Back of the envelope estimation here... the mirrors are probably 1% of the drag cross section of the car and the drag is maybe ~50% of the total energy loss in the car. So my guess would be around 0.5% reduction in fuel consumption. Over its life, your car might burn about 20,000 liters of gas, so you'd save about 100 liters, or about $100 (depending on exact prices). Of course, I'm likely to be off by more than a factor of two (but probably less than a factor of 10).
Actually side view mirrors account for about 2-7% of the drag cross section for typical passenger cars (cars vary a lot in drag cross section), but only about 9-19%of the energy produced by burning gasoline makes is used to overcome drag (about 65% is lost in the engine itself). However, the rest of the typical passenger car is becoming more aerodynamic all the time so that 7% number is going up all the time.
As an example, there is a big win is for semi-trucks where their large side view mirrors can account for up to 10% of the drag cross section (after the rest of the truck is already streamlined) and every 2% reduction in drag results in a 1% increase in fuel economy. This is because over 50mph, drag becomes the most significant factor affecting fuel economy and truck spend much more of their time at speed than a typical passenger car.
There is a case for cameras to eventually replace mirrors in passenger cars, though. The cameras will likely be there already (for Advanced Driver Assist Systems required by the emerging New Car Assessment Program standards) and bulking up the various pillars (already required by the NHTSA for improved rollover crush resistance) is easier/cheaper if they widen them (unfortunately widening pillars creates larger blind spots which need to be accommodated by automotive architects), so if they just don't need to install mirrors, it is one less thing to install in the car and one less constraint on the automotive architects.
Ok, but I still think it is a poor choice of words, when a more appropriate (and understandable) term would be leases.
Depends on which English. For example, in British English** an appropriate (and understandable) term would be hire... However, even though "hire" might confuse the USA/. folks, I imagine the most English speakers can muddle their way through... Besides, there is no such thing as proper english, right?;^)
**the reporter who wrote the article worked in Hong Kong a few years and she was apparently named after a song written by an London based band (Led Zeppelin)...
The increase of the size of the "A" pillar has been a result of US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 216. The NHTSA based their proposal on the following analysis.
The agency used two alternative methods to estimate the benefits of this proposal. Under the first alternative, we estimate that this proposal would prevent 793 non-fatal injuries and 13 fatalities. Under the second alternative, we estimate that this proposal would prevent 498 non-fatal injuries and 44 fatalities. The annual equivalent lives saved are estimated at 39 and 55, respectively. The estimated average cost in 2003 dollars, per vehicle, of meeting the proposed requirements would be $10.67 per affected vehicle. Added weight from design changes is estimated to increase lifetime fuel costs by $5.33 to $6.69 per vehicle. The cost per year for the vehicle fleet is estimated to be $88-$95 million. The cost per equivalent life saved is estimated to range from $2.1 to $3.4 million.
Since they had no data yet, they of course did not factor in visibility concerns into the proposal.
Although you might think it's "easy" to simply just manufacture the A-pillar out of high-strength steel, the A-pillar must also be soft enough to meet federal head impact standards which generally requires some sort of foam and other energy absorbing materials which adds bulk. Also to meet the federal mileage requirements, you want small side mirrors and to steeply sweep back the windshield to reduce drag putting more structural requirements on the A-pillar.
In comparison, let's look at the K.T. Safety Act of 2007 (apparently, 70 percent of all non-traffic, car-related childhood fatalities are due to limited visibility according to kidsandcars.org the folks that lobbied to make rear view camera mandatory on new cars by 2018). Providing for rear-view cameras, the NHTSA estimated the cost per equivalent life saved is estimated to range from $15.9 to $26.3 million and annually, it would save 13-15 lives (vs ~210 today) and reduce about 1125-1332 injuries (vs ~15,000 today). Interestingly, though a rear backup camera could potentially be a source of additional repair costs, it is estimated to provide a net *reduction* in repair costs of about $10-$13/year by helping drivers avoid damage in the first place. The estimated average cost per vehicle, of meeting the proposed requirements would be $43-$45 per affected vehicle ($132-$142 for those w/o displays). The cost per year for the vehicle fleet is estimated to be $546-$620 million.
That's quite a bit more than the A-pillar "costs" (but of course we need to think of the children).
