I am surely not alone in thinking that the text of every patent seems to be deliberately obfuscated.
Nope - in my experience patents often ARE in fact deliberately obfuscated (beyond the inevitable legalese). The more general the description of the patented article, the better (at least that was the advice I got when pursuing a patent with some colleagues). This often leads to vague wording - the more specifics you give, the easier it is to take that specific, give it a "non-obvious" twist, and suddenly someone else has a patent based on something that was largely your idea. It also gives your lawyers a better case if anyone infringes on the patent. I could be wrong though - IANAL, and the aforementioned advice was not from one either (although it WAS from someone who holds several patents himself...).
Thanks for your reply - I agree with most everything you said, though I take issue with one line in your post.
A lot of people have shown a lot of numbers that look they support a lot of things. Most of the time the numbers are accepted as evidence.
The difference is that in most other fields, those numbers may be reproduced by completely different researchers. In all paranormal research that has been done to date, I have never known this to be the case. I'm not saying that it will never happen, but (barring government conspiracies) it hasn't happened in the decades of research that has occurred which, to me, negates the credibility of these numbers.
I agree that Joop's current work should stand on its own merit, but I must admit I'm less inclined to believe him based on his publication history. Whether or not I'm justified in this is a matter of opinion. As I said before, there's a big difference between parapsychology and astrobiology, and the sudden switch in specialties is somewhat worrisome for his credibility.
My initial post was my gut reaction, and I knew it would elicit responses - To be more specific, I'm less inclined to believe him given the fact that he has published extensively on fringe theories (ESP and paranormal phenomena) unrelated to the topic of the work in question (evidence of life on Mars from the Viking mission). The difference between parapsychology and astrobiology is a big one.
Also, I mentioned alchemy in a previous post (timestamped 5 minutes before the one I am responding to), and I also have not condemned (rather, I've advocated) paranormal research, citing alchemy as an example of a field of study that had unintended, beneficial results.
You sir have shown a remarkable skill in making snap judgments on a person based on a 3 word post.
It takes more then simply applying the method de jour to prove or disprove a radical idea.
I may have misinterpreted, but did you just imply that the scientific method is the "method de jour"? If so, it's certainly had a pretty good "jour" so far.
Also, I think you may have misinterpreted my mention of alchemy. Alchemy resulted in the more regimented field of chemistry, as well as drove research in other fields - hardly a waste of time. My overall point was that I don't have a beef with paranormal research if it uses a strong methodology - if not, results can easily be manipulated/mis-read by an overzealous researcher.
I'm not biased against the "fringe" of scientific study - My first posts here were on the topic of radiation hormesis, something of a fringe theory in my field (http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23592 5&cid=19247375 and other posts in the thread). Just because the topic is in the fringe, however, doesn't mean you can ignore the scientific method.
Oh wait, you must be one of those crackpots who somehow thinks science is a field for people with CLOSED minds that already believe they know the answers to the big questions.
No, I happen to be a scientist who believes in the scientific method. I have read a fair amount about paranormal phenomena, and it is my belief that in all probability it's just wishful thinking. A lot of people have shown off a lot of numbers that look like they support ESP. This list of unclaimed prizes ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_for_ev idence_of_the_paranormal ) goes to show nobody has able to do it in a controlled environment.
You know, I support the research of the paranormal. If someone reproduces an event in a controlled environment, the experiment is reproducible, and it is deemed valid by experts in the field, I will believe it. I won't believe a collection of anecdotal evidence. I equate paranormal research to alchemy research - the fruits of the research may not be what we're expecting, but could end up useful. I certainly would like various anecdotal paranormal phenomena to be genuine (it certainly would make life more interesting), but reason prevents me from believing in them.
I've never met Joop, but given the disparity between his paranormal research and the research this thread is concerned with, I'm inclined to believe that he relishes the fringe. I'm also inclined to believe that the same desire for the paranormal/out-of-the-ordinary to exist that I just expressed about myself may also drive spurious conclusions.
As a side note, given your apparent interest in the topic Mr. shaitland (having mentioned the research going on at MIT in another comment), I recommend you look into the PEAR program at Princeton that operated for about 30 years ( http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/ ). Personally, I found their results (based on 30 years of data) less than convincing.
