I apologize if it appears that I "made up" the information in my previous post. I wrote the post based on a magazine article (IIRC) that I read when I was 12-14. I regret that I cannot remember anything more specific about the article. In my defense, the idea seemed to make sense at the time, and still does.
maggard, if you are a psychologist, psych student, a specialist in interpersonal dynamics or something along those lines, I will be happy to post a retraction if you can explain to me in layman's terms why a group of three is optimal in high-stress situations. I would be grateful (assuming it is not too much trouble, of course) if you could direct me to some of the publicly available material on this topic.
I await your reply with interest.
P.S. English is not my first language, and so the tone of some of my comments may seem inappropriate or stilted. I hope that I am judged by my intentions rather than by my tone.
> the friction exists primarily between the
> ground controllers (American and Russian) and
> the ISS crew, not among the ISS crew as most
> previous posts seem to speculate.
Most tension *on radio* is b/w ground control & the astronauts. It stands to reason (see my earlier post on the three-person groups being unusually fractious in high-stress conditions) that there would be intra-crew friction. I know for a fact that most of the Russo-American Mir crews had similiar issues on debriefing (or at least the American component did) - not a lot of which was communicated to GC during the mission. Remember, the Mir crews had also trained together extensively.
I absolutely think that intra-crew friction is normal + expected - high stress, culture shock, unfamiliar environment...
Is it just me, or is the article strongly biased pro-NASA? Surely the difference is not that large!
...that groups of three are the most unstable small grouping. There is always potential to form dynamic, shifting 1-against-2 conflicts. With the present crew, American-vs-Russian, commander-vs-other 2 crew (both of which coincide w/ the current command rotation), or minor shit like 2-guys-who-like-coffee vs 1-guy-who-likes-tea or something equally inane. Emotional conflicts as described are expected w/ a group of three.
...processing using photonics - most of it dealt with simply producing light from silicon chips. Not too sure how you would process using photons. And what sort of perfomance gains would you be looking at?
[implausible_math]Say electrons move at 10^5 m/s (somebody help me out here) and photons (in Si) move at 10^8 m/s. In a circuit 10^-2 m long, electrons would take 10^-7 s (100 ns scale) to give 10^7 ops per second while light would take 0.1 ns to give theoretically (10^10 ops per sec - 10 gigaflops).[/implausible_math]
All my assumptions were b.s., but is a thousand-fold increase theoretically "in the ballpark"? Anybody?
[doh]Photons are 10^3 times as fast as electrons, naturally I came up with a 10^3 performance boost![/doh]
OTOH, I'm not sure I'd want a glow-in-the-dark CPU...
> eco-protection agency breathing down your neck > about protecting the forest
> Sorry - you loose all respect from me with the > above display of ignorance. Maybe it would be
> better if you mowed the Rainforest down to
> raise cattle for a local McDonalds? Dont forget
> the chemical spewing plastics factory to
> produce PokemonPlasticPrizes for Happy Meals.
You know what pisses off people in developing countries? Westerners placing the environment over our own people. All else being equal, the environment must be protected. But often developing countries cannot afford to protect the environment. Many conservationists don't seem to grasp this. We don't have a choice!
How much is a human life worth in terms of the environment? If you don't let us cut down those trees/fish that reef/mine that iron *some of our people will die* (or live in poverty and filth) that would otherwise have lived. It is not right to ask us to make that sacrifice for you or for future generations. If you don't want the Malaysian forest to come down, then *go to Malaysia* and find a way (read:funding) to get the people what they need *or* don't whine about the rainforest and castigate "these ignorant Third-Worlders".
The way radiation pressure from Merope slowed down small dust particles, mimicing air resistance here on Earth.
Yeah, I know that's what you'd expect, but I just find it interesting how so many processes resemble each other, in spite of vastly different scales. (A tropical storm resembles a spiral galaxy etc. etc.)
Boil and filter. That's what we do to get rid of bacteria in drinking water at home (in India). Also exotic stuff like UV irradiation, ozone treatment, etc, but I don't think that would work too well on a ZnS-encased bacterium.
