Slashdot Mirror

Finally, the results of today's climate simulations--which are much more sophisticated than those that were available in the 1980s--suggest that even a nuclear exchange of just a few dozen weapons could cool Earth substantially for a decade or more.

Currently, a measurement accuracy of one part in 10^7 is possible

It would be interesting (albeit an ethical grey area) if one day we reached a stage where we can create a clone of someone from their genome (i.e. without needing their actual DNA). We'd be able to recreate people hundreds of years after they die.

But we're still rather a while away from being able to stick together billions of base pairs and create a usable piece of DNA. However - it's actually been done before (article is pretty old, I know) with simpler organisms (viruses) and their RNA, so it's not unthinkable...

Indeed, I love french press coffee, but the whole cafestol situation is pretty sad. They've done the experiments, given french press coffee to one group, and drip coffee to another, and after 6 months the french press drinkers had about 10% more LDL cholesterol. Here's the study, and a non-technical blurb. There's also a lengthy review I haven't gotten around to reading yet.

I don't know what to do. Going back to drip coffee would make me awfully sad, but better to be sad than prematurely dead.

According to this paper, if you are in hot ice, you'd be zapped or fried (maybe that's the same thing) ;^)

From:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/bob8. asp

"Both the Los Alamos and NREL teams calculate a maximum of 42 percent conversion of solar power to usable electricity. Conventional cells, by contrast, operate at 15 to 20 percent efficiency."

You would think but you would be wrong.

You see a landfill gets many things dumped into them that should not be. The major problem with this is that many of these chemicals end up reacting with mercury which causes more problems then most people realize, please see some of the URL's below as to why you are mistaken in assuming that mercury is a noble gas. On top of this you also have the problem that it appears bacteria found in landfills are able to convert mercury into the much deadlier form of methylated mercury which is again bad.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010707/fob1. asp

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/20 01/jul/science/kc_landfill.html

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/people/lindberg/lindberg3. html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb4814/is_20 0507/ai_n17457809

Show me a bowl that doesn't have a hole and I'll show you a bowl. Show me a bowl WITH a hole and I'll show you a doughnut.

How is this news? The fact that bdelloid rotifers have remained asexual for over 40 million years is not news e.g. an article from 2000.

Wait...doesn't pot stimulate the same area? So potheads will do shitty too? I WANNA TRY! :-)

But I suppose "tantalisingly close" isn't enough to prove prior art on Penrose's U.S. Patent 4133152.

If I recall correctly, the proof that Penrose tiling is aperiodic depends on projection of a line marked out in intervals representing an irrational number onto a line marked out in uniform intervals. According to Wikipedia (hey, this isn't an academic paper, so I can cite Wikipedia, right?) the first reference for irrational numbers was in the Indian Sulba Sutras composed between 800-500 BC, so the fundamental knowledge was available in plenty of time for these tilings. And because irrational numbers were arrived at geometrically I can imagine that the ancients could indeed have understood the math.

There's more information about the ancient tilings here, which shows that the Islamic tilings break down into five basic tiles, and that each of those five tiles can be broken down into Penrose tiles. So it looks as if they beat the first modern aperiodic tiling, Berger's initial one, which needed 20426 tiles, but didn't get as far as cutting it down to Penrose's two.

Methane is a gas created by animals and insects (termites). Currently it mostly escapes into the atmosphere where it damages the ozone layer. As other posters have responded, it can be harvested from pig farms or garbage dumps. Methane and other natural gas hydrates are also found frozen at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico in massive quantities.

Unlike traditional fossil fuels like petroleum, methane can be generated in very short time spans and as a byproduct to other production activities (bacon). The problem remains that burning anything is not a clean energy source. Natural gas cars will still emit carbon dioxide, which is one of the main problems we're grappling with in terms of global warming. The plus side is that this fuel source might help Americans put fewer of their dollars in Middle Eastern pockets.

