Slashdot Mirror

See also Algae (cow crap), and thermal depolymerization (just about any kind of garbage) as biodiesel sources.

... the AC is right. There is not enough cropland in the USA to replace the diesel fuel the nation burns, let alone the gasoline, coal and natural gas (at least not using conventional crops; salt-water algae may be able to change that).

We have the technology now to chew all that stuff up for power, leaving only mild leftovers with 100-200 yr. half-lives.
(Put that in your smoky glass and .. uh .. <metaphor meltdown>)

Oh, and it will also run on thorium. And can't go critical.

Nuclear power (both fusion and fission) both have the potential to produce incredible amounts of power, but they both have their drawbacks which may be overcome by technology.

The technology is here. It's called an 'energy amplifier'.

It's a nuclear reaction which:
- creates far less plutonium and other waste materials
- is impossible to runaway/meltdown
- is fed by thorium (much more abundant than uranium, and much easier to process)
- the waste materials it does create have a much shorter half life, and in fact can be used to process nuclear waste from conventional reactors to be made safer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_amplifier
http://einstein.unh.edu/FWHersman/energy_amplifier .html

It has a high start-up cost due to needing a cyclotron accelerator, but the long-term cost will be a great savings overall. We just have to stop being so short-sighted and invest in it.

We could grow almost all the oil we need, certainly enough to make a huge dent in imports, on a couple hundred square miles of the Senora Desert. I know it's ecologically sensitive but I think for oil independence the scorpions, mice and other critters can just deal with it.

Why aren't we doing this now? Guess it couldn't be because we have an oil family with connections to the Saudi Royal family in office? Or big oil companies with too much influence over elected officials? Nah, must be some other really good reason.

I've talked to these people, I think they could really do it. Probably could've built the whole project for about half of what we've spent on Iraq. So, which would get us farther? Invading Iraq or cutting back on our oil imports?

My fault. Actually, rereading the link, I don't know where I get the figure.

According to the University of New Hampshire, listed in the Wikipedia entry:
Need: 140.8 billion gallons
Required surface with algae: 9.5E06 acres
Estimated Costs: $308 billion to build the farms.

Total arable land in the US: 1030E06 acres

one point to filter for emissions
That's not necessarily a good thing. Basically you would be concentrting all of the resulting pollution in one area instead of spreading it out more or less evenly. Assuming nature cleans up the pollution at a certain rate (say, as by density of plant life and large bodies of water to absorb and recycle CO2) then you actually made the problem much worse in some areas.

no car pollution in cities
Ah, well, as long as it's not in your back yard I guess it's okay then!

an easy upgrade path when you replace your coal plant with biodiesel or solar or fusion or whatever
Except that the existing power distribution system is already strained and aging such that it can barely keep up with peek demands today. It would cost billions upon billions to construct new powerplants and additional infastructure to handle the additional demand of the now millions of electrical vehicles feeding off of it.

possible economies of scale
See above. In general you try not to build powerplants too far from where the power is used (obvious?). And you will definately need more of them right from the start.

Now take a straight biodiesel economy model:

Virtually no infastructure costs. Everything you need to produce, transport and distribute liquid fuel is already in place.

Less pollution on the grand scale. BD burns cleaner than the oil and coal (especially coal) used in powerplants, and the resulting pollution is spread out evenly such that nature can process it more effectively. If you're worried about soot (which BD produces less of anyway) there are already very effective filtering systems for small vehicles in widespread use.

Excellent scaling economics. Unlike electricity you CAN produce/refine all of the BD in one spot for the entire country (even though you probably wouldn't want to). There is basically no restriction on the location of the refineries, and the distribution infastructure of trucks, boats and pipes is more flexible than high voltage transmission lines.
The only problem is "where does te energy come from in the first place?", which the centalized electric system doesn't address either. Fusion power has to actually exist before you can even consider it, and all of the other possibilities such as oil, coal and nuclear all rely on the very same sources we're trying to get away from.

I have read articles about the possible use of algae for BD production. According to the article (which I found a version of on google) you can farm a high-oil content algae species for the purpose, which eliminates basically all of the problems of cultivating and fertilizing land for growing plants (algae doesn't need tilling...) Simply excavate a shallow lake somewhere relatively low and let gravity fill it with seawater, then start growing. If you're clever you can use a system of dykes to let the tide purge the lake for you and filter off the algae as the lake drains. Then you run it through a giant juicer and add a little methanol and lye to remove the glycerin from the product, and you got Biodiesel ready to burn in just about any existing vehicle.
=Smidge=

A big problem with methods that are "more efficient" in turning solar energy into locomotion (household solar used to create hydrogen for fuel cells), is that their storage efficiency is not up to the standards we are used to.

