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Optical Cloaking Coolness...

Troythulu — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:58:45 +0000

There is a discipline within physics, dubbed ‘plasmonics’ as of 2000 by Harry A. Atwater’s group working out of the California Institute of Technology, which deals with the creation of electron density-waves called ‘plasmons’ which can yield improved microscopes, more efficient light emitting diodes, better biological and chemical sensors, and even now show promise for the possibility of… invisibility. Just like the Romulan cloaking devices of Star Trek, only these use something called ‘meta-materials,’ substances which make use of plasmonic optical properties to bend light around them like running water around an obstacle in a stream. Plasmons have been studied since the 1980s, when Raman spectroscopy was used to observe the molecular vibrations of a sample by scattering laser light off of it to analyze its structure. Meta-materials have rather impressive optical capabilities, and even without invisibility per se, might produce so-called ‘superlenses’ which have the potential to image incredibly tiny, nigh-infinitesimally small structures, allowing the production of vastly smaller computer chips than are available today, or optically imaging living viruses. But I digress. Researchers working out of the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, have produced new meta-materials that exhibit what is known as a negative refraction index, bending light in a manner opposite that of most substances, such as, if water had such a property, the fish swimming in it would appear to be in the air above it, rather than within it. Two-dimensional materials have been produced, but with unreliable light-bending effects, and they absorbed too much light, though two new three-dimensional substances have been produced with more robust negative refraction indices, showing better potential for usefulness, and one step closer to the creation of an optical cloaking technology. One method involves the use of stacked layers of a transparent compound, magnesium fluoride, and silver, with fishnet patterns less than 1/100th the width of a human hair cut into the layers. The layers of fishnet, according to one Jason Valentine, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, serve to bend light in an unnatural direction, which with further development, may even be able to bend light entirely around an object, and without reflecting any light toward a hypothetical viewer, the object would be effectively invisible. Unfortunately, the magnesium fluoride-silver was only effective in the infra-red portion of the EM spectrum, outside that normally visible to humans. In the second technique, using small silver nano-wires in porous aluminum oxide, light in the red portion of the visible spectrum was successfully bent.
According to Jie Yao, a graduate student in the Applied Science and Technology department, some of the remaining difficulties include the directionality of the light bending effect, for currently, items coated with these substances would be invisible only in one direction, and visible in another, and the fact that to be practical, the materials used must be much less costly than at present, and the substance should be able to bend all wavelengths in the visible spectrum, obstacles which could take years to overcome, but an important first step nonetheless, to paraphrase Yao.

Synaesthesia: hearing colors, seeing sounds, etc.

ninjagarden — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:27:34 +0000

Synaesthesia is interesting. You should click here to watch the video to see if you might have synaesthesia.

Some people see colour when listening to mus

US scientists have discovered people who can "hear" what they see.

The rare form of synaesthesia - a condition where senses intermingle - came to light after a student reported "hearing sounds" from a screensaver.

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology then found three more people with the same condition, New Scientist magazine reported.

Those affected performed better in tests of recognising visual patterns than those without the condition.

A more common form of the condition is being able to perceive numbers or letters as colours.

It's common to find people who have it the other way round - so they see colour when they hear music

Dr Julia Simner, Edinburgh University

Several artists have been linked with the condition, including David Hockney who is able to see colour when listening to music.

Dr Melissa Saenz discovered the phenomenon when a group of students were being shown around her lab and one asked if anyone else could hear a pattern of moving dots on a computer screen.

When she questioned him further she realised he matched the criteria for synaesthesia - he had experienced it all his life and it happened with lots of different moving images.

By sending the moving dots image to hundreds of other volunteers, she found three others who could also hear sounds, such as tapping, whirring or whooshing, when watching it.

Tests

To double check they did have synaesthesia she tested their ability to recognise a series of visual patterns.

They either heard a pair of series of beeps or watched a pair of a series of flashes and had to say whether they matched.

Both groups were accurate 85% of the time when they heard the pattern, the results published in Current Biology show.

But when watching it, the individuals with synaesthesia remained 85% accurate while the others dropped to only 55% accuracy.

Dr Saenz said: "I was surprised to realise this particular form had not been reported before and I wanted to see how common it was.

"The goal of the study was to objectively determine if the sound perception was real."

Dr Julia Simner, who researches synaesthesia at the University of Edinburgh said some forms of the condition were more common than others.

"It's common to find people who have it the other way round - so they see colour when they hear music.

