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I could spend more time and get peer reviewed articles but...I won't so here are a few that my 30 seconds of googling turned up:

http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/102spring2002_Web_projects/Z.Yates/Zach's%20Web%20Project%20Folder/EICE%20-%20Main.htm

Scroll down to efficiency. Stock cars are typically 26% at the engine and closer to 12% at the wheels.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_cycle
Most gas powered plants are combined cycle which typically operate at 60% efficiency but can get up to 85%.

Here is a more detailed read comparing the Tesla to other cars energy efficiency whise:

www.stanford.edu/group/greendorm/participate/cee124/TeslaReading.pdf

improving the forests, saving the fuzzy animals, and so on, is actually served by the increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, as plants grow better in richer CO2 atmospheres and that leads to a stronger biosphere all round. By and large, there's very few better things we could have done with our intelligence for the continuance of life on Earth than releasing all of the trapped CO2 back into the atmosphere so that it can be used again.

While model simulations over the analysis period of this
study indicated a small terrestrial carbon sink for atmospheric CO2, this study does
suggest that carbon storage in high-latitude regions like the western Arctic is
particularly vulnerable to the loss of carbon to the atmosphere from the response
of soil organic matter to warming. Such a response would act as a positive feedback
to climatic warming (McGuire et al. 2006a; McGuire et al. 2006b).

You might be interested in knowing that there is a huge effort here at the University of Alaska to preserve the various languages (at least 20) that are spoken by indigenous Alaska natives http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/ . The cool thing that ties it to where I work on campus (the supercomputing center) is that the language center is digitizing many of the tapes of Native speakers and archiving the data on our mass storage system. It's a really neat blend of using modern tech to preserve ancient knowledge (some of the languages are only now spoken by 2 or 3 people).

You are the fringe lunatic. I gave links to two research papers(NOT YOU) that point to this kind of research of men actually falling behind in general in education, you are just talking making things up without consulting the actual research. I took the time to read on the papers and know that this gender gap no longer really exists if anything in general boys are behind girls and need more attention, this is a myth created by women groups like AAUW and their popularized 1992 report which I mentioned. But I am sure you forgot the already with your low level of dialectic argument.

http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html ... "The gap in performance between American men and women in the natural sciences and in mathematics is genuine and indeed a cause for concern. But this gender gap, it is also important to recognize, affects the prospects and careers of very few people. It is far from a monumental social problem. In 1994, for example, 450 American men received doctorates in mathematics compared to 146 women. In the physical sciences, 2,335 American men received doctorates compared to 659 women (NCES, 1996, Table 266). To achieve parity in mathematics and the physical sciences would affect fewer than 2,000 women a year"

Here is some info about how hard this report is to obtain that popularized this mythical gender gap against women in 1992, which I am sure is another conspiracy theory:

http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html ... "The AAUW's own commissioned research in fact undercuts the position it trumpets---that girls receive less attention than boys. The AAUW sponsored a nationwide survey of 3,000 children between grades four and ten which forms one important statistical base for its glossy, highly publicized reports (American Association of University Women [AAUW]/Greenberg-Lake, 1990). When I tried to obtain a copy of this report, I had a difficult time.

"While the politicized version, How Schools Shortchange Girls (1992) is available for a mere $16.95, obtaining the full data report requires a payment of $85.00 for unbound xeroxed pages. The AAUW provides an 800-number for ordering its reports, but the person I called at this number knew nothing about the full data report. I then called the AAUW offices, left messages, and waited for weeks to get telephone calls returned until I finally located someone who knew of this report.

"That the AAUW should make the report difficult to obtain is understandable. The data from their own report do not back up the charges they publicize---that girls receive less attention from teachers.
When asked about their personal experience, boys and girls reported receiving virtually identical amounts of attention from their teachers (Table 13). The gender differences that occur are trivial, and sometimes favor boys and sometimes favor girls."