Seth

It's hard to find much about Kelvin's ether vortex theory of atoms, but try here. It comes from an 1867 paper of his which may have been reprinted somewhere.

He gave an explanation in there as to why the antimatter was more likely to fall in than the matter; I don't remember the details offhand. A quick search reveals the following interesting sites:

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Har rison/BlackHoleThermo/BlackHoleThermo.html (Look in the 'Black Hole Thermodynamics' section)

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20040925/bob9. asp This site seems geared more towards the non-techincal reader, but it includes this paragraph, paraphrasing Stephen Hawking, which seems to support my earlier statements:

Hawking came to this view when he introduced some of the elements of quantum theory to black hole physics. According to quantum theory, the vacuum of space isn't empty but seethes with pairs of elementary particles winking in and out of existence. One partner in each pair has negative energy, which keeps that particle gravitationally bound to the black hole, while the other has positive energy, which gives it enough oomph to escape from a black hole.

In short, I don't know (I am a computer nerd, not a physicist); I am simply parroting what I have read 8-)

Cheers

I'd like to add as an honorable mention, Evlis, the Welsh corgi that demonstrated an intuitive ability to solve calculus optimization problems.

Geckos probably lick their feet clean every once in a while, or have some other bio-mechanism to decontaminate their feet.

According to this science news article, gecko feet are self cleaning. It's one of the properties that makes synthetic gecko adhesive so attractive.

A number of references in my reply to your post show I did read your post, despite your suggestion to the contrary. Presumably your mind is not sufficiently open to consider that I find your post inconsistent and therefore cannot firmly conclude your objection is one of principle, as compared to e.g. knee-jerk anti-authoritarion thinking?

Clearly I recognise the grounds for an objection in principle to the security thing (why mention it otherwise?), and I do get the reference, and I do think the US government is building a fake picture of the dangers we face to justify its actions, or increase control, or however you prefer to describe their goals and motivations. Nonetheless, given the emotional and perjorative tone of calling people like me cowards and sheep, it is entirely possible your thinking is in fact more emotional than logical, and not based on consistent principle as such. As you point out, you can be tracked via other mechanisms that presumably for your own convenience you still keep.

Individuals might have a given point of view or principles similar to your own, and yet nonetheless for practical purposes (e.g. considering the safety of others more important than views on security policy, shared principles here I suspect) choose to make a compromise. You compromise to have a cell phone; I compromise to reduce delays. Why that makes *me* a coward, but gives *you* the luxury of opting out, I'm not sure.

On flying safety - again, not clear what your point is here. Flying is safer per mile because the danger is take off and landing. So driving is clearly safer on a per trip basis if the plane takes off, goes nowhere and lands again. The question then becomes "how many miles do you have to fly before it's safer", and the figure given these days is around 18km (first result on Google for post 9/11 research: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20030111/fob3. asp). You can't get commericial flights that short - so flying is always safer. Should you have a different set of figures leading to a different conclusion, fair enough, but I am making a rational decision here.

I did not say delay was the issue, but delays and standing on a forecourt filling up a car are not typically associated with luxury. Perhaps a blunter point to make would be that your supposed luxury in fact appears to be an indulgence in either self-righteousness, thinking you are more free-willed than others, or some other intellectual self-praise. Luxuriating in this kind of self-belief is often an indicator that the individual's stated principles are in fact not the emotional driver behind that person is expressing. For example, a government official might indulge in the luxury of saying they are protecting their citizens from harm, and actually enjoy that warm feeling, while everyone else is thinking they really just want more control even at the risk of removing civil liberties.

Teeth are an interesting problem, but someone could always offer crazy interpretations of them as capable of plant eating. I'd rather see them explain the A) huge, probable T. rex coprolite with crushed up bone in it, B) the stomach contents of the Coelophysis found at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico -- the rib cage area contains bones of their last meal (originally thought to be of the same species, but maybe a type of crocodile-like creature instead), C) the stomach contents of Compsognathus from Solnhofen in Germany (probably a type of lizard), or D) the bite marks on dinosaur bones found at a site in Madagascar.