Interestingly, though since car manufacturers will need to put in at least 1 camera to meet new safety requirements, they are all on track to eventually use cameras replace *all* mirrors for all the blind spots, so this blind spot problem may only be a temporary issue for new cars (and I'm sure after-market will be coming soon)... Maybe even your insurance company will pay for it (by giving you a discount)...
Except I drive a manual civic and don't have cruise control.
Cruise control has been an option on MT (including civics) for quite a while. Generally, on MT, CC works in gears 4-5, but won't engage in 3rd gear. The stock CC will dis-engage automatically if you touch the break (same as auto) or the clutch pedal (w/o actually engaging the clutch).
My 1984 Nissan Maxima 5-speed MT had cruise control. Worked about the same as my 1989 Honda civic MT (but maybe CC only came with the power windows package, I can't remember, it's been too long). Given how loaded civics have become, I'm a bit surprised that it isn't a standard feature yet...
Learn 2 math? Your fusion reactors are off by several orders of magnitude compared to consumption. So to answer your question: Fusion reactors produce a tiny, tiny amount of helium - certainly not enough to even cover the cost of collecting it, let alone hoping to commercialize it. So yeah, we will eventually run out.
Non sequitor. Sure, getting helium from fusion reactors is probably a futile exercise, but that doesn't mean we'll run out.
Although there's some evidence that helium can come from alpha particle emitters (and we have a pretty much endless supply of radioactive rocks), apparently this research ignores the original source of the helium and simply postulates that volcanic activity can release helium stored in deep rocks where it can be dissolved in water and transported to the same types of formations that natural gas collects. So there may be much more of it available than we know about.
All the British want is control of their borders. They are a nation after all.
As if Chancellor Merkel had any say in this at all. Maybe you should be directing your derision at Martin Schulz, Donald Tusk, Mark Rutte, and Jean-Claude Juncker... They (and their cohorts in Brussels) are the ones that control the EU policies on immigration.
FWIW, although the UK currently has an "opt-out" concerning Schengen so they actually have technical control over their border, they don't have an opt-out when it comes to actual granting of work visas to other EU citizens (which is what this is really about, not borders).
As you might expect, the summary doesn't completely reflect what this document says. Basically, it a long kitchen sink document that says the EU should try to figure out how best to get ahead of the curve in legal framework for this inevitable AI revolution. The document contains a big laundry list of stuff like...
- making sure AIs are all "registered" (that's a bit ominous) - allowing you to "sue" an AI (force owners to carry insurance and producers to contribute to a compensation fund in case owners don't carry enough insurance) - require access to source code (presumably for forensic purposes) - code of conduct/ethics for the AI researcher and developers (including the AI "teachers") - make sure AIs are developed to respect European values of dignity freedom and justice (including privacy and data sharing issues) - provide basic income to support all the people that are going to become unemployed by AIs (a commonly recurring EU parliament theme, not a scheme to give social security to robots)
The chip in question is shen1-wei1, which is more like "superior-power" as in lots of MIPS (not wrath of god?).
The spaceship is slightly different shen2-zhou1, which is more like "divine-ship" rather than god's personal ship.
Firstly, although they have the same root (shen1), they are not the same character. Secondly, although they are pronounced similar (belying their shared root), they are pronounced with a different tone (one is 1st tone, one is 2nd tone). Saying god's ship would imply that it is the ship-of-god, where a divine ship is simply a ship that travels in the heavens (which is basically a spaceship, right?). In chinese, you might say God's boat like shen-de-zhou (God's own boat) which is not at all what people mean when they say spaceship.
Of course you can make up a literal translation that has completely bombastic implication, but you have to remember nouns in chinese are basically mostly compound connections of a limited set of "words" whose compound meaning does not translate directly from the translation of its components. If you want, you can do the same thing in english by twisting etymological root words (e.g., google "mortgage etymology" which yields "death pledge"), but nobody really means that shit even though it might be a legit translation.
FWIW, the historical name china gave itself was shen-zhou (divine state), which is probably why you see so much shen-this, shen-that... Although today calls itself more modestly and less heavenly/divinely zhong-guo (middle nation or perhaps central kingdom), "middle" or "central" doesn't really work as many places as divine...
