Slashdot Mirror

Psych 110 (Fundamentals of Learning and Behavior) lecture, UCLA, circa 1994.

Interestingly, I had noticed this effect anecdotally, and asked about it in Physiological Sciences 5 (Human Diet and Exercise), where the professors had never heard of it. It was known to those studying operant conditioning, however.

Here's the first hit on Google Scholar for a search on [insulin artificial sweetener]. There have been human studies of this effect as well.

The process described is about two years old and was published last month.

Untold millions of dollars have been spent in search of a cost effective process to produce ethanol from cellulose for use as a fuel, leading me to wonder exactly what the catch is.

Of course, converting much of the world's cropland to pulpwood production isn't exactly an environmental panacea.

this one maybe

IAAG (I am a geneticist)

  It isn't a very popular idea, especially among anthropologists, but what the gp says is fundementally true (not the Africans being stupider than Japanese part).

There is a large body of work out there which deals with the subject and come to the same conclusion, that Ashkenazi jews perform better than the general population on verbal reason and maths based tests. This intelligence is the result of natural selection for occupations which were portable i.e when they were kicked out of whatever country didn't like them at the time (spain, england, germany, russia etc...), they could take their livelihoods with them.

For example (with a little bit of searching you can find a lot more):
1

2

3

IAAG (I am a geneticist)

  It isn't a very popular idea, especially among anthropologists, but what the gp says is fundementally true (not the Africans being stupider than Japanese part).

There is a large body of work out there which deals with the subject and come to the same conclusion, that Ashkenazi jews perform better than the general population on verbal reason and maths based tests. This intelligence is the result of natural selection for occupations which were portable i.e when they were kicked out of whatever country didn't like them at the time (spain, england, germany, russia etc...), they could take their livelihoods with them.

For example (with a little bit of searching you can find a lot more):
1

2

3

After a few horrendous early bad attempts (Cane Toads for example) Australia's CSIRO (the government's research arm) has gotten very very good at importing biological controls to deal with other invasive species. They now have methodologies in place that let them do so on a regular basis.

Examples include the moth that was used to eradicate Prickly Pear,

About the artice You've linked to: what is worth mentioning here, is that while you can read between the lines that in Australia this "environmental engineering" was in fact successful, for unknown reasons it failed in Kruger National Park, South Africa...
WM

After a few horrendous early bad attempts (Cane Toads for example) Australia's CSIRO (the government's research arm) has gotten very very good at importing biological controls to deal with other invasive species. They now have methodologies in place that let them do so on a regular basis.

Examples include the moth that was used to eradicate Prickly Pear, the introducing of African dung beetles to curb an explosion in flies due to agriculture, and the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus have all been very successful.

And they've introduced no less than 5 different species (3 weevils, 2 flies and a moth) to successfully control Onopordum Thistles (although the program is ongoing).

I think the rule of thumb here is that you don't solve your invasive species problems by just wandering over to their source country, picking up the first highly visible superpredator that you find, and bringing it back. (Cane Toads, Mongooses, Wolves, etc)

There's so little difference between humans and, say, the chimp/pan that they are virtually the same species. We are the third chimpanzee. Like us, chimps seem to be happiest with close to ten hours of sleep per day.

The Primates journal is a good place to look for info.

The question then is why are the primates at the low end of the sleep budget? Your dietary thesis is interesting and represents one popular line of teleological reasoning for our waking budgets.

Getting back to the issue at hand, my thesis is that were it possible to simulate human consciousness, it may be necessary to simulate the sleeping as well as the waking state.

Which is why I (guiltily) laugh at the 'him', but not at the 'her'.

Domestic violence against women is underreported... but not as underreported as domestic violence against men.

It has nothing to do with what is "underreported" and everything to do with how violence is used in a greater context. If you can quote a single reputable article that states that men are subject to systematic violent expressions of power from their surroundings I will be most impressed.

Here's one of many from the other perspective: Violence against women: global scope and magnitude

Oh, incidentally I am a man. As in the gender, not the species. Oh, I'm that too, but I prefer using human about that.

How hard is it to search for some credible evidence in the intertubes?
Several studies have tried to estimate the prevalence of LSD-induced prolonged psychosis arriving at numbers of around 4 in 1,000 individuals

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD#Psychosis

Hallucinogen persisting perception disorder after psilocybin consumption: a case study

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VM1-4GDBT8V-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2e61e47d1b85590dfcf1081263b02d83

BTW, any ex-hippie knows this (not that I'm one). Just ask grandpa.

I know you were being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but they've found that the appendix actually DOES have pretty good use: Here is a tech-minded summary, and here is the full article.