You are the fringe lunatic. I gave links to two research papers(NOT YOU) that point to this kind of research of men actually falling behind in general in education, you are just talking making things up without consulting the actual research. I took the time to read on the papers and know that this gender gap no longer really exists if anything in general boys are behind girls and need more attention, this is a myth created by women groups like AAUW and their popularized 1992 report which I mentioned. But I am sure you forgot the already with your low level of dialectic argument.

http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html ... "The gap in performance between American men and women in the natural sciences and in mathematics is genuine and indeed a cause for concern. But this gender gap, it is also important to recognize, affects the prospects and careers of very few people. It is far from a monumental social problem. In 1994, for example, 450 American men received doctorates in mathematics compared to 146 women. In the physical sciences, 2,335 American men received doctorates compared to 659 women (NCES, 1996, Table 266). To achieve parity in mathematics and the physical sciences would affect fewer than 2,000 women a year"

Here is some info about how hard this report is to obtain that popularized this mythical gender gap against women in 1992, which I am sure is another conspiracy theory:

http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html ... "The AAUW's own commissioned research in fact undercuts the position it trumpets---that girls receive less attention than boys. The AAUW sponsored a nationwide survey of 3,000 children between grades four and ten which forms one important statistical base for its glossy, highly publicized reports (American Association of University Women [AAUW]/Greenberg-Lake, 1990). When I tried to obtain a copy of this report, I had a difficult time.

"While the politicized version, How Schools Shortchange Girls (1992) is available for a mere $16.95, obtaining the full data report requires a payment of $85.00 for unbound xeroxed pages. The AAUW provides an 800-number for ordering its reports, but the person I called at this number knew nothing about the full data report. I then called the AAUW offices, left messages, and waited for weeks to get telephone calls returned until I finally located someone who knew of this report.

"That the AAUW should make the report difficult to obtain is understandable. The data from their own report do not back up the charges they publicize---that girls receive less attention from teachers.
When asked about their personal experience, boys and girls reported receiving virtually identical amounts of attention from their teachers (Table 13). The gender differences that occur are trivial, and sometimes favor boys and sometimes favor girls."

People stop spouting off myths. The myth you are supporting has no basis in facts. The shady small interest feminine group the American Association of University Women created this false perception of female victimization in schooling to give more resources and attention to girls in schooling at the expense of other groups.

First off no one but feminist interest groups really stress this gap thing and others who follow their well created myths. What about the important gap of women vs. men in Major League Basebell where no women is represented? Women and men do not have to compete in everything. You do not hear much hype about a male gender gap in nursing, teaching elementary school, etc. because there are no male groups to whine and moan about non-issues but there are feminists and fake women studies courses in universities.

http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html

"But the idea that the "schools shortchange girls" is wrong and dangerously wrong. It is girls who get higher grades in school, who do better than boys on standardized tests of reading and writing, and who get higher class rank and more school honors. It is young women who enter and graduate from college far more frequently than young men. It is women who have made dramatic progress in obtaining professional, business, and doctoral degrees. The great gender gap of the 1960s in advanced degrees has almost closed, especially in the professional fields to which ambitious women aspire. In the view of elementary and high school students, the young people who sit in the classroom year after year and observe what is going on, both boys and girls agree: Schools favor girls. Teacher think girls are smarter, like being around them more, and hold higher expectations for them." ...

"The American Association of University Women (AAUW) put itself on the political map through its highly publicized 1992 report: How Schools Shortchange Girls. The media trumpeted the message around the world: In the schools, as in so many other areas of life, females are victims. Girls are silenced in the classroom, suffer a decline in self-esteem at adolescence, and fall far behind boys in such crucial subjects as science and mathematics. As the AAUW Executive Summary declares:" ... ... "I telephoned David Sadker to ask him directly about the serious charge that his famous study had disappeared. He could not send me a copy of the report." ...

"Neither girls nor boys nor the nation itself are served by politicized research and "noble lies." Major assertions in the AAUW report are based on research by David and Myra Sadker that has mysteriously disappeared. Evidence which contradicts their thesis that the schools shortchange girls is buried in supplemental tables obtainable only at great difficulty and expense. Such shady practices undermine public confidence in social science research. This damage done by the AAUW report will have repercussions that last far beyond the immediate issue of whether either girls or boys are shortchanged in the school." ...

Perhaps the base is weighted with $10 bills (£5 notes?). That would explain the price to me more effectively.

All Inuit are Eskimos; but not all Eskimos are Inuit. Some Eskimos are Yupik. As for being an insensitive term, apparently it depends on where you live.