It's fine (though crazily unlikely) to hypothetically propose T. rex and other sharp-toothed dinosaurs could have used their teeth to eat plants, but when the stomach contents, bite marks, and their poop imply a meat-eating diet, then that hypothesis is quickly negated by the evidence.

Elevated estrogen and estrogen mimicking substances have made it into our rivers and streams, causing signs of hermaphroditism in fish. Scientists have discovered a wide range of other drugs in our drinking water, from pain killers to birth control pills to antidepressants. High levels of rocket fuel toxins have been found in mothers' milk. My city still uses lead piping to transfer most of its water, and they alkalinize the water to reduce lead levels to "acceptable" levels, even though scientists have pretty much shown that the only acceptable lead level is no lead at all.

It's not entirely clear what, if any, effects these substances have on developing children. Personally, I'd rather be safe than sorry and remove these contaminants from my water.

Apparently someone doesn't know how interesting this problem is.

In your obvious haste to be first to point this out you clearly just linked to the first source you found on a simple search, which is a nutty creationist website. How about a slightly less wacky news source?

There was an aticle in Science News last year about robots that have a more natural gait.

you can find it HERE.

It's going to take time in geological scale for any lead to get out of the glass it is part of.

That's a very reasonable thought, with which I'd have instinctively agreed, but unfortunately it turns out not to be true. Apparently it takes mere hours to days if the glass is crushed. Here is a surprising brief report from Science News, which, since it's in a God-damned PDF, I will quote:

Though anecdotal reports have hinted that picture tubes' glass might leach [lead], no one knew how much, notes Timothy G. Townsend of the University of Florida in Gainesville. To fill that data gap, his team tested 36 picture tubes.... The researchers...took samples from different portions of the tubes' glass. Then, they crushed the glass into fine and coarse particles, shook 100 grams of each sample in a beaker of acidic water for several hours, and measured how much lead had leached into the water....lead from all 30 color [picture tubes] exceeded [the Federal safety standard for lead in water of 5 mg/L]....Some glass tainted water with more than 200 mg/l of lead [40 times the Federal safety limit]. When that glass was crushed to pieces less than 5 millimeters in diameter, it had the largest surface area and leached the most--often tainting water with 400 mg/L of lead [80 times the Federal safety limit]. The researchers also discovered why color units leach so much lead: It's their frit, which 70 percent lead by weight. From now on, the researchers conclude, color picture tubes should be considered hazardous waste and kept out of landfills and municipal-waste incinerators.

Strange and unsettling. The article is from 2000, we can hope things have improved since then.

Slashdot wants more characters per line Sky above 37Â375"N 122Â2222"W at Sat 2005 Jul 2 20:11 Slashdot wants more characters per line ScienceDaily Magazine -- News Summaries Slashdot wants more characters per line BBC NEWS | Science/Nature Slashdot wants more characters per line Science News Online Slashdot wants more characters per line Molecule of the Day Slashdot wants more characters per line The Loom Slashdot wants more characters per line Cosmic Variance Slashdot wants more characters per line Scientific American news Slashdot wants more characters per line Sciencegate Slashdot wants more characters per line New Scientist Slashdot wants more characters per line LiveScience Slashdot wants more characters per line Science And Politics Slashdot wants more characters per line Chris C Mooney Slashdot wants more characters per line symmetry Magazine Slashdot wants more characters per line Discover Magazine Slashdot wants more characters per line Mathematician OTD Slashdot wants more characters per line Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Home Slashdot wants more characters per line Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter: Home Slashdot wants more characters per line ESA - Cassini-Huygens Slashdot wants more characters per line NASA - Cassini-Huygens: Close Encounter with Saturn Slashdot wants more characters per line HiRISE Operations Center -- HiROC Slashdot wants more characters per line Cassini Saturn Slashdot wants more characters per line CICLOPS: Cassini Imaging Slashdot wants more characters per line Saturn Today Slashdot wants more characters per line HubbleSite - NewsCenter Slashdot wants more characters per line MESSENGER Web Site Slashdot wants more characters per line Deep Impact: Your First Look Inside a Comet! Slashdot wants more characters per line Pluto, Charon, and other Kuiper Belt Objects including, Sedna, 2003 UB313, as well as Asteroids and Comets. Slashdot wants more characters per line Nature Slashdot wants more characters per line Pharyngula

