No, you aren't the only one. I could also see the illusion initially for a fraction of a second, then I started seeing the hue changing in a subdued manner. Let's set perception of change when still to 100%, that is, 100% of dots in number change and they do so in 100% intensity. In motion, it's about 30% in number and 50% in intensity. In contrast, I was pretty much blind to the size change. This is, in fact, analyzed in the article: it's because it's hard to keep the gaze exactly still. There's a strong reflex to track the motion of a moving object by eye.
And you think because high school chemistry classes aren't affected, nothing is? Sheesh.
Just consider a simple neutralization reaction for two strong electrolytes, HA + B gives [BH+][A-]. The goal is to neutralize the acid and base exactly to give a neutral mix. Let's say that either reagent contains sulfur, which is now M = 32.059 to 32.076. This is a change of 5.3e-4 units in terms of the lower value. Now if we have for example 1 mol/l solution, then we have 5.3e-4 mol/l excess. Doesn't sound like a lot, does it? But, the problem is, these are strong acids and bases, which are practically always ionized in water. In plain water, autoionization is only 1e-7 mol/l, which is three orders of magnitude below 5.3e-4 mol/l. In other words, we change the pH by about 3.3 pH units, so an excess of acid gives pH ~ 4. This is far from insignificant; it can easily ruin your measurements.
This isn't as stupid as it sounds, because up to the 1980s spectrometers and chromatographs had pen-and-paper plotters, not personal computers for data recording. Numerical integration would've been a waste of time without a computer.
This is Upcode, a VTT project. I think this has been the next big thing for several years already, any day now we're supposed to have these in every magazine and so on.
The methane molecule is tetrahedral, but carbon dioxide is a linear O=C=O chain. There are many more ways to bend, stretch and twist the bonds in methane than in carbon dioxide, which can only bend and stretch asymmetrically (the symmetric stretch doesn't change the dipole moment and so it isn't infrared active). These additional bending modes correspond to more energy levels and more absorption peaks. The result is that given a reasonably smooth distribution - like that of solar and terrestial infrared - there is simply more energy absorbed to the peaks of methane than to the few peaks of carbon dioxide.
I never understood why Google wants to load the site as a frame, which is unimaginably distracting and often the image is difficult to find. Rather, if they took a screenshot into the cache and moved the cursor automatically to the image, then it'd be more convenient, more reliable and safer.
What I'd like to see is statistics on where the spam-producing criminals are, and where are their "customers", rather than counting where the botnet is. I bet Brazilians, Russians or Chinese aren't doing that much good business in selling Viagra (may contain plaster) or Genuine Quartz Rolexes, or more importantly, buying them. IMHO: if you eliminated the spam that either comes from American criminals or which is targeted at Americans, there'd be no spam.
No, the hard white part is good for you. I mean, people first throw eggshells away and then buy dolomite pills to get calcium. If they ate a fish with most of its bones or an egg with the shell each week, there wouldn't be any need for calcium supplements. Currently it's like pedaling a stepping exercise machine in an elevator.
I'd like to see the response from security guards' unions for this. Not only it's without pay, the employee has to actually pay to do his work.
That said, most people will report three times and the forget about it.
There should be some connection to real uses or real science. The space program, for instance, received its impetus from military use (GPS, communication and spy satellites, ballistic missiles, etc.). This science seems to be going nowhere. I work as a scientist, and it's a huge problem to get anything over 5000 funded. If only I could spend 0.69 billion to observe that plants grow bigger in absence of gravity.
People should learn to think in terms of opportunity cost. $100 billion spent to unmanned missions could fund 143 Planck satellites, 91 Herschels, etc.
In a former workplace, there was Dans Guardian installed (and we weren't informed; I'm not sure if that's legal). In Google search (filtering off; I always switch it off since I don't know their criteria), it turns out I was censored for looking information about "lithium aluminum hydride". The reason? Since this powerful but dangerous reductant is often used in natural products research, one gets results like periplanone A. This interesting compound has the biological role of being the cockroach sex hormone.
