Slashdot Mirror

WTF do you think statistics are for? The frequency of forest fires has doubled. When your fire insurance doubles because of this, you're going to be concerned even if a forest fire didn't affect you directly.

Also, people ARE more concerned about things that happen more frequently. The frequency of terrorist attacks, the frequency with which Donald Trump shoots himself in the foot while shooting off his mouth, the frequency with which Clinton refuses to give direct answers, the frequency of bacterial outbreaks at Chipote, restaurants, the frequency of Samsung Note 7's bursting into flames ... people notice through repitition, same as how they learn most things.

To find the plastic-eating bacterium described in the study, the Japanese research team from Kyoto Institute of Technology and Keio University collected 250 PET-contaminated samples including sediment, soil and wastewater from a plastic bottle recycling site.
Next they screened the microbes living on the samples to see whether any of them were eating the PET and using it to grow. They originally found a consortium of bugs that appeared to break down a PET film, but they eventually discovered that just one of bacteria species was responsible for the PET degradation. They named it Ideonella sakainesis.
Further tests in the lab revealed that it used two enzymes to break down the PET. After adhering to the PET surface, the bacteria secretes one enzyme onto the PET to generate an intermediate chemical. That chemical is then taken up by the cell, where another enzyme breaks it down even further, providing the bacteria with carbon and energy to grow.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-n...

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-n...

To find the plastic-eating bacterium described in the study, the Japanese research team from Kyoto Institute of Technology and Keio University collected 250 PET-contaminated samples including sediment, soil and wastewater from a plastic bottle recycling site.
Next they screened the microbes living on the samples to see whether any of them were eating the PET and using it to grow. They originally found a consortium of bugs that appeared to break down a PET film, but they eventually discovered that just one of bacteria species was responsible for the PET degradation. They named it Ideonella sakainesis.
Further tests in the lab revealed that it used two enzymes to break down the PET. After adhering to the PET surface, the bacteria secretes one enzyme onto the PET to generate an intermediate chemical. That chemical is then taken up by the cell, where another enzyme breaks it down even further, providing the bacteria with carbon and energy to grow.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-n...

http://phys.org/news/2016-03-n...

Say we stipulate for a moment you're correct, that it was "one factor".

By what method do you discern how much of a factor? How do you tell the difference between "3% responsible for leading to an arid desert wasteland" and "30% responsible for leading to an arid desert wasteland"?

Obligatory CO2 desert greening link: http://phys.org/news/2013-07-g...

Emissions seem to reduce fast without nuclear power. http://m.phys.org/news/2016-08...

How about another source referring to a more recent Duke study? Further, coal slurry has plenty of heavy metals which are also ugly environmental contaminants that react poorly with human populations, particularly when they leech into water supplies (or just bury your town). In any event, I can't imagine anyone making the argument that it's good for humans or for the environment to have mountains of coal slurry hanging around. Outside of a coal lobbyist, I don't think anyone actually believes it's harmless.

And you have to admit the Wikipedia linked info about Shakti is pretty damn thin. An offhand comment in a publication appears to suggest that maybe possibly something somewhere could have come from Bill's father-in-law's third cousin twice removed on a stormy Tuesday...

Moron of the universe unit. RTFA: "Overall, when accounting for the emissions today from the power plants that provide the electricity, this would lead to an approximately 30 percent reduction in emissions from transportation. Deeper emissions cuts would be realized if power plants decarbonize over time." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-e...

RTFA: "But the team found that the vast majority of cars on the road consume no more energy in a day than the battery energy capacity in affordable EVs available today. These numbers represent a scenario in which people would do most of their recharging overnight at home, or during the day at work, so for such trips the lack of infrastructure was not really a concern. Vehicles such as the Ford Focus Electric or the Nissan Leaf—whose sticker prices are still higher than those of conventional cars, but whose overall lifetime costs end up being comparable because of lower maintenance and operating costs—would be adequate to meet the needs of the vast majority of U.S. drivers." Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-e...

[citation needed]

You see population growth is rapidly decelerating, albeit still positive. Hence our impact is likely to be decelerating too.

Population is one factor, the other is per capita emissions and resource usage. It's the latter that's increasing. A common theme in the news recently has been the alarm expressed by scientists at the rapidity with which changes are happening. Nobody is saying that things are progressing at lower than expected rates. They're all shocked at how fast it's hitting home. People can make cute comments about Malthus to imply that there's nothing to worry about, but that's not what we're seeing. Just because Malthus wasn't right in his lifetime, that doesn't make him wrong. Malthus died in 1834: that's really not that long ago.

