The grandparent is a very important question. We use diesel and not batteries or capacitors in our agricultural and industrial machinery because the chemical vs. electrochemical energy stored is not even remotely comparable by weight. Capaciters don't give up energy due to chemical bonds being broken, and the dielectric strength isn't based on the chemical bond strength. (Paper has twice the dielectric strength of quartz, for example.)
Back to answer the grandparent. Diesel has an energy density by weight of 11.6 KWh/kg.
Ultracapacitors have a theoretical energy density of up to 0.060 KWh/kg.
So they don't really max out at the same magnitude at all, because the energy really isn't being stored in a similar manner.
And a few clarifications for you. Several of the studies indicating net energy gain ignore the energy used to make the farm machinery and the energy used by the labor. Dr. David Pimentel has some reasonable objections, gadfly though he may be.
Perhaps more importantly, most of the debate is over irrelevant issues.
Ethanol carbon neutral? Irrelevant.
Ethanol positive energy balance? Irrelevant.
The question _should_ be: Would corn based ethanol ever be used if it wasn't for the subsidies that keep it going?
Or a more sophisticated way to ask it: What is the EROI? (Energy return on investment.)
Ethanol can barely compete in spite of direct subsidies and hidden subsidies (such as the state and federal taxes on gasoline that are not applied to ethanol.)
Economically it makes no sense, even if you do get a little extra energy out of all your work in the fields and ethanol production plants. The energy limitations simply mean that it never will make sense.
I know it's pedantic, but you seem to be confusing your C-section incisions a bit. Getting through the skin and getting through the uterus are two separate issues.
The "bikini" (Pfannenstiel) incision is the superficial, skin incision.
The midline vertical incision is also a superficial, skin incision.
The midline vertical is sometimes used in emergency C-sections due to a relatively rapid entry with minimal blood loss. A skilled obstetrician can usually get into the abdomen with no difference in time or outcome with a Pfannenstiel, provided a controlled OR to work in. In extreme emergencies, such as death of the mother in an MVC, a vertical incision all the way to the baby can be made with no tools besides the scalpel. That is a relatively rare scenario.
Once through the skin (and fat, fascia, and peritoneum) you enter the abdomen and need to make an incision in the uterus to get the baby out. The choice of incision depends on several factors, including the position of the baby, location of the placenta, fibroids, ability to get the bladder out of the way, etc. That said, the choice of incision is almost always a low transverse or low vertical incision, even in emergencies.
High vertical incisions don't heal as well and are more prone to rupture in subsequent pregnancies. They are very rare, in spite of your claims to the contrary.
At any rate, I have never seen a C-section where the obstetrician is "lifting the intestines up out of the body and putting them on the chest so that you can get to the uterus underneath" as you claim in your previous post. It is actually almost physically impossible. I would question the sanity of the obstetrician who tried it to see if it could be done.
"Infant mortality" has different definitions between _states_ in the USA. Was it a miscarriage, or did a baby die? It depends on which state you're in. Comparing between countries will give you some real apples and oranges. This is maddening if you are in a state with a broad definition of "infant mortality" and your hospital is getting bad quality outcome numbers because of the definitions your state legislature made.
Also, one would expect that infant mortality would be highest in a country with the highest risk obstetric patients, wouldn't we? Let's see. A country where women with careers wait until their 30's to have babies instead of their teens and twenties. Where, as a result, infertility treatments and therefore multiple gestations (twins, triplets, etc) are common. Where, as a result, the neonatal ICUs are crammed with babies from about 30 weeks gestational age (having been in the uterus for only 3/4 of the celestial committee's recommended stay.) One could easily make the assumption that the more money a country is willing to spend on medical care, the higher their infant mortality would be.
The actual numbers, sampling biases, etc are much more complicated than this, but anyone who thinks Cuba's medical care is better than that in the US is a bit confused or deliberately misleading others in my opinion. I wouldn't want to be a 30 week gestational age infant in Cuba.
Here's an article that gets into a little more detail, but really the whole socialized medicine argument is like debating creationists. You aren't going to change their belief with any evidence. I just get sick of the infant mortality / longevity comparisons which are so obviously inane.
1889 Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat
on
Cyberchondria
·
· Score: 1
Is hilarious. The first chapter is about a fellow who gets a medical textbook and comes down with all sorts of maladies. Try it at project Gutenberg or buy your hard copy here. I am a family physician, and that chapter made me laugh so hard I almost injured myself.