Algae Biodiesel has the advantage of zero net carbon emissions, with the storage efficiencies we are used to.

It has to be cheaper than growing fuel from food crops, algae can be grown from sewage, and the processing steps can probably be completely automated.

A no-cost fertilizer source and drastically reduced labor costs have to beat the usual process of growing crops, algae doesn't waste energy on making leaves, stalks, or roots and these items don't have to be processed as waste since they don't exist.

The farmers get cheaper fuel out of it.

This article compares the efficiency of hydrogen production with that of biodiesel. It also proposes algae as a source of biodiesel. Deserts aren't "dead" just because they appear to be dead. It would require study, but desert algae farms could produce all the biodiesel we need without impinging on food production.

Biodiesel requires no new technology to implement. Many fine diesel vehicles are already on the market. Homebrew biodiesel is simple and inexpensive. "Little people" like you and I can get started today.

When Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine, he designed it to run on peanut oil.

"[Henry]Ford was so convinced that renewable resources were the key to the success of his automobiles that he built a plant to make ethanol in the Midwest and formed a partnership with Standard Oil to sell it in their distributing stations. During the 1920's, this biofuel was 25% of Standard Oil's sales in that area."

The University of New Hampshire's doing some interesting work on producing oil from algae http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

They claim "Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 15,000 square miles."
The best bit is you don't need to waste valuable land used to grow food crops, it can be done with shallow salt water pools in the desert.

Biodiesel can be made from waste vegetable oil, something that municipal sewage treatment plants typically spend lots of money to dispose of.

It can be made from algae.
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html

The transformation of vegetable oil to diesel produces glycerin which may actually be more valuable than the diesel. Also, the transformation of the vegetable oil to diesel requires far less energy than would be required for alcohol based fuels.

Biodiesel doesn't require any new technology or infrastructure; it can run in existing diesel engines including truck, train, and ship engines so even if nobody buys new diesel cars it will reduce demand on oil reserves and CO2 emissions.
Biodiesel also burns more cleanly than petrodiesel.

The primary limit to biodiesel right now is poor quality control in commercially available sources and a relative lack of interest.

It sucks that the kid died, but this should be a setback for solar-powered motor vehicle on highways. The safety problems are very probably unsolvable. Bicycles have been on the roads for over a century and motorcycles for almost as long. No technological solution for what happens when car meets bike that keeps the bike or the rider intact has been found. This suggests to me that there isn't one. If a road-safe solar vehicle can't be built, there is no point in pursuing this technology as more than a dangerous hobby any further.

More to the point, this is NOT an environmental solution. Safety issues aside, every barrel of oil that is conserved by the industrialized countries will be burned by an industrializing Third World, unless carbon-neutral solutions to replace fossil fuel cheaper than the current ones can be found. Therefore, conservation-based approaches to either global warming or running out of oil are uniformly unworkable, no matter how cool the technologies are.

We need energy replacement, not energy conservation.

The place for solar cells is in orbital solar arrays as part of a solar power satellite network. Power availablilty 24/7/365, no concerns about weather, and no SUV will ever run into a cell array and take it offline. However, this is better adapted as a solution for central station power generation facilities.

The solution for motor vehicle power? Switch to diesel engines and grow crude oil in energy farms. Even food-grain crop based biodiesel is comparable to price to bin Laden's Finest Middle East oil product, and algae-based biomass grown as part of sewage treatment promises to be quite a bit cheaper than growing it from fuel crops.

For more discussion of the implications of this, check my sig.

We're better off buying cheaper cars and light bulbs and putting the difference into taxes to be spent on subsidizing energy farm development if we actually want to make a difference either from the standpoint of global warming or from the standpoint of not providing the oil producers of the Middle East more money to make trouble for the West with.

The question of US/EU conservation is no longer especially relevant to the global warming picture. Worrying about this is part of a conventional wisdom that is obsolete and that we no longer have time for anymore.

The Third World will happily burn any oil we don't in the pursuit of the cheapest possible industrialization and consumer goods. Imagine ever Chinese and Indian family with a car. Get the idea? Unless we can find them and ourselves a better and cheaper alternative. Algae biomass is probably it.