In Mechanical engineering it is good to have a hands-on project that have specific goals. At my University there are a few yearly projects you can sign onto (rocket project, ice arch, steel bridge project) but these are few, and only the ice arch is integrated with an course room instruction. I wish more projects like that were integrated with the curriculum and available. I expect to learn some similar structural information when I try to design and build my own cabin this summer.

In Mechanical engineering it is good to have a hands-on project that have specific goals. At my University there are a few yearly projects you can sign onto (rocket project, ice arch, steel bridge project) but these are few, and only the ice arch is integrated with an course room instruction. I wish more projects like that were integrated with the curriculum and available. I expect to learn some similar structural information when I try to design and build my own cabin this summer.

In Mechanical engineering it is good to have a hands-on project that have specific goals. At my University there are a few yearly projects you can sign onto (rocket project, ice arch, steel bridge project) but these are few, and only the ice arch is integrated with an course room instruction. I wish more projects like that were integrated with the curriculum and available. I expect to learn some similar structural information when I try to design and build my own cabin this summer.

http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.20/20. 02/PICMicrocontroller/index.html

http://polarfront.org/archives/000537.html

http://blog.paddlefish.net/archives/2004/12/usb_pi ckit_tool.html

http://robrohan.com/projects/PIConOSX/

http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/22/011123 8

http://www.teammojo.org/PICkit/pickit1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPUTILS

http://lawlor.cs.uaf.edu/~olawlor/projects/2003/mi crochip/

http://www.gnupic.org/

I don't think you read what I posted. 1996 was the hottest year in the 20th century for the entire earth (the 1930's weren't even close). That the arctic had a warmer year than this does not change that fact.

I don't know much more about polar bears than I do about the dust bowl. However, in doing a little background reading, I researched Polyakov. It seems figure 2 from Polyakov disagrees with the one you posted. So, it seems that someone is misrepresenting Polyakov. So, I went looking around TCS and found the article from which the plot came. If you want more from Polyakov (without the TCS filter telling you what to believe), here's an article he actually wrote: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/am plif/amplif_jul02_2.pdf

That's the funny thing about those denying global warming. If you actually read the few scientific articles they say support their position, you usually find out that those articles do NOT support their position.

I don't think you read what I posted. 1996 was the hottest year in the 20th century for the entire earth (the 1930's weren't even close). That the arctic had a warmer year than this does not change that fact.

I don't know much more about polar bears than I do about the dust bowl. However, in doing a little background reading, I researched Polyakov. It seems figure 2 from Polyakov disagrees with the one you posted. So, it seems that someone is misrepresenting Polyakov. So, I went looking around TCS and found the article from which the plot came. If you want more from Polyakov (without the TCS filter telling you what to believe), here's an article he actually wrote: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/am plif/amplif_jul02_2.pdf

That's the funny thing about those denying global warming. If you actually read the few scientific articles they say support their position, you usually find out that those articles do NOT support their position.

Step 1: Take a price from this map.
Step 2: Multiple that price times 2,000.

So for California, 2,000kWh would cost $240 per hour to run. That's $5,760/day, $40,320/week, and a whopping $2,096,640/year!

Of course, for diesel your prices may be higher. As of right now, diesel is approximately $2.669 per gallon in California. To compute the costs, you'd need to know how efficient the generator is. This page claims "approaching 40%", so we can use that for a guesstimate. At about 146,520,000 joules per gallon of diesel, we can compute a need of 122.85 gallons per hour. At the going rate, it would cost ~$327.89/hour to run a 2MW generator.

It's true that the headline is misleading. The patent application is not for "conjugating verbs". That said, it is still very broad and something for which there is tons of prior art. I don't see any specific methods mentioned. Software for generating the entire paradigm for a verb is nothing new, as various posters, including myself, have already pointed out. The idea that the user doesn't need to produce a particular citation form but that the system will figure it out is also not new. I published a paper ("Making Athabaskan Dictionaries Usable," in Gary Holton (ed.) (2002) Proceedings of the Athabaskan Languages Conference --- 2002, Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska. Working Papers #2. pp. 136-147.) a while back about how such a system can provide a usable dictionary for languages with extremely complex verbal systems, such as Navajo.

Here's a description of an actual implementation of a system like this for Nahuatl. Unfortunately, the site at which you can actually try it out seems to be down, but it does, or at least did, exist.

Well, over at the usual place, I found some values for the specific energy (potential chemical energy per unit mass) in a variety of fuels. A better source would probably be the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, but I left it in my other coat today.