According to the USA Today article (the 2nd link),
Broadly, the IAU group agrees that a planet should independently orbit a star, possess enough gravity to shape itself into a sphere and weigh at least 100,000 billion billion grams.
The article says, however, that the remains have not been dated yet... the 6 million years figure comes from remains previuosly found in the same strata. I will be much more exciting once they actually date the remains. I mean, this overturns much of what we know about early human evolution.
I wonder what genus these will be put into - yet another *pithecus I imagine!
O/T: Anybody know what the common ancestor of modern primates & man was? I am thinking of Ramapithecus, although I know that's not it. Something beginning with a D and ending in pithecus is all I can come up with.
a really long time ago!
(Horizon is a documentary from the BBC)
They brought up all the connections to the beetles in the Kalahari-Namib etc... really good show, it was.
There is also donateaphone.com. In case the link is/.ed, here is some more info off of a message board:
During the month of October, Radio Shack is accepting donations. Or, you can mail your old cell phone, any time, directly to
Call to Protect
c/o Motorola
Dept. P
1580 E. Ellsworth Rd.
Ann Arbor, MI 48108
I think that the major use of grafting bone marrow cells would be in cases of spinal cord damage - even if a small section of nerve tissue was damaged beyond repair, a bone marrow graft could be induced to replace it. This avoids the loss-of-data issues theoretically possible with grafting into the brain. Networking is also a lot simpler in the spinal cord an the brain. If bone marrow cells can replace brain cells, they also ought to be able to replace spinal cord cells (both being part of the CNS, with lots of shared cellular architecture).
OTOH, reflexes controlled by that section of cord would be useless - a small price to pay, IMHO.
The reason for this is that water is a polar fluid, meaning that it has an electrical charge...
Water as a whole does not have an electrical charge - it is a neutral molecule.
in the case of water, a negative charge on the oxygen atom and a positive charge on the hydrogen atoms. This charge is weaker then the normal charges that bind atoms into molecules, so that the water molecules stay slightly connected to each other but aren't connected into a larger molecule...in other words, they become a liquid.
This is commonly called "hydrogen bonding". You are right in that is one of the major reasons that water exists as a liquid. However, your explanation is s drastic oversimplification - there are many other interactions that also increase the cohesive forces in liquids. Acetone and hexane and thionyl chloride and [substitute compounds of choice here] are liquids and yet lack any hydrogen bonding. Long- and medium-chain hydrocarbons (think oils) are liquids although they pretty much lack any polarity whatsoever.
As things stand on Mars now, the pressure is low enough that only traces (if anything) of liquid water on Mars.
What exactly do you mean by sulfur hydroxide? That kinda puzzled me.
there was never enough pressue to turn any fluid but water into a liquid.
Sedimentary rock is (at least on Earth) precipitated out of water. Metamorphic rock is igneous or sedimentary rock that has been subjected to extremely high temperatures and/or pressures. Just thought I'd clear that up. Sorry for the nitpick:)
I didn't see an analog(ue) stick - did I miss something? That's pretty much essential for a modern gamepad. Also, in a pinch, you could use the analogue stick as a mouse alternative. [IMO, beats a touchpad any day.]
chiral molecules can exhibit differences in polarity. (a good example is the alpha and beta anomers of glucose - beta is more polar than alpha). given the right solvent system (such as water) they can be separated by crystallization or chromotography. a natural progress could mimic this on mars. So you don't/need/ enzymes to get stereoisomer-specific reactivity.
which is not to say it wouldn't be interesting anyway - just not defintive:)
The figures are interesting but more than a little misleading. They only refer to first-languages, and not total speakers. Also, they don't have India listed among English-speaking countries, although English is one of the national languages of India - at least 100 million Indians speak English, closer to 200 million. Hindi has close to 500 mil. speakers (a billion people kinda skew things:-) And hey - 280 mil (US) + 60 mil (UK) by themselves add up to more than 332 mil (the figure for English). Even subtracting Spanish-speakers from the US total, the rest of those countries ought to add up to more than 332, right?
