biohack - Slashdot User

Submission + - Investigating the Complexity of Academic Writing (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by biohack on Wednesday October 28, 2015 @09:39AM

biohack writes: While the general public might expect that researchers should want to maximize comprehension of their work, academic writing tends to follow an opaque style permeated with professional jargon and complex syntax. Proposed explanations for the emergence of this style range from experts generally finding it difficult to be simple when writing about their expertise to more complex social and cultural theories:
Cynics charge ... that academics play an elitist game with their words: They want to exclude interlopers. Others say that academics have traditionally been forced to write in an opaque style to be taken seriously by the gatekeepers—academic journal editors, for example.

Comment Re:Chatbot? (Score 3, Interesting) 84

by biohack on Monday September 02, 2013 @05:56AM (#44737197) Attached to: Advanced Chatbot Could Help With Social Awkwardness

Do you mean one of these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moydodyr

Comment Re:My world is topsy-turvy (Score 1) 87

by biohack on Monday February 14, 2011 @10:37PM (#35205784) Attached to: Harvard Professor Creates Paper Accelerometer

George Whitesides is a world famous chemist. If not for his intellectual curiosity, he could just earn a comfortable living by consulting for industry and VC firms. As for practicality and simplicity, Whitesides often looks for an inexpensive solution that can produce results that are almost as good as those achieved with state-of-the-art equipment. His group pioneered a number of such creative inventions in microfluidics and nanotechnology, many of which have been widely used and further enhanced by others. When I read that this paper device was developed by a Harvard professor, Whitesides was my first guess.

Submission + - Science in Islamic Countries (aip.org)

Submitted by

biohack

on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @12:15PM

biohack writes: "Physics Today recently published a thought provoking article on development of science in Islamic countries. The author, a Pakistani physicist, posits that 'Internal causes led to the decline of Islam's scientific greatness long before the era of mercantile imperialism. To contribute once again, Muslims must be introspective and ask what went wrong.' The author makes a few strong conclusions, many of which are relevant to the general debate between science and religion.

Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world. If the scientific method is trashed, no amount of resources or loud declarations of intent to develop science can compensate. In those circumstances, scientific research becomes, at best, a kind of cataloging or "butterfly-collecting" activity. It cannot be a creative process of genuine inquiry in which bold hypotheses are made and checked.
"

Submission + - World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural

Submitted by

biohack

on Thursday May 24, 2007 @01:25AM

biohack writes: "A major demographic shift took place on Wednesday, May 23, 2007: For the first time in human history, the earth's population is more urban than rural. According to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia, on that day, a predicted global urban population of 3,303,992,253 exceeded that of 3,303,866,404 rural people. In the US, the tipping point from a majority rural to a majority urban population came early in the late 1910s. Today, only a few states — Maine, Mississippi, Vermont, and West Virginia — are still majority rural. According to the researchers, rural people do not fare well relative to their urban counterparts. Maps of U.S. quality-of-life conditions, for example, show that poverty and low education attainment are concentrated in rural areas — especially the rural South — where the nation's food, water and forest resources exist."

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