From what I've seen, the people that tend to buy the music that sells in big numbers (pop, top 40 stuff) also tend to only listen to the 1-3 songs that end up being singles off of that album (look at how successful the "NOW" series of CD's has been). Actually buying the CD single version of the song was never a very popular option b/c the price per content was even more unreasonable than the CD's themselves (and they often weren't available). By letting people buy single tracks from iTunes (or any other online music vendor) around the much more reasonable $.99 per song, the "masses" are able pick out whatever the cool song is. I would think that this would cut into CD sales on the same order of magnitude as piracy.
As a side note, music piracy has caused me to buy far more CD's than I otherwise would have. My first exposure to some of my favorite bands has been through (illicit) downloaded tracks, and I often end up buying their entire discography. I know, I know, fuck the RIAA - regardless of their evilness, it's not going to stop me from wanting to own a physical copy of Marquee Moon by Television (shameless plug for the album at the top of my playlist right now).
Given a description of an incident, however, it may be possible to place upper and lower bounds on some of the classified parameters - bounds that are narrower than the published numbers, and there are plenty of adversaries who would be delighted to deduce things about our Naval capabilities (a lot more interesting/useful than even our bomb designs), given just a few more missing puzzle pieces.
Great point, and one that I hadn't thought about. The spill did happen on the commercial (naval reactor) side of the plant. Like you said, our Naval reactors are far more interesting than bombs, and any clues to their design would be worth a ton to those looking to develop their own. From what I hear, they make modern power reactors look like Tinkertoys - They've got to go from 0 to full power extremely rapidly - a power reactor takes several hours to "warm up". The engineer in me thinks KAPL (http://www.kaplinc.com/) would be an awesome place to work...
Hmm... good point - it's very possible that's what they meant. Bad wording in the article - the "its" could refer to the company (Nuclear Fuel Services) or all the incidents seen by the NRC (in which case TMI would be #1). The latter makes more sense.
It wouldn't have caused an explosion, just a chain reaction a la what is sustained in a nuclear reactor - except this would be completely uncontrolled and unshielded. As everyone here probably knows, fission is caused by one neutron busting apart a big nucleus, throwing out more neutrons (among other things). Criticality happens when there are more neutrons in a given "generation" (instant, essentially) than the previous generation (for a given geometry, etc). In a power reactor this ratio of neutrons in a given instant to the previous instant (k) is (very close to) 1 - ie the neutron flux remains (relatively) stable across short time frames (the flux varies significantly with fuel burnup). Once you go to k > 1, the reaction increases very rapidly and thats when things get dangerous in an uncontrolled environment. There would be "nuclear reactions", even fission, going on in a tablespoon of the stuff, just not at a rate necessary to create a chain reaction and establish criticality.
How much of this stuff it would take to create and maintain a chain reaction depends on a lot of things - geometry, what else is in the liquid solution (ie anything hydrogenous would help thermalize/"slow-down" the neutrons to the point where fission is most likely, maintaining the chain reaction), and the amount of enrichment (since this is weapons/navy grade stuff, it was extremely high, meaning you wouldn't need much). That said, I don't have a good estimate of how much of this stuff it would take, but I do know that a sphere of pure Pu-239 a little bigger than a softball (~12kg) is a critical configuration.
I have a BS in Nuke Engineering, but haven't had a reactor theory course for a few years and shifted career paths, so I apologize for any errors.
McIntyre defended the commission's decision not to fine Nuclear Fuel Services, even though the agency rated the uranium leak last year as its second most-serious violation.
(Emphasis mine) Personally, I would be interested to know what the most serious violation was...
Re:Am I the only one who just doesn't care about H
on
Blue Blu-ray
·
· Score: 1
Plain old DVDs serve my purpose perfectly well too. I've got a 42" 1080p LCD, and upscaled to 720p/1080i old-school DVDs look fantastic. I just use an $80 used Xbox softmodded with XBMC installed as a media center box - from what I've read, the software upscaling is as good if not better than standalone upsampling DVD players. I also use the TV as a monitor for my PC (HL2, Oblivion, and Civ 4 in 1080p are well worth the investment), so I don't feel like the extra resolution over 720p is wasted at this point. I'm going to wait until the dust settles on the HD player front before investing in one, although considering the ease with which you can install Linux on a PS3, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone creates an app similar to/ports XBMC - This fact alone makes me lean towards PS3/Blu-ray, but I definitely don't feel the need to make the jump anytime soon.
