Slashdot Mirror

nope

Date: 26 June 2015

Source - U. Exeter

The raw CO2 figures look pretty big on paper, but are meaningless without comparing the CO2 emissions of the various modes of transport in terms of something like tonne/kilometer. Check out the second table here:

https://people.exeter.ac.uk/TWDavies/energy_conversion/Calculation%20of%20CO2%20emissions%20from%20fuels.htm

(NB: seems to be an error in the second table header. Given the actual data units, I think it should say "KG CO2 per KM")

The results here are fairly varied in the final units they come out with, mainly because the different forms of transport considered are so different, but the eye-browing raising figure is that short haul passenger flights emit the same amount of carbon per person per kilometer as moving 18 tonnes of cargo by ship the same distance!

WRONG http://projects.exeter.ac.uk/RDavies/arian/dollar.html

The first currency sign ever was the Pesos sign ($).

Oh? But this says Since the $ symbol is more recent than the name, and the origins of the latter are well understood, one might expect that the origins of the sign would also be known for certain particularly when the origin of the British pound sign, £, which is far older, is well-established. However that is not the case with regard to the dollar.. But I don't know what the origin of £ is, unless it really is the obvious (£ = L, the latin word librum, meaning pound).

As several people have pointed out this is not a new discovery, its been well understood for a long time and doesn't take much thought to understand the processes. A really quick google search found the following references: http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/newstraffic.shtml http://www.enm.bris.ac.uk/publicity/traffic.html These don't go back too far, but I remember watching a TV program about this and the scheme proposed for the M25 (UK) and that was many years ago. As usual the title is overly sensational. The actual NewScientist article does point out this is simply a physical demonstration of a theory that goes back 15 years and has been modeled in computer simulations many times before! I would think observing many of the worlds busy motorways is just as beneficial! The one thing that worries me is the suggestion that this can now be used to help understand how to reduce traffic jams. Using the computer models this has long been understood, its just not so easy to get motorists to abide by the requirements!

The article What is Software Design makes a good case that the program source code is the best, most natural expression of the design of a system. It's not just for the computer.