By mid-morning you were up and had breakfast
and read the Sunday paper, took a pill for arthritic pain and a nap. Awoke and
did forty minutes of exercises, played with Jadah who was craving for some
personal attention, helped Carol with a computer problem on her Mac, i.e.
"restart it and see if the problem will go away." It did. - Amorella
1255 hours. That takes us to the present moment, Amorella. I assume we
will head out to lunch in the next hour.
You have returned to your stationary
position at Pine Hill Lakes after lunch at Penn Station where Tylersville ends
at Western Row. Carol is reading the August Better Homes and Gardens and
yesterday you read the first of a new subscription to Popular Science. -
Amorella
I did. It is fun to look at mostly because it reminds me of how much I
treasured that magazine in my youth and actually read during almost all those teaching
years because it and a dozen other magazines were available from the school
library. High school libraries are perks for the teacher. I think I read four
or five magazines a week, not every article but at least one or two in almost
all of them in a variety of subjects; Scientific American was one of the best. Once
in a while there were esoteric articles on quantum mechanics and even Milton's Paradise
Lost. I used a few articles on Paradise Lost, on the birth/language
development and on quantum mechanics in my lectures. Today I refresh myself on
Wikipedia mostly and educational sites.
You woke up this morning thinking about the
Miller Analogy Test, the only test you ever did well on and the test that got
you admitted into Bowling Green State University. - Amorella
That's true. How lucky I was for that test, otherwise they wouldn't have
taken me because of my low overall average at Otterbein. If I hadn't taken 68
or 69 semester hours in English literature at Otterbein I never would have
graduated. I really like most of my classes but I had learning problems (which
I learned to handle myself) and I still have diversified memory problems plus I
have trouble with articulation when it comes to speaking and writing. Otherwise,
you wouldn't be here.
That's a stretch but in the short and the
long of it there is some truth to what you say; you are right, I wouldn't be
here to help. You have, at times, a faulty reality function that allows you to
see faulty reality. - Amorella
That's an odd way of putting it.
This is what I am talking about. You use it
to your advantage though. Let's say, if there were two 'twilight zones' you
would, at times, be in both at once. - Amorella
Does this mean that if I am in two twilight zones I can see them three
dimensionally?
This
is an example of faulty reality. Some thoughts you have learned are best kept
to yourself. You are wondering if the
Miller Analogy still exists. Look it up. - Amorella
** **
Miller Analogies Test
The Miller Analogies Test
(MAT) is a standardized test used primarily for graduate school
admissions in the USA. Created and still published by Harcourt Assessment, the
MAT consists of 120 questions in 60 minutes (formerly 100 questions in 50
minutes).
Content and
use
The test aims to measure an individual's
logical and analytical reasoning through the use of partial analogies. A sample
test question might be
Bach : Composing :: Monet :
a. painting
b. composing
c. writing
d. orating
This should be read as "Bach
is to (:) Composing as (::) Monet is to (:) _______."
The answer would be a. painting because just as Bach is most known for
composing music, Monet is most known for his painting. The open slot may appear
in any of the four positions.
Unlike analogies found on past
editions of the GRE and the SAT, the MAT's analogies demand a broad knowledge
of Western culture, testing subjects such as science, music, literature,
philosophy, mathematics, art, and history. Thus, exemplary success on the MAT
requires more than a nuanced and cultivated vocabulary. In-house factor
analysis studies, however, show that only one major factor accounts for most of
a person's performance.
The MAT has fallen out of favor
among some admissions departments, yet it is still widely accepted in the
social sciences, education, and occasionally in the humanities. For most
graduate programs the GRE is the most common qualifying exam.
Format and
scoring
In the fall of 2004, the exam
became computerized; test-takers can now opt to take it as a computer-based
test (CBT), although the pen-and-paper exam still exists.
Out of the 120 questions, only
100 count in the test taker's score. The remaining 20 questions are
experimental. There is no way for test takers to identify any of the 20
experimental questions on a given test form, as the two types of questions are
intermingled.
Tests taken before October 2004
were scored simply by the number of questions the test-taker answered correctly
with a range from 0-100. Scores using this metric have historically been known
as "raw" scores.
Tests taken in October 2004 or
later have a score range from 200 to 600. The median score is 400, with a standard deviation
of 25 points. These scores, based on a normal curve, are known as
"scaled" scores. Because of their grounding in this model, scaled MAT
scores of 500-600 are extremely rare, as they would be more than four standard
deviations above the norm of 400.
Percentile ranks are also
provided along with the official score report. Test takers receive an overall
percentile rank as well as a percentile rank within their intended graduate
school discipline.
