[QUOTE=petrw1;499938]1. I read a series of library books in school about a kid named "Brian"; however it wasn't until I was somewhere in the 3rd book in the series that I realized I had been reading it as "Brain" until then.[/QUOTE]A great series for kids:

[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Brain[/url]

[QUOTE=rogue;499928]<snip> Brian is my older son's name and he is very smart. He is a teenager and thinks he is smarter than me (sometimes). He'll learn how wrong he is when he goes to college. :grin:[/QUOTE]
Reminds me of a quotation that turns out to be [url=https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/10/twain-father/]not by Mark Twain[/url]:[quote]When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.[/quote]

[QUOTE=Dr Sardonicus;499954]Reminds me of a quotation that turns out to be [url=https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/10/10/twain-father/]not by Mark Twain[/url]:[/QUOTE]

Scratch the 7 year part, and this is the tale of my life. Once tried to break my father's neck in front of family because he acts so stupidly.

[URL="https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/322792"]9 Ways to Rewire Your Brain for Creativity[/URL]

[URL="https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/11/04/663668407/neuroscientists-debate-a-simple-question-how-does-the-brain-store-a-phone-number"]Neuroscientists Debate A Simple Question: How Does The Brain Store A Phone Number?[/URL]

[URL="https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/new-supercomputer-now-world-s-fastest-brain-mimicking-machine-ncna931366"]This new supercomputer is now the world's fastest brain-mimicking machine[/URL]

[URL="https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46078989"]Llama blood clue to beating all flu[/URL]

[URL="http://time.com/5444486/neil-armstrong-space-memorabilia-auction/"]Neil Armstrong's Moon Memorabilia Fetched More Than $7.4 Million at Auction[/URL]

[URL="http://mentalfloss.com/article/555041/how-hiking-trails-are-created"]The Psychology and Science Behind How Hiking Trails Are Created[/URL]

[URL="http://maxplanck.nautil.us/article/338/learning-to-read-in-your-30s-profoundly-transforms-the-brain"]Learning to Read in Your 30s Profoundly Transforms the Brain[/URL]

[url=https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/nov/14/impact-crater-19-miles-wide-found-beneath-greenland-glacier]Impact crater 19 miles wide found beneath Greenland glacier[/url] | The Guardian

"The enormous bowl-shaped dent appears to be the result of a mile-wide iron meteorite slamming into the island at a speed of 12 miles per second as recently as 12,000 years ago."

Note that the article later makes clear that the date range is still very large, the 12,000 ybd number is merely the lower bound on age.

[b]Edit:[/b] Here is the link to the Greenland-crater article in [i]Science[/i]'s News section:

[url=https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/massive-crater-under-greenland-s-ice-points-climate-altering-impact-time-humans]Massive crater under Greenland’s ice points to climate-altering impact in the time of humans[/url] | Science
[quote]Though not as cataclysmic as the dinosaur-killing Chicxulub impact, which carved out a 200-kilometer-wide crater in Mexico about 66 million years ago, the Hiawatha impactor, too, may have left an imprint on the planet’s history. The timing is still up for debate, but some researchers on the discovery team believe the asteroid struck at a crucial moment: roughly 13,000 years ago, just as the world was thawing from the last ice age. That would mean it crashed into Earth when mammoths and other megafauna were in decline and people were spreading across North America…. The news of the impact discovery has reawakened an old debate among scientists who study ancient climate. A massive impact on the ice sheet would have sent meltwater pouring into the Atlantic Ocean—potentially disrupting the conveyor belt of ocean currents and causing temperatures to plunge, especially in the Northern Hemisphere. “What would it mean for species or life at the time? It’s a huge open question,” says Jennifer Marlon, a paleoclimatologist at Yale University.[/quote]
13,000 ybp would place the episode close to the start of the Younger Dryas cold-snap which interrupted the transition out of the last glacial epoch. If the crater proves a few thousand years older, it might still be associated with the Older Dryas cold interlude.

[url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/the-case-against-quantum-computing]The Case Against Quantum Computing[/url] - IEEE Spectrum. A pessimistic take on the vexing problem of error correction at scale.

[url=https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/when-tulips-kill/574489/]When Tulips Kill[/url] - The Atlantic. On microbial resistance caused by agricultural/horticultural overuse of antifungal drugs:
[quote][The] kind of testing [done at Radboud laboratory] is most important for people who are very ill, because their fragility doesn’t leave much room for redirecting treatment if something isn’t working. The most vulnerable patients are people whose immune systems can no longer protect them against infections, because their innate defenses have been undermined by cancer treatment, by the immunosuppressive drugs given for autoimmune syndromes and after organ transplants, or by diseases such as HIV. People who are immunocompromised are like living petri dishes, fertile ground for whatever pathogen wafts their way. In the early 2000s, a cluster of those patients at Radboud were infected by an organism called [i]aspergillus fumigatus[/i].