With respect to cheap energy in general, check my sig. The good news is that real solutions are within reach.

It's time to go to full-hydrogen engines in cars.

Hydrogen is highly explosive and must be stored at high pressure in non-corrosive tanks. Due to hydrogens' low energy density and storage limitations, hydrogen vehicles will be of short range.

In Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae Michael Briggs of the University of New Hampshire Physics Department offers an enlightening comparison of hydrogen and biodiesel fuels.

Biodiesel is here today and it doesn't require new technology. It will power existing vehicles equiped with diesel engines.

Or, as I'd say without the lame /. subject line limits, Biodiesel is the future if we have the wits to grasp it.

I'm drunk tonight, so I'll speak bare truth and you can make of it what you will. I'm an American and this is my point of view, so if you're euro then I could care less, except to point out that the fucking French have more progressive nuclear and biodiesel policies than we could hope to have here.

Biodiesel is almost as efficient an energy storage medium as dinodiesel (10% lower energy density). Unlike Hydrogen (also an energy STORAGE format, not an energy SOURCE) it can be stored and distributed using EXISTING infrastructure, doesn't require high-pressure or highly expensive storage containment. When some teenage fuckhead wraps his coupe around a tractor-trailer, it's less likely to burn than gas, where a high-pressure hydroden container would be... interesting.

The pollution issues with biodiesel are lower than with standard dinodiesel, and in 2 years when the U.S. legal limits on diesel sulfur content drop to low levels (see bullets below), car manufacturers can filter out biodiesels small issues without the filters being compromised by sulfur.

Biodiesel doesn't release any carbon that didn't recently come out of the atmosphere. It's a net zero fuel in carbon terms, garbage out, but only from garbage recently in. When you burn petrofuels, you release carbon that's been buried for millions of years.

Biodiesel can be manufactured in a number of ways. The original Diesel engine ran on peanut oil; almost any oil seed can be used to generate biodiesel, as can turkey guts and algae. People complain that solution X won't create enough biodiesel to meet the need, but we could make 10% come from source X, 40% from source Y, 50% from source Z and be done with it.

In 50 years, it will become vital to have an alternative to dinofuels. The question of oil reserves pales next to the socioeconomic pressures that millions of welfare-state arabs will pose. Consider Saudi Arabia. Work is considered "beneath" everyone, so foreigners are imported to do most of the work, and unemployment among the citizens (and I use that term loosely) is rife. Converting to a productive society is almost impossible; the world bank won't fund projects because the state welfare level is too high, and any change to a dynamic (capitalist) society would threaten the current ruling caste. Young men are channeled into madrasses because there is no other path for them. If you think religion is the opiate of the masses, consider a society consisting completely of addicts.. An economist once said that revolution is inevitable once the merchant class exceeds 10% of the population. A fool could tell you that revolution, bloody revolution, is inevitable when the crop of dissatisfied young turks currently being grown ripens, and the natural reserves of oil that support a welfare state begin to wane.

The oil economy will cause bloody flux within our lifetimes. Will it catch us by suprise or will we shift to independence before then? Biodiesel, solar power, nuclear, we've got to turn to it before it becomes a crisis if we want to survive. Of course petrofuels are cheap - they're accepting the investment of dead dinosaurs millions of years ago. You see any dinos volunteering to become fuel today? I didn't think so. It's always cheaper to take advantage of dead shit that's turned into fuel, but you can't always bank on dead shit working for you. Maybe it's more expensive to push for biodiesel today, but in 50 years when the conflagration of the Middle East makes today's wars look like sandbox games, we'll either be glad we pushed for independence or sorry we didn't.

Okay, you

• $169 billion to build the algae farms
• $33B/year operating costs

You can look at them for yourself at the University of New Hampshire site here This is largely based on research successfully completed at DOE in the mid 1990s and shelved because cheap oil looked like forever back then.

Other than that, remember $250/ton shipping to LEO? Follow the links from the slashdot article, to JP Aerospace and to evaluations by experts. From what I saw at the JP Aerospace site, the only reason why it's going to take 7 years for them to get to orbit is lack of funding. They're getting DOD experimental contracts for high-altitude transportation, but even with this, they're bootstrapping. The NASA space power satellite system was planned on a basis of $400/kg shipping cost. $250/ton is a lot cheaper than $400/kg.

