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‘Life began before Earth was born’

PTI | Apr 22, 2013, 05.09 AM IST

If genetic complexity progresses at a steady rate, then the social and scientific development of any other alien life form in the Milky Way galaxy would be roughly equivalent to those of humans, the report said.

WASHINGTON: Life existed long before Earth came into being, and may have originated outside

 our solar system, scientists claim. Researchers say life first appeared about 10 billion years ago —

 long before Earth, which is believed to be 4.5 billion years old.

Geneticists have applied Moore's Law— which states that computers increase exponentially in 

complexity, at a rate of about double the transistors per integrated circuit every two years -

 to the rate at which life on Earth grows in complexity.

Alexei Sharov of the National Institute on Ageing in Baltimore, and 

Richard Gordon of the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida , replaced the

 transistors with nucleotides — the building blocks of DNA and RNA — 

and the circuits with genetic material.

Their findings suggest life first appeared about 10 billion years ago, far older than

 the Earth's projected age of 4.5 billion years, Tech-NewsDaily reported.

Like in the 2012 sci-fi movie 'Prometheus' , as our solar system was forming, 

preexisting bacteria-like organisms , or even simple nucleotides from an older part

 of the galaxy, could have reached Earth by hitching an interstellar ride on comets,

 asteroids or other inorganic space debris.

However, the calculations are not a scientific proof that life predates Earth — there's no way

 of knowing for sure that organic complexity increased at a steady rate at any point in the

 universe's history . "There are lots of hypothetical elements to (our argument ) ... but to

 make a wider view, you need some hypothetical elements," Sharov said.

Sharov said that if he had to bet on it, he'd say "it's 99% true that life started before 

Earth — but we should leave 1% for some wild chance that we have not accounted for."

The theory of "life before Earth" , if found true, debunks the long-held science fiction

 trope of the scientifically advanced alien species.

Moreover, if genetic complexity progresses at a steady rate, then the social and

 scientific development of any other alien life form in the Milky Way galaxy would

 be roughly equivalent to those of humans, the report said.

"Contamination with bacterial spores from space appears the most plausible 

hypothesis that explains the early appearance of life on Earth," Sharov said.

So, which employees are likely to stay on ?

How software helps firms hire workers more efficiently

Apr 6th 2013 |From the print edition of the ECONOMIST

THE problem with human-resource managers is that they are human. They have biases; they make mistakes. But with better tools, they can make better hiring decisions, say advocates of “big data”. Software that crunches piles of information can spot things that may not be apparent to the naked eye. In the case of hiring American workers who toil by the hour, number-crunching has uncovered some surprising correlations.

For instance, people who fill out online job applications using browsers that did not come with the computer (such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer on a Windows PC) but had to be deliberately installed (like Firefox or Google’s Chrome) perform better and change jobs less often.

It could just be coincidence, but some analysts think that people who bother to install a new browser may be the sort who take the time to reach informed decisions. Such people should be better employees. Evolv, a company that monitors recruitment and workplace data, pored over nearly 3m data points from more than 30,000 employees to find this nugget.

Some 60% of American workers earn hourly wages. Of these, about half change jobs each year. So firms that employ lots of unskilled workers, such as supermarkets and fast-food chains, have to vet heaps—sometimes millions—of applications every year. Making the process more efficient could yield big payoffs.

Evolv mines mountains of data. If a client operates call centres, for example, Evolv keeps daily tabs on such things as how long each employee takes to answer a customer’s query. It then relates actual performance to traits that were visible during recruitment.

Some insights are counter-intuitive. For instance, firms routinely cull job candidates with a criminal record. Yet the data suggest that for certain jobs there is no correlation with work performance. Indeed, for customer-support calls, people with a criminal background actually perform a bit better. Likewise, many HR departments automatically eliminate candidates who have hopped from job to job. But a recent analysis of 100,000 call-centre workers showed that those who had job-hopped in the past were no more likely to quit quickly than those who had not.

Working with Xerox, a maker of printers, Evolv found that one of the best predictors that a customer-service employee will stick with a job is that he lives nearby and can get to work easily. These and other findings helped Xerox cut attrition by a fifth in a pilot programme that has since been extended. It also found that workers who had joined one or two social networks tended to stay in a job for longer. Those who belonged to four or more social networks did not.