(I'm the AC that also responded to you). After doing some research into their claims, I came across this: impossible dinosaurs. Their claim is as follows:

"Most conventional theories assume that gravity throughout the universe has always been and will always be a constant property of matter. ... The Electric Universe offers a different point of view. Gravity is not a constant. It's a variable that depends on the plasma environment. So Earth in the Mesozoic Era may have had less gravity than it has today. Holden calculates that in order for the largest dinosaurs to function, gravity must have been at least 1/3 (and possibly as low as 1/4) what it is today."

It took a fair amount of effort to dig up the relevant papers regarding changes in the gravitational constant. (Short answer for the mathematically challenged: it hasn't changed). I'd also point out that if gravity was 1/3 to 1/4 of what it was today, the moon wouldn't have remained in orbit.

The original slashdot article had a post detailing what their predictions were. They were wrong.

Let's just call bad science when we see it. Plasma cosmology predicts few things. When it has tried to, it failed. Much like the yeti, flat earth, luminous aether and timecube, it probably won't go away any time soon. But it really should.

This is something I strongly agree with. We (and, by 'we' I mean the western world, not any specific country) can't keep passing environmental and labour laws, and maintain free trade. The end result will be that everything is produced in places without them.

Studies show that as income increases people's care for the environment also increases. This is part of the Kuznets curve. Partially the way it works is that at first people are just concerned about living, eating, and having a roof over their head without having to work all the tyme. But as people make more they become concerned about their environment as well. Afterall why be concerned about pollution if you don't have enough to eat? This extends to health as well as work conditions.

We should encourage free trade, but only with countries that mandate a minimum level of worker and environmental protection

Many in the Third World see this as a way to keep them from improving their lives.

Falcon

According to this journal article (2008), there were about 2 x 10^10 beryllium-10 atoms per gram of soil; and about 60,000 Bq/m^2 from cesium-137.

Why would they hire a physicist who dabbles in earthquake detection when they've got seismologists who do this full-time around, who know that radon levels are not an accurate predictor of earthquakes?

Because the many many seismologists who are paid to do their jobs obviously did not.

The earthquake science community looked at it and dismissed it decades ago as insufficiently reliable--some earthquakes aren't preceded by a spike in radon levels, and some spikes aren't followed by an earthquake,/quote> ...yeah, right, because all, these reports are obviously written by sci-fi writers

Have YOU even thought about what you are blabbering?

Well... lets not dignify your question with a response, shall we?

If I'm reading them correctly, the studies being quoted (BTW, here's one of them if you have ScienceDirect) are NOT saying that Asperger's can be cured or prevented by altering a child's exposure to stress. They're saying Asperger's brains have a different neurochemical reaction to sudden changes than ordinary brains do.

1: This may (or may not) point toward changing how Asperger's kids are trained to deal with stress.
2: More interesting to me, this may point to targeted pharmaceuticals able to provide long-term remission.
3: This may just be a side effect of Asperger's, and the actual cause is somewhere else entirely.

High temp increases the rate of release, but it's not a linear relationship.

Consider DEHC release from PVC... the diffusion coefficients [D × 1010 cm2 min1] at 5 and 40 C are 9.1 and 156.0 according to this paper. Seeing as microwaves can easily create temps over 100 C, it's pretty trivial to deduce that though some phthalates are released at room temperature, high temperatures could easily cause much higher concentrations of toxins in your food.

As for vinyl floors, if the area is poorly ventilated, even a slow rate of diffusion could result in toxic contentrations of phthalates.

More comment, continuing from above. The abstract in ScienceDirect says, "An analysis of the associations between indoor environmental variables in 2000 as well as other background factors and the ASD diagnosis indicated five statistically significant variables: (1) maternal smoking; (2) male sex; (3) economic problems in the family; (4) condensation on windows, a proxy for low ventilation rate in the home; (5) PVC flooring, especially in the parents' bedroom."

What? Male sex?

Another quote from the "scientific" paper: "... parental-reported autistic spectrum disorders..."

What is "autistic spectrum"? Can parents report autistic behavior accurately? Maybe the child is just trying to protect himself or herself from the abusive behavior of the parents. Is that autism?

To me the abstract indicates very weak investigation. More importantly, Scientific American proved itself to be untrustworthy, in my opinion.

Not an April Fools joke: "Received 11 November 2008; accepted 30 January 2009. Available online 10 February 2009."

Sensationalistic "science" news is a huge money-maker: "If you do not have a User Name and Password, click the "Register to Purchase" button below to purchase this article. Price: US $ 31.50"

Fraud? In my opinion, there is definitely some element of fraud: The headline in Scientific American: "Scientists Find 'Baffling' Link between Autism and Vinyl Flooring" Headline of the photo caption: "Is vinyl bad for baby?" Disclaimer in the body of the article: 'The scientists were surprised by their finding, calling it "far from conclusive." ' The Scientific American article emphasized one factor, when 5 were reported, including smoking by the mother. Smoking definitely puts poisons in the blood. A pregnant mother who smokes poisons her baby.