Quantum physics is incomplete, because otherwise it would be the 'theory of everything'.

From "Einstein vs quantum mechanics, and why he'd be a convert today":

"None of this impressed Einstein. He believed quantum mechanics was correct, but desperately wanted to find a way to 'complete' quantum mechanics so it made sense."

RWT completes quantum mechanics, so it makes sense (i.e. a purely sinusoidal reality).

http://phys.org/news/2011-04-s...

I think until the majority of scientists do not accept this we won't have a unified theory.

Even Lee Smolin acknowledges that we have some problem with time (in The Trouble with Physics), but he thinks the problem is that we treat time as a static/frozen thing while he thinks it is a dynamic thing like space itself (eg. the shape of space continuously changes due to matter).

The US Navy would disagree with you.

We, as a civilization, should be discouraging any technology that lowers the cost of energy fuels producing IR filtering gases that linger in the atmosphere. Especially techniques with other harmful side-effects as environmental groups pointed out in Germany.

Instead, offering incentives in research and development of lower cost energy alternatives or techniques that prevent greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere. For example: research like this method using electrolysis to change CO2 into profitable carbon nano-tubes Power plants that covert all CO2 emissions into carbon nanotubes

Don't know about IR, but gamma and X rays definitely go through tape and can be picked up by the camera sensor, effectively turning the smartphone into an improvised Geiger-Mueller counter...

NASA has never purchased a Russian Engine

Sure, they just pay Russia $490 million to ferry U.S. astronauts into space instead. It's all good. -PCP

This allows them to pass through the wall of the cavity like it wasnt even there.

Transparent Aluminum

Pfft!

Where have *you* been, Mr. Late-To-The-Party?

http://phys.org/news/2009-07-t...

Heck, it was even on Slashdot!

https://science.slashdot.org/s...

Strat

http://phys.org/news/2012-04-n...
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ici...

At least at $5B I hope that they are building something like the worlds most advanced light source for a new type of fab. It would be an incredibly stupid waste of money to spend that on a pretty building.

Well actually...

The GP linked article cites the tone as being over 18 KHz - but not by how much. I couldn't find a definitive number elsewhere; did I miss something?

Who is gonna host all that data and for how long?

Brewster Kahle. Forever.

Your data, good for a thousand years

If that's not good enough, go back to sleep for another twenty years.

Eternal 5D data storage could record the history of humankind

Problem solved.

The lawsuit was filed in California.

Source: http://m.phys.org/news/2016-05-china-huawei-sues-samsung-wireless.html

Your efficiency comparison model is woefully incomplete/inaccurate. Most research suggests a 3x efficiency margin for battery EV over Hydrogen FCEV:
http://phys.org/news/2006-12-h...

It's a start: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-n...

Look at the seasonal variation of temperatures in Bahgdad.

A shift of a few degrees C is nothing compared to normal seasonal variation, even adjusting the topmost temperatures doesn't mean that much difference in reality.

Of course that's only kinda relevant if the temperature increases uniformly which it doesn't

In the Middle East and North Africa, the average temperature in winter will rise by around 2.5 degrees Celsius (left) by the middle of the century, and in summer by around five degrees Celsius (right) if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase according to the business-as-usual scenario (RCP8,5).

That's ~9F, would you consider that change in your summertime average to be inconsequential? The average high in Baghdad in July is 44C, if the projection is right it will become 49C, I suspect there's a few places you start to consider uninhabitable at that point.

According to whom? Serious reply to what I consider to be a serious point you've made. You seem to think that it is a given, settled, the the Iowan owes the African something.

Well I agree some people don't realize it yet, but I think they are either wrong or misinformed. Just like if you steal my money, I consider you owe me no matter if you agree or not, I consider polluters owe the others. The more people are convinced the better, of course, but not having an universal recognition won't change the way I act.

I don't agree with you. More to the point, I doubt the Iowan agrees with you and likely doesn't care much what someone in Europe thinks about him/her.

Fortunately, even if he doesn't care, we live in a world where he can be forced to pay for it. The first of which is if his government make him pay.

No, actually it wouldn't accomplish anything. You think it would, because you're been sold the lie that there is some safe CO2 level that we can keep emitting. There might have been in the past, but now we're so far past it, we simply need to stop.

Do you know how much CO2 the world can emit and still remind under 2C temp rise? At this point it is about 500 gigatons.

Well first the Earth has a natural absorption rate for CO2. Second even if we miss the 2C rise, it's better to stay under 3C or even 5C than reach 10C.
So yes, stopping at current levels, while not perfect, is better than continuing to increase emissions at the current world rate.