For years I've subscribed to 'Science News', a slim weekly publication with wonderfully concise articles covering most if not all branches of science. They've been publishing since 1921 and are pretty highly regarded in the industry. It's written for the scientist who wants to keep up on what's going on outside their specialty, or anyone educated enough to not need the lowest-common-denominator language required by the mass media outlets. They have a website at http://www.sciencenews.org/ but I find the paper version worthwhile to have in my car so I can skim a few paragraphs at stoplights, or while otherwise stuck in traffic...

First link is Defense Mechanism: Circumcision averts some HIV infections

Circumcision apperently *does* prevent HIV transmission.

Defense Mechanism: Circumcision averts some HIV infections

Better-Off Circumcised? Foreskin may permit HIV entry, infection

Male circumcision could avert millions of HIV infections

All links from Science News online website (www.sciencenews.org). Note that the final two links are subscriber only.

Circumcision apperently *does* prevent HIV transmission.

Defense Mechanism: Circumcision averts some HIV infections

Better-Off Circumcised? Foreskin may permit HIV entry, infection

Male circumcision could avert millions of HIV infections

All links from Science News online website (www.sciencenews.org). Note that the final two links are subscriber only.

I'd recommend a subscription to the weekly periodical _Science News_. It contains short yet detailed articles "covering the most important research in all fields of science". Organized for the reader who actually cares about the science (as opposed to the sound bite), it has many "small details" that it gets right, like having an up-to-date and searchable online edition and ,*gasp* always citing the source paper(s)! It's very nice to read a captivating article summarizing a recent discovery and then be able to grab a more detailed technical paper, should one fancy. http://www.sciencenews.org/

ScienceNews

I used to get the print version of their weekly pamphlet. It's aimed at the science-knowledgeable public.

There was also a good piece on the invisibility question about 2 weeks ago in Science News , my favorite technical magazine. Its way better than any jerk wire-service story.

We don't have a new Bangs or Thompson yet because pop culture today is primarily a technology story. And we don't know how to write about technology.

That's why we read /. and all the other fine online tech-news sites.

Really, this is hardly a new problem. Print journalism has long had high-quality sources of scientific and other tech news, though most of them are now online. The fact that 99% of the general public, including the mainstream media (MSM), were unaware of them didn't change the fact that good information was available to anyone at all interested. We've had weekly publications like Science and Nature for more than a century, and note that both are much fatter than Time or Newsweek.

We do have a bit of a problem with the commercial consolidation in the MSM, which naturally goes with reducing costs by dumbing down. But anyone with access to a computer and the Net can easily spend their entire day reading good quality tech news. And that's probably where we'll find the next Hunter Thompson.

Or maybe (s)he's already here, blogging away. Anyone got any nominations?

There were some articles recently about biofuel production pushing up food costs.

Ramping up biofuel production in a big way as you suggest could potentially impact the price of food. This wouldn't be a big deal for most Americans, but it could affect those who purchase the food exported from the US.

Cellulose-based biofuel would mitigate this effect, allowing the production of both food and fuel from the same crops, but currently the technology is not commercially viable.

Black hole life preserver to the rescue![*]

Ok, maybe not entirely rescue, but it would buy you time. Only 0.09 seconds to tell the truth, but it's something.