Great point - I think the cool part about these findings is that the vast majority of the neighboring plants' genetics were identical, being the same species and all. From the actual paper, they were able to differentiate their siblings through root interaction... Could you shake the hand of someone you've never met and tell if they were your brother or sister? The lone fact that the plants are able to detect these tiny genetic differences, let alone act on them, is pretty cool, IMO.
The thing I liked about the new Sam and Max games was that they were ACTUALLY episodic, as opposed to HL2 "episodes," which have taken over a year each, or SiN Episodes of which there was one. I hope TellTale sticks to the episodic content model for their next project because they seem to handle it well - After this project, I'm sure they've become more used to the different schedule demands of periodically producing content rather than one big push.
Personally, I think the thriving animal populations in these areas have a lot to due not with the radiation, but with the lack/greatly reduced numbers of humans populating these areas.
People are scared off by the radiation, but at these levels it basically increases the base genetic mutation/birth defect and cancer incidence rates at a level that doesn't really matter much to the growth of an animal population. A 5% increase in birth defects would scare the hell out of a human population though (understandably so). Point being, people leave -> animals move in unhindered.
I hope they don't mangle the PC Fallout 3 UI to match what would look good on a console (like they did in Oblivion) - or at least make the UI moddable. Inventory/spell management was a giant pain in vanilla Oblivion (huge icons/font). Off topic, but I have the same worries about how Bioshock will feel on a PC as well...
Thanks for the reply - I guess my point was that when dealing with the retrospective population types of studies you mentioned, dealing with confounding factors (socioeconomic status, healthy worker effect) is a pain in the ass, and really hurt the statistical reliability of your results. That said, regulatory agencies tend to go overboard in dismissing these studies based on the confounding factors.
When I said good, controlled study, I meant something like this: John Cameron wanted to do a double-blind study with a large sample of senior citizen volunteers in gulf states (where background radiation is low), giving half of them low doses of radiation (ie conceptually, like putting radioactive or normal rocks under their beds) and comparing cancer incidence, longevity, etc. This would cut out confounding factors (though it would only look at old people... due to the latency period of radiation induced carcinogenesis, young people are more susceptible to this... but the data would be definitive for old people at least). This is not going to happen in the near future w/ all the FUD surrounding radiation.
We could certainly do a lot more with the data we've got though - I completely agree.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope - in my experience patents often ARE in fact deliberately obfuscated (beyond the inevitable legalese). The more general the description of the patented article, the better (at least that was the advice I got when pursuing a patent with some colleagues). This often leads to vague wording - the more specifics you give, the easier it is to take that specific, give it a "non-obvious" twist, and suddenly someone else has a patent based on something that was largely your idea. It also gives your lawyers a better case if anyone infringes on the patent. I could be wrong though - IANAL, and the aforementioned advice was not from one either (although it WAS from someone who holds several patents himself...).
The difference is that in most other fields, those numbers may be reproduced by completely different researchers. In all paranormal research that has been done to date, I have never known this to be the case. I'm not saying that it will never happen, but (barring government conspiracies) it hasn't happened in the decades of research that has occurred which, to me, negates the credibility of these numbers.
I agree that Joop's current work should stand on its own merit, but I must admit I'm less inclined to believe him based on his publication history. Whether or not I'm justified in this is a matter of opinion. As I said before, there's a big difference between parapsychology and astrobiology, and the sudden switch in specialties is somewhat worrisome for his credibility.
Cheers!
My initial post was my gut reaction, and I knew it would elicit responses - To be more specific, I'm less inclined to believe him given the fact that he has published extensively on fringe theories (ESP and paranormal phenomena) unrelated to the topic of the work in question (evidence of life on Mars from the Viking mission). The difference between parapsychology and astrobiology is a big one.
Also, I mentioned alchemy in a previous post (timestamped 5 minutes before the one I am responding to), and I also have not condemned (rather, I've advocated) paranormal research, citing alchemy as an example of a field of study that had unintended, beneficial results.
You sir have shown a remarkable skill in making snap judgments on a person based on a 3 word post.
I may have misinterpreted, but did you just imply that the scientific method is the "method de jour"? If so, it's certainly had a pretty good "jour" so far.
