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It looks like a neat little unit; a few seconds into the video they show a potted device with a sigfox module on one side, another photo shows a GNSS module on the other (with a patch antenna on top, similar to this), and a Saft LS14250 LiSOCl2 battery (nominally 4.3 Wh). A GNSS position fix consumes up to ~1 mWh, and a Sigfox transmission should consume less than that, so they should have more than enough energy budget to last the three years comfortably.

Interestingly if they'd used LoRaWAN instead they may not have needed the GNSS module. Sigfox's geolocation via radio signal strength has a precision of 1 - 10 km, whereas LoRaWAN can use multilateration (time difference of arrival) and get down to ~200 metres. That should be more than enough precision to track a rhino's movement towards a dangerous area, which means the device could last longer without using a GNSS module. LoRa competes with Sigfox, so someone else would have to do it, but it could be an interesting approach to animal tracking.

The thing with diseases that get regularly checked, is that it doesn't make *that much* importance if they are missed on the first check.

5% is a large percentage, but some of these could be picked up by the dermatologist supervising the exam (if there's one on the premice)
and some of those 5% will eventually be picked up during next year's check, or the year after that.
(so 12 or 24 months later, which is still within the 28 months median time before metastasis, at which point the disease turn fatal.
Meaning that we're considering 0.05 ^ 3 [people missed after 3 tests in a row spread over 24 months] * 0.5 [portion of them who potentially developped metastasis] = 6.25 per million.
That is still a lot of potentially future dead cancer patients, but that's a lot better than no testing at all).

---

NOTE:
unlike benign skin features (birth marks, whatever),
malignant lesion change gradually over time (that, per se, is one of the criteria used by dermatologists).
so even if you run then exact same CNN on the skin picture the year after that, that CNN will definitely not see the exact same skin picture and might actually detect the cancer this time.

Gender dysphoria is classified exactly the same as schizophrenia and anorexia. It is even thought to be a subclass of schizophrenia, as over 60% of people with GD also have been diagnosed with both.

Citation needed. Even this paper discussing links between GD and schizophrenia shows either a very slight or more likely no correlation.

Gender dysphoria is simply not known to be a subclass of schizophrenia, and you are talking out of your ass.

Meat is murder and must be abolished.

Eating unnatural foods is murder. Look at all the damage unnatural and plant based fats have done in the Western diet, leading to oxidized LDL and the associated heart disease and cancers.

Lard and tallow and chickens and beef and pork and fish and escargo for me, consistent with healthier ratios of saturated and unsaturated fats.

Shape Memory Alloy are a Nickel Titainium alloy often called muscle wire because by changing its crystal structure it gets shorter when heated or an electric current runs through it. While very different in how it works from a polymer, Shape Memory Alloy has had similar uses including heart stints, explosive bolt replacements on spacecraft, toys and heating air vent controls. Biggest down side to it is it tends to be a bit slow so it is more sloth muscle than jackrabbit muscle.

Also the safety aspects for the technically minded: http://www.hindawi.com/journal...

Things like adding charcoal to poor and/or depleted soil have been proved to improve yields considerably (of course, better results from crappier soil).. I haven't yet found the exact study, but some arican farmers saw a 70% increase.. no hybrid seeds, or inorganic ferts necessary.

Did find this:

http://www.hindawi.com/journal...

and this

http://www.avocadosource.com/c...

which talk up the possibilities.

The indian mars orbiter, a vehicle with a lander module, and designed for interplanetary flight, cost less to manufacture and launch than the sandra bullock movie Gravity.

Source
http://money.cnn.com/2014/09/2...

So, there's the cost of a suitable vehicle. About 74 million dollars.

Then we have the designer microbe end. Most designer microbes are intended for biofuel production, using fully synthetic biological pathways, designed by humans.
http://www.hindawi.com/journal...

Other sources of interest are the biodegredation of toxic agents:
http://www.nature.com/nchembio...

And of course, Plastics.
http://garj.org/garjm/pdf/2013...

