Oil is dirt cheap, no matter how much Americans complain about gas prices. The fact is, that there's a lot of oil, and it doesn't cost much.
So, consider a single government - what can it do? Fossil carbon and particularly oil is used so widely in all sorts of economic activity, (transportation, manufacture, etc.) that taxing oil increases the price of all goods from the nation. A single country would shoot itself in the foot by taxing carbon. Only if all governments agree to tax oil, then it works. That isn't going to happen. In effect, we're well past the point of no return: it's easier to consume all oil than limits its use.
Yet, the carbon tax issue isn't that simple. You have to think about what a tax is: a transfer payment in a zero-sum game. Those who consume oil pay the tax for the government - which consumes the same oil itself. The government employees have to drive to work, too. Effectively, a carbon tax has no net effects for environmental protection.
Another model is to tax oil and then pay corporate welfare to oil companies. Results aren't any different.
Also, the population is growing at the same pace as energy efficiency is gained. The only way the carbon tax would work is that entire countries would decline the use of oil, even if it's cheap. The political stability of domestically produced energy is gaining importance, but it still doesn't present any alternative to the massive use of oil and coal.
I think that this proposal seriously threatens the quality of research and teaching, because it severs the link between industrial practice and teaching.
On this topic, Paul A. Bartlett said in a NATO workshop on total synthesis:
It's worth elaborating a little bit on this issue of practical application of the research that we do in academe. I am often asked why we don't direct some of our enzyme inhibitor design approaches towards more medicinally relevant enzymes rather than study such common enzymes as thermolysin and carboxypeptidase. After all, we don't really need a better inhibitor of our digestive enzymes. For example, why did I not work on the angiotensin-converting enzyme, which is a zinc peptidase just like the ones I have described in my lecture? My response is that I have made a conscious decision to avoid enzymes with which I would be competing with professionals. The goal of industrial research is to come up with practical compounds that can be turned into drugs to earn money for the company. The product of industrial research is profit.
But profit is not the goal, or should it be the product, of academic research. Our products are ideas and well-trained students, who can go to industry and solve relevant problems. If we really want to understand how a protein binds a small molecule, and how to design the best inhibitor of an enzyme, thermolysin is just as useful as the angiotensin-converting enzyme.
Furthermore, commercial drug discovery carries with it a lot of constraints, things such as patent coverage, pharmacokinetics, oral bioavailability, human safety, etc. It doesn't seem to me that it is appropriate for one or two graduate students in my research group to try to compete with 20 chemists at Merck and 15 chemists at Bristol Myers in trying to develop a real drug candidate.
So, because universities are allowed to do research on patent-protected drugs, it maintains a connection with the industry. The industry will not show any patented drugs, processes or trade secrets to university researchers if they fear "poisoning" of their innovations and patents with this patent-destroying obligation. Sharing of knowledge between the universities and the industry would stop, the teaching would quickly obsolete, and universities would become irrelevant.
Slashdot is a computer site. So, when people think about computers, they think about this. You're doing computers. You're the incarnation all things computery. You do computing stuff like Microsoft.
Why the hell is this story posted here? Some dignity, please!
Yep, but per tensile strenght, concrete is the least energy-consuming building material compared to steel, aluminium and brick. Generation of energy for the manufacture of these materials releases CO2.
It's always interesting to see how posters on Slashdot are reinventing the wheel in environmental issues. For example, municipal waste is treated in an anaerobic bioreactor in ASJ Stormossen waste treatment plant in Mustasaari, Finland. Landfill biogas is also collected. A 1998 report.
A major problem with eco-friendly technology is the relatively undeveloped state of most of the world. Processes like these are novelty in America and practically unheard of in Russia, for example, even if they are becoming commonplace in some areas in Europe. Most of the world's population just dumps the waste somewhere.
When the "digital revolution", so to speak, was in the air in the 1990's, I read an article about someone who won a school "computer competetion". One of the questions asked was "why do computing and develop advanced technology, why not help the poor?"
With the growth of IT in India, the answer is pretty obvious today.
I think you're using the classical "here be dragons" with further silicon purification, referring to national security. It's not really a secret.
First, silicon is reacted with hydrogen chloride to given chlorosilane, which is a gas, and is distilled. Chlorosilane is reduced with hydrogen to give silicon. Silicon is crystallized into a large crystal, about 10 cm thick.