"The very nice thing about this paper is they have been able to document a kind which we knew was out there but for which we only had hazy knowledge."

ninjagarden

You Can Judge a Drink By Its Cover

Alexandra Shimo — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:34:04 +0000

The taste of bottled mineral water depends its journey through different rocks and minerals. And while taste matters, so too does touch, according to a study by Maureen Morrin, a professor of marketing at the Rutgers School of Business. Studying the responses of 1,000 men and women, she found that people would rate the taste of the water according to the container holding it. When served in a firm cup, people would find it more tasty, compared to a flimsy one.

This isn't the first study that has linked taste to another sense. In March 2008, a study in the Journal of Consumer Research found that color shaped people's perceptions of taste. Given two cups of the same Tropicana orange juice, one darkened with food coloring, people would make taste distinctions that did not exist. In contrast, they were less likely to notice real taste distinctions - such as more sugar - when the drinks were the same colour. Memory matters too, according to studies. In blind taste tests between Pepsi and Coke - published in the October 2004 edition of Neuron - people's perceptions of taste would depend on whether they knew what brand they were drinking. Price too has been found to influence taste. According to research from the California Institute of Technology, people rated the same bottle of wine more tasty when told it was $90 rather than $10.

Taste, like beauty, seems to be in the eye of the beholder.

A Random Rant

lebronpleasesavenewyork — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:55:33 +0000

I came across an article on ESPN the other day about the California Institute of Technology's men's basketball team. It basically talked about how the team blows but the school is so academically challenging and the players are geniuses and blah blah blah. But in the article the writer mentions how the average verbal SAT score at Caltech is 2190 and the average math score is 2320. She further goes on to say that "a perfect score these days is 2400 in each." Now I know the SATs have changed since I took it (which really isn't that long ago) but I didn't know the high score went from 1600 to 4800. And I thought they added a writing section??? Now, I'm an avid reader of espn.com and this won't make me boycott them or anything like that because this is pretty stupid I guess and God knows I've made my fair share of stupid mistakes and writing about this will clearly come back to bite me in the ass soon enough, but how does this happen? Not only is the perfect score NOT 2400 in each but also, where are you getting your information from? Who is telling you that the average verbal score is 2190 and the average math score is 2320? Couldn't you run this by those genius Caltech guys before the article was actually published? Or maybe a co-worker? I'm sure any 16 year old kid could've told you that those scores are impossible because in fact, the perfect score is 800 in each. Like I said, this is a stupid thing to get annoyed about and it was probably just an oversight by the writer, but I just found it ironic that an article about a bunch of geniuses would have such a gross academic oversight.

To read the article, click here.

Photographies vintage (10)

siams — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:50:22 +0000

Pour cette dixième édition, je vous propose le must de ce qui se fait en matière d'intellect. J'écris cela sur le ton de la plaisanterie, mais je pense que si l'on devait faire la moyenne des QIs des différents propriétaires de siamois évoqués jusque là sur notre blog (nous inclus), nous dominerions largement et pour un bon moment cette dernière avec ce présent billet.

Pas plus de mystère, je vous propose donc ce vieux cliché, vraisemblablement pris autour des années 50-60, représentant George Beadle en compagnie de l'un de ses siamois. Mais qui était George Beadle allez-vous me dire ??? "So simply" le prix Nobel de Médecine en 1958, éminent Professeur américain en biologie et en génétique qui a reçu un grand nombre de récompenses et de distinctions tout le long de sa carrière.

Merci au site web des Archives du Caltech Institute (California Institute of Technology), sans lequel jamais je n'aurais trouvé une telle rareté.

Et pour en savoir plus : nobelprize.org

The Cosmic Magnifying Glass and the Universe?!

europadanica — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 21:40:01 +0000

Here's another thought-provoking LiveScience.com article on the apparent existence of numerous cosmic magnifying glasses - also known as gravitational lenses - in the Universe.

Universe Loaded With Natural Magnifying Glasses

We Can Buy Happiness...er, sort of.

beholdthestars — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 20:19:36 +0000

A study led by Antonio Range, Assistant Professor of Economics at California Institute of Technology, concludes that the more we believe an item is worth, the happier we are with our purchase:

The study's participants were hooked up to brain scan machines and instructed to take a sip from five glasses of wine, which ranged from $5 to $90 a bottle. When they were told they were drinking a glass of wine from a $90 bottle, brain scans showed increased activity in the medial orbital frontal cortex, the area of the brain that registers pleasure — even if the person was actually knocking back the price equivalent of two-buck chuck./p>

Sadly, it’s a fleeting kind of glee. The brain scan study showed that the brain's pleasure centers only reacted to the enjoyment of the pricey wine for a few seconds, or just a few beats longer than it took to swallow. After that, your retail joy is gone. And so is your money.