Perhaps a more relevant historical comparison is between the assignats (money) the National Assembly printed up under King Louis and the $25K the author of the above article wants created (somehow) for every person.
Louis et al. created too much money. It became worthless. The number of assignats it took to buy bread went through the roof. The resulting hyperinflation made the masses _very_ miserable, and was an impetus for the revolution. People lost their heads.
I don't think printing up money for people to spend is always a good idea.
is a fun book. It explains the basic physics of electricity and electrical devices in a very entertaining way. Check it out here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail /-/0962 781592/qid=1059866050/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-366266 4-1016845?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
Retrospective studies like this are too susceptible to confounding. One obvious issue would be that more intelligent/better off people might drink more coffee, and take longer for the disease to show up.
There are a lot of variables that go into Alzheimer's disease. Dementia is usually the sum of a lot of different "insults" to the brain. So start at your baseline intelligence, then take away the brain that died with any damage done. Little strokes ("vascular dementia") are a big contributor, and smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol all promote them. (Folic acid and vitamin B6 are showing promise at reducing/preventing this problem.) Shear damage to neuronal axons, like with a fall off a horse (President Reagan) or boxing or football will take you down a notch. This makes the dementia more obvious. Dementia can be rated by several scales, but the most common is the Mini Mental Status Exam (MMSE).
As dementia progresses, it can be treated with some novel medications that (simplisticly) amplify the signals through the damaged brain. In spite of the pun in my "subject", dementia is no laughing matter, and would be a fate worse than death in many people's minds. People with dementia usually don't have insight into the problem, though. They continue blissfully unaware of their forgetfullness. It is most stressful for their family.
I am a doctor, (IAAD?) btw.
Regards.
There are many truly great chairs, but the best are made by Hal Taylor: http://www.haltaylor.com
They are custom built rocking chairs, sized for the individual. Rocking chairs are much better on the back than stationary chairs, and these have bent wood backs that not only support the lumbar region, but flex as you move, supporting the entire back. No brace under the seat between the rockers, so you can kick your legs all the way under you. Also, they are the most stunningly beautiful works of functional art I have ever seen. They aren't cheap, but they are the best.
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The grandparent is a very important question. We use diesel and not batteries or capacitors in our agricultural and industrial machinery because the chemical vs. electrochemical energy stored is not even remotely comparable by weight. Capaciters don't give up energy due to chemical bonds being broken, and the dielectric strength isn't based on the chemical bond strength. (Paper has twice the dielectric strength of quartz, for example.)
Back to answer the grandparent. Diesel has an energy density by weight of 11.6 KWh/kg.
Ultracapacitors have a theoretical energy density of up to 0.060 KWh/kg.
So they don't really max out at the same magnitude at all, because the energy really isn't being stored in a similar manner.
And a few clarifications for you. Several of the studies indicating net energy gain ignore the energy used to make the farm machinery and the energy used by the labor. Dr. David Pimentel has some reasonable objections, gadfly though he may be.
Perhaps more importantly, most of the debate is over irrelevant issues.
Ethanol carbon neutral? Irrelevant.
Ethanol positive energy balance? Irrelevant.
The question _should_ be: Would corn based ethanol ever be used if it wasn't for the subsidies that keep it going?
Or a more sophisticated way to ask it: What is the EROI? (Energy return on investment.)
Ethanol can barely compete in spite of direct subsidies and hidden subsidies (such as the state and federal taxes on gasoline that are not applied to ethanol.)
Economically it makes no sense, even if you do get a little extra energy out of all your work in the fields and ethanol production plants. The energy limitations simply mean that it never will make sense.
I know it's pedantic, but you seem to be confusing your C-section incisions a bit. Getting through the skin and getting through the uterus are two separate issues.
The "bikini" (Pfannenstiel) incision is the superficial, skin incision.
The midline vertical incision is also a superficial, skin incision.
The midline vertical is sometimes used in emergency C-sections due to a relatively rapid entry with minimal blood loss. A skilled obstetrician can usually get into the abdomen with no difference in time or outcome with a Pfannenstiel, provided a controlled OR to work in. In extreme emergencies, such as death of the mother in an MVC, a vertical incision all the way to the baby can be made with no tools besides the scalpel. That is a relatively rare scenario.
