The time President James Garfield wrote a mathematical proof onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The time President James Garfield wrote a mathematical proof

So, now that we've reviewed which U.S. presidents in history did the most to advance science, let's turn our attention to which presidents have done the most for math — and the time U.S. president James Garfield wrote a proof for the Pythagorean Theorem.

Commenter jztemple suggested that, though Garfield's term in office was only 200 days, he still deserved consideration as a top president for advancing the sciences, due to a math proof that he himself has written. Jztemple also sent us a link to this excellent video from Khan Academy, explaining the math behind Garfield's Proof.

The theorem is made all the more impressive by the fact that Garfield was not a mathematician by training. In college, he had instead studied ancient languages and literature, eventually becoming a Classics professor.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The time President James Garfield wrote a mathematical proof

The most important moment in the evolution of life onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The most important moment in the evolution of life

There's a fundamental mystery at the core of our evolution. No, it's not how we went from fuzzy shrews to humans — it's how bacteria made the jump from single-celled existence to something more complex. The weird part is that evolutionary jump only happened once.

Over at Nautilus, Ed Yong has a terrific essay about that moment, roughly 2 billion years ago, when bacteria made an incredible evolutionary leap. It put them on a path that eventually led to the evolution of complex, multicellular animals like us. But how the hell did it happen.

Yong writes about a new theory that could shed light on the most important missing link in our history as animals. Here's how he starts:

At first glance, a tree could not be more different from the caterpillars that eat its leaves, the mushrooms sprouting from its bark, the grass growing by its trunk, or the humans canoodling under its shade. Appearances, however, can be deceiving. Zoom in closely, and you will see that these organisms are all surprisingly similar at a microscopic level. Specifically, they all consist of cells that share the same basic architecture.

These cells contain a central nucleus—a command center that is stuffed with DNA and walled off by a membrane. Surrounding it are many smaller compartments that act like tiny organs, carrying out specialized tasks like storing molecules or making proteins. Among these are the mitochondria—bean-shaped power plants that provide the cells with energy.

This combination of features is shared by almost every cell in every animal, plant, fungus, and alga, a group of organisms known as "eukaryotes."

Bacteria showcase a second, simpler way of building a cell—one that preceded the complex eukaryotes by at least a billion years. These "prokaryotes" always consist of a single cell, which is smaller than a typical eukaryotic one and bereft of internal compartments like mitochondria and a nucleus. Even though limited to a relatively simple cell, bacteria are impressive survival machines. They colonize every possible habitat, from miles-high clouds to the deep ocean. They have a dazzling array of biological tricks that allow them to cause diseases, eat crude oil, conduct electric currents, draw power from the Sun, and communicate with each other.

Still, without the eukaryotic architecture, bacteria are forever constrained in size and complexity. Sure, they have their amazing skill sets, but it's the eukaryotes that cover the Earth in forest and grassland, that navigate the planet looking for food and mates, that build rockets to Mars.

The transition from the classic prokaryotic model to the deluxe eukaryotic one is arguably the most important event in the history of life on Earth. And in more than 3 billion years of existence, it happened exactly once.

Life is full of complex structures that evolve time and again. Individual cells have united to form many-celled creatures like animals and plants on dozens of separate occasions. The same is true for eyes, which have independently evolved time and again. But the eukaryotic cell is a one-off innovation.

Bacteria have repeatedly nudged along the path towards complexity. Some are very big (for microbes); others move in colonies that behave like single, many-celled creatures. But none of them have acquired the full suite of crucial features that define eukaryotes: large size, the nucleus, internal compartments, mitochondria, and more. As Nick Lane from University College London writes, "Bacteria have made a start up every avenue of eukaryotic complexity, but then stopped short." Why?

It is not for lack of opportunity. The world is swarming with countless prokaryotes that evolve at breathtaking rates. Even so, they were not quick about inventing eukaryotic cells. Fossils tell us that the oldest bacteria arose between 3 and 3.5 billion years ago, but there are no eukaryotes from before 2.1 billion years ago. Why did the prokaryotes remain as simple cells for so damn long?

There are many possible explanations, but one of these has recently gained a lot of ground. It tells of a prokaryote that somehow found its way inside another, and formed a lasting partnership with its host. This inner cell—a bacterium—abandoned its free-living existence and eventually transformed into the mitochondria. These internal power plants provided the host cell with a bonanza of energy, allowing it to evolve in new directions that other prokaryotes could never reach.