Gasoline is quoted at being around 44 megajoules per kilogram. (More sources here.)

Under ideal conditions, neglecting irreversible losses like wind and rolling resistance, you'd only have to burn fuel when you wanted to change your vehicle's speed -- because without friction it would just roll along all day -- and the energy required is a pretty trivial Newtonian mechanics problem. The work to accelerate it is just (1/2)mv^2, where m is the mass and v is the velocity. Then of course you add the 'real work' to change its position: going uphill 'costs' you mgh, where g is acceleration due to gravity and h is the height upwards moved.

If you had a perfect regenerative braking system, then theoretically you'd never need to use any more gas at all (except when going to a higher altitude then you'd gone before); you'd just stop using the regenerative brakes, then turn that energy right back out and use it to start moving again. Without regenerative brakes, you just waste the input energy whenever you stop (except whatever energy you've stored by virtue of the car's position, i.e. by parking it at the top of a hill).

Of course in real life that doesn't happen: the regenerative brakes are going to have losses, there's non-trivial rolling resistance and wind resistance that grows (I think) proportionally to the square of your forward speed.

I'm not going to go through all the math right now, but basically it's a very simple problem that boils down to what simplifying assumptions you want to make. If you add in rolling resistance and aerodynamic drag and make realistic assumptions about the brakes and transmission, at a certain point all you're asking is "what is the fuel economy of an average car, if it had a perfectly efficient engine?" If that's the question, there are easier ways to solve it: you can just figure out the "thermal efficiency" of an internal-combustion engine (not hard: put an engine on a dyno and measure the energy output at the same time as you're measuring the fuel going in) and calculate what the fuel consumption would have been, if it were 100% efficient.

The accepted figure for thermal efficiency of an ICE seems to be around 25-26%, so the short answer is that if the engine in your car right now was a perfect converter of the energy stored in gasoline to mechanical movement, you'd get around four times the gas mileage that you do right now.

Hey kids! Science doesn't mean beingthis, it can mean being this, this or even this!

>>>But throwing more money at search and extraction doesn't yield much more supply.

That maybe true, but every time a barrel of oil goes up in price the oil "reserves" for oil companies goes UP. Why? Because "reserves" is an accounting term not a reflection of how much oil is in the ground. It means how much oil I can get to while making a hell of a profit. Just look at the Canadian tar fields, they have been siting there for thousands of years and no one cared,,, until oil company economic models set the base price of oil for the next twenty years at $40 per barrel. Now they are spending billions of dollars so they can make billions of dollars at field that is thought to be greater than all of Saudi Arabia.

see http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/102spring2002_Web_proj ects/M.Sexton/

Notice this line:
The sum of these covers an area of nearly 77,000 km2. In fact, the reserve that is deemed to be technologically retrievable today is estimated at 280-300Gb (billion barrels). This is larger than the Saudi Arabia oil reserves, which are estimated at 240Gb. The total reserves for Alberta, including oil not recoverable using current technology, are estimated at 1,700- 2,500Gb.

In other words, with better technology we have up to 10 Saudi Arabias sitting in tar.

If you're curious about accessing CSI data loggers from linux, one of the people I work with has written some perl modules that I think may be some flavor of gpl. It's pretty stable, been in use since 2000 or 2001. It doesn't work with pakbus and table data but if you use the older array based OSes it works fine.
Here's our website:
UAF - WERC
Look for Ken.

I read the press realease and things didn't sound like what I remember from a decade ago when I was in school, so I and it turns out that He(4) is superfluid at a higher temeperature than I remembered, 2.3K instead of 2K and He(4) becomes liquid at 4K

http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/212_fall2003.web.dir/R odney_Guritz%20Folder/properties.htm

The news is that they did this with fermions instead of bosons. A press release from 2004 that seems to be a little more detailed. If this really does turn out to be fermion based super fluidity, It would suggests that one might be able to find a substance that is liquid at close to room temperature, (Iron (Fe) based compoundes are mentioned in the following release)

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/04/04041 4003425.htm

I do not see any mention of the lamda point being observed, so I guess the people calling this the next wave of cold fusion articles may yet be proven right,

The other thing that makes me leary of their results is that the press release was citing tempratures notably colder than the lamda point of liquid helium.