How's that supposed to work in a country like the USA? Grab power from Mexico when needed? By starting with building a nation wide grid? So Texas can use power from Nevada or Florida instead of running ist own isolated grid?
Obviously the "German" or "European" way is portable, see India, Australia, Africa, China...
In the US, we basically only have 3 grids. Eastern Interconnection, Western Interconnection and the smaller Texas Interconnection. Because of losses over current transmission lines, it doesn't make sense to ship power from Nevada to Florida, but in times of emergency, the Interconnnections can be "tied" to each other using DC connections or Variable frequency transformers.
The existing Eastern and Wester interconnections reach all the way into energy rich Canada, so, we generally don't need to grab power from our neighbors down south (there exists grid "ties" to Baja and New Mexico and even across the Rio-Grande river through the Sharyland DC Tie). However, now that Mexico has opened their electrical power generation market up (power is constitutionally required to be owned by the Mexican government so it basically takes an act of government to exchange power with the US) we are selling power to Mexico on through these interconnecting "ties"...
FWIW, the Tres Amigas SuperStation project is currently planned to be built to provide a more economical way to transfer power between the 3 interconnections (using DC superconductor technology) in anticipation of the surge in renewable energy plants coming on line in the next decade.
On one hand, I think this whole thing is overblown. On the other hand, playing devil's advocate, the TLAs can't access a machine that is powered down; this potentially allows them to turn it on remotely.
There are many levels of "powered-down". Many enterprise PC have had wake-on-lan and pxe-boot for a while. Often these are simply controlled via bios settings (which we know are completely secure against TLAs)...
Quick shut the barn doors, the horses have escaped!
Seriously, nobody ever actually checks that you signed your name. Just write 'I don't agree' somewhat legibly.
HR drones are fucking morons, use it.
Consider signing actual name on IRS and 401K documents, but even there no big deal, nobody checks.
IANAL, but AFAIK, just signing an "X" in the presence of the counterparty is enough to "sign" a document. All you need is a meeting of the minds for a contract which is why they make you initial here and there when signing important documents, so you later can't claim you didn't get a chance to read a certain clause. This is why square can let you scribble illegibly on an ipad to charge your credit card.
Actually signing "I don't agree" might work against you in this case (since you are kind of admitting you understand it enough to disagree with it). It might be better to legibly write "I don't understand" or "I am incompetent", but it probably legally doesn't make much of a difference if you actually put pen to paper signalling to the counterparty that the contract terms are closed.
The only real argument you probably have if you have already scribbled on the signature line in the presence of the counterparty is that you signed it under duress. However, if you later accept a check, that might be a hard argument to make.
And hotel room numbers often start with 8 as 8 is good luck.
Technically the reason 8 (ba, or baat in Cantonese) is considered auspicious is that it sounds like wealth (fa or faat) or 100 (baak in cantonese). For those that consider luck synonymous with wealth that is a reasonable approximation.
You can be room 14 on the 6th floor and instead of 614 the room will be 8614.
I have only heard of one hotel that actually does that, but I have seen rooms numbered so they skip "4"s.
Also, several skyscrapers in Hong Kong don't number a 4th, 13th, or any floors from 40-49th in a combination of Tetraphobia and Triskaidekaphobia as 4 (si or sei) sounds a bit too much like death (si or sei) and there are quite a few Christians in Hong Kong as well.
Even if the numbers don't come close to the losses in Iraq or Afghanistan, don't expect people to be rational about it even though this is arguably far more important for the human race.
If we are talking about "rationality"...
Odds of a person dying in US: 821.5 deaths/100,000 people/1 year = 0.82%/year (of course includes infant and death by old age) Odds of troop dying in WW2: 400,000 deaths/16,000,000 troops/6 years = 0.4%/year Odds of US soldier dying in Iraq: 2000 deaths/150,000 troops/3 years = 0.4%/year Odds of miner dying in coal mine: 276 deaths/1,286,120 miners/10 years = 0.2%/year (only includes the recent "safer" years) Odds of 25-34yo dying in US: 102.2 deaths/100,000 people/1 year = 0.1%/year (more representative of troop ages) Odds of dying in space: 22 deaths/1228 people-flights/48271 people-days/356 days = 0.01%/year (counting time actually spent in space, not including expected mission duration)
I suspect that any mars mission will suffer significantly worse loss rates (and won't be close) than any of these other things.
