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...and your reference is?

There is such research, of course, and it mostly falls into a few broad categories:

- Gender "science". Gender science presupposes biological factors are irrelevant as a matter of doctrine.

- Sociology of various stripes. Rarely uses biological controls of any kind. No standardized or generally accepted methodology exists.

In short, the research you are referring to is pretty close to worthless. It is also often obviously driven by a certain (egalitarian)utopian ideological mindset, that is aggressively intolerant of any dissent from the party line whatsoever.

Unfortunately for these "sciences", real science in the biological fields is constantly pushing back the veil of ignorance that psuedoscience has been hiding behind. There is a plentora of articles discussing the phonomena - here is one:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00018E9 D-879D-1D06-8E49809EC588EEDF

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00040A7 2-A95C-1CDA-B4A8809EC588EEDF&sc=I100322 http://www.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate- change Let's just consider this simple FACT. When smoking was deemed to be cancerous and dangerous to the health of individuals they found plenty of scientists willing to work for them to disprove negative claims. Ignoring Al Gore as an inflated ego there is plenty of popular support for the theory of Global Warming. There is plenty of evidence from many varied fields to support it. Before grasping at the few dissenting voices as proof that it is not universally accepted it's worth investigating the credibility of the dissenters, their motives and why they are at odds with the majority. One of the protagonists in this article for example works for oil companies. Do your research see what you can find out. Considering that the these are the same rhetorical arguments used by the creationist/intelligent design people, the smoking lobby etc. I'm instinctively suspicious. Fabricating dissent or over inflating the value of opposition is a tactic favored by those who fear change. I think as a simple test we should move all those who don't agree with Global warming to New Orleans, Bangladesh and the Netherlands just to really test their convictions. Anti-Global warming rhetoric is for people who can't deal with large amounts of rhetoric forcing them to re-think their world view. Just as anti-Evolution arguments are for those who have failed to let their world view evolve. For most of he scientific community Global warming isn't a matter of "IF" it, it's "HOW" it will affect us. Considering that most of the scientific is hugely more intelligent than the average journalist, American voter or US President I'm going to go with their over-whelming consensus until there is some stronger evidence than the opinions of some corporate stooges, a few deranged rogues seeking attention and their friendly Right-Wing spin doctors.

<sarcasm>

</sarcasm>

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articl eID=0000FCD2-AA88-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7&catID=3

seems to suggest that aluminium has no proven effect either way, many other articles seem to go with the traditional alumium causes alzheimers desease. many state scientists disagree.

however it seems aluminium is unavoidable and that since we are all universally exposed the incidence of alzheimers should be higher. Maybe i will try to avoid aluminium when I have lost a significant amount of weight and have quit smoking.

Of course, a new antibiotic is never the final word in the war on bacteria. The introduction of this new antibiotic, platensimycin, provides yet another opportunity for bacteria to mutate and to develop defenses against it. Eventually, the bacteria will become resistant to platensimycin.

What is not known is whether we can continuously develop new antibiotics that kill new antibiotic-resistant strains of germs and that will not kill human cells. As each successive generation of new antibiotics bombards the bacteria and as it adapts to the new medicines, will the bacteria become so powerful that it cannot be killed?

When will Washington ban the feeding of antibiotics to cattle? I am referring to the use of antibiotics as a food supplement. It is insane.

I think your definition of culture might need some expanding - check out last month's SciAm about orang culture. Their definition - roughly the ability to pass knowledge to the next generation - fits better, and if you were so inclined you may be able to fit that to your original ants.

You are joking, but bioengineers like Drew Endy at MIT are working to deconvolute chromosomal structures so that they can be more readily engineered. Check out this article at Scientific American http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0009FCA 4-1A8F-1085-94F483414B7F0000

There are things which cannot be proven : See this article in Scientific American.

A more serious article was published about a year ago on similar changes in constants.