That said we have a few different teams that seem to be observing a subset of the actions only known to superfluids, so it may be babysteps. Either way the press releases seem more hype than news.

to quote: http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/102spring2002_Web_proj ects/M.Sexton/ Although tar sands occur in more than 70 countries, the two largest are Canada and Venezuela, with the bulk being found in four different regions of Alberta, Canada: areas of Athabasca, Wabasha, Cold Lake and Peace River. The sum of these covers an area of nearly 77,000 km2. In fact, the reserve that is deemed to be technologically retrievable today is estimated at 280-300Gb (billion barrels). This is larger than the Saudi Arabia oil reserves, which are estimated at 240Gb. The total reserves for Alberta, including oil not recoverable using current technology, are estimated at 1,700- 2,500Gb. 290Gb / 0.1321Gb = 21,958 days or 60 years plus we (US) have approximately 1-TRILLION recoverable barrels in the Green River basin... do the math

Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.

Launched in May 2004, Media Matters for America put in place, for the first time, the means to systematically monitor a cross section of print, broadcast, cable, radio, and Internet media outlets for conservative misinformation -- news or commentary that is not accurate, reliable, or credible and that forwards the conservative agenda -- every day, in real time." Here's their staff.

Certainly that is an objective, unbiased source of, something. I failed to find your purported study, however.

As for your troll: ""..."religious school you got your degree at presumably did." I wasn't aware that UAF was a "religious" school. Thanks for pointing that out.

Taught at universities in Texas and Alberta.

And Alaska. And you're right, there is a shortage and these guys make BIG bucks.

You have made everyone feel dumber for a few seconds by making them read what you just wrote.

Actually Co2 concentrations in the atmosphere are almost 20% higher than they were 50 years ago. I would hardly call that 'changing very, very little'.

Sunlight does not 'come in' during an aurora. And ozone is not created in them.

Three cheers for the US school system!!! Its making me rich!

Check out the 3D movies at Busch Gardens and similar parks. I remember one where bees dove at my face and I really couldn't help but flinch or close my eyes. Very good stuff.

Similarly, I'm working on the development of an inexpensive (under $40k) portable CAVE. We held a demo session Monday and I had a lot of fun making things fly past peoples' faces. About half of them would sway, fall over, or try to grab at the air.

We're working off the clock to get Quake et. al. working in there.

so there is no tetherless spacewalk capability anymore.

Then what the hell is this?
http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/211.web.stuff/Adamczak /mmu.htm

And, yes, the same ideas - using antimatter to trigger fusion - could be used to make some "cool" weapons. Notably, small nuclear weapons that don't emit fallout. The political consequences of having nuclear weapons that don't emit fallout available I leave to the reader...

And, yes, the same ideas - using antimatter to trigger fusion - could be used to make some "cool" weapons. Notably, small nuclear weapons that don't emit fallout. The political consequences of having nuclear weapons that don't emit fallout available I leave to the reader...

1. The majority of the student body at any university in Duke's class/caliber is going to be "middle-to-upper-middle class students with parents that are paying for college." Do you think that tier is cheap? How many full ride scholarships will they give out? And I would certainly want my say in where I would be spending the next 4-5 years. What if your parents wanted you to study arctic wildlife at UAF and you wanted to study beach wildlife at UCSD? Wouldn't you want a say in that? If not, have fun on the frozen tundra. I'll be on the beach with the girls if you need me. Insert obilgatory Girls/Slashdot comment here.
2. Did you honestly evaluate the colleges that you applied to by the (pseudo) free trinkets they gave you? "Hey Ma! Isn't this frisbee neat? I want to go there 'cause they have ultimate frisbee intramurals!" As for who gets the bill, I'm absolutely sure that its tacked on somewhere to the student's bill. Probably something like "Electronics Lab Fee" "Portable Lecture Device Fee" "Insert some stupid name for a fee" or even under "General Fee."
3. Duke's reputation and offerings are stong enough that they do not need to lure students with an iPod. Academics, Athletics, etc.
4. Profit? Perhaps, but that comment has no bearing in this discussion, regardless of the /. joke you are trying to pull.