... in contrast to preaching to the choir. How does the submitter think that the el-cheapo scare tactics are going to work with Slashdot readers, some of which are no doubt nuclear engineers?
But, to the point. In commercial reactors, water is used as a radiation shield. Floating a plant in radiation shield would be a sensible idea. In fact, if a meltdown was imminent, they could dump the reactor to the ocean, saving countless lives and preventing the widespread contamination like in a reactor on land. Furthermore, placing the plant far into the arctic territory, away from large population centers is also a good idea. Particularly with nuclear security inherited from the Soviets.
But can science be advanced if the society is not free and the political leadership is ideologically anti-intellectual? I'm interested how the American scientists see the new shift towards an anti-scientific government.
You're making some assumptions that are simplistic, and dare I say, distinctively American. Namely: green technology is the opposite of profitable technology, and that green technology and advanced technology are if not opposites, then at least hard to fit together. I assume that the blame for this confusion goes to: first, environmentalists with their association to things like astrology, herbal healing and anti-technology attitudes; second, to the general thinking that you add "environmental technology" to existing technology to make it "green".
Let's put it simply: green technology is advanced technology. When you're able to do the same thing as before, but with fewer resources, less pollution, less noise, and so on, that's clearly an advance in technology. Perhaps the easiest way to create "greener" technology is to reduce energy consumption. There are also other ways, and in all cases, in the very design stage you need to "think green". It represents an overall increase in quality, control of the production process, and public reputation. And it's not easy. It's much easier to reuse the old methods as they've always been used. It's ridiculous to think that "environmentally friendly" is just something hippie, or that you can just "add the green" after, because the "green" represents high quality.
Legal issues are also involved. In Europe, governments and the law generally support, sometimes with substantial pressure, the use of greener technology. European governments realize that economic development is not the same as economic growth, or that more doesn't equal better.
As raw material, electronics waste is used extensively, because it has important minerals that you'd have to enrich from ore otherwise. It's a question of how many grams per ton.
What the hell does this do on this site? If it were a scribbling in his school notebook, it'd be ignored by Slashdot. But once it's an ICON IN INSTANT MESSAGING it's Slashdot material. What the tuck, does the involvement of a computer somewhere in the process of committing a crime make it nerdy? D'oh, return to the nineties. I would suggest ignoring this Scheissendahl and returning to coding.
They have created the radar equivalent of the widely used IR spectroscopy. There is a technique for an isolated, single sample - IR spectroscopy - which requires you to dissolve the sample in a solvent and place it on a salt crystal. The new technology gives this literally new dimensions - two, as you can see should you RTFA, by using terahertz frequencies. Terahertz frequencies are difficult to generate experimentally and their behavior is largely unknown to science, unlike IR (can be created by a lamp) or radio (can be created by an oscillator). This application is truly revolutionary.
This invention is comparable to MRI (nuclear magnetic resonance imaging), which is tomography with NMR, which also was a "dissolved sample only" kind of spectroscopy. Introducting gradients to the field allowed you to locate the resonating nuclei in two dimensions, enabling tomography in three dimensions.
Ahtisaari is the son of Martti Ahtisaari, President of Finland (1994-2000). The older Ahtisaari is also known for positions in corporate boards. (Corporatism must be either hereditary or contagious, then...)
What a nasty attitude. "Since foreigners speak English, this must lead to dumb English."
In fact, it's going to be the opposite: the foreigners who speak English tend to be more educated than those who don't.
I've been writing "scientific English" for years now. I actually had to learn to write short and simplistic sentences, because so many English speakers were complaining about "long sentences" and "long words". If anything, learning English has forced me to accept oversimplifying everything in order to get my point across.
Seriously, this is more like desinfection than cleaning. The sheer amount of organic material people leave in toilets is not chemically destroyable. Toilet brushes won't become a thing of the past.
You should be seeing epicycles every time coordinates are transformed in order to fit observation into theory (and not the other way around). Relativity has to be the biggest kludge ever.
Unlike most people believe, relativity is not the final word in physics, although it is the most popular theory, since it requires very few arbitrary constants (speed of light). Other theories exist; mostly with more constants, but the arbitrariness of redefinition of coordinates is not required. For example, taking the energy and size of the universe as arbitrary constants and speed of light as variable produces an interesting theory: http://www.redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V08NO3PDF /V08N3SU2.PDF
Or, if you just want to stay in your dream, before the outsourcing industry graced us, we were all snake-charmers riding elephants and we had never seen money or a calculator.