Here's a good reason why it would promote peace not to develop it: it enables first strike. For example, currently nuclear missiles and artillery shells are difficult or impossible to effectively intercept. That means that a counter-strike is likely to be devastating and thus provides a deterrent against first attack. An example affecting the U.S. is North Korea, which is within range of conventional artillery from South Korea's capital. But, given a weapon that mostly neutralizes the counter-strike, there is suddenly an incentive to strike first.
This is also the reason the American government is so eager to build a missile defense system to defend against Iran; not because Iran would suddenly try to annihilate the entire United States in a fit of unreasonable rage, which is not even possible given their competency, but because the American government wants to attack the country with impunity and fears the few (and probably not even effective) ballistic nuclear missiles that Iran would then launch for terror purposes.
Of course the argument applies that the adversary develops it, too. Yet what'll happen is that Russians steal it like Soviets did with the atomic spies, and others such as China copy it otherwise, and Britain and France will simply purchase it. The result is even more dominant Security Council permanent members, which is harmful to international relations, even more so than the current situation, and produces even more bullying of small nations. This is because the technology will be applicable to conventional projectiles, too, not just the doomsday missiles. The technology sounds cool but developing it takes a lot of money that, especially in the current depression, could be spent better. And where the American government gets the money, if not from China et al.?
There lies an opportunity for improvement. Whereas field manuals contain only the instructions, for example, "make sure that no sand gets into the barrel", the opportunity to add citations to e.g. real accident reports would improve the believability, that is, the same followed by [5], and [5] goes to "Soldier A sustained injuries including loss of head when sand got in to the barrel and was not removed before firing the weapon".
There is also a lot of miscellaneous information about locations that soldiers gather; it's not necessarily official military intelligence but can help with practical survival. This is not written down but taught unofficially.
Look ma, no sources, +5 Insightful! Nice how experimental findings can be negated by "feel-so". The fact is that if a group is split up, the performance of both halves goes down. A case study: The PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study found that Finland's education produces 15-year-olds that are consistently 1st or 2st in the world in the categories of Mathematics, Reading literacy, Science and Problem solving. Finland's educational policy is explicitly designed to be maximally inclusive up to the ninth grade (15-year-olds). Only the mentally disabled are given special education, and there are no "honor students" or such, let alone "gifted classes". Others in the top 3 of the ranking are Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Canada.
You're right about the energy balance for the wrong reasons, and also the article submitter has screwed up. No one is suggesting urine, which the journalist made up on the spot, and which fails the capacity requirement to boot. The pure industrial chemical urea is mostly produced synthetically from ammonia and carbon dioxide, and ammonia is made from hydrogen and nitrogen. Hydrogen is currently produced mostly from natural gas and similar sources, which means it won't solve anything, and the carbon dioxide should be non-fossil also for the carbon cycle to be closed. In summary, what we have here is another way to produce synthetic fuel from natural gas or carbonaceous masses like coal or organic matter. The good thing is that the fuel precursor is noncombustible; the bad is that it's completely unproven and even hypothetical, and its energy density is not known.
They are NASA astronauts, and NASA is a federal government organization, and the federal government enjoys sovereign immunity. The military has actually claimed this in a few instances when reverse-engineering private DRM.
Or alternatively, because you HAVE TO follow a certain career path if you're in certain fields. First basic degree, then PhD, then postdoc. You don't get to choose this, if you want to be accepted as a competent researcher, and what's important, you have no leverage to complain about the wages, management, terms of contract or even safety. This is all pretty much at the discretion of the lab and professor. That argument of "they like the job so much" is applicable only up to a point.
The figure was from the latest GEO magazine. Note that "human use" does not mean only "cornfield". Most of renewed forest, for example, is being periodically logged, and also areas such as pasture, meadows and urban areas count towards human use. The map referenced by GEO is found here.
I am an industrial chemist in an immediately related project. I do think the discovery is important, but I don't see the point of converting prime cellulose to fuel, because that's sort of missing the point. Currently cellulose has plenty of uses; it is being used widely as is in things like paper, paper tissues, cardboard, viscose fibres and cellophan. The fact is that only 20% of the Earth's land area outside the polar regions is in a natural state. The rest is in human use somehow. We'd need to cut down energy consumption severely and improve the efficiency of current technology to live with 100% renewables only.
