Entomologists have put out warnings that the state of Alabama may find itself home to unusually massive wasp nests this year. Known as ‘perennial’ nests, they dwarf the nests normally constructed by yellow jacket wasps, in terms of both the number of wasps living within and the volume of space the nest occupies. Perennial wasp nests may contain up to 15000 worker wasps, several times the population found in a normal ground-based nest. These nests expand along with their population into any structure available, climbing the sides of buildings or…
Dartmouth researchers have managed to register on fMRI brain scans the degree to which different people understand a subject, based on brain activity when viewing images. A study of twenty-eight students, split between engineering students and those with no engineering knowledge, was able to differentiate areas of the brain that activate when viewing a structure and considering the forces applied to it. Both types of student registered the image in the visual cortex, but engineering students recognition of different types of structure and the forces involved created activity in regions…
A research paper published in May claims that Magic: The Gathering, a well-known tabletop trading card game, is the most complex game in the world, and possibly the most complex game that can exist. Invented in 1993, Magic, which was originally designed by mathematician Richard Garfield, involves two players with decks of 60 cards assembled to their liking from a larger set. The total number of cards available has reached incredible numbers in the two decades since the game’s creation, with over twenty thousand cards each bearing their own unique rules.…
In 2016, a Florida state court jury ruled in favour of Terry Bollea, also known as wrestler Hulk Hogan, in a suit brought against publisher Gawker Media and several of their employees, in relation to Gawker’s publication of a sex tape taken of Bollea in 2006. The tape, recorded without Bollea’s knowledge by Bubba Clem, depicted Bollea having sex with Clem’s wife Heather. It was published to the Gawker blog website by editor AJ Daulerio in 2012, under the headline “Even for a Minute, Watching Hulk Hogan Have Sex…
In 1984, the Supreme Court of Florida denied a rehearing to Miami Herald Publishing Co., who had petitioned after their appeal in the Third District Court. The question at hand was whether a plaintiff who was neither a public figure nor a public official needed to establish malice or reckless disregard as cause of action for a libel suit. The Miami Herald had falsely indicated that the respondent, Aurelio Ane, had been named (by the Monroe County Sheriff) as owner of a beer truck containing marijuana. The majority…
The first step in the process of bringing the case to trial is the filing of a complaint or demand for retraction, followed by the filing of the actual suit and the defendant being served. After this comes discovery, in which both the plaintiff and defendant’s attorneys investigate the case and gather documents, statements, and witnesses. Depositions, interviews under oath, are taken by the attorneys of both sides. This continues to a mediation period in which settlements outside of court may be considered. The pretrial process may take several years…
The law considers public figures and public officials to have greater recourse against the media when responding to false statements due to their public standing and ability to make public statements, and thus it holds them to a higher standard of evidence when bringing action against the media in court. The standard of ‘actual malice’ was set by the United States Supreme Court in the case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, and requires that a plaintiff who is a public individual show that the press made false statements…
The Linux operating system is the main competitor to major OSes such as Microsoft Windows and Apple’s macOS. The development of Linux started with a man from Finland named Linus Torvalds. As a computer science student in the 90s, Torvalds decided he did not like the Microsoft MS-DOS operating system available to personal computers at the time. While personal computers used MS-DOS, a precursor to Windows, computers in universities used an operating system called UNIX. Torvalds was introduced to the programming of operating systems by a Unix course at his…
In 1984, a then 19-year-old Michael Dell founded the company that would become Dell Computers with only one thousand dollars, abandoning a college education in favor of selling mail-order hard drive upgrades to corporations out of his condo. Within a year, Dell was making millions, and tens of millions a year after that. Thirty years later, in what Forbes called “the nastiest tech buyout ever,” Dell the man would spend billions to take Dell the company off the publicly traded market and get a majority share in a company that…