There is no point asking jobseekers if they are honest. But surveys can measure honesty indirectly, by asking questions like “How good at computers are you?” and later: “What does control-V do on a word-processing programme?” A study of 20,000 workers showed that more honest people tend to perform better and stay at the job longer. For some reason, however, they make less effective salespeople.

Algorithms and big data are powerful tools. Wisely used, they can help match the right people with the right jobs. But they must be designed and used by humans, so they can go horribly wrong. Peter Cappelli of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business recalls a case where the software rejected every one of many good applicants for a job because the firm in question had specified that they must have held a particular job title—one that existed at no other company.

House Rules .....

Dickie Bird's All TIme Great XI

Sunil Gavaskar, not Sachin Tendulkar, in Dickie Bird's Test XI

TNN | Apr 19, 2013, 01.29 AM IST

Sunil Gavaskar is the only Indian in the XI as Sachin Tendulkar misses out. (AFP Photo)

BANGALORE: Umpiring legend Harold 'Dickie' 

Bird is someone who believes respect cannot be

 bought, but earned. While some of the cricketing

 world's greatest stars like Sachin Tendulkar and

Brian Lara surely have his respect, gaining entry

 into his all-time greatest Test XI is a tougher feat

 than they would have imagined.

Picking the side for a British daily ahead of his

 80th birthday on Friday, Bird suggested he

 has no issues leaving out Aussie legend

 Donald Bradman too. Curiously, the

 top-10 run makers in Tests don't figure in Bird's

 line-up.

His team is captained by Pakistani pacer Imran Khan, whose knowledge of the game

 "wasoutstanding". Sunil Gavaskar is the only Indian in the XI as he "was one of the two best

 opening bats I saw".

The list has South African batting great Barry Richards and his countryman Graeme Pollock, 

three Australians in Greg Chappell, Shane Warne and Dennis Lillee, as many West Indians in

 Garfield Sobers, Viv Richards and Lance Gibbs and a lone Englishman - wicketkeeper Alan Knott.

Apparently, Bird gave Barry and Pollock the benefit of the doubt, stating that both careers 

were cruelly curtailed by the apartheid. Having said that, Barry's stint with Hampshire in

 county cricket would have given Bird enough reason to pick him for his playing XI.



That he has chosen to give the famed West Indies pace quartet - Michael Holding, Colin 

Croft, Joel Garner and Andy Roberts - the miss too, is interesting, as is his choice of captain 

at the expense of Clive Lloyd or his own countryman Mike Brearley.

His spinners - Shane Warne and Lance Gibbs - are doubtless world class but then his picks

 may lead to furrowed brows among Indians as the spin quartet of the 70s - Bishan Bedi

, BS Chandrashekar, EAS Prasanna and Venkataraghavan - had held the world in a thrall.

Close to two decades after he hung up his famous white coat, the cricketing world can't help 

but talk fondly of the Englishman who became the game's first superstar umpire. His quirky

 antics as a "not-outer" and strong values while playing the "benefit of the doubt" card made

 Bird one of the most respected invigilators of the game's laws.

"You can't buy respect, you have to earn it," Bird was quoted as saying. "And I can honestly 

tell you I had not one problem with any professional cricketer. If I go to Pakistan, Imran Khan

 and Javed Miandad invite me round for a meal at their place. If I go to Australia the first man

 to ring me is Dennis Lillee. If I go to West Indies, the first man on the phone will be Garfield 

Sobers, the greatest that's ever lived. You'll never see another like him, not in your lifetime,"

 the newspaper quoted Bird as saying.

A former batsman who made only two hundreds in 93 first-class appearances thanks to his 

anxiety issues, Bird always fancied himself as a player and compared his skills with that of 

Geoffrey Boycott.

Bird lamented in the interview the end of cricket's glory days with technological invasion putting

 paid to decisions going unchallenged and players not having a bit of a laugh on the ground. 

"The characters have gone out of all sports haven't they?" he was quoted as saying.

Bird, however, admitted that his heart still belonged to the game. "It's still the greatest game

 in the world, cricket," he said.

You just moved 3000 kms !

I'm Gaining It !