[*] Not tested in dual hole configuration, use at your own risk, no liability implied.

Actually, sonoluminescence was discovered in 1934. I believe the most recent batch of research may have been inspired by the observation that snapping shrimp seem to be able to acheive it, and trying to understand what process could release a photon via such a relatively low power system. It seems that if it's not some form of fusion, then an entirely new set of physics, or at least chemistry, needs to be invented.

This is not a bad idea, but like any other notion of harvesting energy from the kinetics of the planet, I think we ned to make sure we understand the full impact of removing that energy from the system that is the planet. Weather patterns rely on the energy inherent in air movement - and harvesting that, while seemingly innocuous, could be a bad idea. Aside from the other issues that come from wind-power farms, such as scaling, etc., this is something that must be considered before we start possibly causing unanticipated effects. Bear in mind, too, the scope and scale of ecological and meteorlogical impacts. Personally, I like the notion of an external source, myself, but I'm also aware of the limitations we face in trying to use it currently.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060121/fob7. asp

Fusion reactions take place in the vat because clusters of bubbles form and then violently collapse, explains nuclear engineer and team leader Rusi P. Taleyarkhan of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. A neutron or another energetic particle triggers a bubble to form in a low-pressure trough of the ultrasound waves, he says. Then, high pressure from the wave crushes the orb to an enormous density and temperature that fuse some atomic nuclei of the bubble's gas.

Before everyone goes nuts saying our goose is cooked. It appears that not all sources agree as to the distance of this star. While some sources claim the star is 1,950 light years away, others claim it is as much as 5,000 light years away. http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060722/fob8. asp On referring to RS Ophiuchi, ScienceNews states: "That finding could have two interpretations, suggests the report's coauthor Richard Barry of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. If the star system resides at about 5,000 light-years from Earth, then the emissions reflect a mysterious, dense reservoir of material surrounding the two stars. If the system lies at only about one-third that distance, then the emission may for the first time be revealing a short-lived epoch during which the white dwarf, soon after its outburst, becomes as bloated as its red giant partner." Sites like Space.com claim it is 5,000 light years away, while Wiki has it pegged at 1,950. Meanwhile, the Harvard Gazette reports that: "When do scientists think the Ophiuchi supernova will rock the universe? Of course, no one knows enough about what goes on out there to say. But the best guess is it will take thousands of years for the final bit of gas to accumulate and blow the white dwarf away. Meanwhile, these reports should stimulate many more astronomers to focus their attention on the constellation Ophiuchi." So... I think it's a bit premature to claim we are doomed.

If it existed, had a physical channel, and spent energy - we would see it. Or at least some artifacts of "it".

It's like the flatlander story and what it would be like to see a sphere. (forget the rest, just look at that part) While we may not be able to understand what is going on (3D sphere being inserted into flatland), we most certainly see elements of SOMETHING going on (changing diameter circle appearing out of nowhere). Like the flatlander example of a changing diameter circle just appearing out of nowhere -- if telepathy really exists, then we would see some derivative of it show up in a meaningful pattern of somekind in this world.

Right now, we see none of the above when it comes to telepathy.

Ethanol, or any biofuel, will be hard pressed to replace oil. Petroleum is essentially very old and dirty, but efficient biofuel, stockpiled underground. A year's worth of [insert favorite biofuel source plant(s) here] will be hard pressed to replace an eon's worth of petroleum.

Here is some back-of-the-napkin stuff - mostly unit conversions. Nothing fancy. If you trust my math skills, feel free to skip to the surprise ending.

My sources are just whatever came up first on Google.

So here goes:

According to this link, there were 598 million metric tons of corn produced globally in 2002. (That was the first year I came across. Let's assume it's typical.)

598 million metric tons * (2204.6 lbs/metric ton)
...converts to 1.3 billion lbs of corn.

A bushel of corn is currently defined as 56 lbs.