As for my own opinion of Duke's iPod program, now that I've rebutted your post, I see it as a positive. Yes, you can put music on there; yes, you could never use it for your studies; but, the potential is there for you to use it to record lectures on, transport large chunks of data from the ASTR lab to your dorm computer for further evaluation, or to store the entire works of your collegiate career, from ENGL-101 to your senior thesis. Isn't that what college is about, developing potential?

Amigori

The problem that I have with it is that it's based on scholarly work. Since he's the president of a college, that probably means that he is studying grades, homework, or teacher reports on male vs. female students. This does not take into account factors that effect the outcome before the students even reach his school.

Some studies have shown that teachers tend to call on girls less and expect them to get lower grades in math and science classes, and that parents also can have a negative effect on girls' attitude toward math. Other studies have shown that girls simply don't like math. here are some examples.

So, there are dissenting opinions on the subject. This is something that I don't think we can get a really good control case for. Without a control case, how do we know that we aren't starting out with girls that have not been negatively influenced by parents, teachers, or other peers?

I am female, and have always had a natural ability to do math. I don't particularly like it, but I am good at it. (We are talking about a level below calculus, I did not have any kind of natural ability with that!) I used to tutor people that were in the same class as me.

While I only remember having a couple of teachers pick me out or completely ignore me, I'm not sure if that was because of me as a person, or because of gender. I tend to think that it didn't have anything to do with gender. I may not be getting a general idea of what is going on with this, though, because I went to a small college where a decent percentage (about 1/4) of the math and science graduates were female. I also went to elementary/middle/high school in an extremely small town, there were only about 20 people in my graduating class.

That said about teachers specifically, I think that a lot of what happens has to do with what girls pick up from society and school. Parents are sometimes sexist, they have an idea of what their children should be like and treat them as if they were that way. My dad refused to teach me chess after teaching my younger brother, and my mom is always saying how she can't do this or that because she's a girl. This may be unusual with parents specifically, but this is the kind of influence that girls get from the people around them all the time. I went against parental influence on this particular point, but it would appear that I am unusual in this.

I avoided anything that was tracking, took all the fixed rates, added them up together, averaged them ,and multiplied by 365.

As did I, only i used NRELs annual statistics not your uninformed calculations of their raw data (no offence). Since we seem to go over this again and again I will spell it out for you. Though at this point I think you are just being obstinate. From the rredec database:

"City: ","KANSAS CITY "
"SOLAR RADIATION FOR FLAT-PLATE COLLECTORS FACING SOUTH AT A FIXED-TILT (kWh/m2/day)
"Tilt(deg)"," ","Jan","Feb","Mar","Apr","May","Jun","Jul","Aug", "Sep","Oct","Nov","Dec","Year"
"Lat ","Average", 3.8, 4.3, 4.8, 5.4, 5.6, 5.8, 6.0, 5.9, 5.4, 5.0, 3.8, 3.3, 4.9
" ","Minimum", 2.7, 3.3, 3.5, 4.2, 4.6, 4.9, 5.2, 4.8, 3.5, 3.8, 2.7, 2.5, 4.5
" ","Maximum", 4.8, 5.4, 5.7, 6.4, 6.4, 6.6, 6.8, 6.6, 6.8, 6.6, 4.9, 4.3, 5.5

Now look at that last column, "Year". Look at the row "Lat Average". 4.9kWh/m^2/day. Got it? If not, want to see a map of the same data? I don't know what you want, whack you over the head with a dozen sources? Here, here, here

So 7% of texas land mass to produce ALL of our energy use, only 0.8% for our electricity need. Using fixed panels (not even adjusting the angle seasonally), including shading. I didn't use the best location, but an average location. This doesn't translate by any stretch of the imagination into all of Texas. More importantly I showed we don't to use any new space at all.

You also are naively using 3 * 10 ^ 13 kW as our total energy source that would need to be replaced - the difference is that 90+% of that energy is in a form that we can directly use - natural gas for heating and gasoline for burning, coal for making steel, etc.

Ready to discuss storage, transmission, grids, seasonality, etc Yet? I think you've lost this part of the argument.

number one cause of highway deaths? Drunk driving

despite no evidence speeding causes accidents

Thing is, there isn't such a thing as a 100% efficient internal combusiton engine (not even close to that, in fact - check http://ffden-2.phys.uaf.edu/212_fall2003.web.dir/B en_Townsend/Heat_Engine.htm).