The proven reserves of coal, oil, and natural gas are about 3,000 gigatons (and we're hunting for MORE!). You think slowing the burn will matter, but it actually won't. It has to stop, completely. Or to put it more simply, it has to become carbon neutral.

It doesn't matter if we take 35 years to burn 3,000 gigatons or 70 years or 150 years... the effect from the planet's point of view is largely the same. You're thinking human lifetime, not planet scale. Yes, CO2 does slowly get burned away and absorbed, but not in our human lifetime scale, it takes thousands of years in the volumes we're talking about.

While it is true that slowing the CO2 output buys time for our OWN lifetimes, it doesn't do squat for our kids. The climate change will accelerate and while humanity won't become extinct, we may have an unpleasant ride and many people may not survive it.

I think you are wrong and you underestimate the Earth absorption capacity. A quick Google search brings me this article:
http://phys.org/news/2012-08-e...
It's from 2012 but still, 50% absorption is a lot better than 0.001% you are suggesting (as in thousands of years).

The interesting thing is that I believe it is common for Americans to look at the taxes of Europe and shake their heads. When people hear what it costs to buy gas over there, they just mutter something and carry on.

I get the sense that you feel that your ideas are better than ours. Maybe, maybe not, but you won't convince anyone with such an attitude.

That's exactly the point, in order to fight climate change their ideas are definitely better than yours. Sorry if hearing the truth makes you sad, but these are facts.

About a year ago I remember reading that the control experiment also produced thrust....
http://phys.org/news/2015-07-s...

Has something changed since then?

The author of the paper, Professor Benjamin Sovacool, is Director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex. Confusingly, the University also describes him as "Professor of Energy Policy (SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit)". A brief search of the University of Sussex, University of Aarhus, and Wikipedia Web sites reveals that he has published a vast number of papers, given many, many talks and seminars, published books, received grants, and has a PhD in 'science and technology studies from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University in Blacksburg, Virginia, where he won the “Outstanding Dissertation of the Year” award from the College of Social Sciences and Humanities'.

Nowhere, however, can I find any information about Professor Sovacool's undergraduate degree discipline. From his published biographical details, he seems to have popped into existence at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University where he received his PhD - awarded, be it noted, by "the College of Social Sciences and Humanities".

Until I learn to the contrary, therefore, I am assuming that Professor Sovacool is essentially a social science specialist who has ventured - very boldly indeed - into the topical, not to say fashionable, world of climate change, global warming, and general greenness. TFA tells us that, "In a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Research & Social Science, Professor Sovacool analyses energy transitions throughout history and argues that only looking towards the past can often paint an overly bleak and unnecessary picture".

"Energy Research & Social Science". Hmmmmmmm. Professor Sovacool advances undeniably compelling (if not very scientific) arguments, such as this:

"Moving from wood to coal in Europe, for example, took between 96 and 160 years, whereas electricity took 47 to 69 years to enter into mainstream use... Ontario completed a shift away from coal between 2003 and 2014; a major household energy programme in Indonesia took just three years to move two-thirds of the population from kerosene stoves to LPG stoves; and France's nuclear power programme saw supply rocket from four per cent of the electricity supply market in 1970 to 40 per cent in 1982".

Well, there you have it. Clearly that evidence leaves no possible doubt that "[t]he worldwide reliance on burning fossil fuels to create energy could be phased out in a decade". To the satisfaction of any social science professor, anyway.

http://phys.org/news/2016-04-f...

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have created new ceramic materials that could be used to store hydrogen safely and efficiently.

Dr. Roy Spencer provides evidence and contrary opinions.

He also says a lot of stuff that isn't well supported by the evidence. In fact, he once said about his own paper:

"Our paper is an important step toward validating a gut instinct that many meteorologists like myself have had over the years," said Spencer, "that the climate system is dominated by stabilizing processes, rather than destabilizing processes -- that is, negative feedback rather than positive feedback."

One has to wonder how many of the climate myths that Dr Spencer has said have been a result of what his gut says rather than any evidence; and how much of his evidence is selected to match his gut feeling. His papers and comments do seem to be motivated by the desire to right the supposed mistakes of other climate research.

And yet he claims that it is the climate researchers who are the myopic ones:

They think that the only way for global-average temperatures to change is for the climate system to be forced 'externally'...by a change in the output of the sun, or by a large volcanic eruption... But what they have ignored is the potential for the climate system to cause its own climate change. Climate change is simply what the system does, owing to its complex, dynamic, chaotic internal behavior.

In his quest to show that climate researchers are wrong, he has stated that the climate system is dominated by stabilizing processes, but also that it causes its own climate change by its complex, dynamic, chaotic internal behavior.

