The "border search exception" has been well vetted legally: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
(Note that the ACLU's implication that this exception extends to 100 miles from the border is incorrect: http://news.yahoo.com/does-constitution-free-zone-really-exist-america-195813138.html)
But I would guess this search exercise does more harm than good. It can be easily circumvented (encrypted data over networks), so the question is empirical: Have criminals adapted to the law yet, in which case it becomes useless, and detrimental to the innocent (mostly for psychological reasons, but also for practical reasons if the government were to abuse the info it obtains).
So X-pire's servers can track who has viewed which images when? That info could come in handy. Might even have a market value. Perhaps I should set up my own such system.
Similarly macroscopic quantum states have been achieved in superconductors. So the significance of this work is that macroscopic superposition is accomplished with a mechanical system, not an electronic one.
The Nature article that the BBC is referring to:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08967.html
The BBC removed the scale bar, which shows that the resonator is about 70 microns long, with an "active region" 40 microns long. But the resonant frequency is still up in the GHz, so they only have to cool to 0.1K, which is not so hard these days.
The author seems convinced that Per Segerbäck is allergic to radio waves, even though Segerbäck doesn't demonstrate this in a blind test, and a psychosomatic explanation looms large behind every incident described. This article is worthless to those looking for scientific evidence on the subject.
Yes, you can insulate a device, so that in almost all cases (definitely in the case of a fast-switching transistor) the main heat source is the device itself.
Here's a commercial box that cools a 2-inch wafer of high-temperature superconductor to around 80K. This box uses 80 watts including whatever other signal processing stuff is in there.
Another source (Cryogenics 42 (2002) 705-718) says that 1W of cooling power at 4K will cost you 5kW of input power using a straightforward helium compressor. This scales as 1/temperature^2 for higher temperatures, but for lower temperatures you'd switch to a different type of refrigerator.
0.3K refrigerators using helium 3 would not use more than 10kW, but this is already too much for most applications.
So the practical significance of this research is that it may be reproduced with higher temperature materials, not that we will build THz DSPs at 0.3K.
i don't see the reasoning behind "all populations are becoming connected and the opportunity for random change is dwindling." random changes will continue (perhaps with varying rate due to trends in the mean age of parents), and they'll have more opportunity to link up with other beneficial changes (via the larger interbreeding population).
isolation is not necessary for evolution, it just makes evolution more visible because one can directly compare different populations rather than having to compare the current population to the population long ago.
but i think (though it's not evident in this article) Prof Jones understands the more important reasons that evolution is slowing down (also discussed in some posts above). i see this excerpt of his on the UCL website:
"Plenty of people are surviving who once did not, or are having children when once they would have stayed celibate, and medicine can now offer treatment for many with damaged genes that can then be passed on."
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The "border search exception" has been well vetted legally: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception (Note that the ACLU's implication that this exception extends to 100 miles from the border is incorrect: http://news.yahoo.com/does-constitution-free-zone-really-exist-america-195813138.html) But I would guess this search exercise does more harm than good. It can be easily circumvented (encrypted data over networks), so the question is empirical: Have criminals adapted to the law yet, in which case it becomes useless, and detrimental to the innocent (mostly for psychological reasons, but also for practical reasons if the government were to abuse the info it obtains).
So X-pire's servers can track who has viewed which images when? That info could come in handy. Might even have a market value. Perhaps I should set up my own such system.
Similarly macroscopic quantum states have been achieved in superconductors. So the significance of this work is that macroscopic superposition is accomplished with a mechanical system, not an electronic one. The Nature article that the BBC is referring to: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature08967.html The BBC removed the scale bar, which shows that the resonator is about 70 microns long, with an "active region" 40 microns long. But the resonant frequency is still up in the GHz, so they only have to cool to 0.1K, which is not so hard these days.
The author seems convinced that Per Segerbäck is allergic to radio waves, even though Segerbäck doesn't demonstrate this in a blind test, and a psychosomatic explanation looms large behind every incident described. This article is worthless to those looking for scientific evidence on the subject.
Yes, you can insulate a device, so that in almost all cases (definitely in the case of a fast-switching transistor) the main heat source is the device itself.
Here's a commercial box that cools a 2-inch wafer of high-temperature superconductor to around 80K. This box uses 80 watts including whatever other signal processing stuff is in there.
Another source (Cryogenics 42 (2002) 705-718) says that 1W of cooling power at 4K will cost you 5kW of input power using a straightforward helium compressor. This scales as 1/temperature^2 for higher temperatures, but for lower temperatures you'd switch to a different type of refrigerator.
0.3K refrigerators using helium 3 would not use more than 10kW, but this is already too much for most applications.
So the practical significance of this research is that it may be reproduced with higher temperature materials, not that we will build THz DSPs at 0.3K.
i don't see the reasoning behind "all populations are becoming connected and the opportunity for random change is dwindling." random changes will continue (perhaps with varying rate due to trends in the mean age of parents), and they'll have more opportunity to link up with other beneficial changes (via the larger interbreeding population).
isolation is not necessary for evolution, it just makes evolution more visible because one can directly compare different populations rather than having to compare the current population to the population long ago.
but i think (though it's not evident in this article) Prof Jones understands the more important reasons that evolution is slowing down (also discussed in some posts above). i see this excerpt of his on the UCL website:
"Plenty of people are surviving who once did not, or are having children when once they would have stayed celibate, and medicine can now offer treatment for many with damaged genes that can then be passed on."