Definition of fraud: A deliberate deception used to achieve some gain.

Was whoever wrote the article or placed the article in Scientific American paid to sensationalize the story? Was someone at Slashdot paid?

Hey, look who Dr. Mosier-Boss authored a paper with!

Given your statements below, I don't think your knowledge of this subject warrants such bold assertions.

If you don't believe that the CO2 hysteria is media and political hype, then you are not paying attention to the common perspective on the whole thing. I'm not talking about the science. I'm talking about the people using the science wrongly to push an agenda.

In the glacial-interglacial cycle, this is true, but it's also not a surprise; it's a prediction of Milankovitch theory, which existed before any lags or leads were ever measured in the data. It also does not imply that CO2 has no effect on temperature.

I didn't say CO2 has no effect on climate. I only said it follows rather than leads the temperature change. I understand chaos theory well enough to know that almost EVERYTHING has an effect, at least in the long term.

It's both. According to the Milankovitch theory, orbital variations cause shifts in temperature. These temperature shifts cause changes in the carbon cycle, which alters CO2 levels. The altered CO2 levels in turn amplify the original orbital temperature change.

If you leave the CO2 feedback part of that process out, then you can't explain the amplitude of the glacial-interglacial cycles anymore, and it's unclear whether you can even, say, trigger a glaciation without the contribution of CO2 drawdown.

Sure. CO2 has an effect. But, it is not THE cause as the media and political class would have us believe.

You could start here, here, or here.

Those are great references and support my argument that CO2 has an effect, but is certainly not THE cause. And, it is clearly illustrated that the coldest period in the last half billion years had a CO2 level 10 times the present level. Those references point out that there are clearly other drivers that are MUCH more significant on climate than CO2. That's not what the mass media and political class would have us believe. Orbital, solar and cloud variation are much more impactful than CO2. But, we can't write laws to deal with those things. So, we push the minor things that we believe we can control.

Human emissions don't vary smoothly, nor does the terrestrial carbon sink, which has quite a bit of interannual variability due to climatic effects on, e.g., photosynthesis and heterotrophic respiration. Just as a guess, I'd look first at the collapse of the Soviet Union (assuming there is a significant slowdown during those years, which I haven't checked).

Great point... at least partially. The natural CO2 cycle has quite a bit of interannual variability. That's why it's hard to nail down what the human factors are. And, given that the CO2 levels have been MUCH higher on the order of 1000's of percents prior to the existence of humans on the planet, it's hard to say that we are going to push things beyond what has been NATURALLY observed on Earth. Sure, there are plenty of hypothesi about the different types of carbon isotopes, but there are plenty of natural ways for those same isotopes to be released. The only thing we are doing to release them is to burn things. That happens naturally all the time.

As for human activity driving the observed increase, that's been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Nobody seriously argues that part of the story anymore; there are about six independent lines of evidence, including historic emissions data, measurements of cumulative ocean carbon and air-sea CO2 f

The CO2 causing warming myth is nothing but media and political hype...

Given your statements below, I don't think your knowledge of this subject warrants such bold assertions.

Looking at the data, it's clear to see that CO2 increase follows, not leads, an increase in temperature.

In the glacial-interglacial cycle, this is true, but it's also not a surprise; it's a prediction of Milankovitch theory, which existed before any lags or leads were ever measured in the data. It also does not imply that CO2 has no effect on temperature.

If there is causation (thus far only some correlation has been established), then the rise in CO2 is caused by the increase in temperature, not the other way around.

It's both. According to the Milankovitch theory, orbital variations cause shifts in temperature. These temperature shifts cause changes in the carbon cycle, which alters CO2 levels. The altered CO2 levels in turn amplify the original orbital temperature change.

If you leave the CO2 feedback part of that process out, then you can't explain the amplitude of the glacial-interglacial cycles anymore, and it's unclear whether you can even, say, trigger a glaciation without the contribution of CO2 drawdown.

For those that support the CO2 driving the increase, I've yet to see how the climate models explain how the temperature 450 million years ago was colder than it has ever been in the last half billion years, but the CO2 levels were 10 times what we have today.

You could start here, here, or here.

And for those arguing that human activity is driving the increase, why does the rate of increase vary so greatly (particularly looking at the significant decrease in rate during 1991-1993) despite the consistent growth of human CO2 producing activities.

Human emissions don't vary smoothly, nor does the terrestrial carbon sink, which has quite a bit of interannual variability due to climatic effects on, e.g., photosynthesis and heterotrophic respiration. Just as a guess, I'd look first at the collapse of the Soviet Union (assuming there is a significant slowdown during those years, which I haven't checked).