Whereas, now, you're mouse-charmers riding the economic boom wave, who still haven't seen a calculator and certainly not any money?
Slashdot Mirror
Oil is dirt cheap, no matter how much Americans complain about gas prices. The fact is, that there's a lot of oil, and it doesn't cost much.
So, consider a single government - what can it do? Fossil carbon and particularly oil is used so widely in all sorts of economic activity, (transportation, manufacture, etc.) that taxing oil increases the price of all goods from the nation. A single country would shoot itself in the foot by taxing carbon. Only if all governments agree to tax oil, then it works. That isn't going to happen. In effect, we're well past the point of no return: it's easier to consume all oil than limits its use.
Yet, the carbon tax issue isn't that simple. You have to think about what a tax is: a transfer payment in a zero-sum game. Those who consume oil pay the tax for the government - which consumes the same oil itself. The government employees have to drive to work, too. Effectively, a carbon tax has no net effects for environmental protection.
Another model is to tax oil and then pay corporate welfare to oil companies. Results aren't any different.
Also, the population is growing at the same pace as energy efficiency is gained. The only way the carbon tax would work is that entire countries would decline the use of oil, even if it's cheap. The political stability of domestically produced energy is gaining importance, but it still doesn't present any alternative to the massive use of oil and coal.
I think that this proposal seriously threatens the quality of research and teaching, because it severs the link between industrial practice and teaching.
On this topic, Paul A. Bartlett said in a NATO workshop on total synthesis:
So, because universities are allowed to do research on patent-protected drugs, it maintains a connection with the industry. The industry will not show any patented drugs, processes or trade secrets to university researchers if they fear "poisoning" of their innovations and patents with this patent-destroying obligation. Sharing of knowledge between the universities and the industry would stop, the teaching would quickly obsolete, and universities would become irrelevant.
Yay, I'm the first to be moderated +5 Insightful.
Slashdot is a computer site. So, when people think about computers, they think about this. You're doing computers. You're the incarnation all things computery. You do computing stuff like Microsoft.
Why the hell is this story posted here? Some dignity, please!
Yep, but per tensile strenght, concrete is the least energy-consuming building material compared to steel, aluminium and brick. Generation of energy for the manufacture of these materials releases CO2.
It's always interesting to see how posters on Slashdot are reinventing the wheel in environmental issues. For example, municipal waste is treated in an anaerobic bioreactor in ASJ Stormossen waste treatment plant in Mustasaari, Finland. Landfill biogas is also collected. A 1998 report.
A major problem with eco-friendly technology is the relatively undeveloped state of most of the world. Processes like these are novelty in America and practically unheard of in Russia, for example, even if they are becoming commonplace in some areas in Europe. Most of the world's population just dumps the waste somewhere.
When the "digital revolution", so to speak, was in the air in the 1990's, I read an article about someone who won a school "computer competetion". One of the questions asked was "why do computing and develop advanced technology, why not help the poor?"
With the growth of IT in India, the answer is pretty obvious today.
I think you're using the classical "here be dragons" with further silicon purification, referring to national security. It's not really a secret.
First, silicon is reacted with hydrogen chloride to given chlorosilane, which is a gas, and is distilled. Chlorosilane is reduced with hydrogen to give silicon. Silicon is crystallized into a large crystal, about 10 cm thick.
Zone melting is used.
The banana best known to most people is the Cavendish variety. All Cavendish bananas are clones.
... in contrast to preaching to the choir. How does the submitter think that the el-cheapo scare tactics are going to work with Slashdot readers, some of which are no doubt nuclear engineers?
But, to the point. In commercial reactors, water is used as a radiation shield. Floating a plant in radiation shield would be a sensible idea. In fact, if a meltdown was imminent, they could dump the reactor to the ocean, saving countless lives and preventing the widespread contamination like in a reactor on land. Furthermore, placing the plant far into the arctic territory, away from large population centers is also a good idea. Particularly with nuclear security inherited from the Soviets.
Let's reiterate the obvious question: why not upgrade to SP2?
But can science be advanced if the society is not free and the political leadership is ideologically anti-intellectual? I'm interested how the American scientists see the new shift towards an anti-scientific government.
I'm half expecting these (tobacco and oil) to merge with Microsoft, RIAA and MPAA to form American Evil Empire Inc.