Nobody has died from zero g on the space station yet. You don't understand the biology.
Maybe nobody died yet, but many experience severe loss of vision acuity and early symptoms of retinal issues which could lead to retinal detachment and permanent blindness... And *nobody* understands the biology behind this yet...
Not even close. SpaceX landing uses atmopsheric drag. Most of the landing comes from its terminal velocity. Earths terminal velocity is about 200 km/h, Mars terminal velocity is 1000 km/h (both of which change per shape/density/etc).
This. It is extremely hard to land something heavy on Mars.
Mars is *tweener*. It's got too much atmosphere to land something heavy solely with retro-rockets (more fuel means more mass to slow before it burns up), and too little atmosphere to land something heavy with parachutes like we do on earth.
Landing something around 2000lbs is the limit of current Mars Landing technology. The reason the latest mars science laboratory (MSL) lander used a a powered decent rocket + sky crane and not an inflatable airbag system used by earlier rovers is that with the mass of the MSL (2000lbs rover), the parachute drag didn't slow it enough and it would have gotten crushed with an airbag landing...
Current thinking is that even to get enough interesting mass into Mars orbit, some sort of aerocapture maneuver will need to be performed. That is even before you attempt to land the payload in smaller pieces...
And of course the SpaceX rockets that are currently landed on earth are essentially empty.
Old Father Elon Went to the von-braun, To give the poor colonist a bone; When he came there, The von-braun was bare, And so the poor colonist had none.
There's only so much you want to know about your parents (google has only been around less than 20 years)... Also, even ancestry.com has to make their money selling subscriptions and DNA tests to the living (not adwords)...
Short summary. Old technique using silicon nanowires has shortcomings. Their new technique using a silicon membrane works better (5.2dB gain at 60 mW).
For those that don't know what Brillouin scattering/amplification is all about, it's basically a non-linear scattering effect between two electromagnetic waves and a phonon (usually a "sound" wave, or more specifically spatio-temporal variations in local strain of a structure say like in silicon). A highly simplified way to think about it is if you "vibrate" a crystal you can set up patterns of constructive interference between incoming and outgoing light which results in amplification.
Although there are many Brillouin configurations that are possible, this paper talks a forward scattering scheme that allows one electromagnetic wave to pump another one (basically what is required to make an amplifier or a laser).
Yes. and even counting all the recent terrorists acts in Europe, The European number of death by gun violence is way lower than yours without terrorist acts guys.
And none of European's school blows up on regularly due to a kids that took daddy's gun.
In the USA, although they make most of the news, terrorist acts make up a minuscule amount of the gun death totals (~2%). US gun deaths are dominated by 2 categories: Suicides (60%), and gang activity (33%). Also despite the notoriety of automatic weapons incidents, about 75% of all firearm homicides and nearly all firearms suicides in the US are committed by standard handguns or rifles/shotguns (because suicides, gangbangers and criminals often use handguns, not automatic assault rifles).
Unfortunately the bulk of these gun deaths are not "newsworthy" as many times the victims are gang members or the victims are members of minority communities (hispanic and black youths are disproportionally impacted by gun violence) so the perception is quite warped. If the goal is to make a real dent in these statistics, it would be better to ban handguns instead of automatic weapons.
If we simply look at mass killings with automatic weapons per capita, surprisingly the US isn't even #1 on that statistic either. Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel, and Switzerland rank higher, and the US is on par with countries like Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany.
If we take a "think-of-the-children" approach, only about 0.5% of accidental gun deaths were among 15 years old or younger (another 0.5% older than 15 years). On the other hand, about 1/2 of suicides are handgun related, so maybe banning handguns would help there. But these have nearly zero to do with automatic weapons used in terrorist incidents.
So what's the problem in the US? It certainly isn't because of automatic weapons. For some hard to fathom reason, the handgun violence rate is significantly higher in the US than in other countries (even compared to countries that have high rates of gun ownership rates like Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and France). Maybe it's some cultural thing, but it isn't something that has a simple fix like banning assault weapons (even if you think that is a good idea in principle, the statistics don't bear out the idea that this would somehow move the needle that much).
But of course we must do something, but we should be thoughtful, not reactionary...