Most of plant matter is not prime-quality cellulose, and there is a major research effort underway to evaluate the uses of the rest of the plant. For example, the second-largest constituent of wood, lignin, has been up to this point only burned to regenerate pulping chemicals and produce energy for the pulp mill.
The discovery is important in the sense that first, it provides information of the catalysis on cellulose, and second, annual plants or other more difficult sources than wood could be used for producing plastics and liquid fuels. Then again, we have to consider the alternative of using oil for plastic: it's not really that bad environmentally to take oil and then convert it into solid plastic, because the carbon it contains is sequestered into the landfill. Liquid fuels from this source would compete with other land plant sources or e.g. algae that produce oils (either triglyceride or terpenes that can be converted with hydrocracking).
I read the article in Applied Catalysis A itself, and found it fairly impressive. The system is truly catalytic, there are no impossible stoichiometric (in this case about 100 g chromium or 220 g chromium chloride per 100 g cellulose) non-regenerable reactants so common in the "alternative fuel" literature. They needed only 0.5%. I see only one major problem in it: chromium. It is being increasingly avoided because it can form carcinogenic compounds. You can distil off the furfural, but you can't distil sugars, so you'll have to deal with the residual chromium somehow. Probably a simple ion exchange could be used.
Rather than just laugh at it, let's point out that the Microsoft tax is not like a real tax. If your friend pirates it, you personally lose no money. Rather, Microsoft loses money. It has been common knowledge that the amount of currency raked in by Microsoft is in no way proportional to the cost of developing the operating system. (If it was, shareholders would be firing someone.)
The real problem here is that we, the people, give the corporations these rights. If the people objected, these imaginary rights would disappear immediately. The concept of a corporation was invented rather recently, and for the most part, it didn't even refer to a private enterprise in a competetive market, but an organization authorized by a real autocratic king to hold a legal monopoly. What's the difference - in real terms, not BS legal ones - here to begin with?
I was - and I am - the "tech support" person that my family, relatives and friends often ask for assistance - we've all been there. However, what cured me of this was realizing how much shit I'll have to endure. People make stupid choices, and then insist that someone should - unpaid - correct their problems for them. Trying to explain something in proper detail will get you nowhere. At best, you'll correct the problem by saying "take it to the computer repair shop", as in the case of obvious motherboard/hardware faults. At worst, you'll get an earful. My current attitude is saying at most 2-3 sentences and then letting things go their natural ways. What I'm trying to say is that there is a difference between being the responsible customer support person, vs. some guy who gives advice because the problem is dead obvious. It is best not to even think of being the former.
Free software is like the latter: there is no monetary incentive to code, but also there is no monetary incentive to make any profit with the code either. A free software coder isn't "criminally" responsible for quality. Rather, what powers him is something much more powerful: self-esteem.
I didn't know that there was DansGuardian at a former job. I always disable SafeSearch because it is my choice to decide whether some information is relevant or not; in principle, how do I know it doesn't give stupid false alarms? Anyway, I used this setting without any problem, until one day I searched for "lithium aluminum hydride" (LAH). This compound is a strong reductant commonly used in total synthesis of natural products; a powerful but expensive and dangerous reagent. This search was suddenly blocked, and I was confused what this means. It turned out that the first page of Google search results featured one use for LAH, synthesis of periplanone B, the "cock- roach sex hormone".
North Korea's "president", "speaker of parliament" and "prime minister" is Kim Yong-nam, who is the "Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly" (a kind of a parliament that rarely convenes) and "Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly". A "presidium" is like a cabinet, and is formally the highest organ of the state.
Kim Jong Il's title is not really "dictator" or "president", but "Chairman of the National Defence Commission". (To compare, in the U.S., the president chairs the National Security Council.) Because North Korea is a military dictatorship, the holder of this position effectively controls the entire government both in real terms and legally. Kim is also the "General Secretary of the Workers' Party", and because this party controls the political decisions of the civil government, this makes Kim the sole final decisionmaker in other matters as well.
In conclusion, the amount and depth of fuckedupness in communist states is incredibly and almost mesmerizingly large.
