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Submission + - Possible Dinosaur DNA Has Been Found (scientificamerican.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: The tiny fossil is unassuming, as dinosaur remains go. It is not as big as an Apatosaurus femur or as impressive as a Tyrannosaurus jaw. The object is a just a scant shard of cartilage from the skull of a baby hadrosaur called Hypacrosaurus that perished more than 70 million years ago. But it may contain something never before seen from the depths of the Mesozoic era: degraded remnants of dinosaur DNA. [...] In a study published earlier this year, Chinese Academy of Sciences paleontologist Alida Bailleul and her colleagues proposed that in that fossil, they had found not only evidence of original proteins and cartilage-creating cells but a chemical signature consistent with DNA.

Recovering genetic material of such antiquity would be a major development. Working on more recently extinct creatures—such as mammoths and giant ground sloths—paleontologists have been able to revise family trees, explore the interrelatedness of species and even gain some insights into biological features such as variations in coloration. DNA from nonavian dinosaurs would add a wealth of new information about the biology of the “terrible lizards.” Such a find would also establish the possibility that genetic material can remain detectable not just for one million years, but for tens of millions. The fossil record would not be bones and footprints alone: it would contain scraps of the genetic record that ties together all life on Earth. Yet first, paleontologists need to confirm that these possible genetic traces are the real thing. Such potential tatters of ancient DNA are not exactly Jurassic Park–quality. At best, their biological makers seem to be degraded remnants of genes that cannot be read—broken-down components rather than intact parts of a sequence. Still, these potential tatters of ancient DNA would be far older (by millions of years) than the next closest trace of degraded genetic material in the fossil record.

Submission + - Deep Sea Squid Communicate By Glowing Like E-Readers (npr.org)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Deep in the Pacific Ocean, six-foot-long Humboldt squid are known for being aggressive, cannibalistic and, according to new research, good communicators. Known as "red devils," the squid can rapidly change the color of their skin, making different patterns to communicate, something other squid species are known to do. But Humboldt squid live in almost total darkness more than 1,000 feet below the surface, so their patterns aren't very visible. Instead, according to a new study, they create backlighting for the patterns by making their bodies glow, like the screen of an e-reader.

Ben Burford, a graduate student at Stanford University, and his colleagues studied deep-water footage taken by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute's remotely operated vehicles off the California coast. They found the squid make around 30 different patterns of lines, stripes and patches. The patterns appear dark, but researchers believe they're illuminated by the squid's bioluminescent skin. Some of the patterns are only used around other squid, suggesting they're used for communication. The squid also appear to reorder the patterns, almost like words in a sentence.

Submission + - A robot repairs a sattelite in orbit (cnbc.com)

Submitted by mi
mi writes:

Intelsat’s IS-901 satellite is nearly 20 years old, and well beyond its expected lifespan, but a small spacecraft built by Northrop Grumman succeeded in docking with the satellite and giving it another five years of service.

Although Hubble was repaired in situ earlier, until today such servicing always relied on human astronauts.

Comment Re:What's wrong with Tokens? (Score 5, Informative) 196

by volstok (#45532711) Attached to: Chicago Transit System Fooled By Federal ID Cards

Why are all cities moving from easy-to-use tokens to these expensive, complicated systems?

Cities move away from tokens to fare cards so they can charge variable rates based on supply and demand. During peak usage, they can make the fee higher and during times of lower ridership, fares can be made cheaper to encourage more ridership. Also general rate hikes cannot be done as quickly with tokens because people can buy a mass of tokens just before the rate hike yet still ride with their pre-hike token after the hike goes into effect.

Comment AP Computer Science (Score 1) 632

by volstok (#41579879) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Were You Taught About Computers In High School?
I took summer school logo class in the late 80's to learn logo and make a lego traffic light built with legos loop in the proper colour sequence. In middle school we learned Toolbook -- just the language as I recall, not really how to structure software. I took high school CS classes in the late 90s. Our standard was the AP Computer Science [pdf] curriculum. We learned basic data structures in Pascal and C++ (structs/records, classes, arrays), sorting algorithms, hashing functions. The most valuable part of the class was problem solving. We would get various problems, like write a program that takes an input of the length of a side of a hexagon and draw a hexagon a line at a time with X's. Or output all the permutations of a given input. Or determine the pattern of a given sequence then write a program that outputs the nth number/word in that sequence. Gaining experience solving lots of different computing problems, recognizing patterns and having to do it quickly and 100% accurately was the most valuable part of the class in my opinion. We learned nothing of database design and extremely light, if anything on software engineering.

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