If this story is true, and there are still those who doubt it, then all eukaryotes—every flower and fungus, spider and sparrow, man and woman—descended from a sudden and breathtakingly improbable merger between two microbes.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com The most important moment in the evolution of life

While you weren't looking, Tomorrow People became a great TV show onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com While you weren't looking, Tomorrow People became a great TV show

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Tomorrow People had a shaky start, but has been steadily improving week by week. But last night's episode was probably the first time this show could legitimately claim to be great, rather than just watchable. Here are all the fist-pumping "fuck yeah" moments in last night's episode.

Spoilers ahead...

One thought that kept going through my mind as I watched "Things Fall Apart" was, this show finally isn't pulling quite so many punches. Thank god. And also, the greater emphasis on Stephen's family reminded me a bit of what I used to love about Kyle XY, the old "paranormal teen boy" soap opera from Tomorrow People producer Julie Plec. But also, this episode actually packed some surprises that I didn't see coming a mile away.

The show still has some problems, to be sure. How the mutants' telepathic abilities work keeps changing from week to week. The rules appear to be inconsistent in general, in terms of what you can get away with and how. Ultra is still an incompetent organization that seems as though you could probably steal their lunch while they were in the middle of eating it.

But the characters are so much sharper, and the show is starting to take more risks with them.

In "Things Fall Apart," Stephen quits Ultra after they tried to kill his friend Astrid — but then the Founder offers a deal: If Stephen gets back the Founder's daughter Cassie, a mega-powerful Breakout who's robbing banks, the Founder will let Astrid off the hook. Stephen captures Cassie, but then it turns out she wants to lose her powers, and she was the victim of some sadistic Ultra experiments — so Cara decides to hang on to her. At last, John hands Cassie over to save Stephen, but the Founder still decides to kill Astrid.

In the middle of all this, there are a number of really nice character turns. John is suddenly less of a saint, who supports Cara's newfound leadership no matter what — in fact, he's a bit of a dick in a totally believable way, questioning Cara's decisions and disobeying her. He wants her back as his girlfriend, but he also wants to be able to do his own thing. (And the show offers a few sops to us Jastrid shippers, too.)

Cara, meanwhile, is less and less the quivering oversensitive telepath she was portrayed as early on. She's actually a good leader, who thinks strategically, and she's actually right about there being more to the Cassie situation than meets the eye. When John finally says he won't just obey her orders and she might as well just throw him out of the underground lair now — and she does just that — I cheered. Finally, someone showing some backbone around here.

Stephen, meanwhile, is starting to loosen up, especially as he lets go of just a tad of the "chosen one" messianic baggage. The scenes where he tries to "seduce" Carrie so he can capture her are sort of hilariously inept — and it's a relief that she knows what's going on and isn't actually taken in by his smooth moves. But he's starting to feel more like a genuine person and less like a giant grumpy baby.

Meanwhile, one of the big fakeouts in the episode is that you think the Founder is cutting his daughter endless slack, much the way Jedikiah is doing for Stephen — but instead, the Founder is doing sadistic insane invasive experiments on her in a secret lab, and implanting false memories of being a student at Brown University to cover it up. (Insert your own joke about how going to Brown is actually like sadistic lab-rat torment.) This is good both because it reduces the sense that Ultra is a club where family members and cronies get carte blanche and the extreme vigilance is only for outsiders, and also because the more evil Ultra appears, the more the main characters' struggle seems relevant and not just like a big morally relativistic squabble.

Oh, and I liked the idea of inserting a port into Stephen's brain so that the Founder could interface directly and read his thoughts without any interference — it's a logical extension of the tech we've seen before. I was only disappointed the Founder didn't carry on with the procedure after his daughter miraculously turned up — I mean, why not?

And Jedikiah, for his part, takes a few baby steps from seeming like a pathetic middle manager caught between the Founder and his underlings — he seems slightly more as though he's in a power struggle with the Founder, or at least playing his own long game. Maybe some of that is just me paying too much attention to Mark Pellegrino's masterful sarcasm-acting.

But really the episode belongs to Stephen's mom Marla, and to a lesser extent his brother Luka. They've been the most neglected members of the show's supporting cast, and at times the show hasn't seemed to know what to do with them in the midst of all the mutant-on-mutant action. But this time around, they feel more integrated into the story — especially Marla, who is pissed about Astrid being missing and on Stephen's case about his endless lies and weirdness.

