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Comment: Preparation, Preparation, Preparation (Score 3, Informative) 76 76


Your home or the high-rise in which you work are unlikely to be consumed by fire. Are fire drills important?

Is it important to know where, for example, the nearest exit is on an airplane or in a theater, even though it is extremely unlikely that you will be confronted with a disabled airplane or a theater massacre-in-the-making?

Preparation for disasters - whether in terms of visualizing the scenario or actual drills to practice response - can be extremely effective in boosting survival.

If you are interested in some of the academic study on this and related topics, see this book, The Unthinkable - Who Survives When Disaster Strikes, and Why. The author did a tremendous amount of research, distilling academic papers and studies of recent and not-so-recent disasters to explore human behavior both culturally w/r/t preparedness and engineering, and in the context of the disaster events.

Brain Stimulation For Entertainment? 88 88

An anonymous reader writes: Transcranial magnetic stimulation has been used for years to diagnose and treat neural disorders such as stroke, Alzheimer's, and depression. Soon the medical technique could be applied to virtual reality and entertainment. Neuroscientist Jeffrey Zacks writes, "it's quite likely that some kind of electromagnetic brain stimulation for entertainment will become practical in the not-too-distant future." Imagine an interactive movie where special effects are enhanced by zapping parts of the brain from outside to make the action more vivid. Before brain stimulation makes it to the masses, however, it has plenty of technical and safety hurdles to overcome.

In France, a Second Patient Receives Permanent Artificial Heart 183 183

Jason Koebler (3528235) writes One of the most important goals of transhumanist medicine—possessing a perfectly healthy heart—has so far remained elusive. This week, we came a step closer when for the second time ever, a French company implanted a permanent artificial heart in a patient. More than just pumping blood, future artificial hearts will bring numerous other advantages with them. They will have computer chips and wi-fi capacity built into them. We'll control our hearts with our smart phones, tuning down its pumping capacity when we want to sleep, or tuning it up when we want to run marathons. The patient who received the first of these hearts, though he survived for 76 days, died after the heart "stopped after a short circuit, although the exact reasons behind the death were still unknown."

Comment: Dreadnoughtus schrani now the largest known dino (Score 1, Interesting) 91 91

The author of the summary is not up to date on the recent release of info on Dreadnoughtus schrani, now believed to be the largest creature to ever have walked on land.

See the following:

+ - Paley's metalwork not just gates, but art->

Doofus writes: A nice piece on NPR this morning about Albert Paley and an exhibit of his work in DC at the Corcoran. Paley began metalworking in the 1960s and his work and his thinking about his work exemplifies the best of the maker movement.


Link to Original Source

+ - Elon Musk expects the Spanish Inquisition->

Doofus writes: Business Insider is running an article this morning about Elon Musk's fears of an AI-powered apocalypse. For a technology expert and inventor with Musk's credentials, explaining fears of technology may seem a bit incongruous. In a transcript of a CNBC interview with Elon Musk, the question of Musk's investment in an AI development firm came up, and he explains his reasoning for investing in the firm.

I was also an investor in DeepMind before Google acquired it and Vicarious. Mostly I sort of – it's not from the standpoint of actually trying to make any investment return. It's really, I like to just keep an eye on what's going on with artificial intelligence. I think there is potentially a dangerous outcome there and we need to –

Musk goes on to explain a bit more about his concerns and references Monty Python as he does it.
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Comment: Drat! Still only 8GB RAM max. (Score 4, Interesting) 316 316

Specs and prices are available in this file:

Unfortunately at no price point will they go above 8GB RAM.

I'll pay more for 16GB RAM! I guarantee other people are out there waiting for the 16GB model. Please MSFT, manufacture a 16GB RAM model.

Comment: All that and water resistant, too (Score 5, Informative) 96 96



+ - Skilled manual labor critical to US STEM dominance

Doofus writes: The Wall Street Journal has an eye catching headling,







+ - Teach Calculus to 5-year olds? ->

Doofus writes: The Atlantic has an interesting story about opening up what we routinely consider "advanced" areas of mathematics to younger learners.




Link to Original Source


Japan To Create a Nuclear Meltdown 222 222

