The TFA says that this tech is usually used prior to treatment, while the patient is in the treatment position.
Because processing a limited number of scans into a useful model previously took several hours, they were forced to perform many more scans to get a more accurate picture with which to build their model - because they don't want to leave the patient lying in the scanner for 6 hours prior to treatment. With this improvement in processing power, they can produce the model from limited data in a feasable time.
So the summary does actually describe the breakthrough quite well: It's not a new image processing technique for working with limited data, it's just new hardware allowing that process to be run in a quicker way. Yes they're using a slightly new algorithm, but I doubt that is a massive breakthrough in itself.
And keep in mind that the telegraph wires are really long whereas those on any biomedical implants are not. Length is key when it comes to this sort of thing - I've been saying the effects are proportional to the length of the wire, but I've been corrected and told that its the length of the wire squared, making the difference even more vast.
I've no experience with pacemakers, but I do recall seeing one chap on the news with an artificial heart that had to recharge it daily.
Frankly, none of the modellers really expected the magnitude of this minimum. We're in "unknown territory" with regard to solar behaviour right now, so based on our very-limited understanding, a major solar event is probably about as likely as any other outcome.
The effect is proportional to length of wire. We're talking about a hypothetical major solar event, potentially comparable to the one in 1859. As the effect will be proportional to the length of the conductor in question, the effect on your ~1m PC will be ~1000 times less than the effect on a ~1km power cable.
Yes, definately. This is just a bit of/. exaggeration based off of uninformed telegraph exaggeration. We're not talking about setting off a nuke next to your PC. We are, however, talking about a problem that will require significant coordination to mitigate some potentially very nasty effects on a global / continental / national level.
Big transformers in the power grids will be the main victims. And all of us that rely on having a power grid, of course.
As long as you keep a spare car battery to recharge any bionics that require that, and provided that the outage doesn't last too long, I'd expect something like a pacemaker to be just fine.
GPS and cars are mentioned because its the satellites themselves that are vulnerable. The "ipods etc" stuff in the telegraph, assuming there's any reasoning behind their inclusion in the article at all, beyond scaring telegraph readers, will be just because they need recharged regularly.
What the actual NASA article boils down to is: if the satellite and power companies (disconnecting transformers, etc) react fast enough, we'll be fine. Otherwise, better make sure you have an exercise bike and a car battery handy. And, potentially, access to locally grown food. I'd rather not see how the urban supply chain holds up without the power grid.
The exploding consoles. Clearly, everyone is very keen to get away from a console that might explode, as quickly as possible. Wouldn't wanna be strapped down next to one!
I'm with you to an extent on this point, but I really don't think that there's anything much more that he COULD do, unfortunately. After the initial failure/error, this would be a major disaster whoever was handling it.
Deep sea expertise is one thing, but this isn't just a deep sea issue. This is also an issue with an extremely high-pressure oil well gushing out through a fair bit of broken machinery. Ignoring the dynamics of that would be a dangerous mistake, and unfortunately, when it comes to practical experience dealing with ruptured oil wells, the experts are likely mostly in private industry.
seeing how [Obama's] superior executive response has been to let BP fumble around forever?
That's because BP are the ones with the greatest expertise here. Frankly, Obama would be acting very irresponsibly if he kicked them out of the cleanup altogether and just made them foot the bill. And with so much at stake, I really wouldn't want the president to act irresponsibly for the sake of making himself look better in the short term.
Trust me, we're doing fine.
There was an exceptional amount of snow last year, several inches (gasp!) in some places, and way back in 1968 we did have hurricane force winds that took the roofs of several houses and killed 20 people.
I'd contest that the former was too insignificant to qualify, and that the damage from the latter was too localised to count either.
I could be overlooking several significant events, but I honestly can't think of anything else remotely significant since 1900 (an arbitrary cutoff), bar a couple of small border towns getting flooded because they were built on the flood plains of small rivers. Feel free to correct me there, though.
Aha! That's a form of "natural disaster" i hadn't thought of. You win, because at least for the immediate future, they seem pretty damn unlikely.
But if its all the same with you guys, I'll stay at home, where midges and "moderate rain" are about the worst we're likely to get.
Until an experiment demonstrates otherwise, or a convincing theory persuades me, I'll continue to suspect that an antimatter universe would appear identical to a "normal" matter universe, macroscopically at any rate. Provided that we didn't poke it too much. C-symmetery is likely close enough.
Makes you wonder what would a universe that swung the OTHER way look like?