So take you pedantic ass and fuck off.

A well formed argument there, but I would expect nothing less from someone who consistently can't spell the word climate.

http://m.phys.org/news/2015-08...

Hey, that whole gravity thing could be bogus! I know other researchers have verified it thousands of times, but maybe they're wrong. Let's just do some calibration tests every day in the lab to be sure stuff doesn't randomly start floating UP instead of falling down. After all, we can't accept consensus!

The existing consensus on gravity has been overthrown before. Your 1001st gravitational calibration tests might be the one finally sensitive enough to detect that Newtonian gravity is incorrect.

"Well, I was going to do a chemistry experiment today, but I don't really believe that whole atomic theory of matter. I mean, there's 'consensus' on the idea that molecules are made up of atoms, and a substance has consistent properties based on that. But maybe water isn't really made up of H2O. Maybe if I zap it with electricity, it will turn out that it's actually made of microscopic gnomes! The gnomes could be magically giving the illusion of molecular structure. Before I start my chem experiments, I need to be sure my hypothetical gnomes aren't going to ruin the properties of my solvent. So let's test for gnomes every day!"

If your 'gnome' turns out to be nucleons and electrons, you would be right to challenge the atom ("indivisible") view. Or if it refers to polymeric chains comprised of H2O subunits. Zapping water with electricity does have important effects. It can decompose it into hydrogen and oxygen, it can restructure the arrangement of the molecules. Water is fairly sensitive to such effects.

The trouble with relying on consensus is that the scientific refinements we are searching for are precisely those which have eluded our previous knowledge and intuition.

My counter to

Consensus is PART of the scientific method. It's the only way we actually get to DO "science".

is that consensus is the enemy of the scientific method. People have been studying the universe as long as there has been people. Why did the scientific method spark so much progress? Because it disregarded consensus. The scientific method didn't care what Aristotle and all the intellectual giants had written about science, it said anything was fair game to be contested and disproven. Humanity was no longer beholden to oligarchy of thinkers in deciding what could and could not be so.

I don't disagree that there is something practical in establishing broad consensus. We have to choose which experiments we want to perform. Sometimes that is done by Senate committees. Sometimes it is done by individuals. We have finite resources and have to spend them wisely, and so science inherits a political aspect. But is that really in keeping with the scientific method? I think that's more of a practical sacrifice to achieve social goals. But scientists should always remember that the essence of their practice is in subjecting human conjecture to every suspicion, to be vindicated only by relentless experiment. And political expedience or no, I would hope there would always be a small contingent of holdouts against every theory, just to make sure we never find ourselves permanently entrenched in a pocket of false truths.

I can cross-breed a goat and a spider?

Really? Because that would be cool as hell.

The headline is misleading; from the article: "There are currently no plans in the pipeline to clone and produce humans in a bid to eradicate disease, but Xiaochun has said that this can change if people become more open to the idea of it." Time for a Sixth Day law.

BTW, there's a possibly more reputable article (from Dec 2015, but basically same content) here: http://phys.org/news/2015-12-c...

There's no justification in not providing information to consumers. I prefer to know whether the food my family purchases is locally grown, from the US, Canada, south of the border or elsewhere. The long term environmental consequences of GMOs are yet clear (e.g. more pesticide/herbicide use leading to resistance, etc.; see, for example: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-s...)

VASIMR can provide more than sufficient thrust for a quick Mars journey, so long as you have a good-sized power source to pair to it.

There's no point to a rocket that exhausts its fuel in a few minutes or even hours when you're talking about a journey that even on a fast route will take many weeks to complete.

But the cards can be skimmed, and they have been! Getting the PIN is extremely simple, so don't even count on that as security. So it's just a matter of intercepting the data going to the bank as a man-in-the-middle, replicating even temporarily a card, predicting the upcoming "random" number, and so forth.

I'm not saying chip and pin is worse than mag stripe, but they are not so completely secure as the marketing would have you believe. Don't trust the banks or others when they say the cards "cannot be read". They have the same sorts of vulnerabilities as ATM in many cases; relying on cheap manufacturers who don't follow best practices on security, over confidence of the security, assuming a PIN is private, or willingness to accept a certain level of loss.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://people.csail.mit.edu/r...
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-...
http://krebsonsecurity.com/201...
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-b...
http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/m...

alarmist nonsense like the impossible scenarios Al Gore presented

Yeah, about that...

http://phys.org/news/2015-10-s...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

http://www.newyorker.com/magaz...

http://phys.org/news/2016-02-c...