1. Using entangled photon pairs
2. Using OTP negotiation

Both methods are completely secure from interception attacks.
The first method uses entangled photon pairs which are randomly generated from some secured source in the middle. The photons are then read at either end. As long as the source is not compromised, the method is secure. Even if the source is compromised, the attacker cannot triplicate the entangled photons, and also cannot read out the photons without compromising their entangled state. Thus, fake non-entangled photons would have to be sent out, possibly alerting the communicating parties.

The other method, OTP negotiation, is much more developed and stable as of today. Alice (the sender) and Bob (the receiver) begin by establishing a one-time key for use with a cipher (such as an XOR cipher). Alice starts by choosing an orientation (orthagonal or diagonal) and then choosing a value (1 or 0).
For example, Orthagonal values are '-' for 1 and '|' for 0, while Diagonal values are '/' for 1 and '\' for 0.
Alice sends one of these 4 possible polarized photons to Bob, who chooses either the Orthagonal filter or Diagonal filter.
The Orthagonal filter is a polarized filter in the '-' direction. '-' photons pass through and register 1, while '|' photons are blocked and register a 0. However, Diagonal photons have a 50/50 chance by quantum mechanics to twist into the filter, so the readout of a Diagonal photon is unreliable.
Similarly, Diagonal filters cannot read Orthagonal photons accurately.
Quantum mechanics ensures that nobody can read both orientation schemes at once accurately, and because the photon may twist through the wrong filter, a measurement can only be taken once correctly.
After the photon reaches Bob and he has measured it, Alice tells Bob which orientation she used (Orthagonal or Diagonal). Bob then tells Alice whether or not he used the right filter. If he used the right one, they keep the bit, otherwise it is discarded.
This process repeats for the entire length of the message.
If Eve is intercepting the line, however, she will have to choose a filter and risk twisting the photon.
For example: Alice chooses '\'. Eve intercepts and reads using Orthagonal, and the photon twists into '-'. Bob then reads using Diagonal, giving the twisted value '/' (1). Since Alice and Bob both chose the same orientation, the bit is retained. However, the bit is incorrect, leading to errors in encryption.
To detect problems or an interceptor, Alice and Bob perform a keycheck when they finish the negotiation. Alice selects several values at random and sends their values and positions to Bob, who checks them and reports back. If any discrepancies are noted, the entire key is invalidated and the process starts over on a new channel. Otherwise, the check bits are discarded and encryption can proceed.

As noted, this is a lot of work for a simple encryption, considering that modern ciphers such as RSA-4096 are unbreakable by modern computers. However, quantum computers (capable of breaking RSA in nanoseconds) will eventually present a danger to these ciphers.
Thus, QC is not yet practical, unless you believe the NSA can break RSA, but it has already proven to be mathematically and practically unbreakable.
The word

There was actually a good article on this in the December Scientific American. There would be no shortage of fuel if we were to build breeder reactors which can convert U238, where we have a large supply, to plutonium and other fissionable fuels. The article goes on to say that the amount of dangerous radioactive waste from this type of reactor is a small fraction of other types of reactors (including pebble bed). The article can be found at Scientific American: Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste [ ENERGY ]
Unfortunately, it requires registration to read.

Not true. See the Dec 2005 issue of Scientific American (http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&col ID=1&articleID=000D5560-D9B2-137C-99B283414B7F0000 ). There are plenty of other countries that have built reactors for electric power generation in recent years and have an excellent safety record. (eg France and Japan) The US needs to have better standardized plants. We don't need to reinvent each plant each time we build a new one. Yes, look at the last one and make incrimental safety improvements etc. Don't reinvent the design each time.

Think about a nuclear sub or a nuclear aircraft carrier. In their 20 to 30 year life cycle they only refuel their reactors a couple of times. That gives you an idea of how much energy is stored in nuclear power.