Exactly the same. Gravity wouldn't be affected at all by a reversal of electrical charge. EM would be the same, but the other way around (not that we'd notice, as all our points of reference would be the other way around), and the strong and weak forces would still work just like you'd expect.
And how long would it take a cow walking on a treadmill to produce an amount of energy equivalent to that used to produce the treadmill (including its raw materials) anyway?
But if he's got 1.3 billion cow treadmills handy, I'd happily take one if I had a cow.
Heh. Maybe my eyes just got tired after 5 minutes:-) Either that, or the into-screen depth was much greater on the scenes that I remember as being "deep." I recall several shots of the dropship flying that seemed to me to have far less 3d depth than they ought to have.
Perhaps I was premature in criticising the film itself, rather than just my own visual processing of it.
Interesting, that's way more of a difference than me (roughly -1.5 left, -2.75 right).
Do you do execises to try to "encourage" proper stereo vision, like holding up two fingers at different distances, focussing on one and concentrating on seeing two seperate images of equal intensity of the other finger?
I was told to do that frequently as a teenager after the optician thought I was "at it" with regard to claiming not to see even the simplest magic eye. Doesn't seem to have had much effect, but I can certainly live without seeing magic eye.
I'm short sighted, and have a dominant left eye on account of it being substantially less short sighted than the right. Red/green 3d glasses work fine for me (afaik), but magic eye is a complete failure.
Watching Avatar was an interesting experience. When substantial 3d depth into the screen was used (such as the scene on the spaceship at the start with them all coming out of the stasis pods or whatever), the effect was very impressive.
Out-of-the-screen effects, however required headache-inducing concentration to see any depth at all, and even then they largely looked quite poor. When everyone else was busy ducking out of the way, I was wondering why things were only projecting ever-so-slightly from the screen.
Overall, I was disappointed at how infrequently the into-screen effects were used compared to out-of-screen ones (or maybe I was only able to see the depth when it was at its most extreme).
Ocular upgrade, plz!
Slashdot Mirror
The TFA says that this tech is usually used prior to treatment, while the patient is in the treatment position.
Because processing a limited number of scans into a useful model previously took several hours, they were forced to perform many more scans to get a more accurate picture with which to build their model - because they don't want to leave the patient lying in the scanner for 6 hours prior to treatment.
With this improvement in processing power, they can produce the model from limited data in a feasable time.
So the summary does actually describe the breakthrough quite well: It's not a new image processing technique for working with limited data, it's just new hardware allowing that process to be run in a quicker way. Yes they're using a slightly new algorithm, but I doubt that is a massive breakthrough in itself.
And keep in mind that the telegraph wires are really long whereas those on any biomedical implants are not. Length is key when it comes to this sort of thing - I've been saying the effects are proportional to the length of the wire, but I've been corrected and told that its the length of the wire squared, making the difference even more vast.
I've no experience with pacemakers, but I do recall seeing one chap on the news with an artificial heart that had to recharge it daily.
It also caught fire.
Dood, when decepticons get at a working power grid, it quickly stops being a working power grid.
Frankly, none of the modellers really expected the magnitude of this minimum. We're in "unknown territory" with regard to solar behaviour right now, so based on our very-limited understanding, a major solar event is probably about as likely as any other outcome.
The effect is proportional to length of wire. We're talking about a hypothetical major solar event, potentially comparable to the one in 1859. As the effect will be proportional to the length of the conductor in question, the effect on your ~1m PC will be ~1000 times less than the effect on a ~1km power cable.
Yes, definately. This is just a bit of /. exaggeration based off of uninformed telegraph exaggeration. We're not talking about setting off a nuke next to your PC. We are, however, talking about a problem that will require significant coordination to mitigate some potentially very nasty effects on a global / continental / national level.
Your computer will be fine. Really. Provided, of course, that your mains connection is properly fused.
Big transformers in the power grids will be the main victims. And all of us that rely on having a power grid, of course.
As long as you keep a spare car battery to recharge any bionics that require that, and provided that the outage doesn't last too long, I'd expect something like a pacemaker to be just fine.
GPS and cars are mentioned because its the satellites themselves that are vulnerable. The "ipods etc" stuff in the telegraph, assuming there's any reasoning behind their inclusion in the article at all, beyond scaring telegraph readers, will be just because they need recharged regularly.
What the actual NASA article boils down to is: if the satellite and power companies (disconnecting transformers, etc) react fast enough, we'll be fine. Otherwise, better make sure you have an exercise bike and a car battery handy. And, potentially, access to locally grown food. I'd rather not see how the urban supply chain holds up without the power grid.
You'd need some way of restoring mass at some point though.