I agree with you though, as it is, we're still dependant on fossil fuels and combustion engines. I think stuff like BioDiesel will be vastly more common in the near future than H-Cells.

1 Newton = 1 Joule/m
1 Newton = 1 kg/m/s^2
1 Kilogram at 9.81m^2 = 9.81 Newtons
9.81 Newtons = 9.81 Joules/m/sec^2

1 Light Year = 9.46e15 meters
4 * 9.46e15 light years * 9.81 J/m = 3.71e17 Joules

15,210 * 3.71e17 J = 5.64e21 Joules

1 watt = 1 Joule/sec
1 Year = 60*60*24*365 = 31,536,000 seconds
7.5gw = 7.5e09 watts

3.71e17 J / 7.5e09 J/sec = 49,466,666 sec
49,466,666 sec / 31,536,000 sec = 1.56 years

For relativistic speeds, the kinetic energy is given by the formula linked here. This kinetic energy will always be greater than the energy calculated for a given velocity using the classical kinetic energy

KE = 1/2 * m * v^2

v (classical) = (2 * KE / m)^(1/2)

Using the figure of 3.09E8 J of kinetic energy per kilogram of ship you've put forward, you end up with a velocity of just shy of 2.5E4 m/s, or 25 km/s. It's going to take you more than four years just to get out of the Solar System at that speed.

Relativity states that a craft notice no change in mass from its own frame of reference. As long as the fuel is contained aboard the spaceship (the rocket formula), its mass will increase along with the rest of the ship's.

This is true, but not relevant to the discussion. I was looking at the energy content of the fuel. The rate of acceleration is neither here nor there (though in this case the calculation is correct--you get up close to c after about 1 year at 1 g acceleration). The problem is straight-up conservation of energy--if there's not the potential energy in the fuel, you can't get the kinetic energy for the spacecraft.

Also, when calculating the energy required for a given acceleration, you have to multiply the force (in newtons) by the distance (in meters).

For an acceleration of 1 g (9.8 m/s^2) of 1 kg of mass, we're looking at a force of:

Force = Mass * Acceleration
= (1 kg) * (9.8 m/s^2)
= 9.8 kg.m/s^2 = 9.8 newtons (N)

Work = Force * Distance
= 9.8 N * 1/2 lightyear
= 9.8 kg.m/s^2 * 4.7E15 m (Thanks Google!
= 4.6E16 kg.m^2/s^2 = 4.6E16 joules (J)

...if the robot can survive terminal velocity falls like cats. Cats falling from very high heights (i.e. skyscrapers) tend to survive the fall better than those falling from lower elevations.

Actually, it's the short falls that tend to kill cats. Cats (like skydivers) can assume a position that reduces the terminal velocity and presents the greatest surface area for impact, reducing the force per unit of surface area. It takes a while to rotate and get into the position, so if the fall is too short, the cat will land in an awkward position and is far more likely to die.

This is not to say that the cats that fell from a great height were uninjured - just that they were more likely to have non-fatal injuries.

Links with more about fireworks physics, and pics of setups.

Given the terminal velocity of a cat is only 60mph, you can save money on re-entry systems.

Who needs parachutes????

Here's the scoop from the Alaska Volcano Observatory. And here is some information on what to do during an eruption. "Alaska is home to more than 40 volcanoes that have erupted in the last 200 years, and more than half of the state's population lives within 100 miles of an active volcano. The single greatest hazard from an explosive volcanic eruption is ash, fine fragments of rock blown into the atmosphere during volcanic eruption. Ash is carried downwind where the coarser particles fall to the ground and fine ash forms a cloud that is carried with the air currents. Ash is extremely abrasive, does not dissolve in water, and is heavy and slippery when wet. Inhaling ash can be dangerous, especially for those with breathing problems, for children, and the elderly. While ash is falling to the ground, you may experience prolonged darkness, loss of water and electricity, and have transportation and communication problems.

I remember day being like midnight during one of the eruptions. The description above is very conservative. But it is my choice to live here, and I am well aware of the hazards. I've nearly been stomped by a moose in my year, and charged by bears, so a volcano is seemingly less of a threat. At least we don't have any muggers here.

And here is a page for very recent earthquakes in Alaska, Russian Far East, Japan, etc.