As for human activity driving the observed increase, that's been proven beyond all reasonable doubt. Nobody seriously argues that part of the story anymore; there are about six independent lines of evidence, including historic emissions data, measurements of cumulative ocean carbon and air-sea CO2 fluxes, measurements of terrestrial CO2 fluxes, modeling of said fluxes, shifts in carbon isotope ratios in air and sea, and changes in the CO2/O2 ratio of the atmosphere.

However, it seems that deforestation along with ever expanding cities with concrete and asphalt that absorb and radiate heat make an even better explanation than CO2,

Urban heat islands don't explain the warming. CIties are a small fraction of the Earth's surface and the amount of heat they radiate, even if you take into account subsidiary albedo changes, isn't big enough to account for the warming. Land use change is a good idea in principle (e.g., due to surface albedo changes, alterations in evapotranspiration, etc.), because it's more widespread. But it still falls well short in magnitude: in some locations it has a substantial effect on local temperatures, but simply doesn't explain the global amount or spatial distribution of surface warming.

We can produce food for many times what is on this planet. The only difference is that diets will adjust to which food products can be readily produced.

I'd definately debate the "many times" part, but we could produce enough... but alas without a global effort to do just that, the transition will only begin when people begin to starve in way more significant numbers than today. I see no talks of forced vegetarianism in international politics.

Do you understand how much land that is suitable for farming isn't even used?

Do you understand the damage we'd do to the planet, (and thus ourselves) if we used all available surface area for farming?

Susan Solomon is a CO2 freak. Her contention has been that we produce too much CO2 but every time I have read her interviews she spouts the changes in how much we produce without going into how much is naturally occurring.
...
mankind has nothing on the mother nature's numbers.

Now I'd never heard of her before this article, but she probably doesn't quote those numbers cos those aren't part of her research. Other people certainly have done significant work on this issue, you honestly think so much of the scientific community is so concerned about this and no one's done that very obvious calculation? Here's something I found on google in a few minutes. It may or may not be strictly relevant, but needless to say, research has certainly been done in this area.

Look at it this way. You have a chaotic oscillator. Without man, nature absorbs a certain amount of CO2, and emits another amount. Generally these amounts are in broad agreement, and so changes in atmospheric CO2 are slow, but occasionally a tipping point is reached and the system relatively quickly flips into a new regime, with different mean global temperature & CO2 levels. Such transitions are bad for most species that live through them, and very bad for the ones that don't survive. The main factors for how 'survivable' a transition is are the overall temperature & CO2 changes, and the swiftness of the transition.

As it pushes towards the boundary of the current regime, anthropogenic forcing causes instability. The more we push, the greater the chances that we'll reach the tipping point, and transition to a new regime. It doesn't actually matter whether nature emits more than man or not, even a small forcing can effect a nonlinear system such as this. This transition would have global consequences, and while the state of the new regime can't be accurately predicted, based on recent climate episodes, a long period with substantially higher temperature & CO2 looks rather likely.

Hyperbole for the win by the way, we have lots of fish, the key is who is farming it and where.

In that case, would you kindly show the fishermen where you're hiding it, as throughout the world they're having a helluva time finding enough to stay in business.

Cap and Trade is the outcome these people want because it will make them money.

Dare I ask who these people are that would profit from emissions trading schemes? Apart from the companies springing up offering "carbon offsetting" of course. Although for the most part they seem to be offering dubious environmental benefit, I get the impression they probably aren't amassing fortunes of billions. You seem to be implying a global conspiricy.

More on this: http://www.sciencedirect.com/

Apparently, someone made nanomechanical nuts & bolts from imperfect carbon nanotubes, but you have to pay to see the paper.

Maybe this image will not require a subscription, although I suspect it will.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/cache/MiamiImageURL/B6WSS-4V4113M-P-7/0?wchp=dGLbVtz-zSkzk

On the off chance it does, keep in mind this is not the full article. Critiques along the lines of "this doesn't prove anything," or "They should have done X" are premature if you haven't read the full (journal) article. If you thought of it, they probably covered that in the article you're not willing to pay for.

Okay, to give you a little more info (in a hurried fashion, as I am at work and should be peeking into a database right now)...

Yes, they do discover most planets through the wobble method, however, when they have this information, they can actually start to look at the planets themselves. Once you know it's there, and you know the orbit, you can stop looking at the wobble and focus on where the planet is you see.

As for working out composition, it's called gas chromatography. Here is a brief history of it :)

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9524256?dopt=Abstract
http://www.nature.com/onc/journal/v22/n48/full/1207139a.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WWY-45K1406-T&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=b88d0fc0f181cae87b8a1bd7686a8caf
http://books.google.com/books?id=7NAvFJ-oDn0C&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=p52+oncogenesis&source=web&ots=f9fRAXEbkc&sig=Kdl7bxvWMFM18E2deunfget71ds&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA74,M1
http://www.springerlink.com/content/25300q641u238965/

Note that in the above papers, Epstein-Barr explicitly subverts the P52 mechanism to its own ends (which is an interesting result).