And that would have to be by means of an external mechanism already present at your destination, limiting its practicality for intial exploration.
The exploding consoles. Clearly, everyone is very keen to get away from a console that might explode, as quickly as possible. Wouldn't wanna be strapped down next to one!
I'm with you to an extent on this point, but I really don't think that there's anything much more that he COULD do, unfortunately. After the initial failure/error, this would be a major disaster whoever was handling it.
Deep sea expertise is one thing, but this isn't just a deep sea issue. This is also an issue with an extremely high-pressure oil well gushing out through a fair bit of broken machinery. Ignoring the dynamics of that would be a dangerous mistake, and unfortunately, when it comes to practical experience dealing with ruptured oil wells, the experts are likely mostly in private industry.
seeing how [Obama's] superior executive response has been to let BP fumble around forever?
That's because BP are the ones with the greatest expertise here. Frankly, Obama would be acting very irresponsibly if he kicked them out of the cleanup altogether and just made them foot the bill. And with so much at stake, I really wouldn't want the president to act irresponsibly for the sake of making himself look better in the short term.
Trust me, we're doing fine. There was an exceptional amount of snow last year, several inches (gasp!) in some places, and way back in 1968 we did have hurricane force winds that took the roofs of several houses and killed 20 people.
I'd contest that the former was too insignificant to qualify, and that the damage from the latter was too localised to count either.
I could be overlooking several significant events, but I honestly can't think of anything else remotely significant since 1900 (an arbitrary cutoff), bar a couple of small border towns getting flooded because they were built on the flood plains of small rivers. Feel free to correct me there, though.
Godzilla.
Godzilla was the unintentional result of nuclear explosions, so I'd hesitate to count him as a "natural" disaster.
Aha! That's a form of "natural disaster" i hadn't thought of. You win, because at least for the immediate future, they seem pretty damn unlikely.
But if its all the same with you guys, I'll stay at home, where midges and "moderate rain" are about the worst we're likely to get.
Its 5m, not 15. But you're right. 5m is not 15 feet - it is precisely 16.4041995 feet.
Yet another reason ... why I'm glad I don't live in the USA.
Fixed that for the GP. I mean, seriously. Is there a form of natural disaster you guys aren't under constant threat of?
Until an experiment demonstrates otherwise, or a convincing theory persuades me, I'll continue to suspect that an antimatter universe would appear identical to a "normal" matter universe, macroscopically at any rate. Provided that we didn't poke it too much. C-symmetery is likely close enough.
Makes you wonder what would a universe that swung the OTHER way look like?
Exactly the same. Gravity wouldn't be affected at all by a reversal of electrical charge. EM would be the same, but the other way around (not that we'd notice, as all our points of reference would be the other way around), and the strong and weak forces would still work just like you'd expect.
And how long would it take a cow walking on a treadmill to produce an amount of energy equivalent to that used to produce the treadmill (including its raw materials) anyway?
But if he's got 1.3 billion cow treadmills handy, I'd happily take one if I had a cow.
Heh. Maybe my eyes just got tired after 5 minutes :-) Either that, or the into-screen depth was much greater on the scenes that I remember as being "deep." I recall several shots of the dropship flying that seemed to me to have far less 3d depth than they ought to have.
Perhaps I was premature in criticising the film itself, rather than just my own visual processing of it.
Thanking me for self-indulgent moaning? You're most welcome! :)
Interesting, that's way more of a difference than me (roughly -1.5 left, -2.75 right).
Do you do execises to try to "encourage" proper stereo vision, like holding up two fingers at different distances, focussing on one and concentrating on seeing two seperate images of equal intensity of the other finger?
I was told to do that frequently as a teenager after the optician thought I was "at it" with regard to claiming not to see even the simplest magic eye. Doesn't seem to have had much effect, but I can certainly live without seeing magic eye.
I'm short sighted, and have a dominant left eye on account of it being substantially less short sighted than the right. Red/green 3d glasses work fine for me (afaik), but magic eye is a complete failure.
Watching Avatar was an interesting experience. When substantial 3d depth into the screen was used (such as the scene on the spaceship at the start with them all coming out of the stasis pods or whatever), the effect was very impressive.
Out-of-the-screen effects, however required headache-inducing concentration to see any depth at all, and even then they largely looked quite poor. When everyone else was busy ducking out of the way, I was wondering why things were only projecting ever-so-slightly from the screen.
Overall, I was disappointed at how infrequently the into-screen effects were used compared to out-of-screen ones (or maybe I was only able to see the depth when it was at its most extreme).
Ocular upgrade, plz!