When Marla goes to Jedikiah's office and bitches him out and promises to put him in a world of hurt if anything happens to Stephen or Astrid, I honestly thought it would be the most fist-pumping awesome scene in the episode. And then later, Marla makes Stephen A) confess that he's in out of his depth (which he absolutely is), B) do a ridiculous/wonderful "iron triangle" mantra about the family sticking together. And I thought THAT was probably going to be the most awesome moment in the episode.

But at the episode's end, when the Founder (predictably) reneges on his deal to spare Astrid if Stephen hands over the Founder's daughter, the show does a really good job of tricking you into thinking that Stephen's mom has met the fate of all parental figures in standard "coming of age" dramas — dying in a hail of bullets. And then it turns out that Marla actually has had superpowers all along — which makes me slightly sad that she doesn't just get to be a tough-as-nails human who makes all the super-mutants pay attention, but still thrilled that this show is turning its "human mom was all at sea when her mutant husband left her with mutant kids to raise" storyline on its head. Lovely stuff.

Oh, and Stephen thinks that Luka's big secret is that he's manifesting superpowers too — but apparently his big secret is that he's got a bong. Yay. I kind of hope Luka stays the one human in the family, especially now that Marla has vacated that role.

The one complaint about this episode is that the whole "Astrid living among the mutants" set-up, which could have been milked for so much hilarious insanity, basically gets zilch. It slips through the cracks. All Astrid does is whine about why she wants to go home — which is understandable, but still disappointing.

Still, all in all, Tomorrow People is finally becoming a worthy companion for its fellow Wednesday-night show Arrow. Let's hope this is the start of something.

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com While you weren't looking, Tomorrow People became a great TV show

Twitter SNAFU lets researchers identify a new kind of harrassment onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Twitter SNAFU lets researchers identify a new kind of harrassment

It's a kind of online harassment that happens all the time, but which we haven't really named. Over at Model View Culture, computer security researcher Leigh Honeywell calls it "opportunistic." And a recent change at Twitter made it clear how this kind of harassment works.

Honeywell describes what "opportunistic" harassment is:

Online harassment varies dramatically in form and intensity, but there is a huge swath of it which is low-grade, opportunistic, and not terribly persistent. These are the online equivalent of a "hey baby" from a street harasser, or an inappropriate leer from a coworker. Their target is never sure which one will escalate to a serious threat, and even the ones which don't escalate can add up to some serious harm when walking past them on a daily basis or having to interact with them at work.

Social networks are perfect places for opportunistic harassers, because it's easy to aggregate all the people you want to harass in one feed, and then just troll them from one easy location. Often, opportunistic harassment isn't really personal. It's directed a class of people, like atheists or feminists or Tea Party members. On Twitter, an opportunistic harasser can just follow everybody who contributes to a #doctorwho hashtag, for example, and then send each person a message saying that Doctor Who sucks.

One of the nice things about social networks, however, is that it's easy to block these opportunistic harassers and never see them again. But that all changed on Twitter in December, when the company changed how its blocking worked.

Honeywell talks about how the Twitter change affected users:

When Twitter changed the scope of its blocking functionality on December 12th, 2013, they made it easier for low-grade harassers to pursue their targets. The change allowed blocked users to continue to "follow" their targets, and to interact with their target's content by retweeting and favoriting it. Previously, these types of interactions were not permitted by blocked users. In attempting to solve the problem of users being retaliated against for blocking, Twitter missed other ways that harassers operate on their service. Retweeting, in particular, is often used by harassers to expose the target's content to the friends of the harasser – potentially subjecting the target to a new wave of harassment. With the blocking functionality changed to work as "mute", targets lost the ability to stop their harassers from retweeting them.

When the unannounced change was noticed, users and commentators argued that a determined harasser could have always copied-and-pasted a target's tweets, set up new accounts, or otherwise worked around the existing blocking functionality, and that the original blocking functionality represented a false sense of security. These arguments ignored the value of that functionality for dealing with unmotivated, low-grade and opportunistic harassers.

She also points out why "solution" offered to this problem — making your account private — is not a solution at all. As a result of arguments like Honeywell's, Twitter rolled back the feature and has restored the old blocking functionality.

It's a fascinating story, and shows how real-life social behaviors get translated to social media, taking on new attributes in the process.

Read the whole article on Model View Culture

onlinecollegedegreee.blogspot.com Twitter SNAFU lets researchers identify a new kind of harrassment