The only thing keeping these technologies from becoming a viable alternative in the very near term is bad habit on the part of what passes for our business and governmental leadership. They're obsessed with the idea that the only way to get oil is the traditional methods. Even if the cost estimates for biomass oil and the SPS are off by a factor of 10, they look awfully good next to the projected $16T (yes, that's $16,000 billion) dollar cost of "business as usual"... based on an unproven and unlikely assumption that "enough" oil is there to be found. (see below)

Hint: The Bush Administration defunded the Space Power Satellite project.

Concrete steps to get this running? For the oil side, how about government loans, tax credits, and temporary price supports in case the oil cartel gets desperate enough to try to put the new energy replacements out of business by dropping their oil prices to cost of production? A promise to the rest of the world that the algae oil biomass production technology will be freely exported as soon as it is ready to go? These are the first things that occur to me.

For the space side, direct government funding, and or payload guarantees (e.g. the government will guarantee payment for X-million pounds per year of payload to any vendor(s) who can prove the ability to get it to LEO for, say, under $10/pound?) would be a good start. Or start contracting for lots and lots of solar cells and designate JP Aerospace as the prime contractor to get them to orbit.

The alternative: The International Energy Agency wants $16 TRILLION DOLLARS to be spent on new oil exploration and development and facilities to "prevent" energy crisis. This makes the happy assumption that there's enough oil to solve the problem. A few minutes spent googling on "peak oil" will convince you that there isn't.

The $16T does NOT include the military costs of dealing with the Middle East.

Personally, I'd rather see $16T spent on something useful.

In particular, this link offers a pretty good breakdown of the amount of biodiesel needed to replace gasoline - and the amount of algae needed to get there. It also looks at a couple of other alternative fuels.

Seriousl Academics are proposing fueling the entire US using biodiesal from algae. Folks like
Harry Braun are proposing wind-based power production. Both would appear cheaper than spending hundreds of Billions in the Middle East on wars and foreign aid.

Point being that the price would be lower than your subsidised, foreign gas. And no wars would be required to secure it.

A DOE biomass algae > oil project mothballed after successful completion in the mid-1990s has been revived by the U of New Hampshire.

Bottom lines from the report - replace imported oil will require:

• $183B capital investment
• $50B/year operating cost
• $2.12/gallon diesel at the pumps.
• about 10K square miles

  I'm just starting to get into the DOE report, but I've already gotten far enough to know that the technology demo project was mothballed because at the time, nobody saw a market for $2/gallon diesel oil and there didn't appear to be a substantial possibility of real disruption in the Middle East oil flow.

  CO2-neutral, the CO2 burned as oil will have been previously extracted from the atmosphere.

  Algae is about as efficient a way to convert CO2, sunlight, and nutrients to something which can be processed to oil fuel as is imaginable.

  It appears to be "good enough", though I prefer powersats for central station power as a coal replacement. The basic problem with that kind of project has been cost of transport to orbit.

  The Space Elevator may already be obsolete (follow the links) ... estimated $250/ton to LEO. No, $250 is NOT a typo, the solution is astounding, and the relevant experts appear to agree that this isn't snake oil. The rest we know how to do. Solar cells at current efficiency levels are "good enough". Microwave transmission is "good enough".

  If we as a society have the will (aka willingness to spend money), the solutions to the energy and a few related problems just got dumped into our laps.

On the sea. Notice how I mentioned algae. Take a look at this.

6% of the land area of the U.S. is huge. Consider there are 50 states, so each state, on average consumes 2% of the land mass. You're talking 3 state's worth of land here. Soybeans, mustard seed, and especially algae would be preferable to hemp, as they yield more biodiesel per acre than hemp.

How does your biodiesel get made?

In the USA, it currently is made using excess (waste) virgin soybean oil, since that is the cheapest biomass available. However, it can be made using almost any vegetable oil. In fact, Rudolph Diesel's first engine was powered using peanut oil. Biodiesel can also be made using just about any biomass. For mass production of biodiesel, algae is believed to the best option.

What fuels its production?

Biodiesel fuels itself, since it has a positive energy balance. Some of the biodiesel that is output from the refining process is fed into heaters/burners and electric generators.

How does it get to your gas tank?

A pump. You can buy biodiesel at retail pumps.

How much energy is involved, and where does it come from?