Now if they had counted all speakers of every language, English would be a lot higher up - probably overtaking Mandarin Chinese. It would be interesting to see where Spanish was.
Now I shall end my post... leaving the obvious chad joke unsaid.
[sigh] I remember when I was in 4th grade in UK (I'm Indian) and we were learning about tidal waves. I had to explain to my teacher what a 'tsunami' was and her reply: "Is that a word in Indian?"
These British;-)
What do you people think about a pidgin-type language based on English as a candidate for a universal language? (Pidgins are languages generally based on English but with simplified grammar and phonetic spelling. They have been popularly used in parts of the world with a broad variety of dialects, generally as a second language.)
The grammar used by pidgin languages mirrors the grammar used by many children as they learn to talk; also (in my experience) by adults unfamiliar with English. This has led some (most notably Sagan) to suggest that the rules for pidgin grammar are hard-wired in the human brain.
On a separate note, I think that any English-based lingua franca (now/there's/ an oxymoron...) would have to be based on British English. In spite of Americans' high estimates of the pervasiveness of their own culture, I feel that the British dialect has been taught to so many more people that it ought to take over.
They are speaking English using the pronunciation rules of Javanese (langauge of Malaysia).
The major language in Malaysia is B.M. - "Bahasa Malaya" or "Bahasa Malaysia". (Bahasa (from Sanskrit Bhasha means "language".)
Interestingly, it is now written in the Roman script and borrows many words from English, but with B.M. spelling in/Roman/ script.
ahem... yeasts are single-celled eukaryotes, in that they do have nuclei, intracellular compartmentalization and all the other trappings. So they wouldn't necessarily be the best models for hypothetical life on Mars. But that's very interesting about the dextro- and laevo- sugars used in fermentation.
There is no known natrual,[sic] non-biological process on Earth that can produce an asymmetric molecule.
Erm... sorry to disappoint you dude, but chiral (a.k.a. asymmetric) molecules are produced all the time, on Earth and pretty much everywhere else, by non-biological processes. Almost anything can be chiral - hydrocarbons, mineral salts, crystals, what-have-you. It would be very cool if chirality were a litmus test for biological processes, but it is most definitely not.
Slashdot Mirror
> And what is the round-trip delay?
The round trip delay is 443 sec, or about 7 minutes. Not that bad, is it?
I apologize if it appears that I "made up" the information in my previous post. I wrote the post based on a magazine article (IIRC) that I read when I was 12-14. I regret that I cannot remember anything more specific about the article. In my defense, the idea seemed to make sense at the time, and still does.
maggard, if you are a psychologist, psych student, a specialist in interpersonal dynamics or something along those lines, I will be happy to post a retraction if you can explain to me in layman's terms why a group of three is optimal in high-stress situations. I would be grateful (assuming it is not too much trouble, of course) if you could direct me to some of the publicly available material on this topic.
I await your reply with interest.
P.S. English is not my first language, and so the tone of some of my comments may seem inappropriate or stilted. I hope that I am judged by my intentions rather than by my tone.
> the friction exists primarily between the
> ground controllers (American and Russian) and
> the ISS crew, not among the ISS crew as most
> previous posts seem to speculate.
Most tension *on radio* is b/w ground control & the astronauts. It stands to reason (see my earlier post on the three-person groups being unusually fractious in high-stress conditions) that there would be intra-crew friction. I know for a fact that most of the Russo-American Mir crews had similiar issues on debriefing (or at least the American component did) - not a lot of which was communicated to GC during the mission. Remember, the Mir crews had also trained together extensively.
I absolutely think that intra-crew friction is normal + expected - high stress, culture shock, unfamiliar environment...
Is it just me, or is the article strongly biased pro-NASA? Surely the difference is not that large!
...that groups of three are the most unstable small grouping. There is always potential to form dynamic, shifting 1-against-2 conflicts. With the present crew, American-vs-Russian, commander-vs-other 2 crew (both of which coincide w/ the current command rotation), or minor shit like 2-guys-who-like-coffee vs 1-guy-who-likes-tea or something equally inane. Emotional conflicts as described are expected w/ a group of three.