Feel free to order some of those researcher's samples!

Perhaps you would want some that are sporting a fully 100% human created genome?
http://www.jcvi.org/cms/press/...

Microbes are tenacious things. Once cultured in the lab, and loaded into a delivery system, sending them to venus would cost about 80 million dollars.

Cost of R&D of modifying a suitable sulfur cycle microbe for venusian atmospheric conditions would cost around 100 to 200 million.

So, for around the 300 million dollar mark, we could be initiating the end of the hellish environment on venus-- OR-- we could pay for a few military airplanes.

You are a delusional moron.

Afaik this class of RNA-based vaccines is interesting but still very much at the research stage. There's been a large area of research on whether they could play a role in fighting cancer, as another example.

Interesting article. In particular, I liked the following assertion:

Other causes of priapism include:
[...]
        * Illicit drug use, such as marijuana and cocaine

I got curious and searched for priapism and marijuana on Google Scholar. The first link contains quotes such as:

To date, no specific case of priapism and marijuana was found in the literature.

Cute.

Antenna design for hand-held devices at these frequencies and power levels is not exactly trivial, and minimizing the effect of the human body (hand) on the antenna characteristics is the subject of much research in the industry.

http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&fileOId=1152137

http://www.rfm.com/corp/appdata/antenna.pdf

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120848913/articletext?DOI=10.1002%2Fmop.23715

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/11208/36089/01710996.pdf

http://e-citations.ethbib.ethz.ch/view/pub:18638

http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v49/v49-156.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Hands-effect-Shahla-Moradi-Shahrbabak/dp/3639175425

http://www.google.com/search?q=effect+of+hand+on+antenna&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&ei=GbZBTOP-NIP-8Aaw_aUZ&start=10&sa=N

http://rfdesign.com/mag/505RFDF1.pdf

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2009/491262.html

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4913660%2F4957855%2F04958011.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4958011&authDecision=-203

http://wireless.per.nl/wireless/articles/08_WIC_correlated_coupled_MIMO.pdf

http://www.impinj.com/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2563>

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66.2119&rep=rep1&type=pdf

http://202.194.20.8/proc/VTC09Spring/DATA/02-07-08.PDF

AND THAT'S IN JUST THE FIRST THREE PAGES OF MY GOOGLE SEARCH!!!!!!!!!!

Note that this "antennaphile" site called the iPhone 4's antenna design "cool", and said to expect to see other manufacturers adopting similar designs.

Note that the forum thread linked below says that your hand can affect a GHz-band antenna from as far way as 3cm. So where on a phone that is FAR less than 1cm. thick are you going to place that antenna that WON'T have "hand-effects" to some degree? Now, factor in the fact that the FCC MANDATES that the antenna be on the LOWER half of the phone (where your hand naturally grips!), and you can readily see that, as Jobs stated (and demonstrated), EVERY cellphone suffers from the presence of the user. Keep that in mind when you hear people proclaim "NO other phone has these issues." WRONG! EVERY cellphone struggles mightily with this limitation (the presence of the user), during EVERY SINGLE CALL and with EVERY SINGLE USER.

I disagree, but feel free to enlighten me.

Ok, I will.

Antenna design for hand-held devices at these frequencies and power levels is not exactly trivial, and minimizing the effect of the human body (hand) on the antenna characteristics is the subject of much research in the industry.

http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&fileOId=1152137

http://www.rfm.com/corp/appdata/antenna.pdf

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120848913/articletext?DOI=10.1002%2Fmop.23715

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/11208/36089/01710996.pdf

http://e-citations.ethbib.ethz.ch/view/pub:18638

http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v49/v49-156.pdf

http://www.amazon.com/Hands-effect-Shahla-Moradi-Shahrbabak/dp/3639175425

http://www.google.com/search?q=effect+of+hand+on+antenna&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&ei=GbZBTOP-NIP-8Aaw_aUZ&start=10&sa=N

http://rfdesign.com/mag/505RFDF1.pdf

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2009/491262.html

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4913660%2F4957855%2F04958011.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4958011&authDecision=-203

http://wireless.per.nl/wireless/articles/08_WIC_correlated_coupled_MIMO.pdf

http://www.impinj.com/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2563>

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66.2119&rep=rep1&type=pdf

http://202.194.20.8/proc/VTC09Spring/DATA/02-07-08.PDF

AND THAT'S IN JUST THE FIRST THREE PAGES OF MY GOOGLE SEARCH!!!!!!!!!!