Read this article which is a recent Slashdot Thread: [link snip]

I did read the article and the discussion around it. Personally, I find his reasoning to be shaky and his references to climate models to be disingenuous. There are a lot of climate models, but very few are effective at predicting even historical data (give it data up to 2000, does it provide any predictions that match 2000-2005?). Though they are being continuously improved, there is a limitation to predictive accuracy based on the same limitations that meteorologists have: the earth's weather system is highly chaotic.

Where do you get your numbers on the amount of CO2 released by humans.

Well, you forced me to do some more research and what I thought was a slam-dunk fact (ten thousand to one proportion) turned out to be fairly shaky and almost certainly incorrect.

One older source:
http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articl eID=000D4121-91C5-1CD1-B4A8809EC588EEDF&catID=3&to picID=22

Newer source #1:
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/frequent_quest ions/grp6/question1375.html

Newer source #2:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Global_Carbon_E mission_by_Type.png

Newer source #3:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=87

My older source and the newer sources differ substantially. The older source states 10,000:1 human:natural and 110MT CO2/year from volcanoes (implied 1100GT/year from humans). Source #1 states a long-term average of 500MT CO2/year from volcanoes and a recent average of 17.6GT CO2/year from humans. Source #2 provides recent human emission totals of 5GT to 6.5GT C/year from humans (equivalent to 16.4GT to 21.3GT CO2/year).

I think that the older source took the amount of human CO2 emissions over the past 200 years (though Source #3 states that total human CO2 emissions are 500GT CO2, so that's not enough to fully explain his error). Based on newer and better researched data, I've now updated my statements to reflect that humans release 32 times as much CO2 as volcanoes on average.

You also mention that volcano eruptions cause the Earth's temperature to drop because the sulphur compounds reflect heat. You then say that mankind releases 8181 times more that that.

Clearly an error. Humans release about 10MT SO2/year. Volcanos release on average 2.5MT SO2/year, though individual eruptions release much more than others (El Cichien 8.5MT, Pinatubo 17MT, Mt. St. Helens 212 KT). Also, the exact kind of sulphur "stuff" released and where it ends up makes a huge difference on whether it has any impact on global temperatures. Some volcanoes, like Tambora release lots of SO2 to the upper atmosphere, which causes an optically dense haze that blocks some of the sun's radiation. The SO2 in the upper atmosphere and the haze it creates can persist for more than two years. Other volcanoes, like Mt. St. Helens, release more ash, which does create more clouds in the months following the eruption, but is almost entirely washed out of the atmosphere within six months.

Most human emissions of SO2 occur in the lower atmosphere, and contribute heavily to smog and haze close to the ground, but are more quickly removed from the air by rain than the SO2 delivered to the upper atmosphere by volcanoes. Also, because the haze is lower to the ground (often at ground level), the optical scattering from the haze doesn't reflect nearly as much back out (most of the radiation is captured in one way or another by the time it reaches ground level).

To me, the biggest remaining issue is to show a caus

And

Scientific American gives 15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense.

Memorize them for your next party

Sulphur compounds tend to result in global cooling. CO2, methane, a few others tend to result in global warming. Any volcanic eruption will release it's own balance of sulphur vs. other debris, which will change the effect of that eruption on the atmosphere.

Here's one article that I read today on that exact same topic. It may be the same thing you've already read.

Regards,
Ross

Scientific American Did a great article recently on how the Bush Administration has been censoring scientific reports to fit thier particular agenda. It seems an oilman doesn't want oilmen to look like bad people. Who would have guessed? LINK TO ARTICLE

Scientific American Did a great article recently on how the Bush Administration has been censoring scientific reports to fit thier particular agenda. It seems an oilman doesn't want oilmen to look like bad people. Who would have guessed? LINK TO ARTICLE

When you see this point, it's always a good indication that the person making it doesn't have a clue about WTF they're talking about.

Here's the scoop from a geologist, you know, someone who actually knows something about this topic:

There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity.

> What IS surprising, is that there is no image

Lots of other places covered the story, some do have pictures.
http://news.google.com/news?q=Tiktaalik+roseae

e.g. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&arti cleID=000A040D-36A2-1434-B6A283414B7F0000

Also Scientific American's article has a couple of pictures. AND National Geographic has a write-up on it.