-cp-

I hear UAF has a pretty good program. At one point, throught internet II, they had the fastest throughput in the world. But that's since been shattered many a times. Plus i've heard they want to put largert server farms on the north slope, powered by they abundant natural gas from the oil drilling for exceptional power backup availabilty, and the fact that it's not too hard to cool up there in the winter, just keeping it warm would be the problem

I also had an SDK-85, the Intel single board computer which showcased the 8085 chip. This was about like the Sym-1, but less neat-o hobby-oriented stuff in the rom. It actually had a proper area to which I could attach a breadboard, so projects on this looked a little less kludgy. Since I never really took a shine to the Intel chips, this collected more dust than the Sym.

Then, there were my portables: First an HP-41c, then a Sharp PC-1500 (also known as the TRS-80 PC2). The Sharp was a hand held, calculator sized (like a 10 inch long chunk of 2x4), basic programmable calculator. Its basic was almost entirely comaptible with the MS GWBasic which was shipping with PC-DOS at that time (1982 or so), so I could develope programs on it, then retype them on the PC. The little CMOS CPU on the Sharp ran at a slower clock speed than did the IBM PC's CPU, but the programs were still nearly as fast. I had the plotter/cassette interface, which let me print out circuit diagrams and so on in class, for tests. Since there weren't enough PCs in the classroom for everyone to use at once on tests, I got a big advantage out of this.

Of course, before I owned any of these, there was the Honeywell mainframe (lousy link, that'll give you an idea of how obscure Honeybucket computers were and are) I used at UAF.

Then, there were some that I worked on, but never owned:

The Otrona Attache. These were wonderful little CPM machines, with a Z80 CPU and a TI screen controller chip which I was never able to find a source for (Not sure about the TI part, but definitely sure about the hard-to-get part.). I never owned one, unfortunately, because none of the people who owned them would ever part with them, including the owner of the one with the chip I couldn't replace.

Then there were the various models of Altos and Vector Graphics machines. Both of these were multi-user, multi-CPU CPM machines.

If we find something, it cannot not be within our Universe, as we could not interact with it.

Actually, another universe does not need to be within our universe to interact with it. Modern theories of physics say that there are many universes that exist in parallel to ours. These universes can and DO interact with our own on the subatomic scale. For instance, photons have a tendency to collide or be interfered with by photons from other universes. See here for a more detailed explanation.

Natural parthenogenesis in mammalian species is considerably more common than most people think, and is considered normal in certain breeds of mice, cattle, and camels, occuring as a result of defective egg cells. In the vast majority of cases, mammalian parthenogenesis fails to produce offspring and results in noncancerous ovarian tumors.

However, such parthenogenic ova can produce clones of their mother when (A) they are simultaniously ovulated into a receptive womb, e.g., shortly after an ordinary egg which became fertilized, and (B) contain a diploid nucleus. Although ova are supposed to be haploid some human haploid cells are naturally diploid. Presumably this is an ordinary kind of haploid mutation.

Although it is difficult to estimate the rate of occurance of natural human parthenogenic offspring, it is probably more common than one in a billion over the course of a modern human female lifespan, meaning that there are probably already a handful of clones on the planet. ["Wow, you really do look like your mother."]

This has been going on for a long time, of course. Actually, we (in McIntosh hall) once showed a swedish nurses porn flick on the wall of the neighboring residence hall (it was Nerland hall). The Nerlandites weren't amused; I'm not sure why. We DID invite them to come over and watch.

This was a 16mm film, long before digital movies were practical (about 1982 or '83).

Please provide a celery processor link. I would love to read it. All it could find right away is this.

Oh, certainly! The original article. Donald must be quite the stud, huh? Hope this helps!

Thats a heck of a Tiger in the Tank :-)

Of course, anti-matter engines are waaaaaaaay off

Actually, we already have anti-matter engines, they're just not very sophisticated. Pennsylvania State University and NASA are investigating these drives. The drive could power a mission to Mars in 120 days. That's: go to Mars (30 days), stay for 30 days, and come back (30 days). Sum: 120 days. That's awesome.

Ah, here we go:

Antimatter Catalyzed Micro Fission/Fusion

NASA Press release

Antimatter drives

ANTIPROTON-CATALYZED MICROFISSION/FUSION PROPULSION SYSTEMS FOR EXPLORATION OF THE OUTER SOLAR SYSTEM AND BEYOND