Why Invest in a Bachelor of Computer Science

It is undeniable that the field of computer science is among the most interesting and fast growing fields and this has made many people want to join it. While there are some people who have made it in the IT field without a degree, having a bachelor of computer science is quite necessary and can open doors that were previously closed very easily. Apart from opening other doors especially in the big companies, the remuneration that one will get after attaining the degree will be a bit higher than that of a person who has lesser education. Some companies are also known to increase a person’s perks when they discover that the person has a bachelor’s degree. As aforementioned, the filed of IT is one that grows very fast and it is very easy for one to get left behind. It is for this reason that one should keep themselves abreast of the on goings by getting themselves a bachelor’s degree in computer science.

It has been established that high quality of academic training is what is setting the standard basis for proficiency in IT and this is reason enough why one should go back to the classroom for their bachelor of computer science. Very few work places can work without computers and this means that there is a ready market for a person who is skilled in computer science. There is no better way of showing that one is qualified to meet this demand other than having a degree in computer science.

Getting a degree in this field will also help the person to have an edge as well on hand experience in theoretical and practical exercises as well.  People who have branched into computer science have another advantage as they can go into different jobs that are in database management, programming and network administration and this makes them quite versatile.

The branch of IT that deals in research  is probably one of the most demanding and for one to get there they need to have a Master’s degree or a Doctorate in computer science. There is no way that a person can get either of the two degrees if they do not have a bachelor of computer science and this is a good enough reason to get the degree. As mentioned above, there are very many doors that can be opened when one has a bachelor’s degree in IT and among the places one can work are government agencies, software publishers, design system firms and financial institutions.

A bachelor of computer science is quite challenging and is great news to people who love challenges. The challenges do not start immediately one starts the course but as it progresses they will discover that they need to do a lot of memorizing. Additionally, there is much learning to do and at the end a student will be required to complete their final project which will either entail writing a complicated program or coming up with a network of some sort. With the above reasons it is easy to see why there is always a rush for a degree in computer science.

According to the Latest in Forensic Science DNA Evidence can be Faked

What has been the gold standard in court-recognized evidence in every murder that's been tried over the last 20 years? What kind of proof is considered so strong and so incontrovertible that people who’ve spent 15 years in prison for crimes they never committed can be set free in a matter of days? Of course, the only kind of scientific evidence anyone is aware of that could change the course of trials in such a commanding way happens to be DNA-related evidence. But now, the criminal justice system is having its trump card called into question. According to experts in forensic science, DNA can be custom-manufactured by anyone today who has nothing more than a minimal training in science. The technique was invented in Israel.

The scientists in Israel have demonstrated that when a person has the right equipment, training, and accurate information about someone's DNA, they can easily and quickly manufacture DNA strands that look exactly like the DNA of that person. If a criminal were to plant this evidence at a crime scene, current forensic science DNA tests would never be able to tell the difference.

A criminal would only need scientific training to the undergraduate level, and a bit of someone's DNA from, say, the dried saliva on a discarded cigarette or a drinking glass. He could use a technique called genome amplification to turn one or two strands of DNA from the sample into a whole lot of the stuff so that it could be planted all over a crime scene.

But apparently, and thankfully, the copies made are not perfect. While most regular forensic science DNA tests could not tell the difference, a new technique developed by an Israeli company called Nucleix could. And they want to sell their method to our law enforcement.

Our poor criminal justice system has not even had the time or the resources to find ways to apply the DNA technology we've had all this while to all needed cases. There still are thousands of people in jail awaiting the results of their requests for DNA tests to be applied to their cases. And now we have something to undermine the hopes of all these people. Basically, before long, lawyers are going to be bringing this up in court and calling all DNA evidence suspect. Perhaps Law and Order SVU will have a great time dramatizing the outcome of all of this. Innocent people caught up in a crime they haven't committed have just had an important tool taken away from them. The DNA tests they have always relied on are suddenly not good enough.

Should we Spend Billions on Silly Research Science?

Republicans in Congress are looking at the National Science Foundation and what it does, and they feel that the research science conducted there is just a waste of time. Are they right? Is the NSF really wasting taxpayer dollars for research that makes no sense?

There is always a little truth to most allegations usually, and these allegations by the Republican review board are no exception. Some money allotted to research science projects conducted by the NSF really has been applied wrongly. Their Antarctic research station apparently has a problem with porn-addicted scientists; and the expense reporting some scientists file at the office are apparently for personal romance-related travel. But the government criticism goes wrong when they try to criticize the science projects these scientists take up as frivolous. The NSF for instance, had a $1 million project going on at the UCLA to do with the creation of a robot that could do simple chores like the folding of clothes. Another project was aimed at finding out if a general parsing of Twitter updates could bring up something about the way the stock market was going to head. There was another study that went into why some basketball teams win a lot.  There has even been an expensive study to do with how shrimp don't do so well moving about when they're sick.

Are the Congressional panel members right to ridicule this as frivolous research science? Is there any point to this at all? As it would happen, you have to be a real scientist to understand how important these things can be. Twitter for instance, provides behavioral scientists insight into the passing thoughts in people's minds like never before. The stock market prediction study was meant to see if a new behavioral model could be built into predicting human behavior. The robot that was built to fold towels was just a step along the way to building a truly versatile robot. In some cases, like the research aimed at testing how well shrimp walk when they are sick, nonscientists can’t really understand how important it can be that scientists should have ways to understand how the lab creatures are doing when they develop new drugs.

Members of Congress from both parties usually love to criticize science spending. Research science on fruit flies was criticized by Sarah Palin a while ago. Bobby Jindal laughed at and ridiculed volcano monitoring. Politicians tend to look at the news and pick on the story that seems to be ripe for the picking. And they go at it with little understanding of the science involved and the implications thereof.

There's been quite a bit of hysteria whipped up over transparency in funding for research science. “Let the public decide what projects can best serve the public interest”, the politicians seem to say. It is hard to see though why this should be so much concern over funding for research science. The budget of the nation tops $3 trillion. The NSF’s budget out of that is a mere $7 billion. Should we begrudge our research science one half of 1% of our budget?