A lot. Our friend, the almighty sun.

many countries have.

we(Americans) are just behind the times. 10 years, maybe.

http://www.iol.unh.edu/consortiums/ipv6/index.html

Life is persistant. Life is vindictive.
I don't mean this like the saying "life sucks" - I mean this like "Living things are like Rocky Balboa - you can knock them down, but they'll get back up. You might win the first fight, but they'll train, they'll get better, and they'll challenge you to a rematch."
Sure - plenty of the places in the universe - hell, MOST of the universe by a HUGE margin - are very poor places for a human to exist...and not just a human, but all the life that's evolved on this little planet.
but what about the life that could have evolved THERE?
We see places in the universe where the radiation and poisonous elements would kill and sicken us in mere moments - but what about living things that evolved to that environment? Things we would barely recognize as being "alive"? silicon based life that uses mercury as a "skin pigment" to protect it from the radiation of it's sun; iron in place of calcium for it's support structure...etc. etc. etc.

There are wild enough looking and behaving organisms here on this earth using our model of life (take the deep ocean volcanic bacteria for example).

nay sayers in these replies I've read keep saying "but the conditions here on earth are rare!" and to that I say: FUCK earth! We are one example. Maybe there are other examples of life out there that follows the rules of it's environment, not the rules of ours.

As far as intelligence goes - we can't even define that in HUMANS very well, let alone other animals here on earth.
Is smart being able to do math? No - that would mean computers are smart (smarter than quite a few people, I think...)
Is smart being able to read? No, but it helps.
Is smart being able to do well on a test? no - some smart people have test anxiety and don't test well.
Smart, like pornography, is something that's hard to define, but you know it when you see it. Or do you?

Robert T. Bakker came to my university for a lecture a few years back, and I was there, with my son, in the fifth row. Part of his lecture was on a theory he called "The Line of Equal Smarts" where he showed different animals plotted on a graph where y=brain mass and x=body mass. He showed that all the "smartest" animals tended to be towards the center of the graph, along a diagnal line. On this line were animals like humans, apes, chimps, dolphins, squid and parrots. Near to the line were dogs, pigs, rats and horses. far from the line were animals like cats, giraffes, and pandas. dead center on the line was the "Utah Raptor". His point was that "smart" can show up in unlikely places. (he did go on to explain that to finish the theory, he'd have to more in depth than just plotting "brain mass" on a graph, because some brain mass is more important that others - for example, most of a dog's brain is designed to decode smell sensory data, not engage in abstract thought)
Some scientists are re-evaluating whether apes or parrots are "smarter" - parrots have recently shown to actually understand the noises they make (meaning when it says "polly want a cracker" he really means he wants a fucking cracker, knows what a cracker is, and knows you are the one to get it for him!)

the scarriest ramification of the whole Robert Bakker talk was the fact that squid were on that line... Their ratio of brain mass to body mass was almost the same as humans, meaning they could potentially be as "smart" as dolphins, chimps, parrots and apes....
Sweet JEEEEEEZUZ! Ia Ia! Cthulhu F'taghn!

I suck. I put the wrong URL for my program, I dont go to UVM anymore! The correct link is here.

Uranium prices have dropped significantly since the 1970's, to the point where there are no commercially viable fuel reproccessing operations.

Moreover, it appears that there are nuclear solutions such as accelerator driven fusion which can use abundent Thorium as a source fuel.

They did; this is the rerun.

Posted by michael on Friday August 08, @08:55PM
from the good-junkyard-wars-challenge dept.
capt.Hij writes "There is an interesting article at the Christian Science Monitor about how water skimmers are able to move the way they do. This new theory debunks the previously accepted theory and answers why smaller, younger water skimmers are also able to move the same way as their elders: 'As he looked into the question, he adds, he learned that the reigning explanation leaves an unsolved puzzle: If these tiny insects propel themselves in the way many researchers think they do, then baby water striders should go nowhere fast.'" There's also a BBC story with pictures.

I'm a final year AI PhD student.

Once down the road of Academia, it gets harder to get back into industry from what I gather. Not impossible, but if you take a post-doctorate post for an extra few years or so, you may suffer.

Also, when I graduated with my first degree it was simple: I looked for CompSci graduate jobs. I had loads of offers. Now, I'm going to be looking for a job fairly soon and I'm so specialized, I'm not sure what's best to look for. I could get a graduate job and hope that my PhD will help me climb the corporate ladder quickly or I could try hard to get a job in my chosen field. This could be quite hard (anyone else heard of constraint programming?).