This may be one of the last discoveries at Fermilab. As it stands now, Fermilab, SLAC, and Brookhaven's future is in severe doubt.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&arti cleID=00080A6A-C9C7-1419-89C783414B7F0101&colID=2

A few floors collapsed, yes. But the bulidings did not. The force of a floor falling on the floor beneath it should not generally be enough to bring the lower floor down.
One floor falling on a lower floor, perhaps. But what about scores of floors? Each floor that collapses would produce additional momentum. There's also the damage caused from the jetliner to consider here for WTC1 and 2, or the falling debris on WTC7.
See this well done presentation.

Think about it: the floors have been holding that weight up for decades.
That's a statement about mostly statics that is meaningless for this argument. They held up floors for decades, but without the dynamics of significant structural damage, fire, etc.

A jet fuel fire is no hotter than any other hydrocarbon fire that reaches it's maximum possible temperature.

Under ideal lab conditions, sure -- but we're comparing something that intended to ignite and burn (fuel) with a random assortment of office equipment that would likely include fire retardants in the carpet, wiring, etc. These are things that are not intended to ignite, let alone burn for long periods of time.
Can you provide evidence that any of those previous building fires burned at the same temperature and for the same amount of time as a large jet fuel fire?
And even if they did, there's still the pesky problem of the massive amount of variables involved in each of these cases. I'll say it again, just because it didn't manage to fully collapse in a handful of previous cases involving different buildings and far different conditions, doesn't mean it is impossible or even unlikely.

There's simply no way the jet fuel was still burning weeks later when they were still finding pools of molten metal.
Assuming a few eyewitness accounts of pools of molten metal are true, what melted them? And what kept them in a liquid state for these eyewitnesses? Planted explosive charges in the basement? Seems like that would have cooled off quickly.
Was steel the only metal at WTC? What about Aluminum, yaknow, from the planes? Al melts at ~1200F. Can these eyewitnesses visually tell different pools of molten metal apart?
Or couldn't they have meant melted steel?
Or perhaps it was glass. Some glass melts as low as 900F.
And where are the pictures of the molten metal?

The steel didn't need to melt for the towers to collapse. I'm sure you've seen it, but here's the link to the Scientific American debunking anyway.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. And so far, the "official" version of events has far better evidence.

http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articl eID=000DBCF7-C08B-1C71-9EB7809EC588F2D7 As you will see, it is possible to have an ellipsoid crater. It is not common, but it is possible

This (pay wall past intro) is an interesting article I read in Scientific American about a plan to recycle much of what is currently considered nuclear waste for use in advanced fast breeder reactors. It seems the most feasible alternative to oil I have seen.

The problem is that you have to throw the rocks really, really hard. If you just lob them off the surface, you'll give the asteroid a minute nudge as the rock flies away, but there will still be a gravitational attraction between the asteroid and the piece of rock you threw. If they remain close together (and I'm speaking of close in astronomical terms), then they will just make up a two-body system with the center of mass precisely where it was before. Eventually, the asteroid and the cloud of rocks you threw will just attract each other back together right at the pre-existing center of mass, with no net change in orbit.

You need to fling the rocks far enough away so that some other body becomes more important to them, gravitationally speaking. Once the cloud of rocks get dragged away by the Earth, the Sun, Venus or some other convenient gravity well, they are far enough away from the asteroid to be really out of the picture in terms of influencing the asteroid's orbit.

If you start soon enough, you don't have to throw them so far, since the small rocks' orbits around the sun will decay sooner than the asteroid. However, you'll need a couple of dozen solar orbits to really make them fall inward much, taking them out of the asteroid's influence. Since each asteroid's orbit is almost two years, if you want to land a cannon and start flinging rocks, you need to be at T-60 years (30 orbits) for it to be effective. That means a working gas cannon/rail gun/etc., on the asteroid, flinging rocks, in 2040.