I think the problem here is that the ones who are saying that MMR causes autism are the exception, not the rule.

While I may have kind of agreed with you that many private practice physicians are behind on their science, I highly disagree that those in academia are. I worked in the Johns Hopkins medical institute and not a single one is devoid of scientific training.

The entire notion that those in academia are practicing substandard science is laughable - the science of medicine is in academia. You are talking about quacks who fear monger and are generally disregarded among the scientific community. They don't get a disproportionately loud voice in the media because they don't understand science - it's because the media loves sensationalist stories and conspiracy theories.

Or releasing countless, unending and contradictory studies about diet.

Ok, I see the problem. First, let me say that dietitians and nutritionists are not physicians - but really that's irrelevant. When you cite diet studies as an example of medicine, you are essentially playing the mainstream media game. You never hear about any of the scientific studies because the public wouldn't understand the science.

Let me give you an example of an actual academic paper. I will not give my father's papers because I do not have his permission, however this is very similar to his area of expertise: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B8JDD-4RDPT4X-6-6&_cdi=43612&_user=1458830&_coverDate=02%2F29%2F2000&_sk=%23TOC%2343612%232000%23999339997%23677390%23FLA%23display%23Volume_66,_Issue_2,_Pages_i-ii,_347-753_(February_2000)%23tagged%23Volume%23first%3D66%23Issue%23first%3D2%23date%23(February_2000)%23&view=c&_gw=y&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkzV&md5=acbce1898e1a993e7adeb4badc8ea004&ie=/sdarticle.pdf . I would like you to read this article and tell me where it lacks in science. In fact, here is the link to the New England Journal of Medicine. http://content.nejm.org/current.shtml My parents' house is full of the things. Look at the papers in "Original Articles." These are examples of science and I don't know how you can deny it.

Academia is built on science, much the same way that the academic researchers in computer science are much more closely related with math and science than your average programmer. If someone asked you why computer science is really a "science," you wouldn't point them to the Cathedral and the Bazaar, would you? You would point them to P vs NP or Cellular Automata or any of the other million subsections of computer science theory. In the same way, just because a private practice physician may be behind on his biology, you should never assume the same of an academic researcher, or you will appear quite foolish at any reputable university.

Well... yes. If you were expecting a quick action fix.
GITS and Masamune Shirow's manga in general need to be watched/read with some concentration.
Add to that Mamoru Oshii's direction who almost always goes of to a deep end of the psychology pool and it may seem unnecessarily complicated.

As for trash..

Try reading some of Shirow's manga. He would really get into particulars with every single little thing in his universe.
That is, before he figured out he can live off the royalties and churning out a borderline hentai calendars and art-books here and there.
There are no "beam guns" in Shirow's manga.
If a piece of technology is used there is a neat description somewhere of how and why that particular piece of technology works and what are its underlying principles.
There is almost no issue without some added bits of text with additional explanation for such cases.
Original Ghost in the Shell manga is a great example. There are about 10 pages of "notes" at the end of the book.

A great example of visionary "future tech" he also featured can be found in Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor.
In a story printed in 1992 (Drive Slave) he drew microrobots that travel through bloodstream using flagella for propulsion.
Such robots are widely researched today.

 
On other hand...
I fear that you have no idea what Sci-Fi is. Or Science Fiction. Or that one is primarily read, and other mostly watched these days.

GITS SAC 1, 2 and the movies are great sci-fi.
GITS manga and movies are great Science Fiction.
If nothing else, Hollywood hacks like Wachowskis ripping it off is a good indicator of its value.

Use your imagination, it's a way to turn electricity into drinking water. It would be useful on a lifeboat for example, you could run it off solar power. People can survive for a month with no food but only a couple of days without water.

Mind you, on a lifeboat I'd probably use a solar still.

I can't find a freely available reference. The abstract of this one demonstrates the principle though article

The reason why nobody will fake a result is because light measurement experiments are far too easy to replicate with cheap equipment. Being caught would be a near certainty.

Conventional incinerator plants produce a lot of ash and nasty combustion byproducts, like benzene, toluene, etc. This is a result of the incomplete combustion of the trash. Even well controlled, high temperature incinerators have this problem with the stack gases.

Plasma systems reduce everything down to elemental composition. All of the toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) get broken down to C, H, N and O. This can be done in a variety of ways, many of them more effective and energy efficient than you might think.

The point of plasma reduction is not that it's going to magically be a net energy producer, but that it's a much cleaner way to recover some energy while you are destroying trash. This would be particularly appropriate for difficult to recycle materials, such as stubborn plastics, components with trace heavy metals, things with toxic coatings, etc.

