mjeffery - Slashdot User

US Satellites Dodging Chinese Missile Debris 331

Posted by CmdrTaco on Saturday January 12, 2008 @12:48PM from the fakes-left-dodges-right dept.

GSGKT writes "Today's Washington Times runs a story about the increasing problem with space junk orbiting the earth. Debris from the anti-satellite missile test by the Chinese military last year threatens the integrity of more than 800 operating satellites, half of them belonging to the US. Two orbiting U.S. spacecraft were forced to change course to avoid being damaged soon after the incident. Air Force Brig. Gen. Ted Kresge, director of air, space and information operations at the Air Force Space Command in Colorado, estimates that "essentially (Chinese anti-satellite tests) increase the amount of space debris orbiting the Earth by about 20 percent", and the debris might threaten spacecraft for up to 100 years."

Comment Re:Insanely biased paper (Score 1) 614

by mjeffery on Sunday January 06, 2008 @08:13PM (#21936660) Attached to: Western-Style Voting 'A Loser'

In approval voting, you can cast as many or as few votes as you want, but only one per candidate. In range voting you have a fixed number of votes to distribute, and if one candidate gets more all others must get less.

This is not correct. In range voting, a voter assigns each candidate a value from, say, 0 to 10 independently of the value assigned to every other candidate. Ranking one candidate higher does not force the voter to lower the ranking of another. What you are talking about is cumulative voting, where a voter a specific number of votes to be distributed among the candidates.

The Human Mutation 339

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 08, 2007 @08:55PM from the le-gene-juste dept.

eldavojohn writes "Scientists in China have announced finding the gene that makes us human. The article explains that prior work has shown that humans, as compared with the great apes from which we diverged over 5 million years ago, have a longer form of a protein (type II neuropsin) located in the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. From the article: 'Gene sequencing revealed a mutation specific to humans that triggers a change in the splicing pattern of the neuropsin gene, creating a new splicing site and a longer protein. Introducing this mutation into chimpanzee DNA resulted in the creation of type II neuropsin. "Hence, the human-specific mutation is not only necessary but also sufficient in creating the novel splice form," the authors state.' The team is urging further analysis of the extra 45 amino acids in type II neuropsin since they believe that chain may cause protein structural and functional changes. The research didn't link anything with this protein, simply identifying it as a very distinct difference between us and our closest cousins."

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