The Navy is thinking about a ship-mounted rail gun. This can fling a 15kg round at 2.5km/s, with a rate of fire of 6-12 rounds per minute. It would need a dedicated nuclear reactor, and a machined 5kg sabot for each round, and machined rounds, but nevermind. Assuming that this rail gun could fling 22kg rounds at 10 per minute at 1km/s, that's one metric ton every 10 minutes, or 6 metric tons an hour. If you can sustain that rate of fire for 12 hours out of every 24, day in, day out, that means you'd have flung your 1,000,000th metric ton 13,888 days after you start. That's 38 years of continuous operation. Land 10 rail guns, it's 3.8 years.

Keeping the gun(s) fed would be a challenge. Add in the operation and mainenance for the guns, the reactor, and the munitions manufacturing facility (where you turn rocks into rounds), the mining facility (where you dig up the rocks in the first place), not to mention the living quarters, and you've got all of the problems of a major space colony. Oh, and the cosmic rays would probably kill any astronaut who is on-site operating or repairing it.

hows about fast neutron reactors - new and improved mr burns would like 'em. See SciAm article. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D556 0-D9B2-137C-99B283414B7F0000

Perhaps he should invest in some cosmic shielding research. I was just reading an article eariler today in the current issue of Scientific American that you could end up reaching Mars with severe DNA and brain damage. The obstacles do not lie in the innovation of rockets, but in protecting the traveler.

The article was very disappointing because I didn't see any mention of the pyrometalurgical reprocessing and fast reactor design that would allow much more efficient use of the nuclear fuel. Current reactor designs and pebble bed only use about 3-5% of the Uranium (the U235 in the enriched Uranium), whereas the reprocessing method I mentioned above uses nearly all the heavy metals (actinydes) from Americium to Plutonium, including the Uranium 235 and U238.

There's a really good article (only a preview available) at Scientific American which explains the pyrometalurgical process and the fast reactors that allow this.

On the other hand, the reactors mentioned in the article won't hurt anything if the reactors I'm talking about get built later. They can supposedly burn up the nuclear waste from existing reactors.

The methods whereby CO2 heats up a planet are fairly well understood, and no one with a sane state of mind can deny that humanity has made things worse.

Change "made things worse" to "increased the effect" and I'd agree.

But there is a question open as to whether increasing the CO2 is making things "worse".

Some scientists have done work indicating that the Earth WAS headed back into an ice age, and would have been well on its way - at an accellerating rate - but for the effect of human CO2 emissions - starting at the beginnings of agriculture, at what WOULD have been the peak of the interglacial.

Their models indicate that human influence held the temperature nearly constant until the start of the industrial age, then began raising it.

But they ALSO indicate that (depending on the rate of carbon emission), the peak could be expected to be only a couple degrees C above the preindustrial plateau - about the amount we SHOULD be colder than it right now - and that (again depending on the rate of carbon emission) after 400 years or so, as the economically-recoverable fossil fuels are exhausted, the global temperature will crash back onto the ice-age-bound curve over a few decades - a curve that would have the "should be" temperature about twice as far below that of today, and falling much more rapidly. (Changing the assumed rate of carbon emission would change the height and width of the "hump" - possibly leveling it out and delaying the crash out to something like 600 years in the future. But it wouldn't eliminate it.)

By this model we should be in an ice age NOW, with permanent snow cover over much more of the continental masses, evolving into glacers and expanded ice caps.

If this is accurate, or even close, wouldn't you agree that the phrase for humanity's effect so far is "made things better"?

I read something related to this in a neurobiology article back in October. See this link.

For the lazy, some scientists in Singapore and Asia activated a flourescent green protein in rat males and bred them with normal rat females. After giving birth, the mother rats had neuronal cells with the protein expressed in their brains, making it clear that those cells formerly belonged to their fetuses. And check out this quote:

"Moreover, after the scientists chemically injured the mouse brains, nearly six times as many fetal cells made their way to damaged areas than elsewhere, suggesting the cells could be responding to molecular distress signals released by the brain."

