Monthly Archives: February 2013

Letter to Jared

Last weekend my son Adam and I flew from Boston to attend a Discover Mines day. After enjoying a morning full of opportunities to look through people, not smile, and not hold doors, we decided to get something to eat at the Slate Café. We were scanning The Oredigger (2/11/13), munching ore-burgers, and lamenting our fast-fading fake tans when we came across your Grinds My Gears article about how much people from the Northeast annoy you. After reading it we have decided to change our lives. From now on we will say hello to everyone, everywhere, all the time. This will probably get us killed on the subway back home, but hey, attempting to change social norms is not without risk.

Scientific discoveries this week: 2/25/13

Johns Hopkins
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that a protein known for turning on genes to help them survive low oxygen conditions also slows down the copying of DNA strands. This effectively shuts down the growth of new cells. Their discovery has wide-ranging implication due to DNA replication and new cell growth being key factors in diseases such as cancer. The protein HIF-1α can switch hundreds of genes on or off in response to low oxygen conditions. HIF-1α can also stop new cells from forming. The researchers looked at how the protein affects DNA replication by comparing cells in low-oxygen conditions to cells kept under normal conditions. The cells in the low oxygen conditions stopped dividing, but had as much DNA replication systems as the normal cells. The difference was that the nondividing cells were being affected by HIF-1α which was binding to a protein and preventing the replication process from occurring.

New Resident Hall, new Dining Hall Fall 2014

This spring, the Colorado School of Mines will start 15 months of construction on a new dining hall for at least 500 people as well as a new residence hall for roughly 200 students. The construction, currently dubbed Elm Hall, is part of the campus master plan which aims to create a residential campus. This includes providing housing and facilities for the entire freshman and sophomore class on campus some years down the road.

Headlines from around the world: 2/25/13

Mothers went topless in Spain to raise money and save a school bus. The ten mothers from Montserrat, Spain, showed some skin in a calendar sold to raise money to restore a reduction in bus service for 600 elementary students. So far the calendar has raised enough money to pay for the monthly service charge for the bus. The mothers hope to sell all 3,000 copies for this year and start anew next year.

EE and CS Minors stay, farewell Golden Bowl

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science students will be relieved to know that, courtesy of Tracy Gardner along with other faculty, they will be able to obtain a minor for other disciplines within their major department. Due to a reorganization, EE and CS students have had their departments merge. As a result, EEs working towards a minor in CS and CS students looking for a minor in EE would not be able to obtain the minors, as they fall within the same department. The Faculty Senate has now decided that those students will be able to obtain the minors they have already started, and are looking for alternative solutions for future students.

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Under the Radar Games: 999

5…4…3…2…1…Boom! A loud noise startles Junpei awake, and his eyes snap open. He wakes to find a completely unfamiliar room. Still groggy, he falls to the metal floor and finds that his whole body hurts and that he has large bump on his head. “Where…am I…?” Looking around the room, he sees a large iron door. On it, written in red paint, is the number “5.” Trying to open it, he finds it is locked.

Space Empires V Review

When people think of a 4X (explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate) game, they think of the “Civilization” series, the quintessential 4X game. For space 4X games, people think of “Sins of a Solar Empire,” “Master of Orion,” or “Galactic Civilizations.” “Space Empires V” tries to break into the genre, but it unfortunately falls short of its potential.

What the Playstation 4 specs mean

It’s that time again. Rumors of the next cycle of console upgrades have been swirling around for some time and Sony has finally announced their specs. This marks the beginning of a new iteration in the game development cycle and, if these specs are any indication, it should be a good one.

There is a seemingly unending cycle in video games. And no, I do not mean the Reapers. Over time, the usual incremental improvements that come with the new models of computer hardware add up. Every few hardware generations, PC gamers decide the improvements are enough to justify some new hardware on their student loans. However, our console brethren are not so lucky and have to go six or seven years between generations. At the start of a console cycle, their performance tends to be similar to a budget gaming computer. By the end, about any $100 video card thrown in an old Dell will put the consoles to shame.

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