Also, I think you may have misinterpreted my mention of alchemy. Alchemy resulted in the more regimented field of chemistry, as well as drove research in other fields - hardly a waste of time. My overall point was that I don't have a beef with paranormal research if it uses a strong methodology - if not, results can easily be manipulated/mis-read by an overzealous researcher.
I'm not biased against the "fringe" of scientific study - My first posts here were on the topic of radiation hormesis, something of a fringe theory in my field (http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2359
Thanks for your reply - Cheers!
No, I happen to be a scientist who believes in the scientific method. I have read a fair amount about paranormal phenomena, and it is my belief that in all probability it's just wishful thinking. A lot of people have shown off a lot of numbers that look like they support ESP. This list of unclaimed prizes ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_for_e
You know, I support the research of the paranormal. If someone reproduces an event in a controlled environment, the experiment is reproducible, and it is deemed valid by experts in the field, I will believe it. I won't believe a collection of anecdotal evidence. I equate paranormal research to alchemy research - the fruits of the research may not be what we're expecting, but could end up useful. I certainly would like various anecdotal paranormal phenomena to be genuine (it certainly would make life more interesting), but reason prevents me from believing in them.
I've never met Joop, but given the disparity between his paranormal research and the research this thread is concerned with, I'm inclined to believe that he relishes the fringe. I'm also inclined to believe that the same desire for the paranormal/out-of-the-ordinary to exist that I just expressed about myself may also drive spurious conclusions.
As a side note, given your apparent interest in the topic Mr. shaitland (having mentioned the research going on at MIT in another comment), I recommend you look into the PEAR program at Princeton that operated for about 30 years ( http://www.princeton.edu/~pear/ ). Personally, I found their results (based on 30 years of data) less than convincing.
Ah shit, now Joop's gonna strangle me all the way from Germany.
Our friend Joop has also published a lot of work on ESP and paranormal activity: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Joop+Houtkoope r&hl=en&lr=&btnG=Search.
I call BS.
Submitted too soon - meant to add a " ;) " and mention that I used to have a T-shirt w/ that slogan...
If it's too loud, you're too old.
From what I've seen, the people that tend to buy the music that sells in big numbers (pop, top 40 stuff) also tend to only listen to the 1-3 songs that end up being singles off of that album (look at how successful the "NOW" series of CD's has been). Actually buying the CD single version of the song was never a very popular option b/c the price per content was even more unreasonable than the CD's themselves (and they often weren't available). By letting people buy single tracks from iTunes (or any other online music vendor) around the much more reasonable $.99 per song, the "masses" are able pick out whatever the cool song is. I would think that this would cut into CD sales on the same order of magnitude as piracy.
As a side note, music piracy has caused me to buy far more CD's than I otherwise would have. My first exposure to some of my favorite bands has been through (illicit) downloaded tracks, and I often end up buying their entire discography. I know, I know, fuck the RIAA - regardless of their evilness, it's not going to stop me from wanting to own a physical copy of Marquee Moon by Television (shameless plug for the album at the top of my playlist right now).
Great point, and one that I hadn't thought about. The spill did happen on the commercial (naval reactor) side of the plant. Like you said, our Naval reactors are far more interesting than bombs, and any clues to their design would be worth a ton to those looking to develop their own. From what I hear, they make modern power reactors look like Tinkertoys - They've got to go from 0 to full power extremely rapidly - a power reactor takes several hours to "warm up". The engineer in me thinks KAPL (http://www.kaplinc.com/) would be an awesome place to work...
Hmm... good point - it's very possible that's what they meant. Bad wording in the article - the "its" could refer to the company (Nuclear Fuel Services) or all the incidents seen by the NRC (in which case TMI would be #1). The latter makes more sense.