1.3 billion lbs * (1 bushel/56 lbs)
...converts to about 23.5 million bushels of corn.

According to this article, a bushel of corn can produce 2.7 gallons of ethanol.

23.5 million bushels * (2.7 gallons/bushel)
...tells us that 63.5 million gallons of ethanol could theoretically be made from all the corn grown globally in one year.

According to this, a barrel of petroleum has 42 gallons. After refining, it could be made into about 19.5 gallons of gasoline.

So if we say that 1 gallon of ethanol can replace one gallon of gasoline, then

63.5 million gallons * (1 barrel / 19.5 gallons)
...comes to 3.2 million barrels.

(The 1-to-1 ethanol-to-gasoline ratio is a falacy, as ethanol will only take your car 0.8 miles for every 1 mile gas will, but this is getting too complicated. Let's just say 1-to-1.)

According to this source, the United States currently uses 20 million barrels of oil per day.

3.2 million barrels * (1 day / 20 million barrels)
...amounts to 0.16 days.

So if we can stop using corn for livestock feed, corn starch, corn syrup, corn oil, corn chips, corn stoves, corn bread, popcorn, candy corn*, corn on the cob, corn dogs, creamed corn... er... sorry, I was channeling Forrest Gump for a second...

If we use all of the corn grown in one year for making ethanol, and production is still propped up by using current (petroleum-heavy) farming practices, it would keep the U.S. running for just about four hours. Or, if you prefer, Argentina could last almost a week. Or we could supply Togo with their fuel needs for the entire year.

"Your math is wrong!" you exclaim. Not unlikely. But show me where. Am I off by an order of magnitude? Let's take it from 4 hours to 40 hours. That's almost two days! Woohoo!

"Corn is the wrong source!" you shout. Let switch to sugar. Or switchgrass. Or anything you want. Let's imagine the Fubar tree, which is 100 times more efficient for making ethanol. So now we've gone from 3 hours to almost 17 days. Woohoo!

Let's dare to dream, and combine the last two! I'm off by an order of magnitude, and there's a massive switch to Fubar tree farming. The U.S. now has over 5 months of petroleum replacement. Sorry Argentina and Togo...

Feel free to check my math. I'm sure this must be due to rounding error.

--
* - I checked. Corn syrup is an ingredient in Candy Corn

The story about a paralyzed man (Matthew Nagle) controling a computer with his brain is definitely not new. There was a very good story in Wired in March 2005, and much more recently, a piece on NPR's The Infinite Mind. According to the piece, Matthew has since had the implant removed, since the trial has ended. I believe at least one other trial is in progress.

As for bugs controlling stuff with their mind, here's a sciencenews article from 2000 about a lamprey (not actually a bug I guess) steering a computer-controlled robot for no good reason. I saw the original paper in Artificial Life at some point, and it was easily the most ridiculous scientific journal article I've ever seen.

eldavojohn, if that's his real name, is refering to things discussed here, and, wait . . . OMG, by George, right here!. Read the articles reported on so kindly by /. and you'll understand which humor he's refering to. Funny (to me at least, I'm sure not you), your post rather answers his own question well.

PS - don't call people idiots, sir. That's really really mean.

The fake elements originated at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, NOT LANL. (See http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20020720/fob5r ef.asp) And the mustang story is largely false, although the mainstream press did not make a big deal out of the fact that the story originally reported turned out to be untrue. (See http://www.lanl.gov/news/index.php?fuseaction=home .story&story_id=1453). Also keep in mind that that LBL, Argonne, Brookhaven, etc... do minimal amounts of classified work compared to LLNL, LANL, and SNL. Even PNL and ORNL do significantly less than the big three. So if LANL, LLNL, and SNL tend to have more security incidents, then one cannot ignore that a stellar record from a laboratory that does no classified work means very little in comparison.

Please get your facts right. It's that sort of uninformed, incorrect rhetoric and accusation that got LANL in the press-generated hot water it currently finds itself in. Are you a politician?