According to April Benson, author of I Shop, Therefore, I Am, we confuse the item's worth with our own self worth.

If we look at this, we see that what happens in the brains of shopoholics is like that of addicts of all kinds: a rush of increased sense of peace or self worth followed by a relatively quick drop back to real life, all directly conrollable by our actions. But like all addictions, addiction to the rush of spending winds up creating not happiness, but additional suffering in the form of wrecked finances and personal lives.

Look then, to find longer-lasting forms of happiness, like love, companionship, service, and accomplishment.

You Get What You Pay For

athinkingman — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:28:35 +0000

It was the week before Christmas. Every other week when you went round the supermarket you were always attracted to the wine offers that were under £4.00. Every week you told yourself that at this supermarket they were able to maintain quality and keep costs low because they purchased quality wine in bulk, and you really could get a good bottle of red for £3.99. Really, you could.

But it was the week before Christmas. Wintervale. The season of pagan indulgence and celebration. You had already moved money from your savings account into your current account in a desperate attempt to survive the impending credit card tsunami. You had already saved a pound or two by recycling some of last year's unwanted gifts and you had got used to being extravagant. Now was the time to lash out one more time. £5.99 on a bottle of Bordeaux. You wouldn't normally spend that much, but hey, this was Christmas, and a bit of recklessness was occasionally permitted.

And of course, when you drank it with the obligatory post Christmas beef, it was wonderful. So much better than that £3.99 stuff. So rich and velvety. So smooth. It really was worth paying the extra. I mean the £3.99 wine was excellent, but the £5.99 one was out of this world.

That experience would come as no surprise to researchers from the California Institute of Technology and the Stanford Graduate School of Business who found that $90 wine tastes much better than the same wine priced at $10. Because we expect wines that cost more to be of higher quality, we trick ourselves into believing the wines provide a more pleasurable experience than less expensive ones. When 20 adult test subjects sampled the same wine at different prices, they reported experiencing pleasure at significantly greater levels when told the wine cost more. At the same time, the part of the brain responsible for pleasure showed significant activity.

Their study, published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says that with the higher priced wines, we have greater expectations which result in more blood and oxygen being sent to a part of the brain called the medial orbitofrontal cortex, the part of the brain that registers pleasure. Brain scanning using a method called functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) showed evidence for the researchers' hypothesis that changes in the price of a product can influence neural computations associated with experienced pleasantness. This happens even though the part of our brain that interprets taste is not affected. The sensation of pleasantness that we experience when tasting wine can be linked to its price.

The research, along with other studies the authors allude to, are putting a serious dent in economists' notions that experienced pleasantness of a product is based on its intrinsic qualities. Several studies they quote have provided behavioral evidence that marketing actions can successfully affect experienced pleasantness by manipulating nonintrinsic attributes of goods. For example, knowledge of a beer's ingredients and brand can affect reported taste quality, and the reported enjoyment of a film is influenced by expectations about its quality. Even more intriguingly, changing the price at which an energy drink is purchased can influence the ability to solve puzzles.

So, you really do get what you pay for (according to these studies, at least).

Before you and I go and hike up the price of any services or products that we offer in an attempt to automatically influence perception of quality, I need to give a word of caution. The participants in this study did not pay for the wine themselves. The pleasure may also have have come from thinking they were drinking an expensive wine they had not paid for themselves. Who knows what the effect of paying for the wine might have had on their taste experience? I suspect if they could well afford it, similar results would be obtained. However, if they had little money and the wine was expensive, they may get less pleasure in drinking it.

If you had to pay to read this blog, would it make the experience any more valuable?

________________
Source: "Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness."
Hilke Plassmann, John O'Doherty, Baba Shiv, and Antonio Rangel.
PNAS published early online January 14, 2008.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0706929105

Quand le vin vaut son pesant d'or

winecase — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 08:27:50 +0000

Pensez-vous que vous jugez objectivement les vins que vous goûtez? Que les considérations de prix, de provenance, etc., n'ont pas de prise sur vos papilles et votre bulbe olfactif? Une étude réalisée au California Institute of Technology par le Dr. Angelo Rangel, et dont fait état l'Agence France-Presse, prouve le contraire en montrant sans autre cérémonie l'activité des neurones au contact du vin... et de son prix, réel ou supposé.