The Miller
Analogies Test is accepted by Mensa, the Triple Nine Society and the Prometheus
Society for its admission requirements. For tests administered prior to October
2004, a raw score of 66 is required for MENSA qualification. For tests
administered during and after October 2004, MENSA requires a score in the 95th
percentile for admission. The Triple Nine Society requires at least a raw score
of 85 on the "old" MAT, and at least 472 on the modern one. The
Prometheus Society requires at least a raw score of 98 on the "old"
MAT, and at least 500 on the modern one.
From:
Wikipedia Offline
** **
Carol remembered it is National Ice Cream
day and all single dips at Graeters are $1.43 as that is the age of the
company.
** **
Graeter's
Graeter's is a regional chain of shops offering ice cream, baked goods,
and candy that originated in Cincinnati,
Ohio in 1870. Their super premium,
thick ice cream has been featured on Food Network, and has earned them many
dedicated fans, including Oprah Winfrey.
"French
pot" process
Graeter's ice cream is made in a
French pot batch process. The ice cream mix is placed into a chilled, spinning
French pot. As the cream freezes on the sidewall of the pot, a blade gently
scrapes the pot's sidewalls, folding the slowly freezing cream into itself. It
takes about 20 minutes to freeze a two-gallon batch. For flavors that include chocolate chips, a low
melting temperature liquid chocolate is poured into the pot, and freezes into a
thin shell on top of the ice cream. A worker uses a blade to break up this
shell and mix it into the ice cream, resulting in Graeter's famous huge dark
chewy chocolate chips.
Each batch of
ice cream is only about two gallons (7.6 L) and
is thus very labor intensive. The resulting ice cream is so thick that it must
be hand-packed into pints
(473 mL). An article in The New York Times in 1997 explains that for reasons
not understood, superior ice creams are made in batches of two gallons or less.
In making that point, the article cited the example of Graeter's, which it said
"is considered by most connoisseurs to be the finest ice cream in the
world."
From Wikipedia
Offline
** **
What does Graeters have to do with blog or
books, boy? - Amorella
I can make it dessert in Brothers 20.
Sounds like a good idea. You are stopped at
Kroger's at Tylersville on the way home from ice cream.
1606 hours. We are home and Carol is talking to Linda, first time since
she arrived home. I think I must have erred, or someone erred in telling me I
did well on that test. Perhaps I did better than on the GRE, but that's it. I'm
rather embarrassed about this because, well, of my natural mental difficulties,
some problem stem from being as premature as I was and surviving the ordeal.
Who knows? Anyway, it got me into BGSU and later allowed me to get into a
pre-doctorate program at BG, but that was not completed; and I did not get into
Miami's doctorate program probably for the obvious reasons. I did enjoy the 16
postgraduate hours in the Ohio Writing Project at Miami in the 1990's and was
eventually considered a 'Fellow' in the project; so much for formal training.
Shoot, my parents didn't think I would graduate from high school. I did do
better than that, but I would not have made it in today's testing program.
There is no way I could have done the math. I am tired of talking about myself;
it is embarrassing.
Find a better word than embarrassing. -
Amorella
It is either humiliating or disconcerting.
Chose one. - Amorella
It is disconcerting.
You
suddenly remember someone told you that you got a 62 on the Miller Analogy. -
Amorella
(1627) I have a poor memory. That just popped into mind. It is probably
wrong. No doubt it is.
That is not what you feel. You feel it was
62. - Amorella
I am wrong, Amorella. No question about it. I am probably thinking about
another test. I think Dr. Coulter told me that after I got admitted and I
stopped at Otterbein to thank him for his letter of recommendation. That's the
way I remember it. He was happy to see I made it in and told me that I'd better
do well as he had given me an excellent recommendation. John Coulter was a kind
man.
Add to the post. - Amorella
If Dr. Coulter said 62, he probably said it to give me confidence.
You
and Carol spent some time watching last week's "Motivation" and
finishing some chores. Dusk and you are considering probes into the hearts and
souls and minds of Connie, Cyndi, Robert and Richard. Shared memories certainly
play a role in all three. All it takes is a word or two to drill into a known
common fact or fantasy. Each of the four knows this. In real life it is the
butter on the bread. Post. - Amorella
2110 hours. These four characters know who they are. They will play it out on their own terms.
2051 hours. Doug sent me a couple of forwards today. The one below hints
at an idea; I just haven't placed it.
** **
Virus Genome
Finding Points To New Branch In Tree Of Life "nature" |
By Ed Yong
Posted:
07/20/2013 10:27 am EDT | Updated: 07/20/2013 10:44 am EDT [Huff
Post Science]
The organism was initially
called NLF, for “new life form”. Jean-Michel Claverie and Chantal Abergel,
evolutionary biologists at Aix-Marseille University in France, found it in a
water sample collected off the coast of Chile, where it seemed to be infecting
and killing amoebae. Under a microscope, it appeared as a large, dark spot,
about the size of a small bacterial cell.