Seems like it makes for a pretty damn good argument for this theory to me.

Nanotubes go flash bang wallop

(Yeah, I know you didn't mean that kind of flash, but the video is kinda cool.)

As this was covered quite in depth in Scientific American article Holes in the Missile Shield . To sum it up, all possible counter measures are shockingly cheap compared to the infrastructure and technology needed to defeat them.

So really, we lose economically.

There was a good Scientific American article in December 2005 about using fast reactors to use waste fuel from other reactors to produce power using pyrometalurgical techniques to process the fuel. I'm sorry but all Scientific American has is a preview of the article, entitled http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D556 0-D9B2-137C-99B283414B7F0000&ref=sciam&chanID=sa00 6 "Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste". The gist of the article is that current thermal reactors use only 5% of the enriched nuclear fuel (U235) and the waste includes a lot of Plutonium, U238, and other actinydes that the process in the article would consume. This pyrometalurgical processing also prevents taking out the Plutonium--it takes out the waste products, like Strontium. Since it can consume U238, Thorium, etc. it would be able to "burn" something like 95% of the nuclear fuel and the waste products would be short lived radioactive waste. I hope this is the procedure they are using, and not breeder reactors or conventional reprocessing.

Not necessarily true. Energy conservation and efficiency, and thereby CO2 emission cuts, can save billions for companies: More Profit with Less Carbon (Scientific American)

I want the hypertext to be the most appropriate 2-3 words that tell you exactly what you're clicking on. I think that is absolutely essential. Every URL should matter, and every bit of hypertext should tell you exactly what it is you're going to get when you click that mouse button.

You (CmdrTaco) and the other editors are completely inconsistent about this -- possibly my single largest complaint about slashdot, even though I'm a grammar nazi and bothered by lots of things. If the article summary is borked, so what? -- as long I can get to the actual article. But many posts seemed to be linked in a way that obfuscates what the relevant article is.

Here's one you personally posted today:A test carried out by Pegasus Lab on account for Swedish magazine PC För alla showed that a normal PC keyboard was infected by more bacteria than a normal toilet seat. More specific it contained 33000 bacteria per square centimeter, compared to 130 on a ordinary toilet seat. The tests also showed occurrence of up to 3100 fungi per square centimeter.

You'll note that doesn't follow your standard of linking what the article is about, rather than the article provider.

How about this one that just popped up: Pennies, pipes, untold miles of CAT5 - they tie up a lot of copper. Unlike abundant iron and aluminum, copper is relatively scarce. But it's vital to electricity generation/transmission, plumbing, and other uses central to a modern standard of living. Scientific American is providing a quick overview of the situation. They report the conclusion that there simply isn't enough available....

Now surely that was not the relevant phrase. Surely the link is about SciAm's "quick overview of the situation" or their "conclusion." In this case it's the only link in the post so it's not hard to find, but in posts with multiple links it would be confusing to find a link to SciAm before actually mentioning it -- I would assume it's background.

This has gotten better in recent years; links used to be placed seemingly at random.

I wouldn't call this timely news as there was a flurry or reports about determining the physics of bee flight in late November 2005 Deciphering the Mystery of Bee Flight
Secrets of bee flight revealed">
Longstanding Puzzle of Honeybee Flight Solved at Last

But as wikipedia shows this problem had been essentially resolved since the early 90's, though I'm sure I been hearing that this problem is "Finally Solved" every year or two and has been since the early 70's.

Researchers will continue to refine their understanding of the process and claim to finally or fully understand the problem at last.
Some, mostly religious types, will claim scientists don't understand the process because there was some mystery at some point a few decades ago. It seems every few years we get similar pronouncements about the trajectory of a thrown baseball.

While Bee flight does little to disprove ID, ID proponents do frequently use examples like bee flight to bolster their ID arguments regardless of what the current scientific consensus is. Urban legends and wives tales do not die easily.

