jergosh | 9 years ago | on: Mounting challenge to brain sex differences
Hopefully far enough to illustrate that "altering brain structure changes personality" isn't the same as "different personalities have to have a basis in brain structure."
jergosh's comments
jergosh | 9 years ago | on: Mounting challenge to brain sex differences
You can change the way a program executes by interfering with the hardware. You can also run different programs on the same hardware.
jergosh | 9 years ago | on: Mounting challenge to brain sex differences
I happen to be an evolutionary biologist and I said nothing about reproductive strategies. You would first need to establish a link between reproductive strategy and psychology (evolutionary psychology is a bit of a joke science, I'm afraid) and then between psychology and brain structure.
jergosh | 9 years ago | on: Mounting challenge to brain sex differences
Um, all the things that are not bodily fluids. And anyway you picked one particular bodily fluid, not even essential to the functioning of a body.
jergosh | 9 years ago | on: Mounting challenge to brain sex differences
Why would this fact be particularly significant?
jergosh | 10 years ago | on: Scientists store digital images in DNA and retrieve them perfectly
There are four copies of each part of the message so you can lose entire chunks and still be able to recover everything. As for subtitutions, unless you get the same error in 2 copies out of 4, there should be no problem.
The 739kb isn't a limit in any sense, the main limitation is that DNA synthesis is currently expensive.
jergosh | 10 years ago | on: Scientists store digital images in DNA and retrieve them perfectly
You don't actually need to that much, as long as you can keep it dry and reasonably cool -- one idea we had kicking around was to use a cave of the sort that's used for long term seed storage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault)
jergosh | 10 years ago | on: Scientists store digital images in DNA and retrieve them perfectly
In principle a few hours but currently you have to outsource synthesis (i.e. writing) to a company and its an expensive process. Sequencing (reading) can be done more easily and has been dropping in price faster than Moore's law predicts.
jergosh | 10 years ago | on: Scientists store digital images in DNA and retrieve them perfectly
I wasn't directly involved but the research group I'm part of did some earlier work mentioned in this paper (ref. 10) and I would be happy to answer any questions people may have.
jergosh | 12 years ago | on: Unified EU electronic identity card
"Not that it really matters once the referendum comes up as the UK will likely be out of the EU after that."
That's actually highly unlikely. Much as the Brits value their independence, the economic cost would be too high.
jergosh | 12 years ago | on: Date parsing performance on iOS (NSDateformatter vs sqlite)
terrible use of percentages.
jergosh | 12 years ago | on: Biggest Virus Yet Found, May Be Fourth Domain of Life?
> Modern classification schemes are so arbitrary and error-prone as to be essentially just a painful way to satisfy scientists' compulsion to shove things into neat little cubbies and has the negative side-effect of scaring students away from an otherwise fascinating subject.
What do you mean by "modern classification schemes"? If anything, molecular phylogenetics helped clarify earlier attempts at classification which used common morphological features.
jergosh | 12 years ago | on: Announcing pqR: A faster version of R
R core developers are notoriously resistant to change. A number of glaring inefficiencies have gone unfixed for years, despite people submitting patches etc.
jergosh | 12 years ago | on: What Neurons Look Like as Drawn by Students, Grad Students, and Professors
Neurons in AI are not supposed to exactly mimic the behaviour of 'real' neurons...
jergosh | 13 years ago | on: My Medical Choice
It's easy to talk about 'no-brainers' in the abstract. A different story if it's your own favourite bit.
jergosh | 13 years ago | on: My Medical Choice
It's a braver decision from someone who depends on their looks for livelihood. Also creates a mindset "if she could do it, then so could I"
jergosh | 13 years ago | on: My Medical Choice
Her going public about this has got a great potential to raise awareness and make other women more likely to consider this course of action. The sad reality is, however, most women won't be able to afford the reconstructive surgery (or to have it done to the standard Angelina Jolie has).
jergosh | 13 years ago | on: It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia
Same story in the UK http://www.davidarno.org/2008/09/15/fly-to-new-york-and-buy-... (2008)
jergosh | 13 years ago | on: Opposite of a Bloom Filter
A Moolb filter?
jergosh | 13 years ago | on: Kenyan Women Create Their Own 'Geek Culture'
It has enjoyed relative political stability but it's not as safe as you think. My exes father lived there for many years. One night his compound was raided, his guard killed and he and his family were trapped in the house. In the morning the raiders left but he still shudders when he thinks about it.
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