Later, after the researchers
discovered a similar organism in a pond in Australia, they realized that both
are viruses — the largest yet found. Each is around 1 micrometre long and 0.5
micrometres across, and their respective genomes top out at 1.9 million and 2.5
million bases — making the viruses larger than many bacteria and even some
eukaryotic cells.
But these viruses, described
today in Science, are more than mere
record-breakers — they also hint at unknown parts of the tree of life. Just 7%
of their genes match those in existing databases.
“What the hell is going on
with the other genes?” asks Claverie. “This opens a Pandora’s box. What kinds
of discoveries are going to come from studying the contents?” The researchers
call these giants Pandoraviruses.
“This is a major discovery
that substantially expands the complexity of the giant viruses and confirms
that viral diversity is still largely underexplored,” says Christelle Desnues,
a virologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in
Marseilles, who was not involved in the study.
Claverie and Abergel have
helped to discover other giant viruses — including the first, called Mimivirus,
in 2003, and Megavirus chilensis, until now the largest virus known, in
2011. Pandoravirus salinus came from the same Chilean water sample as M.
chilensis. Claverie picked up the second Pandoravirus, P. dulcis,
from a pond near Melbourne, where he was attending a conference.
The
viruses’ presence on separate continents helped to establish that they were not
artefacts of known cells. It also suggests that the Pandoraviruses are
widespread, Claverie says.
Indeed, other scientists had
previously mistaken them for parasitic or symbiotic bacteria. Rolf Michel, a
parasitologist from the Central Institute of the Bundeswehr Medical Service in
Koblenz, Germany, found one in 2008, in an amoeba living in the contact lens of
a woman with keratitis. “Reading this stunning article, I recognized that both P.
salinus and P. dulcis are almost identical to what we described a
few years ago,” he says. “We had no idea that those giant organisms could be
viruses at all!”
The researchers showed that Pandoraviruses lack many of the
hallmarks of cellular organisms such as bacteria. They do not make their own
proteins, produce energy via ATP or reproduce by dividing.
They do, however, contain some of the core genes that are common
to giant viruses, and they have a viral life cycle. Under an electron
microscope, the researchers saw the viruses being taken up by amoeba hosts,
emptying their proteins and DNA into the host cells, commandeering the
host-cell nuclei, producing hundreds of new viral particles and, finally,
splitting the host cells open.
The researchers are now
trying to determine the viruses’ origins by characterizing the unknown genes
and the proteins they encode. They have long suspected that giant viruses
evolved from cells; if they are right, the ancestors of Pandoraviruses must
have been very different from the bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes we have
today. “We think that at some point, the dynasty on Earth was much bigger than
those three domains,” says Abergel. Some cells gave rise to modern life, and
others survived by parasitizing them and evolving into viruses.
The discovery suggests that
scientists’ may revise their concept of what a virus looks like. “After reading
the article, many people may wonder if they have something on their shelves
that might be a giant virus,” says Abergel. “We still have more crazy things in
store that we expect to be able to publish next year.”
This story
originally appeared in Nature News.
From Huff Post Science
[My bold and underline.]
** **
I am not sure self-replication works better than evolution. If probes
were built to evolve wouldn't they become more selective and efficient?
** **
Alien Space Probes? Physics
Paper Considers Craft Other Beings May Have Built To Explore Our Galaxy
The Huffington
Post | By Macrina Cooper-White
Posted:
07/21/2013 10:27 am EDT
Ever wonder if aliens have
been spying on us? You're not alone. In a provocative new paper, a pair of
astrophysicists consider the possibility that intelligent alien beings could
have built a fleet of self-replicating space probes that use gravity to sling
themselves from star to star.
"We're saying that if
aliens build self-replicating probes, they could explore the entire Milky
Way in about ten million years," study co-author Dr. Duncan Forgan, a
postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Astronomy,
told The Huffington Post in an email.
Ten million years is a
relatively short time span, given that scientists estimate the universe is
around 13.8 billion years old.
How could such probes make
copies of themselves? Dr. Duncan said that we humans seem to be closing in on
the necessary technology ourselves, and "with current 3D printing tech, it
might only be a century or two before humans figure it out!"
Travel by slingshot effect --
also called gravity assist -- isn't as wacky as it sounds either. When a probe
passes near a planet, it can get a boost in speed from the planet's gravity.
NASA has exploited the phenomenon on many occasions--perhaps most notably with
the Voyager I and II space probes. Launched in 1977, the probes used gravity
assist to reach the edge of our solar system.
Alien probes using the same
slingshot maneuvers wouldn't have to depend on powerful engines or massive
amounts of fuel. And they could explore the galaxy 100 times faster than probes
navigated by powered flight, Dr. Duncan said.
The paper,
entitled "Slingshot Dynamics for Self-Replicating Probes and the Effect on
Exploration Timescales," was published in the International Journal of
Astrobiology.
From Huffington Post
[My underline]
** **
2110 hours. These four characters know who they are. They will play it out on their own terms.
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