You're making some assumptions that are simplistic, and dare I say, distinctively American. Namely: green technology is the opposite of profitable technology, and that green technology and advanced technology are if not opposites, then at least hard to fit together. I assume that the blame for this confusion goes to: first, environmentalists with their association to things like astrology, herbal healing and anti-technology attitudes; second, to the general thinking that you add "environmental technology" to existing technology to make it "green".
Let's put it simply: green technology is advanced technology. When you're able to do the same thing as before, but with fewer resources, less pollution, less noise, and so on, that's clearly an advance in technology. Perhaps the easiest way to create "greener" technology is to reduce energy consumption. There are also other ways, and in all cases, in the very design stage you need to "think green". It represents an overall increase in quality, control of the production process, and public reputation. And it's not easy. It's much easier to reuse the old methods as they've always been used. It's ridiculous to think that "environmentally friendly" is just something hippie, or that you can just "add the green" after, because the "green" represents high quality.
Legal issues are also involved. In Europe, governments and the law generally support, sometimes with substantial pressure, the use of greener technology. European governments realize that economic development is not the same as economic growth, or that more doesn't equal better.
As raw material, electronics waste is used extensively, because it has important minerals that you'd have to enrich from ore otherwise. It's a question of how many grams per ton.
What the hell does this do on this site? If it were a scribbling in his school notebook, it'd be ignored by Slashdot. But once it's an ICON IN INSTANT MESSAGING it's Slashdot material. What the tuck, does the involvement of a computer somewhere in the process of committing a crime make it nerdy? D'oh, return to the nineties. I would suggest ignoring this Scheissendahl and returning to coding.
No, but mørøns do.
But on the topic, that's nowhere near Rüssiä.
Microsoft TELLS CONSUMERS how fast their computers are. Since when they have any interest in performance?
I'm just waiting for the .crap domain.
They have created the radar equivalent of the widely used IR spectroscopy. There is a technique for an isolated, single sample - IR spectroscopy - which requires you to dissolve the sample in a solvent and place it on a salt crystal. The new technology gives this literally new dimensions - two, as you can see should you RTFA, by using terahertz frequencies. Terahertz frequencies are difficult to generate experimentally and their behavior is largely unknown to science, unlike IR (can be created by a lamp) or radio (can be created by an oscillator). This application is truly revolutionary.
This invention is comparable to MRI (nuclear magnetic resonance imaging), which is tomography with NMR, which also was a "dissolved sample only" kind of spectroscopy. Introducting gradients to the field allowed you to locate the resonating nuclei in two dimensions, enabling tomography in three dimensions.
Expect a Nobel Prize in physics for this.
Ahtisaari is the son of Martti Ahtisaari, President of Finland (1994-2000). The older Ahtisaari is also known for positions in corporate boards. (Corporatism must be either hereditary or contagious, then...)
y .mp3
He is probably still known as a pop musician, as he's a bass player and songwriter and composer. Particularly interesting is this old song of his:
http://ahtisaari.typepad.com/moia/files/Technolog
"People used to write long letters when they were in love now they use those mobile phones when they are in love take me away on this supahighway."
The on/off switch, particularly if placed "upstream" of the viewer itself, is still under the consumer's control.
And I'm waiting for PC-based sandboxing technologies to catch up with this bullshit.
What a nasty attitude. "Since foreigners speak English, this must lead to dumb English."
In fact, it's going to be the opposite: the foreigners who speak English tend to be more educated than those who don't.
I've been writing "scientific English" for years now. I actually had to learn to write short and simplistic sentences, because so many English speakers were complaining about "long sentences" and "long words". If anything, learning English has forced me to accept oversimplifying everything in order to get my point across.
"The toiletbowl light needs to be changed".
Seriously, this is more like desinfection than cleaning. The sheer amount of organic material people leave in toilets is not chemically destroyable. Toilet brushes won't become a thing of the past.
You should be seeing epicycles every time coordinates are transformed in order to fit observation into theory (and not the other way around). Relativity has to be the biggest kludge ever.
F /V08N3SU2.PDF
Unlike most people believe, relativity is not the final word in physics, although it is the most popular theory, since it requires very few arbitrary constants (speed of light). Other theories exist; mostly with more constants, but the arbitrariness of redefinition of coordinates is not required. For example, taking the energy and size of the universe as arbitrary constants and speed of light as variable produces an interesting theory: http://www.redshift.vif.com/JournalFiles/V08NO3PD
In Korea, only old people use YYYY-MM-DD!