Slashdot Mirror
No, you aren't the only one. I could also see the illusion initially for a fraction of a second, then I started seeing the hue changing in a subdued manner. Let's set perception of change when still to 100%, that is, 100% of dots in number change and they do so in 100% intensity. In motion, it's about 30% in number and 50% in intensity. In contrast, I was pretty much blind to the size change. This is, in fact, analyzed in the article: it's because it's hard to keep the gaze exactly still. There's a strong reflex to track the motion of a moving object by eye.
And you think because high school chemistry classes aren't affected, nothing is? Sheesh. Just consider a simple neutralization reaction for two strong electrolytes, HA + B gives [BH+][A-]. The goal is to neutralize the acid and base exactly to give a neutral mix. Let's say that either reagent contains sulfur, which is now M = 32.059 to 32.076. This is a change of 5.3e-4 units in terms of the lower value. Now if we have for example 1 mol/l solution, then we have 5.3e-4 mol/l excess. Doesn't sound like a lot, does it? But, the problem is, these are strong acids and bases, which are practically always ionized in water. In plain water, autoionization is only 1e-7 mol/l, which is three orders of magnitude below 5.3e-4 mol/l. In other words, we change the pH by about 3.3 pH units, so an excess of acid gives pH ~ 4. This is far from insignificant; it can easily ruin your measurements.
This isn't as stupid as it sounds, because up to the 1980s spectrometers and chromatographs had pen-and-paper plotters, not personal computers for data recording. Numerical integration would've been a waste of time without a computer.
This is Upcode, a VTT project. I think this has been the next big thing for several years already, any day now we're supposed to have these in every magazine and so on.
The methane molecule is tetrahedral, but carbon dioxide is a linear O=C=O chain. There are many more ways to bend, stretch and twist the bonds in methane than in carbon dioxide, which can only bend and stretch asymmetrically (the symmetric stretch doesn't change the dipole moment and so it isn't infrared active). These additional bending modes correspond to more energy levels and more absorption peaks. The result is that given a reasonably smooth distribution - like that of solar and terrestial infrared - there is simply more energy absorbed to the peaks of methane than to the few peaks of carbon dioxide.
I never understood why Google wants to load the site as a frame, which is unimaginably distracting and often the image is difficult to find. Rather, if they took a screenshot into the cache and moved the cursor automatically to the image, then it'd be more convenient, more reliable and safer.
What I'd like to see is statistics on where the spam-producing criminals are, and where are their "customers", rather than counting where the botnet is. I bet Brazilians, Russians or Chinese aren't doing that much good business in selling Viagra (may contain plaster) or Genuine Quartz Rolexes, or more importantly, buying them. IMHO: if you eliminated the spam that either comes from American criminals or which is targeted at Americans, there'd be no spam.
No, the hard white part is good for you. I mean, people first throw eggshells away and then buy dolomite pills to get calcium. If they ate a fish with most of its bones or an egg with the shell each week, there wouldn't be any need for calcium supplements. Currently it's like pedaling a stepping exercise machine in an elevator.
How long do you think it takes before there's a patent for it?
I'd like to see the response from security guards' unions for this. Not only it's without pay, the employee has to actually pay to do his work. That said, most people will report three times and the forget about it.
There should be some connection to real uses or real science. The space program, for instance, received its impetus from military use (GPS, communication and spy satellites, ballistic missiles, etc.). This science seems to be going nowhere. I work as a scientist, and it's a huge problem to get anything over 5000 funded. If only I could spend 0.69 billion to observe that plants grow bigger in absence of gravity. People should learn to think in terms of opportunity cost. $100 billion spent to unmanned missions could fund 143 Planck satellites, 91 Herschels, etc.
In a former workplace, there was Dans Guardian installed (and we weren't informed; I'm not sure if that's legal). In Google search (filtering off; I always switch it off since I don't know their criteria), it turns out I was censored for looking information about "lithium aluminum hydride". The reason? Since this powerful but dangerous reductant is often used in natural products research, one gets results like periplanone A. This interesting compound has the biological role of being the cockroach sex hormone.