I would cite this but it looks like you have to pay to access it. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W5H-4DN17NH-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=179ce4d1cf2bf2e1d04e2b8b36877a4f

I would suggest that all who believe in anthropogenic global warming read this. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VF0-3YS9862-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=f5228771e5b2eb13a78e4d93d3f7a004

Yet another think-of-the-children article. First off not all Zombies are bad. There has been a lot of negative and biased media regarding Zombies, most of which is complete fiction. The media always likes to sensationalize and dwell upon the negative.

From the Canadian Society Counteracting The Unfair Treatment Of The Living Impaired (CSCTUTOTLI):

Zombies are people too and should not be judged by the few of their kind that are actually bad or the stereotypes depicted by television and movies.

- http://www.ifyouwereazombie.com/50-we-get-letters...-zombies-eh.-take-off-hoser.html

If we could make an effort to live with them instead of demonizing them the world would be a far better place.

One must first try to solve the problem instead of merely dealing with the consequences. If people don't like Zombies in the first place then "scientists" should stop experimenting with genetic engineering, human cloning etc. Stop trying to play god with life forms. Prevention is always better than a cure.

One of the best methods for dealing with unruly Zombies is proper and professional training, make sure they are properly leashed and muzzled when in public, and make sure that children don't approach Zombies without proper parental supervision.

Before posting such lame and biased topics on slashdot people should first do some research. While there is very little scientific research on the topic of Zombies, I have listed a couple of related articles:
- http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/1441495520-41605750/content~content=a714022128~db=all
- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W84-4D1MX3K-6&_user=10&_origUdi=B75JF-4DHWX0N-F&_fmt=high&_coverDate=07%2F31%2F2004&_rdoc=1&_orig=article&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=db53fa206b2c098c5c0ce2758901d679

If you are really interested in helping the cause against Zombie discrimination then you should try to find a local chapter of PETZ (People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies).

The full journal article is available free from Neuron right now via ScienceDirect, for those who prefer to read what the study actually says versus what the popsci reporter decided to interpret it as.

survive a photographer's flash

Found it.

The author and year alone are not enough, but couple it with the subject of the research and finding it is fairly trivial.

He did publish a couple of other studies on this during 2006, however, so this may still not be the study the GP was citing.

Yay, we finally got to the personal attack and the accusation of a drug-induced altered mental state!

Now, if you've never read anything about tokamak reactors or the NIF (or other intertial confinement research), I suggest you do so.

Several different research projects are working toward using HTE of water or HTE of water + CO2 (to produce methane gas), so it's not exactly pixie dust.

Lead-acid? What upcoming mass-produced EV/PHEV is calling for lead-acid? Li-ion is the name of the game, and those are usually 96-99% efficient. The average electric transmission efficiency in the US is 92.8%. You didn't include charger losses, usually 92-93%. You didn't include inverter losses, but your motor losses were too extreme; motor and inverter efficiency combined is generally 85-90% in real-world driving conditions. Your number of 40% for the power plant would be high for coal but low for natural gas, so fair enough.

0.4*0.98*0.928*0.925*0.875=29.4% efficiency. Well-to-wheels efficiency on an gasoline ICE vehicle is generally around 14%. Yes, the *engine* on an ICE vehicle isn't that inefficient when operating in peak conditions, but the combination of it rarely running in a peak operating envelope due to variations in torque and rpm needs, plus parasitic engine losses, means that those numbers aren't close to what you get in the real world.

As for ICE efficiency, Toyota says their Prius gasoline engine achieves 40% and Volkswagen determined their 3-cylinder Lupo diesel engines are at 50%.

You're confusing engine efficiency and well-to-wheels efficiency. Heck, even pump to wheels efficiency is a lot lower than engine to wheels due to all of the parasitic losses in a car.

Here's an interesting study comparing the well-to-wheels efficiency of various vehicle types in Norway. Check out the graphs.

As for the "long tailpipe" argument, it's busted here.

Google "excel probability flaws" or other such key words. you will find documents like this:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V8V-4S1S6FC-5&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=c20658d896f2aa649df41e54fc1219b7

and that destroying the ability of workers to bargain collectively will help our standard of living,

Actually, the average income for non-unionized workers (the majority of workers these days) is significantly lower in industries that have some unionized workers. Overall, workers' collective action has had no positive effect on the economic standing of the working class as a whole. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WX8-45FK09R-9&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=55c1a737055c67e6435ca2058b847c75

You did; I'll only respond to this one ;)

I'm not only talking about construction energy for the battery. There's the entire processing cycle for the nickel, which puts a hybrid at a profound disadvantage compared to a diesel from day one.