In fact, the employer was paying for a software on the iPhone of its employees which enable him to unlock them anything he wishes. The only problem being the employer didn't install the software at all even if he was still paying the monthly fee for it.

And again, the article is pretty clear this case concerns only ONE iPhone.

Shame on you moderators of my arse.

http://phys.org/news/2014-03-w...
http://seclists.org/cert/2012/...
http://securityevaluators.com/...
http://securityevaluators.com/...
http://slashdot.org/submission...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
http://soylentnews.org/article...
http://secunia.com/advisories/...
http://secunia.com/advisories/...
http://secunia.com/advisories/...

APK

P.S.=> So much for your faith in routers alone stupid (225 in total, 15 posts with 15 items each)... apk

That's why you should read the real article and not the bad copy gizmodo created.

According to this http://phys.org/news/2016-02-myshake-app-smartphones-worldwide-seismic.html MyShake only briefly activates GPS after it detects an earthquake.

Back in the dark ages, about circa 2010, researchers found evidence that GPS may erode navigational ability.

"Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were taken of older adults who were GPS and non-GPS users. The subjects accustomed to navigating by spatial means were found to have higher activity and a greater volume of grey matter in the hippocampus than those used to relying on GPS."

http://phys.org/news/2010-11-r...

Here's a list of the largest telescopes in space and on the ground:

http://phys.org/news/2015-01-b...

The diagram is probably the most informative part of the document:

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz...

Imagine if both Europe and the USA could build two large telescopes that could be combined together to form a stereoscopic telescope the size of the planet...

Here's a list of the largest telescopes in space and on the ground:

http://phys.org/news/2015-01-b...

The diagram is probably the most informative part of the document:

http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz...

Imagine if both Europe and the USA could build two large telescopes that could be combined together to form a stereoscopic telescope the size of the planet...

The Verge may be right, but they are totally apple fanboys who jump at any opportunity to make fun of the competition.

I would agree, but Windows Phone is not now nor ever was competition for Apple. The company that is competition for Apple's bread and butter market however, is a totally different story:

http://phys.org/news/2016-01-g...

As much as people like to dump on Windows Phone, or Blackberry, the shrinking of the smartphone market to only 2 major players is a bad thing. More competition is good in trying to keep all vendors on their feet, and there are certainly things WP and BB do better than iOS or Android.

The Verge may be right, but they are totally apple fanboys who jump at any opportunity to make fun of the competition.

I would agree, but Windows Phone is not now nor ever was competition for Apple. The company that is competition for Apple's bread and butter market however, is a totally different story:

http://phys.org/news/2016-01-g...

TL;DR: Google (or Alphabet rather) is likely to overtake Apple's overall net worth soon.

Also to add to that, Apple's massive cash supply has a major problem that's going to take a lot of "financial engineering" to solve:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

TL;DR: Apple has a lot of cash overseas, and can't bring it here or else it will get taxed HARD. Meanwhile, over here, they have a huge pile of debt that is growing faster than their foreign cash reserves.

Between that, combined with the slowing smartphone market, and an overall slowing US economy (we're probably going to see a recession soonish) they *may* be in for some rough times. Microsoft seems to be doing well on the other hand, with their cloud division bringing in huge profits.

Curing blindness sounds admirable - but at what cost?
Don't forget the unseen side effects!
The first Google hit on CRISPR side effects is:
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-c...

Without a suitable blindness cure, the side effects will remain literally unseen.

Curing blindness sounds admirable - but at what cost?
Don't forget the unseen side effects!
The first Google hit on CRISPR side effects is:
http://phys.org/news/2015-10-c...

The Fermi Paradox is really pseudoscience. There are many big problems with it.

I'm not sure what you mean by this and your following statements. Your primary point seems to be that intelligent life might be less likely than we think. But that's not a criticism of the Fermi paradox but a possible resolution of it. Your point about signal detection is certainly correct if that were our only way of detecting civilizations. In particular, we see no ring worlds, or Dyson spheres or other large scale constructions despite systematic searches http://home.fnal.gov/~carrigan/infrared_astronomy/Fermilab_search.htm. We don't in general see any signs of large scale energy use. We've looked at around 100,000 galaxies and found zero full-scale galactic civilizations. See http://phys.org/news/2015-04-advanced-civilizations-earth-obvious-galaxies.html. The universe looks natural. And yes, there are many possible explanations for this, but we need to ask how likely they are. If there is a Great Filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter then it doesn't go away simply because we've found a semiplausible alternate explanation.

Never mind propaganda sites like Forbes. There are plenty of decent sources still left on the web, though you wonder how much longer it will be before they dry up. http://phys.org/news/2016-01-e...