Actually, I'm off to read the comments posted now because this is gonna useful for me too.

http://einstein.unh.edu/~msbriggs/biodiesel/biodie sel_versus_hydrogen.htm

http://einstein.unh.edu/~msbriggs/biodiesel/cars_o n_different_fuels.htm

And not least, biodiesel cars throttle the competition! Biodiesel Fuels Tour de Sol Winners This is a fuel that I run in my 2001 VW today, is close to carbon-neutral, is truly renewable, and the diesel engine will likely last 300,000 mi or more with a timing belt change every 60,000 (2003 models last 100K between changes). The environmental impact (lack of) from these cars' low maintenance, simplicity and long life alone totally outclasses H2 cars along with their required monster-infrastructure.

I can easily get 700 mi on a tank while the best H2 designs can barely manage 180. What's more, I can use this TDI/biodisel combo for the next 20 years and probably still embarrass the 2023 H2 wondercar. The car that won the Tour de Sol was an unmodified midsize Passat with over 250,000 mi. on the odometer.

No, it's not a futuristic-sounding fuel cell, or a novel Stirling engine, has no Star Trek tie-in, uses green not blue solar panels (leaves), and may never get a Slashdot article for these reasons. But diesels and biodiesel fuel are exceptionally efficient, increasingly high-tech and getting moreso. Looking at the physical extremes in this new generation of 'clean diesels' I'd say the technology aspect is surpassing gas engines. Less complex, but higher-tech.

I wonder how H2 cars will look compared to a 99MPG Volkswagen Lupo (on sale in Europe)? VW did a round the world in 80 days promo tour with this vehicle, running on 100% biodiesel, and it wasn't even news when it came through the US. So maybe it won't be compared here at all. But that is not stopping a growing number of individuals, bus and truck fleets from running biodiesel.

http://einstein.unh.edu/~msbriggs/biodiesel/biodie sel_versus_hydrogen.htm

http://einstein.unh.edu/~msbriggs/biodiesel/cars_o n_different_fuels.htm

And not least, biodiesel cars throttle the competition! Biodiesel Fuels Tour de Sol Winners This is a fuel that I run in my 2001 VW today, is close to carbon-neutral, is truly renewable, and the diesel engine will likely last 300,000 mi or more with a timing belt change every 60,000 (2003 models last 100K between changes). The environmental impact (lack of) from these cars' low maintenance, simplicity and long life alone totally outclasses H2 cars along with their required monster-infrastructure.

I can easily get 700 mi on a tank while the best H2 designs can barely manage 180. What's more, I can use this TDI/biodisel combo for the next 20 years and probably still embarrass the 2023 H2 wondercar. The car that won the Tour de Sol was an unmodified midsize Passat with over 250,000 mi. on the odometer.

No, it's not a futuristic-sounding fuel cell, or a novel Stirling engine, has no Star Trek tie-in, uses green not blue solar panels (leaves), and may never get a Slashdot article for these reasons. But diesels and biodiesel fuel are exceptionally efficient, increasingly high-tech and getting moreso. Looking at the physical extremes in this new generation of 'clean diesels' I'd say the technology aspect is surpassing gas engines. Less complex, but higher-tech.

I wonder how H2 cars will look compared to a 99MPG Volkswagen Lupo (on sale in Europe)? VW did a round the world in 80 days promo tour with this vehicle, running on 100% biodiesel, and it wasn't even news when it came through the US. So maybe it won't be compared here at all. But that is not stopping a growing number of individuals, bus and truck fleets from running biodiesel.

They say "gas clouds" like there are known clouds of gas following the earth. I am certainly a neophyte when it comes to astronomy, but I would have thought SOMEONE would have mentioned this to me at SOME point.

The US is a net CARBON SINK. One of the largest in the world.

The lunar atmosphere is also only 1/100,000,000,000,000 that of Earth, and in fact is often called the exosphere. For planets, the exosphere is the tenuous part of the atmosphere beyond the ionosphere that blends into space, says Galvin. "The Earth's exosphere starts at 480 kilometers up. For the moon, you have the surface of the moon and -- bang! -- the exosphere right next to it."

Mathpad is free and easy to use, yet efficient tool for scientific calculating and plotting. It's not Mathematica, but it definitely beats gnuplot.

I've been using MathPad for quite a while now. It's labeling capabilities are somewhat limited but it's free and it has a nice symbolic calculator.

More than that, this does away with the need of intermediate hardware for long distances.

A big boon for use in desolate and (naturally)unfriendly environs.

Very cool indeed. That is infact something that would be immensely useful in places like this for these people.

