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ddobbs | June 9, 2010Â
The photo above isone of several posted by NeuroDojo, who has a lovely post on them.
Genetic Future ponders the 23andMe Oops-wrong-data event. Turns out it was a flipped tray.
"I'm frankly astonished that this was possible at an accredited genotyping facility - plate-flipping is an age-old problem, but trivial to prevent with good plate/machine design that only allows plates to be loaded in a single orientation."
Same source carried a good strong early account of this mix-up as well.
Genomeboy ponders a dog's life, as glimpsed through its genome.
Steven Berlin Johnson gives a peek…
gregladen | June 9, 2010The Constitution of the United States makes no mention of God and only two references to religion. The first reference is in the body: Article VI "[N]o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." The second reference is the first line of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...." The state constitutions are far less restrained. While looking for voting rights in the state constitutions, I began to collect some interesting trivia…
gregladen | June 9, 2010Perched heavily on a white stone wall, a cast-iron stegosaurus watched expressionlessly as a backhoe tore up a patch of land that was supposed to have been left green. "We've been doing some more research in the last few months which has already indicated we have to add extra parking," Mark Looy shouted over the rumbling. "The lobby is probably also going to be too small. That outdoor area with the pillars, that's going to be glass-enclosed now. That becomes a portico, a kind of pre-lobby for people to gather, get their tickets. Our projections are for more than two hundred and fifty…
mspringer | June 9, 2010This is a poster in a hallway here in the Texas A&M physics building:
Sort of an odd question, but an interesting one. Sound waves carry energy, and if that energy we being absorbed by your coffee because you were yelling at it, how long would you have to do so before it was piping hot?
But let's put that question aside for a minute and talk about sound levels. Most of the time you'll hear sound intensity quoted in decibels. Decibels confuse a lot of people because it's a logarithmic scale rather than a linear one. Logarithmic scales are useful for measuring quantities that can span a…
gregladen | June 9, 2010The founder of 4chan, a controversial, uncensored online imageboard, describes its subculture, some of the Internet "memes" it has launched, and the incident in which its users managed a very public, precision hack of a mainstream media website. The talk raises questions about the power -- and price -- of anonymity.
Christopher 'moot' Poole:
gregladen | June 9, 2010It has been said that "word frequency" is the most important variable in language research, despite the belief by many that it can't be used as a variable because no one really knows what a word is. (see: Minifalsehood: We can't tell what a word is!?!? and A run in my stocking ...)
A recent study in PLoS looks at a heretofore under investigated area, word/character use in Chinese.
Following recent work by New, Brysbaert, and colleagues in English, French and Dutch, we assembled a database of word and character frequencies based on a corpus of film and television subtitles (46.8 million…
grrlscientist | June 8, 2010
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The most recent issue of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People); "Scientia Pro Publica 32: Biology Overload" was published by Philip at his blog, The Dichotomous Trekkie 2.0. This was Philip's first ever blog carnival, and he did an excellent job! So go there, leave some warm fuzzies for Philip, then read the linked essays and be sure to leave your comments on at least one of those essays, either telling those authors what they did well, or making…
cortex | June 8, 2010I recently had a short article in Wired on the danger of getting too enthralled with our empirical tools, which leads us to neglect everything that our tools can't explain:
A typical experiment in functional magnetic resonance imaging goes like this: A subject is slid into a claustrophobia-inducing tube, the core of a machine the size of a delivery truck. The person is told to lie perfectly still and perform some task -- look at a screen, say, or make a decision. Noisy superconducting magnets whir. The contraption analyzes the magnetic properties of blood to determine the amount of oxygen…
gregladen | June 8, 2010First, an objective review by Steve somebody:
Now, a little trouble in Oz:
I think it's funny that the voice over says this is an "unfamiliar" position. According to YouTube, these presentations ALWAYS go wrong!
So, in the future, just do whatever Jobs tells you to do, and when that does not work, just quietly accept the blame anyway.
I think maybe I'll get an Android until the bugs get worked out of that iFour thingie.
Oh, wait, no, too expensive.
gregladen | June 8, 2010Apparently. In particular, this approach was tried with GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder). A current study in PLoS investigated whether iCBT (Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy) works when the process is guided by a clinician.
The research was done in connection with the "VirtualClinic," self described as " ... the Internet-based Research Clinic that develops and evaluates free online education and treatment programs for people with anxiety and depression."*. The study involved 150 GAD participants, who were randomly assigned to three groups: "Clinician-assisted vs. technician-…
gregladen | June 8, 2010... is the topic of discussion on Skeptical Science, a blog that examines AGW denialism. John Cook, the author of that blog, did a recent Skeptically Speaking and the podcast of that discussion is here.
gregladen | June 8, 2010... full religious freedom is the compromise between the competing rights of the followers of all the different sects that have fled to our land. Anything short of that is choosing sides, as the people of the time well knew, as the Baptists of the time well knew.
Read more
gregladen | June 8, 2010It turns out the answer is "yes" ...
... according to Yahoo Answers.
Also, in answer to the question, "Can a Jedi Lighsabe cut through Superman?" the answer is: It depends.
Nice to see Yahoo Answers deals with the subtleties.
I hope Yahoo Answers never goes away. But in case it does, the best of the best is recorded here.