(btw, IANAPsychiatrist)
...processing using photonics - most of it dealt with simply producing light from silicon chips. Not too sure how you would process using photons. And what sort of perfomance gains would you be looking at?
[implausible_math]Say electrons move at 10^5 m/s (somebody help me out here) and photons (in Si) move at 10^8 m/s. In a circuit 10^-2 m long, electrons would take 10^-7 s (100 ns scale) to give 10^7 ops per second while light would take 0.1 ns to give theoretically (10^10 ops per sec - 10 gigaflops).[/implausible_math]
All my assumptions were b.s., but is a thousand-fold increase theoretically "in the ballpark"? Anybody?
[doh]Photons are 10^3 times as fast as electrons, naturally I came up with a 10^3 performance boost![/doh]
OTOH, I'm not sure I'd want a glow-in-the-dark CPU...
> eco-protection agency breathing down your neck > about protecting the forest
> Sorry - you loose all respect from me with the > above display of ignorance. Maybe it would be
> better if you mowed the Rainforest down to
> raise cattle for a local McDonalds? Dont forget
> the chemical spewing plastics factory to
> produce PokemonPlasticPrizes for Happy Meals.
You know what pisses off people in developing countries? Westerners placing the environment over our own people. All else being equal, the environment must be protected. But often developing countries cannot afford to protect the environment. Many conservationists don't seem to grasp this. We don't have a choice!
How much is a human life worth in terms of the environment? If you don't let us cut down those trees/fish that reef/mine that iron *some of our people will die* (or live in poverty and filth) that would otherwise have lived. It is not right to ask us to make that sacrifice for you or for future generations. If you don't want the Malaysian forest to come down, then *go to Malaysia* and find a way (read:funding) to get the people what they need *or* don't whine about the rainforest and castigate "these ignorant Third-Worlders".
The way radiation pressure from Merope slowed down small dust particles, mimicing air resistance here on Earth.
Yeah, I know that's what you'd expect, but I just find it interesting how so many processes resemble each other, in spite of vastly different scales. (A tropical storm resembles a spiral galaxy etc. etc.)
"So you talk about free software. Why are
you throwing IE in your example then ?"
IE
Boil and filter. That's what we do to get rid of bacteria in drinking water at home (in India). Also exotic stuff like UV irradiation, ozone treatment, etc, but I don't think that would work too well on a ZnS-encased bacterium.
hth
The article says, however, that the remains have not been dated yet... the 6 million years figure comes from remains previuosly found in the same strata. I will be much more exciting once they actually date the remains. I mean, this overturns much of what we know about early human evolution.
I wonder what genus these will be put into - yet another *pithecus I imagine!
O/T: Anybody know what the common ancestor of modern primates & man was? I am thinking of Ramapithecus, although I know that's not it. Something beginning with a D and ending in pithecus is all I can come up with.
a really long time ago!
(Horizon is a documentary from the BBC)
They brought up all the connections to the beetles in the Kalahari-Namib etc... really good show, it was.
Here is a URL for a similiar program in NJ, distributing cell-phones to schools for emergency use
I think that the major use of grafting bone marrow cells would be in cases of spinal cord damage - even if a small section of nerve tissue was damaged beyond repair, a bone marrow graft could be induced to replace it. This avoids the loss-of-data issues theoretically possible with grafting into the brain. Networking is also a lot simpler in the spinal cord an the brain. If bone marrow cells can replace brain cells, they also ought to be able to replace spinal cord cells (both being part of the CNS, with lots of shared cellular architecture).
OTOH, reflexes controlled by that section of cord would be useless - a small price to pay, IMHO.
The reason for this is that water is a polar fluid, meaning that it has an electrical charge...
Water as a whole does not have an electrical charge - it is a neutral molecule.
in the case of water, a negative charge on the oxygen atom and a positive charge on the hydrogen atoms. This charge is weaker then the normal charges that bind atoms into molecules, so that the water molecules stay slightly connected to each other but aren't connected into a larger molecule...in other words, they become a liquid.