I call bullshit, and demand references.

Do you understand how ABS works? It alternatively locks and unlocks the wheel, which gives a pulse pattern, which means you stop for a second, roll for a second, etc. (Not actually 'a second', but short, pre-determined time intervals)

Read the first 10 pages of google results for "abs increases stopping distance".

What, like;

• This one?

  "1) It isn't entirely clear that antilock braking will reduce stopping distance for the skilled driver;"

  "The IIHS report, issued December 10, 1996, notes that in single-vehicle accidents, cars with antilock brakes are as much as 44% more likely to produce fatalities than are cars without the antilock system."

• Or this one?

  "Other factors affecting ABS performance include the condition of the tires, shocks, and suspension components, as well as their design. For example, if a tire hits a bump and the shocks/springs are weak, the tire may lift off the ground and lock under brake pressure. ABS interprets lockup and releases the brakes. The more the tire is off the ground, the more the brakes will release, thus extending the stopping distance."

• Or this one?

  "Stopping distance is nearly the same for pumped brakes as it is when the brakes are locked. However, with locked brakes the driver has little, if any, control over vehicle direction. ABS pumps the brakes automatically during emergency stop. It prevents wheel lock and allows the driver to maintain a higher degree of control."

  "Most people who have tested ABS in panic situations feel positively towards them. ABS, as stated before, does not shorten stopping distance. If the driver doesn't leave enough room to stop, an accident could occur. Drivers must apply good judgement whether or not their vehicle has ABS."

• Or this one?

  "Do cars with ABS stop more quickly than cars without it? Not always. Although the stopping distance with ABS is shorter under most road conditions, drivers should always keep a safe distance behind the vehicle in front of them and maintain a speed consistent with the road conditions. While a vehicle with ABS maintains its steering capability in a sudden stop, it may not turn as quickly on a slippery road as it would on dry pavement."

• Or this one?

  "ABS technology is designed to maintain rolling traction and steering. The rolling action may produce longer stopping distances on some surfaces, such as freshly fallen snow or loose gravel."

I think you get the point. The comonality between all of thesee pages looks like this;

1. Ideal conditions are required (both road and vehicle)
2. Drivers must be trained/knowledgeable in use of the system
3. Stopping distance is not always reduced, but the steering advantage is hilighted.

The problem with light cars (a very large number of consumer purchased vehicles lately) is that they don't have the weight to keep the skipping wheels on the ground, thus dramatically reducing the efectiveness in both stopping distance and steering control, hence the reason for removing them from the likes of the Cavalier and Sunfire.

Especially in snow, gravel, and sand (loose pack) ABS will drastically increase your stopping distance (by about 200% in some cases, depending on speed and density of the material you're driving in). The plow effect by your car's tires slows the trajectory of your vehicle.

ABS isn't designed to reduce stopping distance, it is designed to give steering control. These are two VERY different things. Incidentally, locking your tires and knowing how to change directions can/will significantly reduce your stopping distance with the same amount of control, as anyone who's ever taken or instructed a crash course will tell you.

I've conducted 80KM/h tests myself, in snow (loose and hard packed), gravel, sand, and wet and dry asphalt and under many of the conditions, especially the non-ideal driving conditions, my stopping distance was increased. I will grant you that my tires did suffer more on the locking tests, but if I'm making an emergency stop, I'd much sooner replace some tires than find myself face-first in the side of an SUV/Minivan/truck/etc.

BTW, speaking of ideal conditions; This study hilights another problem with ABS - Driver reaction time and leg strength. Many (most?) women and smaller men have great difficulty in putting 100lbs pressure on their brake pedals in a real hurry, which the NHTSA has discovered increases stopping distance (150-200lbs is the desired pressure, which was difficult to attain, except by the TRC (professional) test driver).

This was posted on memepool yesterday with an interesting link. This seems to be happening more and more.

Some bright boy already did - basically to put all the waste in front of a cyclotron beam; the recoverable energy, even if not at break-even for every type of waste, still makes the process humongously cheaper than all the bulk-storage or escape-velocity based solutions.

I work in a lab at The University of New Hampshire called IOL (InterOperability Lab) that does a lot of device testing for vendors in conformance with ITU and ANSI standards. I don't work in the Ethernet group myself (I do DSL), but I know that they have lots of tests written up that may be a big help in analyzing traffic. I'm not sure what the other "expensive" services you mentioned cost, but IOL's may be very competitively priced, certainly worth a look.

