'The mist — visible only under ultraviolet light — carries DNA markers particular to the location, enabling the police to match the burglar with the place burgled. Now, a sign on the front door of the McDonald's prominently warns potential thieves of the spray's presence: "You Steal, You're Marked."' Developed in Britain, it's yet to nab a criminal but it will be interesting to see whether or not synthesized DNA will hold up as sufficient evidence in an actual court of law." So it's not just for copper thieves.

Submission + - A Lung Transplant With a Side of Peanut Allergies (discovermagazine.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 19, 2010 @05:03PM

An anonymous reader writes: Here's a weird story. A woman in need of a lung transplant got her new lungs from someone with a peanut allergy who died of anaphylactic shock. Seven months after the surgery, the woman was at an organ transplant support group when she ate a peanut butter cookie and had a violent allergic reaction. So how had the woman's new lungs brought along a peanut allergy? A blog post dives into the medical details and explains that immune cells in the donated lungs couldn't have lived in the new body for long enough to cause the reaction... however, if they encountered an allergen (i.e. something peanuty) shortly after being transplanted, they could have trained the woman's native immune cells to respond.

Twitter To Start Selling Followers 95

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday October 03, 2010 @02:01AM from the supply-would-seem-to-far-outstrip-demand dept.

Ellie K writes "While not quite as bad as it sounds, Twitter will soon be identifying followers with certain interests based on the content of their Twitter usage, and then providing this info to advertisers. Twitter is already selling sponsored Tweets for $100K or more. These reader comments captured the disquieting feeling I have: 'Twitter selling followers? Will that be the same as Google selling top position in SERP?' and 'I wonder when Facebook will start to sell friends.' Advertisers will be allowed to purchase placement in lists of 'who to follow' recommendations targeted to users with particular interests on Twitter."

Gamers Beat Algorithms At Finding Protein Structures 80

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday August 04, 2010 @08:31PM from the tetris-trained dept.

jamie writes "Researchers have turned the biochemical challenge of figuring out protein folding structures into a computer game. The best players can beat a computerized algorithm by rapidly recognizing problems that the computer can't fix. From the article: 'By tracing the actions of the best players, the authors were able to figure out how the humans' excellent pattern recognition abilities gave them an edge over the computer. For example, people were very good about detecting a hydrophobic amino acid when it stuck out from the protein's surface, instead of being buried internally, and they were willing to rearrange the structure's internals in order to tuck the offending amino acid back inside. Those sorts of extensive rearrangements were beyond Rosetta's abilities, since the energy changes involved in the transitions are so large.'"

Human Tests of Mind-Controlled Artificial Arm To Begin 119

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday August 03, 2010 @11:04PM from the do-what-i-mean dept.

kkleiner writes "The world's first human testing of a mind-controlled artificial limb is ready to begin. A joint project between the Pentagon and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Modular Prosthetic Limb will be fully controlled by sensors implanted in the brain, and will even restore the sense of touch by sending electrical impulses from the limb back to the sensory cortex. Last week APL announced it had been awarded a $34.5M contract with DARPA, which will allow researchers to test the neural prosthetic in five individuals over the next two years."

Rogue Anti-Virus Victims Rarely Fight Back 173

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 27, 2010 @07:04PM from the price-you-pay-for-being-had dept.

krebsonsecurity writes "One big reason why rogue anti-virus continues to make major bucks for scam artists: relatively few victims ever ask their credit card company or bank to reverse the charges for the phony security software — even when the victims don't even receive the worthless software they were promised. I recently found several caches of data for affiliates of a rogue anti-virus distribution program, and the data showed that in one set of attacks only 367 out of more than 2,000 scammed disputed the charge. A second rogue anti-virus campaign scammed more than 1,600 people, and yet fewer than 10 percent fought the charges."

Interview With the Man Behind WikiLeaks 489

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday July 27, 2010 @11:46AM from the balls-of-steel dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Julian Assange, the man behind WikiLeaks, explains why he feels it is right to encourage the leaking of secret information. He maintains that the more money an organisation spends on trying to conceal information, the more good it is likely to do if leaked. For Assange, leaked intelligence reveals the true state of governments, their human rights abuses, and their activities, it's what the 'history of journalism is.' On the media's role in making information available to the public, Assange maintains that 'the rest of the world's media is doing such a bad job that a little group of activists is able to release more of that type of information [classified documents] than the rest of the world press combined.'"

Apple Launches New Magical Trackpad, 12 Core Macs 432

Posted by CmdrTaco on Tuesday July 27, 2010 @11:00AM from the oh-oh-oh-its-magic dept.

theappwhisperer writes "The Magic Trackpad is basically a larger version of the MacBook Pro touchpad, with 80% more surface area for all your swiping and pinching. The entire surface acts as a button, so it's also a possible mouse replacement. And all of the expected gestures are here: two-finger scrolling, pinch to zoom, fingertip rotation, and three- and four-finger swipes. You can enable and disable gestures at your discretion from System Preferences." They also launched 12-core Mac Pros coming in August.

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