This is commonly called "hydrogen bonding". You are right in that is one of the major reasons that water exists as a liquid. However, your explanation is s drastic oversimplification - there are many other interactions that also increase the cohesive forces in liquids. Acetone and hexane and thionyl chloride and [substitute compounds of choice here] are liquids and yet lack any hydrogen bonding. Long- and medium-chain hydrocarbons (think oils) are liquids although they pretty much lack any polarity whatsoever.
As things stand on Mars now, the pressure is low enough that only traces (if anything) of liquid water on Mars.
What exactly do you mean by sulfur hydroxide? That kinda puzzled me.
there was never enough pressue to turn any fluid but water into a liquid.
I wouldn't go quite that far...
Sedimentary rock is (at least on Earth) precipitated out of water. Metamorphic rock is igneous or sedimentary rock that has been subjected to extremely high temperatures and/or pressures. Just thought I'd clear that up. Sorry for the nitpick :)
I didn't see an analog(ue) stick - did I miss something? That's pretty much essential for a modern gamepad. Also, in a pinch, you could use the analogue stick as a mouse alternative. [IMO, beats a touchpad any day.]
chiral molecules can exhibit differences in polarity. (a good example is the alpha and beta anomers of glucose - beta is more polar than alpha). given the right solvent system (such as water) they can be separated by crystallization or chromotography. a natural progress could mimic this on mars. So you don't /need/ enzymes to get stereoisomer-specific reactivity. :)
which is not to say it wouldn't be interesting anyway - just not defintive
The figures are interesting but more than a little misleading. They only refer to first-languages, and not total speakers. Also, they don't have India listed among English-speaking countries, although English is one of the national languages of India - at least 100 million Indians speak English, closer to 200 million. Hindi has close to 500 mil. speakers (a billion people kinda skew things :-) And hey - 280 mil (US) + 60 mil (UK) by themselves add up to more than 332 mil (the figure for English). Even subtracting Spanish-speakers from the US total, the rest of those countries ought to add up to more than 332, right?
Now if they had counted all speakers of every language, English would be a lot higher up - probably overtaking Mandarin Chinese. It would be interesting to see where Spanish was.
Now I shall end my post... leaving the obvious chad joke unsaid.
[sigh] I remember when I was in 4th grade in UK (I'm Indian) and we were learning about tidal waves. I had to explain to my teacher what a 'tsunami' was and her reply: "Is that a word in Indian?" ;-)
These British
What do you people think about a pidgin-type language based on English as a candidate for a universal language? (Pidgins are languages generally based on English but with simplified grammar and phonetic spelling. They have been popularly used in parts of the world with a broad variety of dialects, generally as a second language.)
/there's/ an oxymoron...) would have to be based on British English. In spite of Americans' high estimates of the pervasiveness of their own culture, I feel that the British dialect has been taught to so many more people that it ought to take over.
The grammar used by pidgin languages mirrors the grammar used by many children as they learn to talk; also (in my experience) by adults unfamiliar with English. This has led some (most notably Sagan) to suggest that the rules for pidgin grammar are hard-wired in the human brain.
On a separate note, I think that any English-based lingua franca (now
They are speaking English using the pronunciation rules of Javanese (langauge of Malaysia).
/Roman/ script.
The major language in Malaysia is B.M. - "Bahasa Malaya" or "Bahasa Malaysia". (Bahasa (from Sanskrit Bhasha means "language".)
Interestingly, it is now written in the Roman script and borrows many words from English, but with B.M. spelling in
ahem... yeasts are single-celled eukaryotes, in that they do have nuclei, intracellular compartmentalization and all the other trappings. So they wouldn't necessarily be the best models for hypothetical life on Mars.
But that's very interesting about the dextro- and laevo- sugars used in fermentation.
There is no known natrual,[sic] non-biological process on Earth that can produce an asymmetric molecule.
Erm... sorry to disappoint you dude, but chiral (a.k.a. asymmetric) molecules are produced all the time, on Earth and pretty much everywhere else, by non-biological processes. Almost anything can be chiral - hydrocarbons, mineral salts, crystals, what-have-you. It would be very cool if chirality were a litmus test for biological processes, but it is most definitely not.