No, it does not. Just stop and think about this for a second. A new hybrid battery costs about $3k these days. Just assuming that everything else was *free*, and that the *only* cost in making it was was dirt-cheap electricity (i.e., maximizing the amount of energy possibly spent manufacturing it), and that there was *no* profit margin, *no* shipping costs, *no* labor, etc. That'd be about 30,000kWh, or 108 GJ, or about 800 gallons of diesel, or about the energy you can turn to torque from 200 gallons of diesel after losses, which, assuming 38mpg and the average 12,000 miles a year, works out to just over 1 1/2 years of fuel. This is assuming that the *only* costs are electricity, the cheapest form of bulk energy, and ignores that the nickel gets *recovered* by recycling. I mean, the concept doesn't even withstand the laugh test.

I'm also not assuming what you call "reasonable" battery life. I doubt they last more than five years without significant loss of capacity.

Then you doubt reality. NiMH RAV4EVs have been on the road since the late 90s, and they're still working great. Hybrids stress their packs a lot more than EVs (more charge/discharge cycles at a higher rate), and the packs for most hybrids have an 8 or so year warranty. In testing, the automotive variants of li-ions are even more durable than NiMHs. There's this widespread myth that you seem to have fallen for that somehow batteries must inherently die in short order. This is simply false; it's all dependant on the stability of the battery chemistry. Jay Leno owns an early 1900s Baker Electric that still runs on its original nickel-iron batteries.

I'm getting 50-60mpg depending on conditions.

Yeay, a data-free unsupported anecdote!

A) Fuel type is irrelevant for engines that only accept one type of fuel. mpg = miles / gallons. It's how far you can go per gallon of fuel.

If you're an idiot. Who only cares about the *number* of gallons that they burn? Most people care about how much oil they're consuming (15% more in a gallon of diesel), how much CO2 they're emitting (15% more per gallon of diesel burned), how much they're paying (diesel is more expensive per gallon), and so on. Heck, by your argument, we should all buy cars that run on a beryllium slurry, if all you care about is how many miles you go per gallon burned.

B) I also have a lower emissions class than a hybrid.

And you'll be more specific when...?

C) All the mpg figures are in imperial gallons. I'm European, you insensitive clod. km/l would be easier to compare.

Then comparing your numbers to US figures is, as you know, pure BS, as 1 imperial gallon is 1.2 US gallons.

You need to deal with the fact that the revised EPA drivecycle is a tougher drivecycle than the European (NEDC) drivecycle. Our standardized testing actually involves things like air conditioning, aggressive acceleration, higher speeds, etc. Yours does not. Deal with the fact that whatever your subjective experience, your rated vehicle numbers are laxer than our rated vehicle numbers. Whenever a European car makes it to the US, its mileage figures decrease. Example:

-----
2009 Ford Fiesta ECOnetic -- Estimated at 54 + mpgUS combined on the 08 EPA test cycles.

Cologne - Ford of Europe?s new Fiesta ECOnetic leads the Fiesta models at this year?s Paris Auto Show.

A little competition never hurt nobody.

Except the loser.

Wrong. Even if you lose, competition makes you perform better than you otherwise would have. There are lots of research studies about this. See for example this study.

Well, whether we put new vehicles into service or not, we can be damned sure that other countries will keep on motoring along. A few people in this thread have mentioned the Chinese space program. I would have *thought* that somebody would remember that the ESA has been launching craft for years now. But, for that matter, so have the Japanese. And India's program is going nicely. The Brazilian space program is a bit gunshy these days, but, make no mistake, they'll be launching more rockets some time soon. Though we have to wonder how they feel about the Guyanese launch capability, which has been a pretty serious thing for over ten years now.

Folks, there are more governments with space programs then there are well-known Linux distros these days. And plenty of them have or are well on the way to developing their own launch vehicles and facilities. And that doesn't even begin to address all the possible private actors. How many of y'all know how many organizations were vying for the original X Prize? A hell of a lot more than the three or four that most media outlets are aware of. And even that doesn't include some relevant players.

We're entering a world where many space programs are becoming more like seventies Silicon Valley startups than like NASA. For anybody to think that they understand what will be available in three or four years and how just shows that they either haven't looked into it, that they're very warped by Big Company Think, or that they've got their head so far up their ass that they're seeing daylight up their throat.

Fuel cells are not "a good thing". They're an incredibly expensive boondoggle that's been leaching money from electric vehicles. Let's compare and contrast FCVs with BEVs that use modern automotive li-ions (phosphates, stabilized spinels, titanates, etc).

They're roughly a third the efficiency of EVs. Even if you use cleantech to create the hydrogen, you're still talking three times the coastline covered in wind turbines, three times the desert land covered in solar, three times the rivers dammed for hydro, etc -- not good. Even if your electrolysis was near lossless, as a couple techs in the lab are proposing to do, they're still nearly twice as wasteful as EVs. Even hydrogen from natural gas reformation compared to EVs powered by natural gas power plants is *still* significantly more wasteful for fuel cells ((25% efficiency versus 35%).

Hydrogen is expensive; electricity is dirt cheap. Hydrogen is fundamentally always going to be more expensive because it's such a PITA to handle -- leaks through practically anything, embrittles metals, is corrosive, etc -- and not to mention, poses safety and environmental risks.