Here's a good reason why it would promote peace not to develop it: it enables first strike. For example, currently nuclear missiles and artillery shells are difficult or impossible to effectively intercept. That means that a counter-strike is likely to be devastating and thus provides a deterrent against first attack. An example affecting the U.S. is North Korea, which is within range of conventional artillery from South Korea's capital. But, given a weapon that mostly neutralizes the counter-strike, there is suddenly an incentive to strike first.
This is also the reason the American government is so eager to build a missile defense system to defend against Iran; not because Iran would suddenly try to annihilate the entire United States in a fit of unreasonable rage, which is not even possible given their competency, but because the American government wants to attack the country with impunity and fears the few (and probably not even effective) ballistic nuclear missiles that Iran would then launch for terror purposes.
Of course the argument applies that the adversary develops it, too. Yet what'll happen is that Russians steal it like Soviets did with the atomic spies, and others such as China copy it otherwise, and Britain and France will simply purchase it. The result is even more dominant Security Council permanent members, which is harmful to international relations, even more so than the current situation, and produces even more bullying of small nations. This is because the technology will be applicable to conventional projectiles, too, not just the doomsday missiles. The technology sounds cool but developing it takes a lot of money that, especially in the current depression, could be spent better. And where the American government gets the money, if not from China et al.?
There lies an opportunity for improvement. Whereas field manuals contain only the instructions, for example, "make sure that no sand gets into the barrel", the opportunity to add citations to e.g. real accident reports would improve the believability, that is, the same followed by [5], and [5] goes to "Soldier A sustained injuries including loss of head when sand got in to the barrel and was not removed before firing the weapon".
There is also a lot of miscellaneous information about locations that soldiers gather; it's not necessarily official military intelligence but can help with practical survival. This is not written down but taught unofficially.
Look ma, no sources, +5 Insightful! Nice how experimental findings can be negated by "feel-so". The fact is that if a group is split up, the performance of both halves goes down. A case study: The PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) study found that Finland's education produces 15-year-olds that are consistently 1st or 2st in the world in the categories of Mathematics, Reading literacy, Science and Problem solving. Finland's educational policy is explicitly designed to be maximally inclusive up to the ninth grade (15-year-olds). Only the mentally disabled are given special education, and there are no "honor students" or such, let alone "gifted classes". Others in the top 3 of the ranking are Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea and Canada.
You're right about the energy balance for the wrong reasons, and also the article submitter has screwed up. No one is suggesting urine, which the journalist made up on the spot, and which fails the capacity requirement to boot. The pure industrial chemical urea is mostly produced synthetically from ammonia and carbon dioxide, and ammonia is made from hydrogen and nitrogen. Hydrogen is currently produced mostly from natural gas and similar sources, which means it won't solve anything, and the carbon dioxide should be non-fossil also for the carbon cycle to be closed. In summary, what we have here is another way to produce synthetic fuel from natural gas or carbonaceous masses like coal or organic matter. The good thing is that the fuel precursor is noncombustible; the bad is that it's completely unproven and even hypothetical, and its energy density is not known.
They are NASA astronauts, and NASA is a federal government organization, and the federal government enjoys sovereign immunity. The military has actually claimed this in a few instances when reverse-engineering private DRM.
Or alternatively, because you HAVE TO follow a certain career path if you're in certain fields. First basic degree, then PhD, then postdoc. You don't get to choose this, if you want to be accepted as a competent researcher, and what's important, you have no leverage to complain about the wages, management, terms of contract or even safety. This is all pretty much at the discretion of the lab and professor. That argument of "they like the job so much" is applicable only up to a point.
The figure was from the latest GEO magazine. Note that "human use" does not mean only "cornfield". Most of renewed forest, for example, is being periodically logged, and also areas such as pasture, meadows and urban areas count towards human use. The map referenced by GEO is found here.
I am an industrial chemist in an immediately related project. I do think the discovery is important, but I don't see the point of converting prime cellulose to fuel, because that's sort of missing the point. Currently cellulose has plenty of uses; it is being used widely as is in things like paper, paper tissues, cardboard, viscose fibres and cellophan. The fact is that only 20% of the Earth's land area outside the polar regions is in a natural state. The rest is in human use somehow. We'd need to cut down energy consumption severely and improve the efficiency of current technology to live with 100% renewables only.
