Entries from May 2005 ↓

Manakin (中文名:娇鹟, 隶属雀形目), a native in the tropical regions, is wonderful dancer.

You can find videos of its dance at: here or here as the supplements of an academic article.

Another introduction at PBS

A group from Germany just published an article showing that Androgenetic alopecia or AGA, we are professionals, is related to androgen receptor whose gene locates on X chromosome. So your son may also be a loser on this, while you are laughing. And I’m waiting.

News links:

1. From Guardian
2. From The Independent

Article link:

AR is the major determinant of AGA

Redbull-Star Wars
Originally uploaded by mcwolf.

Yes, the race just ended, and Kimi Raikkonen of McLaren won consecutively with a great margin. While Mclaren’s car is too fast to believe, and the two Williams’ “pursuit” of Alonso of Renault and Trulli’s bold tatics at the U-turn are the most of the highlights, the two Red Bull’s cars caught my eyes every time on the screen. Yeah, it’s Star Wars shinning on the cars. Cool.

It’s hot, we even can watch the movie at the same time in China as in US. On the web numerous things pop up about ROTS, and there even exists BitTorrent feed sticking around in forums. I want to see the movie tomorrow and below are some links people talk about this movie:

Lessons learned from Revenge of the Sith on Adam Fields weblog.

The public choice economics of Star Wars: A Straussian reading on marginal revolution.com.

Say Good Night, Obi-Wan on Slate magazine.

May, 21st is Morphine’s 200th birthday.

Check out the entry on Mind hacks and follow the links there.

Mac OS X 自带的中文输入法开启相当的慢,时常让人感到无法忍受.OpenVanilla这个软件可以解决这一点.它基于XCIN,更象是个平台,可以载入多种输入法.它的开启和输入速度都很快,不过如果你要使用它来输入简体中文的话,你要下载輸入法延伸安裝套件

Why God doesn’t have a PhD

1. He had only one major publication.
2. It was in Hebrew.
3. It had no references.
4. It wasn’t published in a referenced Journal.
5. Some even doubt he wrote it by himself.
6. It may be true that he created the world, but what has he done since then?
7. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
8. The scientific community has had a hard time replicating his results.
9. He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use human subjects.
10. When one experiment went awry he tried to cover it by drowning his subjects.
11. When subjects didn’t behave as predicted, he deleted them from the sample.
12. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
13. Some say he had his son teach the class.
14. He expelled his first two students for learning.
15. Although there were only 10 requirements, most of his students failed his tests.
16. His office hours were infrequent and usually held on a mountaintop.

上帝为什么一直没拿到PhD?

1. 他只发表了一篇论文
2. 这篇论文是用希伯来语写的
3. 这篇论文没有引文
4. 这篇论文没有发表在有审稿人的杂志中
5. 有人甚至怀疑这篇文章是不是他自己写的
6. 也许他真的创造了世界，可是自从那以后他干了些什么？
7. 他几乎没有与别人合作的研究
8. 其他科学界人士试图重复他的结果的尝试几乎都失败了
9. 他从来没有得到使用人类作试验的许可
10. 当他的实验快要失败的时候，他试图补救的方法是把所有的实验品都淹死
11. 当实验品的表现不符合预期时，他把这些样品删除
12. 他很少来教课，只是让他的学生们认真读课本
13. 有人说他让他的儿子替他教课
14. 他把他最早的两个学生开除了，理由是他们想学习
15. 虽然他的课只有10个要求，但是绝大部分的学生都通不过考试
16. 他的答疑时间非常的不固定，而且答疑地点经常在一个山顶上 –

毫无疑问，对于Sci-Fi的爱好者来说，这是伟大的一步。Cornell大学Hod Lipson的实验室在今天出版的Nature上发表了一篇关于机器人自我复制的论文： Robotics: Self-reproducing machines。他们构建了一些结构简单的盒子作为机器人模型，但这些盒子可以通过每个盒子对角线方向的旋转和盒子的堆叠来对三维世界进行探索以完成自我复制的目的（这种复制是模拟的，通过电影 [或是文章的附件]就可以理解了）。

作者指出，虽然这不是第一个可以自我复制的机器人，但它却是很重要的一步。

参见news@Nature的报道：Robots master reproduction by Andreas von Bubnoff

这篇论文也被slashdotted

PS: 关于它的相关报道太多了，所以我写了一篇中文的。

UPDATE:作者的网址

You may have know this. If you want to see it, please be well prepared. I should admit that I’ve never finished it.

Link: On my own site or the source I found.

NOTE: Only in Chinese.