En effet, les chercheurs dirigés par le docteur Rangel ont fait goûter une série de cabernets sauvignons aux participants à leur expérience, en n'indiquant sur les bouteilles qu'un prix. Celui-ci pouvait être minimisé ou augmenté, afin de tester l'effet de ce facteur sur le plaisir éprouvé par celui ou celle qui le boit. Le cerveau des participants était scanné au moment de leur dégustation, ce qui a démontré l'influence d'un tel facteur, non seulement sur nos attentes, mais aussi sur la réaction réelle et effective du cerveau. D'autres recherches avaient montré un résultat similaire, en fonction du contexte de la dégustation, de l'étiquette, de l'appellation du vin, etc.

Bref, nous buvons sous influence, ce qui ne fait que renforcer l'importance de déguster à l'aveugle pour parvenir à un jugement un tant soit peu objectif.

L'étude originale, publiée dans les Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, peut se lire, si on est prêt à payer 10$, et qu'on n'est pas rebuté par le titre "Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness".

This wine tastes like a million bucks

winecase — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 07:42:26 +0000

If you have any doubts that blind tasting is essential to formulating a relatively objective judgment about a wine, you just have to read this article sent out on the wires by Agence France-Presse. It summarizes a study conducted at the California Institute of Technology, which demonstrates quite clearly that our knowledge about the (supposed) price of a wine influences the pleasure we take drinking it.

Researchers scanned the brains of subjects who were drinking various wines - all cabernet sauvignons - for which the only information provided was the price of the bottle, real or not. For instance, if the researchers made people taste the same wine when indicating that it was a 90$ bottle, rather than a 10$ bottle, the activity registered in the parts of the brain associated with pleasure was increased. So just saying that you're serving an expensive bottle not only makes people approach the wine more respectfully, but it also provides more pleasure to them, as the brain actually responds to that input.

I would imagine that the same applies to reputation and name. In other words, if you're handed a glass of Château Latour - and told that it IS Latour -, you'll tend to enjoy it more than if you were handed the same glass without being told what it actually is. And that, at the other end of the spectrum, you won't give much consideration to a cheap bottle of no-name brand wine.

If you want to read the original article by Dr Rangel and his colleagues, you'll have to pay 10$ to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and look for a piece entitled "Marketing actions can modulate neural representations of experienced pleasantness", which sounds less fun but is certainly more precise. I'm not sure which part of the brain reading such a title actually activates.

University Performance - US still dominates

admissionsource — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:56:31 +0000

Says BBC

Four of the top 10 are British and the rest American. Harvard is top and Yale, Oxford and Cambridge joint second.

University College London breaks into the top 10 for the first time and Imperial College London rises to fifth.

The annual survey by the Times Higher Education Supplement and careers and education group QS ranks according to factors including academics' opinions.

University College London rose from 25th position last year to ninth.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology was joint fourth last year but falls to 10th place, while Stanford falls from sixth position to 19th.

Another US university which tumbles in the rankings is the University of California, Berkeley. It was rated eighth last year but drops to 22nd place this year.

Asia

The rankings are based on a number of factors including the opinions of academics and of companies employing graduates, international student and staff numbers, and research.

The managing director of QS, Nunzio Quacquarelli, said the rankings recognised the quality of education that UK universities offer.

He said: "In an environment of increasing student mobility, the UK is putting itself forward as a top choice for students worldwide.

They are taking a closer look at the quality of faculty, international diversity and, of course, the education they will receive there."

Asian universities improved their standing but European institutions outside of the UK fell back, the survey said.

Last year there were 41 European universities in the top 100, but in this year's table there are 35.

The president of Universities UK, Professor Rick Trainor, said: "As this table shows, the world standing of UK higher education is at the very top.

"This is due to the high quality of our research and teaching.

"Our competitors are increasingly marketing themselves more aggressively so it is vital that the UK remains among the foremost destinations for international students and staff."

The Top 10 in full is:

1 Harvard University (US)
2 University of Cambridge (UK)
2 University of Oxford (UK)
2 Yale University (US)
5 Imperial College London (UK)
6 Princeton University (US)
7 California Institute of Technology (US)
7 University of Chicago (US)
9 University College London (UK)
10 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)

Story from BBC NEWS

Engineering Schools Acceptance Rate and GRE Score

admissionsource — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 06:46:12 +0000

If full Data is not being dispalyed hit the header

Year 2006 Data.