In nature, [i]aspergillus fumigatus[/i] breaks down decaying plant matter, keeping the world from becoming one giant pile of dead leaves and decaying crops. It reproduces by puffing out spores that drift through the air until they land somewhere damp and warm enough to germinate. One of the places they are likely to land is in our lungs: It’s estimated that each of us inhales about 200 [i]aspergillus fumigatus[/i] spores every day. A healthy immune system sweeps them away—but in someone with compromised immunity, the spores can root into the lining of the lung and grow. [i]Aspergillus fumigatus[/i] likes very warm temperatures; it grows happily in the steamy interior of a compost heap, which just happens to be the same temperature as the inside of our bodies. So once it settles in the lungs, the fungus reproduces wildly, spills into the bloodstream, and is conveyed to other organs, where it grows and overwhelms them in turn.

That outcome is called invasive aspergillosis, and it is diagnosed as often as 500,000 times a year worldwide, in up to 10 percent of immunocompromised patients. It is deadly—or was, until a tiny group of drugs called triazoles came on the market in the 1990s and 2000s. The triazoles, which have names such as fluconazole and voriconazole, worked against many types of fungal infections—a rare feat, because fungi are more like us biologically than bacteria are, and it is harder to make an antifungal that will kill just them and not us than it is to make an antibiotic. Invasive aspergillosis had been a death sentence, but the triazoles dialed the death rate down from 100 percent to 40 percent. In other words, three out of every five patients who would have died began to survive their infections instead.

And then that trend reversed...[/quote]

[QUOTE=ewmayer;500375][URL="https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/the-case-against-quantum-computing"]The Case Against Quantum Computing[/URL] - IEEE Spectrum. A pessimistic take on the vexing problem of error correction at scale.[/QUOTE]
Interesting article, even though I don't fully understand it. The point I take away from it is: Quantum computers will be a few decades away, for many decades to come. Just like Nuclear Fusion plants and AI have been a few decades away for the past decades.

[QUOTE=VictordeHolland;500405]Interesting article, even though I don't fully understand it. The point I take away from it is: Quantum computers will be a few decades away, for many decades to come. Just like Nuclear Fusion plants and AI have been a few decades away for the past decades.[/QUOTE]
Maybe these are the "[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_Unit"]Friedman Unit[/URL]" of technology.
[QUOTE]The [B]Friedman Unit[/B], or simply [B]Friedman[/B],[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_Unit#cite_note-think1-1"][1][/URL] is a [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongue-in-cheek"]tongue-in-cheek[/URL] [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neologism"]neologism[/URL]. One Friedman Unit is equal to six months,[URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_Unit#cite_note-Klein-2"][2][/URL] specifically the "next six months", a period repeatedly declared by [I][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times"]New York Times[/URL][/I] columnist [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Friedman"]Thomas Friedman[/URL] to be the most critical of the then-ongoing [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War"]Iraq War[/URL][URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_Unit#cite_note-wrong-3"][3][/URL] even though such pronouncements extended back over two and a half years. [/QUOTE]

Related to the fungal-resistance article, though focused on bacterial (i.e. prokaryotic vs eukaryotic) pathogens:

[url=https://phys.org/news/2018-11-dodging-antibiotic-resistance-curbing-bacterial.html]Dodging antibiotic resistance by curbing bacterial evolution[/url] | PhysOrg
[quote]In looking for another approach to combating this public health threat, the team of microbiologists, genome scientists, pathobiologists and molecular and cellular biologists found evidence for a key promoter of mutations in many different bacteria. This protein factor, DNA translocase Mfd, seems to speed resistance in diverse species toward every antibiotic that was tested.The researchers call bacterial proteins like Mfd "evolvability factors" because, by increasing mutation rates, they propel the evolution of bacteria. Unlike many multicellular organisms, bacteria evolve quickly. This allows their species to survive or escape suddenly changing conditions, scarcity of nutrients and hostile environments—including attempts to destroy them with antibiotics or immune responses.[/quote]

[URL="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-did-people-do-before-envelopes-letterlocking"]Before Envelopes, People Protected Messages With Letterlocking[/URL]

[URL="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bats-beat-dolphins-in-the-battle-over-who-has-the-best-sonar/"]Bats Beat Dolphins in the Battle over Who Has the Best Sonar[/URL]

[URL="https://www.newsweek.com/watch-bizarre-mri-video-shows-how-beatboxers-make-sounds-1211889"]WATCH: BIZARRE MRI VIDEO SHOWS HOW BEATBOXERS MAKE SOUNDS[/URL]

[URL="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/competitive-library-book-sorting"]The Competitive Book Sorters Who Spread Knowledge Around New York[/URL]

[URL="https://phys.org/news/2018-11-astronomers-super-earth-barnard-star.html"]Astronomers discover super-Earth around Barnard's star[/URL]

[URL="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/15/magazine/tech-design-ai-prediction.html"]THE HUMAN BRAIN IS A TIME TRAVELER[/URL]

[URL="https://www.us.mensa.org/read/bulletin/features/sweet-talk-a-laymans-history-of-diabetes/"]Sweet Talk: A Layman’s History of Diabetes[/URL]

[URL="https://www.us.mensa.org/read/bulletin/features/the-guard-dog-of-dury-mill/"]The Guard Dog of Dury Mill[/URL]

Insight Mars has landed !
 

It's on Mars OK and has sent back its first image !!!