From the Article:The newly discovered planets have masses of about 10, 12 and 18 times that of Earth and they zip around the star in rapid orbits of about 9, 32 and 197 days, respectively. Based on their distances from the star, two inner worlds nearest the star are rocky planets similar to Mercury, the scientists suspect.

The significance of the distinction is that rocky planets may be much more likely to harbor earth-like life than are gas giants. Of course, being so close to their home sun that they have a 9 or 32-earth day year, it seems likely that the "earth-like" life may be mere bacteria living in subsurface water, rather than human-like meat-bags getting suntans on the surface.

If you don't pay attention, it's nobody's fault but your own if you get surprised this way.

Luis and Walter Alvarez proposed the asteroid-impact theory in 1980, not as speculation, but because of the global evidence of iridium enrichment at the K-T boundary. This was reinforced by the discovery of the Chicxulub crater in 1990. To me, that's somewhat more than 5-6 years ago, but you might be using a different calendar... Or a chronosynclastic infundibulum as a proxy server.

And look! Here's a report suggesting that bats are the reservoir for Ebola infection - from 1996.

Wake up and join us in the 21st century. It's lovely and warm here.

This technology has been around for a while: http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010901/bob14 .asp

I think that we are close to seeing why Apple *really* switched to Intel. Put on your tin foil hat because I'm about to take you for a conspiracy theory ride:

1) Intel have been working with Ovonyx since 2000 on a technology called phase change memory (or PRAM, for short). Basically, PRAM uses chalcogenide - the same material used in rewriteable optical media - in a solid state RAM, only it is manipulated electrically, instead of optically. This gives the RAM nonvolatility and random accessibility. It is several orders of magnatude faster than flash (nearly as fast as DRAM) and has a write cycle endurance of 10^12 demonstrated as of about 4 years ago.

2) Intel patent applications have led me to believe that they have made great strides in the technology, while remaining very tight lipped. Here's some insight. Note that they are discussing the displacement of SRAM, DRAM and flash with this technology. Noteworthy, is the following:

[0058] Turning to FIG. 5, a portion of a system 500 in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention is described. System 500 may be used in wireless devices such as, for example, a cellular telephone, personal digital assistant (PDA), a laptop or portable computer with wireless capability, a web tablet, a wireless telephone, a pager, an instant messaging device, a digital music player, a digital camera, or other devices that may be adapted to transmit and/or receive information wirelessly. System 500 may be used in any of the following systems: a wireless local area network (WLAN) system, a wireless personal area network (WPAN) system, or a cellular network, although the scope of the present invention is not limited in this respect.

Now, here's where it all begins:

Envision, if you will, a high-speed, nonvolatile memory with very low power consumption. This enables the following:

1) Intel Robson Technology. This would answer the question of durability. Why would Intel demo such a technology if flash memory would wear out in short order? With PRAM, you've got CMOS compatibility so you can throw the whole deal right into the processor.

2) Ultra-low power wireless devices. Add Intel's Wireless USB and you've got the perfect medium to talk to your iPod. In addition, your gonna end up using it for more than just an iPod. Store your entire "desktop" on the damn thing, add some authentication mechanisms and you can use any wireless USB equipped PC to log into your "wireless personal server".

There's more, but this should be good for now.

Apparently you haven't heard of Contra dancing http://www.sciencenews.org/pages/sn_arc97/6_14_97/ mathland.htm

How can you die happy without ever having seen the photo of the log book with the moth taped into it?

How can you die happy without ever having read about Maurice Wilkes' Aha! moment: "It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that...the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs."

• BBC News: China water pollution so bad, one third of rural water is undrinkable
  
• BBC News: Chinese corrupt officials sacked for ignoring pollution
  
• Air pollution so bad in China, it's killing crops
  
• Chinese pollution so bad it threatens regional political stability