From the liberal-leaning North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling (PPP):
PPP (D) PA-12 Congressional Survey
•Tim Burns (R) 44%
•Mark Critz (D) 41%
•Undecided 15%
This is a special election for the congressional seat of the deceased Rep. John Murtha, Central Pennsylvania, Johnstown area. The election will take place on May 18.
The Democrat lean for this District is 55%.
iPhone OS 4.0 Beta 2 slipped into the iPhone Dev Center earlier, but unless you're a developer and really need to test apps, it's best to skip this extra buggy beta and just keep playing around with the first. More »
Why Employees Break Security Policy (And What You Can Do About It) Dark Reading Instead of using a more secure method, he decides to email some files to his home machine, or upload a file to Facebook, or use a popular PC file sharing ... |
So, I've been working very hard over the past month to organize an event with Sheila Jasanoff of the Harvard Kennedy School about the state of science blogging. The event is cosponsored by Jasanoff's Science, Technology, and Society Program and the MIT Knight Fellowship in Science Journalism. I'll be putting up much more information about it very soon, but for now, just a teaser....the truly rockin' poster: C'mon, you know you want to attend....
Some weird results on potential Neanderthal interbreeding are coming out. Nature News has a write-up. Hat tip, Vaughn Bell.
There is some interest in the upcoming British election, and the renaissance of the Liberal Democrats under Nick Clegg. See this article in The New York Times about the rise of the Liberal Democrats at the expense of the two traditional parties of power, Labour and the Tories. One interesting fact from an American perspective is that Nick Clegg is an admitted atheist, though his children are being raised Roman Catholic by his wife. Of course the lack of faith of British politicians isn’t that new, two Prime Ministers were not even nominal believers, Clement Attlee was an agnostic and James Callaghan was an atheist.
This is of course in sharp contrast with the United States where all politicians operationally have to avow a religious affiliation, and the higher that a politician ascends up the ladder of achievement the more vocal and thorough the assertions of sincere faith have to become. And yet it is Britain which has an established church, where the head of state is the head of the church, and, religiously oriented schools receive public funding.
There are many models rooted in history one could propose, but the facts as they are would probably be unlikely to be inferred from prior axioms. It’s a reminder that human social affairs are the outcome of messy dynamics, and observation is often far easier than deep analysis. In 1800 one would reasonably have expected that it was in the United States where “infidel” politicians would flourish, and yet that has not been so.
The latest item in Google's shopping spree is Agnilux, a small and somewhat mysterious startup full of former Apple, TiVo, and P.A. Semi employees. Few details are available about the acquisition, but it looks like a good deal for Google. More »
LiveScience:
The Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland, which began erupting on Wednesday, April 14, has been churning out volcanic ash that's electrified with lightning. Credit: Olivier Vandeginste.
Words, Words, Words ... NASA, NASA, NASA, Huffington Post
"So, listen up. Develop a sense of urgency and a respect for the benefits we gain from going to space ... without knowing what those benefits will be. Even if he knew precisely what was going to happen, how far would JFK have gotten had he described to Congress a world of cell phones and laptops, YouTube and Google, wireless and texting - for the seeds of all that technology trace directly back to the communications tech required for the Apollo program. Demanding usefulness as a precondition for any NASA budget is wrong-headed thinking; demanding cutting edge innovation, paradigm-shifting scientific, breakthrough technologies - that's the ticket! What will result will no doubt amaze and astound."
Would someone help me solve this problem? Below is a description of a partial circuit. How do you find the resistance looking into the drain of M1? The answer is: Resistance = ro1 (1 + gm1*ro5). Please draw the small signal model you used to get the answer and show all calculations. Thanks
NASA CIO Conducts A Web Experiment, Information Week
NASA CIO Linda Cureton has conducted an experiment in IT leadership via her blog on the space agency's Web site. Cureton wrote about online reputations, then she responded to every comment made by readers. Her conclusion: "Listening changes the listener." ... For the past two years, she has used her blog to write about leadership, innovation, and IT transformation, among other topics. "One of my reasons for blogging is to use this Web 2.0 capability as a leadership tool," Cureton wrote in her latest post, titled "The Connected CIO."
Experimental X-37B Robot Space Plane to Launch Thursday, Space.com
"The United States Air Force plans to launch its first robotic X-37B space plane Thursday on a mission that is a forerunner of things to come. A second mini-space plane is already under contract and is projected to be launched next year. New details regarding the mini-space plane and its upcoming Thursday liftoff atop an Atlas 5 booster were discussed today during a U.S. Air Force-held media press briefing."
Oh my! The folks at BGR have gotten their hands on a BlackBerry 9670. Apparently there'll be more details about the CDMA-based, clamshell device coming soon, but for now there are plenty of pictures to sift through. [BGR] More »
Any good sites or books on long-distance TV reception, say via tropo scatter? I'm trying to get stations 110 miles away.
Salvia divinorum: effects and use among YouTube users.
“Salvia divinorum (salvia) is an intense, short-acting hallucinogenic plant gaining popularity among adolescents in the United States. There has been little scientific documentation of salvia’s effects. The popular video-sharing website YouTube has received literally thousands of video-posts of people using salvia. The objective of this study was to assess the effects of salvia use through systematic observations of YouTube videos. A sample of salvia videos was obtained using the search term “salvia.” The videos were further screened and only videos that captured the entire drug “trip” without video edits were included in the analyses described here (n=34). Three trained research assistants independently watched the videos and rated their observations on 42 effects in 30-s intervals. Onset of symptoms was quick (often less than 30s) and tended to dissipate within 8min. Further, there was a relationship between salvia dose and effect duration. Since salvia’s effects on humans are largely undocumented, this study provides the look at users in a non-laboratory environment (e.g. self-taped videos) exhibiting impairments and behaviors consistent with this powerful hallucinogen. Also, this study demonstrates the feasibility and shortcomings of using YouTube videos to assess emerging drugs and drug effects.”
Image: YouTube/ShivihS
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They won't be terribly fast—they'll swim 59 feet per minute and crawl 98 feet per minute—and they'll cost $18 million to develop, but aquatic robots like this might one day aid underwater search and rescue efforts. More »
Apple's quarterly earnings reports provide a rare opportunity for financial analysts to publicly pose questions to Apple executives. Today, no one granted an audience asked about Apple's lost iPhone. More »