I work in a lab at The University of New Hampshire called IOL (InterOperability Lab) that does a lot of device testing for vendors in conformance with ITU and ANSI standards. I don't work in the Ethernet group myself (I do DSL), but I know that they have lots of tests written up that may be a big help in analyzing traffic. I'm not sure what the other "expensive" services you mentioned cost, but IOL's may be very competitively priced, certainly worth a look.

I work in a lab at The University of New Hampshire called IOL (InterOperability Lab) that does a lot of device testing for vendors in conformance with ITU and ANSI standards. I don't work in the Ethernet group myself (I do DSL), but I know that they have lots of tests written up that may be a big help in analyzing traffic. I'm not sure what the other "expensive" services you mentioned cost, but IOL's may be very competitively priced, certainly worth a look.

I work in a lab at The University of New Hampshire called IOL (InterOperability Lab) that does a lot of device testing for vendors in conformance with ITU and ANSI standards. I don't work in the Ethernet group myself (I do DSL), but I know that they have lots of tests written up that may be a big help in analyzing traffic. I'm not sure what the other "expensive" services you mentioned cost, but IOL's may be very competitively priced, certainly worth a look.

To be fair to the poster, there is also an effect due to traveling through the dilute plasma of interstellar space. Honest to goodness, there is an Insterstellar Medium whose magnetic properties affect the propogation of radio waves. See, for example, this page.

I don't know about PBS for copyright information, but in general, any pictures, images, or film taken by State or Federal employees are public domain. There are certain limitations on this- for example, classified information, or the use of military insignia, but the overwhelming majority of the material put out is free for you to use. So yes, you could use it as source material in your own movies, though common decency demands you give credit where it's due.

This picture is a classic example. It was one of the most stunning photos to come out of the montana forest fires- the low resolution of the picture above doesn't do it justice- and any AP photographer would have killed to have the rights to it. But the picture was taken by an on-duty USGS employee, and hence, everyone gets to use it.

So in several cases, yes, publically funded stuff is in the public domain.
I think it all should be, but that would doubtless deprive my University of some much needed cash that the state will never give us.

Human powered devices? Think of the Wall Street investment possibilities! With the stock price of old school bulk energy suppliers like Enron swan diving into the abyss, companies that provide fuel for the human machine will skyrocket. Of all the companies that seek to power the human machine, Taco Bell has to be the most efficient source as a catalyst for human produced methane gas. IANASP (I am not a Stock Broker) but if I had some extra cash lying around, I think I would sink it into Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc (YUM) -- parent company of Taco Bell and that chicken shop that supposably sells dead fried birds that never had bones, feathers or feet with the mascot that reminds you of the "Good Ole Days" before the Civil War (War of Northern Aggression for you Georgia boys). One stop everyday at Taco Bell could power your PDA, Cell Phone, AbTronics Belt, GPS, IBM's Digital Photo Linux Watch, iPod and a Madonna Vougeing Aibo via a rear mounted methane to electric converter. Plus, if Hollywood can predict the future, according to Sly Stallone's movie "Demolition Man", every restaurant is going to be a Taco Bell anyway...

And what, pray tell, does an average consumer (WinXP user) need with fibre channel? Or more than one drive, for that matter?

Have YOU installed fibre channel on your system?

Should my 70-year old grandma put fibre channel in her computer?

You really should read up a bit on fibre channel before you go saying it is an acceptable replacement for cheap IDE.

Do normal users need "Connectivity over several kilometers" or more "flexible topologies" than a few drives daisy-chained together?

The simple fact is, fibre channel is only practical for high-end machines. If you run a small server or a desktop system, you'd be "braindead" to switch your system to a totally incompatible storage architecture, abandoning the compatibility and ease of IDE for the average user.

You also have to take into account that the cables for fibre channel are much more fragile than IDE ribbons, though not subject to RF reception in the medium itself.

For the record, I've never had a problem with IDE on any of my systems. It's cheaper to upgrade than my SCSI systems, and the drives are getting bigger and faster all the time, and not really going up in price.

Firewire hard drives, now THAT looks promising for desktop use...

CERN already has a good way to 'burn' radionuclides
into less harmful stuff - throw it in front of a
cyclotron beam. This produces a good net energy
gain in the bargain, and all the tech is quite
prosaic by high-energy research standards.

Google up the
Energy Amplifier by Prof Carlo Rubbia.