Safety? Autmotive li-ions can be abused to heck and back without starting a fire -- discharged to 0V, overcharged, punctured, etc; the electrolyte is generally flammable, but no moreso than gasoline. Hydrogen is an incredibly combustible substance -- burns in almost any fuel air mixture, very vigorously, with a very pale blue, hard to see flame; rapidly evolves deflagrations into detonations in atmospheric conditions; pools under overhangs; can be ignited with less than a tenth the ignition energy of gasoline; enters pipes and tubes and follows them to their destinations, pooling there; etc. Liquid hydrogen is even worse; it acts like a high explosive. Check out NASA's safety guidelines for dealing with hydrogen to get an idea of how much of a pain it is to handle.

Fuel cells are ridiculously expensive. Here, go shopping. A good chunk of that price is due to the price of platinum, one of the rarest elements on the planet, although things like Nafion membranes don't help the price, either. Getting fuel cells for $10/W would be an outstanding price. Your average car will need ~10kW to maintain highway speeds, and more for accel/decel, so you're looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars. Automotive li-ions, except for the titanates, are usually a little over $0.50/Wh in bulk, and are projected to significantly decline with mass production, since they're not raw materials costs limited. A couple tens of kilowatts (a couple hours of driving at highway speeds) means $10-20k currently, and significantly less in the near future. And to top it all off, the batteries last longer, too. Nafion membranes tend to wear out over time in fuel cells, giving them around five years or so in typical FCV usage (some techs are proposed to raise that). And there are other components to break, too -- fuel cells have moving parts (compressors, pumps, etc), support parts (heaters, etc), and so on. Automotive li-ions will generally last for thousands to even tens of thousands (in the case of the titanates) of cycles. We're talking decades. To give an idea of how durable they are, the Volt is going to come with a 10 year warranty on its battery pack, and all of the other upcoming EV/PHEV makers are similarly talking about very long warranties. They should last the life of the car.

As for range, it's roughly a draw. 200-250 miles is a typical range for a FCV that costs hundreds of thous

You already have pulsating magnetic fields in your house. In the US, AC current is 60 hz, so you have a constant 60 hz magnetic field. That hum you hear is the oscillating magnetic field moving steel back and forth.

Electrical wiring in houses shouldn't produce very strong fields -- on the order of mG a few inches away. That hum you hear is most likely from transformers in devices you have plugged into the wall than from induction on the beams in your house unless you have a very strange house.

The magnetic field won't hurt you. My dad was an electrical lineman for forty years, often working on the 30,000 volt towers. He couldn't wear a mechanical wristwatch because it would become magnetized. He just turned 77 and he's healthier than a lot of guys my age.

If magnetic fields caused cancer, linemen would die of lukemia right and left.

Wrong type of cancer.

Epidemiological studies show that people working with magnetic fields in fact *do* have a higher rate of brain cancers than the average population. (See here , here, and here.)

That last study notes that leukemia rates aren't affected by EM exposure, and this study shows no increase in breast cancers in rats due to magnetic field exposure.

We actually have a model and theory for how AC fields promote brain cancers. You can read this full paper on an experiment to test a theory that iron-mediated free radical creation is at fault. Here's an abstract for a study testing for oxidative effects of EMF in snails.

(Also, the plural of anecdote is not evidence -- much less, "I knew a guy who did [X risky thing] and is doing just awesome, so stop worrying about it, you pansies!")

Glucose is the form of sugar that travels in your bloodstream to fuel the mitochondrial furnaces responsible for your brain power. Glucose is the only fuel normally used by brain cells. Because neurons cannot store glucose, they depend on the bloodstream to deliver a constant supply of this precious fuel.

Complete glucose deprivation has been shown to induce neuronal apoptosis, but the effect of moderate glucose deprivation under normal and pathological conditions is not fully understood.

Glucose is the only source of energy usually available to the brain. Without oxygen or glucose, neurons will die.

The K+ and Na+ is freely available in the bloodstream and intracellular fluid. Nerves use selective ion channels to establish the ion gradients used for depolarization but they don't require a specific source for them: they're everywhere in the body.
In contrast, without glucose your nerve cells will die. They require glucose to power aerobic metabolism and produce the ATP that they use to maintain the ion gradient.

NOxes happen because at the high temperatures of combustion, nitrogen reacts and picks up oxygen atoms.
The formula for burning gasoline is gas + O2 -> H2O + CO2 and yet it yields NOxes.
Why did you think hydrogen combustion would be different?

My bad - I assumed the NOx was coming only from waste products of the gasoline. Hydrogen doesn't produce NOx if it's burned at a low enough temperature.

I'm glad to see, however, there's some hope that NOx can be reduced or eliminated in a hydrogen-burning engine.