It wouldn't have caused an explosion, just a chain reaction a la what is sustained in a nuclear reactor - except this would be completely uncontrolled and unshielded. As everyone here probably knows, fission is caused by one neutron busting apart a big nucleus, throwing out more neutrons (among other things). Criticality happens when there are more neutrons in a given "generation" (instant, essentially) than the previous generation (for a given geometry, etc). In a power reactor this ratio of neutrons in a given instant to the previous instant (k) is (very close to) 1 - ie the neutron flux remains (relatively) stable across short time frames (the flux varies significantly with fuel burnup). Once you go to k > 1, the reaction increases very rapidly and thats when things get dangerous in an uncontrolled environment. There would be "nuclear reactions", even fission, going on in a tablespoon of the stuff, just not at a rate necessary to create a chain reaction and establish criticality. How much of this stuff it would take to create and maintain a chain reaction depends on a lot of things - geometry, what else is in the liquid solution (ie anything hydrogenous would help thermalize/"slow-down" the neutrons to the point where fission is most likely, maintaining the chain reaction), and the amount of enrichment (since this is weapons/navy grade stuff, it was extremely high, meaning you wouldn't need much). That said, I don't have a good estimate of how much of this stuff it would take, but I do know that a sphere of pure Pu-239 a little bigger than a softball (~12kg) is a critical configuration. I have a BS in Nuke Engineering, but haven't had a reactor theory course for a few years and shifted career paths, so I apologize for any errors.
Your post inspired me - I had to make the image in my head a reality (scroll down slowly): http://www.notentirelystable.com/comic.html
Plain old DVDs serve my purpose perfectly well too. I've got a 42" 1080p LCD, and upscaled to 720p/1080i old-school DVDs look fantastic. I just use an $80 used Xbox softmodded with XBMC installed as a media center box - from what I've read, the software upscaling is as good if not better than standalone upsampling DVD players. I also use the TV as a monitor for my PC (HL2, Oblivion, and Civ 4 in 1080p are well worth the investment), so I don't feel like the extra resolution over 720p is wasted at this point. I'm going to wait until the dust settles on the HD player front before investing in one, although considering the ease with which you can install Linux on a PS3, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before someone creates an app similar to/ports XBMC - This fact alone makes me lean towards PS3/Blu-ray, but I definitely don't feel the need to make the jump anytime soon.
I thought so too, until I realized it was old news =/
http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html
Great point - I think the cool part about these findings is that the vast majority of the neighboring plants' genetics were identical, being the same species and all. From the actual paper, they were able to differentiate their siblings through root interaction... Could you shake the hand of someone you've never met and tell if they were your brother or sister? The lone fact that the plants are able to detect these tiny genetic differences, let alone act on them, is pretty cool, IMO.
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/biology_lette rs/RSBL20070232.pdf
The thing I liked about the new Sam and Max games was that they were ACTUALLY episodic, as opposed to HL2 "episodes," which have taken over a year each, or SiN Episodes of which there was one. I hope TellTale sticks to the episodic content model for their next project because they seem to handle it well - After this project, I'm sure they've become more used to the different schedule demands of periodically producing content rather than one big push.
Personally, I think the thriving animal populations in these areas have a lot to due not with the radiation, but with the lack/greatly reduced numbers of humans populating these areas. People are scared off by the radiation, but at these levels it basically increases the base genetic mutation/birth defect and cancer incidence rates at a level that doesn't really matter much to the growth of an animal population. A 5% increase in birth defects would scare the hell out of a human population though (understandably so). Point being, people leave -> animals move in unhindered.
I hope they don't mangle the PC Fallout 3 UI to match what would look good on a console (like they did in Oblivion) - or at least make the UI moddable. Inventory/spell management was a giant pain in vanilla Oblivion (huge icons/font). Off topic, but I have the same worries about how Bioshock will feel on a PC as well...
"Maybe one day, we'll talk to our homes and they'll answer."
As long as they don't come equipped with Genuine People Personalities...
Little redundant - I made fun of my typo hours before you did
Thanks for the reply - I guess my point was that when dealing with the retrospective population types of studies you mentioned, dealing with confounding factors (socioeconomic status, healthy worker effect) is a pain in the ass, and really hurt the statistical reliability of your results. That said, regulatory agencies tend to go overboard in dismissing these studies based on the confounding factors.
When I said good, controlled study, I meant something like this: John Cameron wanted to do a double-blind study with a large sample of senior citizen volunteers in gulf states (where background radiation is low), giving half of them low doses of radiation (ie conceptually, like putting radioactive or normal rocks under their beds) and comparing cancer incidence, longevity, etc. This would cut out confounding factors (though it would only look at old people... due to the latency period of radiation induced carcinogenesis, young people are more susceptible to this... but the data would be definitive for old people at least). This is not going to happen in the near future w/ all the FUD surrounding radiation.
We could certainly do a lot more with the data we've got though - I completely agree.