Presented in ascending order of the ' acceptance rate'

California Institute of Technology
Overall acceptance rate: 9.8%
Average GRE verbal: 600
Average GRE quantitative: 790
Average GRE analytical: 760

Harvard University
Overall acceptance rate: 12.8%
Average GRE verbal: 540
Average GRE quantitative: 740
Average GRE analytical: 743

Dartmouth College (Thayer)
Overall acceptance rate: 14.5%
Average GRE verbal: 601
Average GRE quantitative: 778
Average GRE analytical: 695

Vanderbilt University
Overall acceptance rate: 15%
Average GRE verbal: 548
Average GRE quantitative: 757
Average GRE analytical: 726

Rice University (Brown)
Overall acceptance rate: 15.3%
Average GRE verbal: 532
Average GRE quantitative: 760
Average GRE analytical: 742

Yale University
Overall acceptance rate: 17.5
Average GRE verbal: 574
Average GRE quantitative: 778
Average GRE analytical: 774

Princeton University
Overall acceptance rate: 17.7%
Average GRE verbal: 586
Average GRE quantitative: 784
Average GRE analytical: 711

University of California--Berkeley
Overall acceptance rate: 18.4%
Average GRE verbal: 553
Average GRE quantitative: 771
Average GRE analytical: 729

University of Rochester
Overall acceptance rate: 19.6%
Average GRE verbal: 535
Average GRE quantitative: 767
Average GRE analytical: 715

Johns Hopkins University (Whiting)
Overall acceptance rate: 20.4%
Average GRE verbal: 547
Average GRE quantitative: 759
Average GRE analytical: 749 University of Virginia
Overall acceptance rate: 20.8%
Average GRE verbal: 538
Average GRE quantitative: 753
Average GRE analytical: 731

University of California--San Diego
Overall acceptance rate: 22%
Average GRE verbal: 521
Average GRE quantitative: 765
Average GRE analytical: 685

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Overall acceptance rate: 22.2%
Average GRE verbal: 574
Average GRE quantitative: 779
Average GRE analytical: 751 Carnegie Mellon University
Overall acceptance rate: 22.3%
Average GRE verbal: 567
Average GRE quantitative: 775
Average GRE analytical: N/AIowa State University
Overall acceptance rate: 22.4%
Average GRE verbal: 506
Average GRE quantitative: 766
Average GRE analytical: 711University of Wisconsin--Madison
Overall acceptance rate: 22.8%
Average GRE verbal: 559
Average GRE quantitative: 776
Average GRE analytical: 800Lehigh University (Rossin)
Overall acceptance rate: 23.1%
Average GRE verbal: 472
Average GRE quantitative: 765
Average GRE analytical: 752

North Carolina State University
Overall acceptance rate: 23.2%
Average GRE verbal: 531
Average GRE quantitative: 756
Average GRE analytical: 670

Cornell University
Overall acceptance rate: 24.3%
Average GRE verbal: 576
Average GRE quantitative: 785
Average GRE analytical: N/A

University of Maryland--College Park
Overall acceptance rate: 24.5%
Average GRE verbal: 536
Average GRE quantitative: 758
Average GRE analytical: N/A

University of California--Santa Barbara
Overall acceptance rate: 24.9%
Average GRE verbal: 554
Average GRE quantitative: 776
Average GRE analytical: N/A

Washington University in St. Louis (Sever)
Overall acceptance rate: 25.5%
Average GRE verbal: 510
Average GRE quantitative: 760
Average GRE analytical: 580

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey--New Brunswick
Overall acceptance rate: 25.6%
Average GRE verbal: 492
Average GRE quantitative: 730
Average GRE analytical: 677

University of Delaware
Overall acceptance rate: 25.6%
Average GRE verbal: 519
Average GRE quantitative: 745
Average GRE analytical: 720

University of California--Irvine
Overall acceptance rate: 25.7%
Average GRE verbal: 50
Average GRE quantitative: 75
Average GRE analytical: 68

Boston University
Overall acceptance rate: 26.6%
Average GRE verbal: 530
Average GRE quantitative: 763
Average GRE analytical: 674

University of Illinois--Urbana-Champaign
Overall acceptance rate: 27.3%
Average GRE verbal: 538
Average GRE quantitative: 772
Average GRE analytical: 741

Northwestern University (McCormick)
Overall acceptance rate: 27.6%
Average GRE verbal: 567
Average GRE quantitative: 770
Average GRE analytical: 609