Note that this "antennaphile" site called the iPhone 4's antenna design "cool", and said to expect to see other manufacturers adopting similar designs.

Note that the forum thread linked below says that your hand can affect a GHz-band antenna from as far way as 3cm. So where on a phone that is FAR less than 1cm. thick are you going to place that antenna that WON'T have "hand-effects" to some degree? Now, factor in the fact that the FCC MANDATES that the antenna be on the LOWER half of the phone (where your hand naturally grips!), and you can readily see that, as Jobs stated (and demonstrated), EVERY cellphone suffers from the presence of the user. Keep that in mind when you hear people proclaim "NO other phone has these issues." WRONG! EVERY cellphone struggles mightily with this limitation (the presence of the user

Here you go

The cage was made of aluminum.

As a "Thank you" for the patience and the link on hindawi, here's another one in return: the original paper referenced by TFA. Up to you to judge if is credible or not (no matter how prestigious the journal is).

However, for some RF effects on biological systems, consistent results have been documented in previous experiments: growth rates of plants [17] and fungi [18] can be increased or decreased by RF exposure. Exposure to RF signals can induce plants to produce more meristems [19], affect root cell structure [20, 21], and induce stress response in plant species, causing biochemical changes [22].

With the citations pointing to:
- Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility
- Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine
- Bioelectromagnetics
- Plant Biosystems
- Annals of Botany
- Physiologia Plantarum

Yes, I know, writing a scientific paper does involve citation tricks, but I just hate the position of "Yeah, tree-huggers are nuts, incompatible with science. Thus this paper have to be a lame joke of a science".

Interesting:

The earth’s natural RF environment has a complex periodicity that has been more or less the same within the lifespan of modern tree taxa. Before 1800, the major components of this environment were broadband radio noise from space (galactic noise), from lightning (atmospheric noise), and a smaller RF component from the sun [14]. Because of the periodic nature of the naturally occurring RF background, plants may have evolved to use those environmental signals, as well as visible light, to regulate periodic functions, and therefore they may be sensitive to anthropogenic RF input.

Not necessarily. Its nothing personal regarding this work, I actually didn't even look at it yet. I'm just pointing out the limitations of peer review. That doctor from India who studies the guy who claims to have not eaten or drank anything for the last 70 years publishes in a peer reviewed journal and everyone I've talked to from India about him called him a quack.

For example, as a scientist unfamiliar with this field, and thus not qualified to judge the particular details of the experiment I would instead focus on the general methods used and the apparent quality of the journal. This journal, found at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijfr/, has only been around for 2 years and unless there are some strange politics going on in the forestry field that likely means it does not attract top notch editors/peer-reviewers. It will also likely have a lower barrier to publication relative to other journals as it will not be receiving as many papers.

They also may be more likely to publish something with a questionable premise (although this should have been more an issue for whoever funded the project) and bad controls, etc if it seems like it will hit upon some kind of hot button issue and thus get the journal exposure. Not to say that doesn't ever happen in the case of Nature or Science, but there will be less pressure to do so.

Also its possible that this researcher simply wasnt allowed to publish elsewhere because people automatically rejected her premise as wacky, and so was forced to publish in a lesser known journal and rely on popular media exposure. Or as is more likely the case here, she simply had no credentials and so found it hard to get published.

All I'm saying is that these are things that should pop into your head when you see "peer reviewed" not necessarily images of reliability. Still its a better system than most. Maybe reviewers should have to have their names attached to each article they accept somehow, so some kind of meta-peer-review could go on.