Most of plant matter is not prime-quality cellulose, and there is a major research effort underway to evaluate the uses of the rest of the plant. For example, the second-largest constituent of wood, lignin, has been up to this point only burned to regenerate pulping chemicals and produce energy for the pulp mill.
The discovery is important in the sense that first, it provides information of the catalysis on cellulose, and second, annual plants or other more difficult sources than wood could be used for producing plastics and liquid fuels. Then again, we have to consider the alternative of using oil for plastic: it's not really that bad environmentally to take oil and then convert it into solid plastic, because the carbon it contains is sequestered into the landfill. Liquid fuels from this source would compete with other land plant sources or e.g. algae that produce oils (either triglyceride or terpenes that can be converted with hydrocracking).
I read the article in Applied Catalysis A itself, and found it fairly impressive. The system is truly catalytic, there are no impossible stoichiometric (in this case about 100 g chromium or 220 g chromium chloride per 100 g cellulose) non-regenerable reactants so common in the "alternative fuel" literature. They needed only 0.5%. I see only one major problem in it: chromium. It is being increasingly avoided because it can form carcinogenic compounds. You can distil off the furfural, but you can't distil sugars, so you'll have to deal with the residual chromium somehow. Probably a simple ion exchange could be used.
Rather than just laugh at it, let's point out that the Microsoft tax is not like a real tax. If your friend pirates it, you personally lose no money. Rather, Microsoft loses money. It has been common knowledge that the amount of currency raked in by Microsoft is in no way proportional to the cost of developing the operating system. (If it was, shareholders would be firing someone.) The real problem here is that we, the people, give the corporations these rights. If the people objected, these imaginary rights would disappear immediately. The concept of a corporation was invented rather recently, and for the most part, it didn't even refer to a private enterprise in a competetive market, but an organization authorized by a real autocratic king to hold a legal monopoly. What's the difference - in real terms, not BS legal ones - here to begin with?
I was - and I am - the "tech support" person that my family, relatives and friends often ask for assistance - we've all been there. However, what cured me of this was realizing how much shit I'll have to endure. People make stupid choices, and then insist that someone should - unpaid - correct their problems for them. Trying to explain something in proper detail will get you nowhere. At best, you'll correct the problem by saying "take it to the computer repair shop", as in the case of obvious motherboard/hardware faults. At worst, you'll get an earful. My current attitude is saying at most 2-3 sentences and then letting things go their natural ways. What I'm trying to say is that there is a difference between being the responsible customer support person, vs. some guy who gives advice because the problem is dead obvious. It is best not to even think of being the former.
Free software is like the latter: there is no monetary incentive to code, but also there is no monetary incentive to make any profit with the code either. A free software coder isn't "criminally" responsible for quality. Rather, what powers him is something much more powerful: self-esteem.
I didn't know that there was DansGuardian at a former job. I always disable SafeSearch because it is my choice to decide whether some information is relevant or not; in principle, how do I know it doesn't give stupid false alarms? Anyway, I used this setting without any problem, until one day I searched for "lithium aluminum hydride" (LAH). This compound is a strong reductant commonly used in total synthesis of natural products; a powerful but expensive and dangerous reagent. This search was suddenly blocked, and I was confused what this means. It turned out that the first page of Google search results featured one use for LAH, synthesis of periplanone B, the "cock- roach sex hormone".
North Korea's "president", "speaker of parliament" and "prime minister" is Kim Yong-nam, who is the "Chairman of the Supreme People's Assembly" (a kind of a parliament that rarely convenes) and "Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly". A "presidium" is like a cabinet, and is formally the highest organ of the state. Kim Jong Il's title is not really "dictator" or "president", but "Chairman of the National Defence Commission". (To compare, in the U.S., the president chairs the National Security Council.) Because North Korea is a military dictatorship, the holder of this position effectively controls the entire government both in real terms and legally. Kim is also the "General Secretary of the Workers' Party", and because this party controls the political decisions of the civil government, this makes Kim the sole final decisionmaker in other matters as well. In conclusion, the amount and depth of fuckedupness in communist states is incredibly and almost mesmerizingly large.
"Concurrence" means "meeting in agreement" in English, not "competetion". False friend.