Ohio State University
Overall acceptance rate: 27.8%
Average GRE verbal: 518
Average GRE quantitative: 758
Average GRE analytical: 684

Virginia Tech
Overall acceptance rate: 27.8%
Average GRE verbal: 551
Average GRE quantitative: 768
Average GRE analytical: 680

Case Western Reserve University
Overall acceptance rate: 28%
Average GRE verbal: 506
Average GRE quantitative: 766
Average GRE analytical: 678

Duke University
Overall acceptance rate: 28.9%
Average GRE verbal: 552
Average GRE quantitative: 764
Average GRE analytical: 702

Columbia University (Fu Foundation)
Overall acceptance rate: 29.4%
Average GRE verbal: 533
Average GRE quantitative: 773
Average GRE analytical: 729

University of Texas--Austin
Overall acceptance rate: 29.7%
Average GRE verbal: 547
Average GRE quantitative: 763
Average GRE analytical: 707

Purdue University--West Lafayette
Overall acceptance rate: 30.4%
Average GRE verbal: 524
Average GRE quantitative: 757
Average GRE analytical: 666

Stanford University
Overall acceptance rate: 31.2%
Average GRE verbal: 573
Average GRE quantitative: 781
Average GRE analytical: 737

University of Pennsylvania
Overall acceptance rate: 32.3%
Average GRE verbal: 541
Average GRE quantitative: 760
Average GRE analytical: 689

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Overall acceptance rate: 33.3%
Average GRE verbal: 531
Average GRE quantitative: 755
Average GRE analytical: 699

University of Washington
Overall acceptance rate: 34.3%
Average GRE verbal: 539
Average GRE quantitative: 736
Average GRE analytical: 654

University of California--Davis
Overall acceptance rate: 34.3%
Average GRE verbal: 504
Average GRE quantitative: 749
Average GRE analytical: 691

University of Pittsburgh
Overall acceptance rate: 34.5%
Average GRE verbal: 488
Average GRE quantitative: 776
Average GRE analytical: N/A

Pennsylvania State University--University Park
Overall acceptance rate: 34.8%
Average GRE verbal: 512
Average GRE quantitative: 755
Average GRE analytical: 692

Georgia Institute of Technology
Overall acceptance rate: 34.9%
Average GRE verbal: 538
Average GRE quantitative: 763
Average GRE analytical: 692

University of California--Los Angeles
Overall acceptance rate: 35.8%
Average GRE verbal: 503
Average GRE quantitative: 764
Average GRE analytical: 725

University of Minnesota--Twin Cities
Overall acceptance rate: 36.3%
Average GRE verbal: 528
Average GRE quantitative: 771
Average GRE analytical: N/A

Texas A&M University--College Station
Overall acceptance rate: 37.9%
Average GRE verbal: 497
Average GRE quantitative: 751
Average GRE analytical: 674

University of Michigan--Ann Arbor
Overall acceptance rate: 40%
Average GRE verbal: 533
Average GRE quantitative: 772
Average GRE analytical: 738

University of Florida
Overall acceptance rate: 43.3%
Average GRE verbal: 519
Average GRE quantitative: 757
Average GRE analytical: 688

Arizona State University (Fulton)
Overall acceptance rate: 44.1%
Average GRE verbal: 519
Average GRE quantitative: 759
Average GRE analytical: N/A

University of Southern California
Overall acceptance rate: 48.8%
Average GRE verbal: 490
Average GRE quantitative: 754
Average GRE analytical: 681

University of Colorado--Boulder
Overall acceptance rate: 61.1%
Average GRE verbal: 552
Average GRE quantitative: 761
Average GRE analytical: 742

Other Related Articles in this blog

Advice for Low GRE

GRE Subject Test

GRE Diagnostics

GRE Resources

Some Good GRE Preparation Sites

Is GRE Required? Is it worthwhile to go to a University not insisting on it?

New tool exposes self-edits in Wikipedia

johnibii — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:45:58 +0000

By John Blau
IDG News Service
August 16, 2007

A word of caution about editing entries "anonymously" in Wikipedia: a tool has been developed that can show who made the changes.

Virgil Griffith, who will be a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology starting in September, has developed Wikipedia Scanner, a search tool that traces the IP (Internet Protocol) address of people who make edits to the online encyclopedia.

While Wikipedia allows anyone to make edits, it keeps detailed logs of the changes made. ...

Read the rest:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/16/Tool-exposes-self-edits-in-Wikipedia_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/16/Tool-exposes-self-edits-in-Wikipedia_1.html