Once through the skin (and fat, fascia, and peritoneum) you enter the abdomen and need to make an incision in the uterus to get the baby out. The choice of incision depends on several factors, including the position of the baby, location of the placenta, fibroids, ability to get the bladder out of the way, etc. That said, the choice of incision is almost always a low transverse or low vertical incision, even in emergencies.
High vertical incisions don't heal as well and are more prone to rupture in subsequent pregnancies. They are very rare, in spite of your claims to the contrary.
At any rate, I have never seen a C-section where the obstetrician is "lifting the intestines up out of the body and putting them on the chest so that you can get to the uterus underneath" as you claim in your previous post. It is actually almost physically impossible. I would question the sanity of the obstetrician who tried it to see if it could be done.
"Infant mortality" has different definitions between _states_ in the USA. Was it a miscarriage, or did a baby die? It depends on which state you're in. Comparing between countries will give you some real apples and oranges. This is maddening if you are in a state with a broad definition of "infant mortality" and your hospital is getting bad quality outcome numbers because of the definitions your state legislature made.
a lth.html
Also, one would expect that infant mortality would be highest in a country with the highest risk obstetric patients, wouldn't we? Let's see. A country where women with careers wait until their 30's to have babies instead of their teens and twenties. Where, as a result, infertility treatments and therefore multiple gestations (twins, triplets, etc) are common. Where, as a result, the neonatal ICUs are crammed with babies from about 30 weeks gestational age (having been in the uterus for only 3/4 of the celestial committee's recommended stay.) One could easily make the assumption that the more money a country is willing to spend on medical care, the higher their infant mortality would be.
The actual numbers, sampling biases, etc are much more complicated than this, but anyone who thinks Cuba's medical care is better than that in the US is a bit confused or deliberately misleading others in my opinion. I wouldn't want to be a 30 week gestational age infant in Cuba.
Here's an article that gets into a little more detail, but really the whole socialized medicine argument is like debating creationists. You aren't going to change their belief with any evidence. I just get sick of the infant mortality / longevity comparisons which are so obviously inane.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/NPA547ComparativeHe
Is hilarious. The first chapter is about a fellow who gets a medical textbook and comes down with all sorts of maladies. Try it at project Gutenberg or buy your hard copy here. I am a family physician, and that chapter made me laugh so hard I almost injured myself.
Perhaps a more relevant historical comparison is between the assignats (money) the National Assembly printed up under King Louis and the $25K the author of the above article wants created (somehow) for every person.
Louis et al. created too much money. It became worthless. The number of assignats it took to buy bread went through the roof. The resulting hyperinflation made the masses _very_ miserable, and was an impetus for the revolution. People lost their heads.
I don't think printing up money for people to spend is always a good idea.
is a fun book. It explains the basic physics of electricity and electrical devices in a very entertaining way. Check it out here:l /-/0962 781592/qid=1059866050/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-366266 4-1016845?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai
Retrospective studies like this are too susceptible to confounding. One obvious issue would be that more intelligent/better off people might drink more coffee, and take longer for the disease to show up. There are a lot of variables that go into Alzheimer's disease. Dementia is usually the sum of a lot of different "insults" to the brain. So start at your baseline intelligence, then take away the brain that died with any damage done. Little strokes ("vascular dementia") are a big contributor, and smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol all promote them. (Folic acid and vitamin B6 are showing promise at reducing/preventing this problem.) Shear damage to neuronal axons, like with a fall off a horse (President Reagan) or boxing or football will take you down a notch. This makes the dementia more obvious. Dementia can be rated by several scales, but the most common is the Mini Mental Status Exam (MMSE). As dementia progresses, it can be treated with some novel medications that (simplisticly) amplify the signals through the damaged brain. In spite of the pun in my "subject", dementia is no laughing matter, and would be a fate worse than death in many people's minds. People with dementia usually don't have insight into the problem, though. They continue blissfully unaware of their forgetfullness. It is most stressful for their family. I am a doctor, (IAAD?) btw. Regards.
There are many truly great chairs, but the best are made by Hal Taylor: http://www.haltaylor.com
They are custom built rocking chairs, sized for the individual. Rocking chairs are much better on the back than stationary chairs, and these have bent wood backs that not only support the lumbar region, but flex as you move, supporting the entire back. No brace under the seat between the rockers, so you can kick your legs all the way under you. Also, they are the most stunningly beautiful works of functional art I have ever seen. They aren't cheap, but they are the best.