My last journal entry was actually on the topic of ID Christians in Scientists' Clothing

Low levels of ionizing radiation seems to be actually beneficial to human health.

This is called radiation hormesis. And this theory started after they found that people who lived in such a distance from hiroshima and Nagasaki that they received low radiation doses. And, years later, this population, exposed to radiation, had much lower cancer rates than non-exposed similar populations.

You can check some references:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd= Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=1150419 7&query_hl=3&itool=pubmed_docsum

http://www.nature.com/embor/journal/v5/n1s/full/74 00222.html

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00019A7 0-0C1C-1F41-B0B980A841890000&catID=4

http://www.angelfire.com/mo/radioadaptive/inthorm. html

http://www.mindfully.org/Pesticide/2004/Hormesis-T heory-Toxins27feb04.htm

you would only need to segregate the waste for a few hundred years, not tens of thousands (the new design burns 95% of the fuel, the old designs only 1%)

no bomb: the design can't be modified to breed more dangerous elements useful in making bombs

design: limited to little pebbles, you would have to be an knowledgable ingenious sabatour given wide access to a facility to do any real damage, which woud be limited to the facility

like i said, educate yourself:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=1&articleID=000D5560-D9B2-137C-99B283414B7F0000

So you are saying Stanley didn't use GPS?

I believe all of the competitors used GPS in some form or another, I was just trying to point out the extensive preprocessing done by humans on the CMU team(and they still lost by 11 minutes). Doesn't seem like an autonomus vehicle should need all that help, kinda defeats the purpose of being autonomus.

But since you're an expert in the field, I'm sure you know why that's the case.

I never claimed to be an expert, I only claimed to have RTFA.

By the way, on that link, the Odometry is a joke. It is absolutely useless in this application.

I agree that the Odometry is a joke on Stanley, especially on sand and other surfaces where the wheel may be spinning, but not going anywhere. I like the solution that a bunch of high school kids came up with for their "Doom Buggy", but I don't see any mention of them finishing the race. They used the same technique that is used for optical mice. I don't know how effective it really was, but it seems like it would be a much better idea than seeing how far the tire rotated over a certain period. That article is here. They talk about the "Doom Buggy" on page 2.

Try the Scientific American article on the DARPA challenge: Innovations from a Robot Rally
It covers all the teams a bit and talks about some of the innovations that were used by the competing teams. It is a little light but worth a minute or your time.

Scientific American: Top Sci/Tech Gifts 2005
Holiday presents for the science- and technology-minded

they already did

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&arti cleID=000D550E-D624-13A1-962483414B7F0000

So I picked up this month's Scientific American and was reading the their "Scientific American 50" the other day and realized that they had named Hwang the "Research Leader of the Year".

If the allegations about fabricating and faking the data are true, then I'm curious what the editors at SciAm will do? Rename him to "Fraud Leader of the Year"?

While this has been proven once every two years since 1989, Slashdot readers should note this is the first time in 5 years that Slashdot has failed to review the research, the theory that honeybees can actually fly is obviously falling out of favor.

...is that it was not intelligently designed.

If they had only put a picture of Michaelangelo's 'Creation of Adam' instead of crusty ole Darwin, the money would have come pouring in.

Imagine the creationist's surprise when they find out that God is a woman in a surgeon's uniform.

Suggested reading: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FE C-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF

Yup. 2001.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&arti cleID=00060286-CB58-1315-8B5883414B7F0000&pageNumb er=1&catID=2

Here is a one-page, ad-free version of the article. Seriously, when articles are formatted like this, submitters should use the "printer friendly" version of the article as the submission.

I don't know man... I sure found this article awful interesting, and beats every one of your death by bungy bungy theories: http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=0 0073A97-5745-1359-94FF83414B7F0000

Jho

Has a great article, with pertty pictures and diagrams, regarding panspermia

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colI D=1&articleID=00073A97-5745-1359-94FF83414B7F0000