My local school has tried to reassure parents by pointing to the double locked doors, the front desk staff, the required sign-ins, etc...
That "school" sounds more like a prison to me.
It's really sad to see that things have come this far.
But maybe we're on to something here . . . maybe we can consolidate schools and prisons . . . ?
The point of school security to keep the students inside so the school officials don't get blamed if they lose a student to non-custodial parents/relatives, or 22yo internet boyfriends... If someone comes in guns ablazing, that is not part of the threat they are guarding against.
San Bio's SB623 is a stem cell line that was originally derived from adult bone marrow stem cells obtained from a company called Lonza in Maryland.
You can read about this Lonza's product here. In the product flier, they simply claim that there was "Reasonable compensation for participation" (which is the industry standard non-answer). Word on the street is that you can get $3000/100ml for your bone marrow and in their price sheet Lonzas is charging $429/10ml, so certainly they aren't paying them much more than this and operating at a loss...
FWIW, to create the stem cell line, San Bio genetically engineered/manipulated these adult bone marrow stem cells to express a modified version of the “Notch**” gene so it really isn't the original bone marrow cells anyhow. AFAIK, this enhanced Notch signalling pathway is suspected to provide scaffolding for new neuron growth, but it is as of yet unverified which is why I guess they are doing all this testing...
**no relation to minecraft, but named after a mutant "Notch" strain of Drosophila back in 1919 (nothing whimsical like sonic hedgehog genes)
...but still the same basic optics solved hundreds of years ago.
Actually, no. More details.
The short story of what is different is described in their paper (preprint here)...
Although visible planar lenses can be realized by diffractive components, high NA and efficiency are not attainable because their constituent structures are of wavelength scale that precludes an accurate phase profile..... To maximize the polarization conversion efficiency, the nanofins should operate as halfwaveplates. This is achieved due to the birefringence arising from the asymmetric cross section of nanofins with appropriately designed height, width, and length
The new idea (well not new, but meta-material approach) is that for each x,y position on the lens, a nanofin is positioned and rotated so that a localized "half-wave-plate" effect created by birefringence of the nanofin crossection modifies the phase profile of incident circularly polarized light to that which propagation through a spherical lens would have produced: All without a refractive component. A fresnel-like lens uses a small refraction (lens) element instead of a nano-sized half-wave plate to accomplish bending, but refraction requires an interface, and you can't make that interface too small without diffractive effects.
The catch? Chromatic aberration will be much worse than a traditional lens because the phase profile is only correct for one wavelength (traditional materials also have a index of refraction that changes with wavelength, but it isn't strictly a linearly proportional geometric effect like rotating nanofins). This new technique would work fine for most scientific purposes where you have monochromatic light, but taking a full color picture with this type of lens might take quite a bit of dsp-post-processing to look reasonable.
Just to point out, that buried in many insurance policies have exceptions for non-common-carrier transport in things like boats and planes. This is why generally people on business trips aren't allowed to fly on their own planes (or planes flown by their collegues) because that render business insurance void.
The insurance industry hasn't caught up to this new sharing economy stuff yet...
Slashdot Mirror
Back of the envelope estimation here... the mirrors are probably 1% of the drag cross section of the car and the drag is maybe ~50% of the total energy loss in the car. So my guess would be around 0.5% reduction in fuel consumption. Over its life, your car might burn about 20,000 liters of gas, so you'd save about 100 liters, or about $100 (depending on exact prices). Of course, I'm likely to be off by more than a factor of two (but probably less than a factor of 10).
Actually side view mirrors account for about 2-7% of the drag cross section for typical passenger cars (cars vary a lot in drag cross section), but only about 9-19%of the energy produced by burning gasoline makes is used to overcome drag (about 65% is lost in the engine itself). However, the rest of the typical passenger car is becoming more aerodynamic all the time so that 7% number is going up all the time.
As an example, there is a big win is for semi-trucks where their large side view mirrors can account for up to 10% of the drag cross section (after the rest of the truck is already streamlined) and every 2% reduction in drag results in a 1% increase in fuel economy. This is because over 50mph, drag becomes the most significant factor affecting fuel economy and truck spend much more of their time at speed than a typical passenger car.
There is a case for cameras to eventually replace mirrors in passenger cars, though. The cameras will likely be there already (for Advanced Driver Assist Systems required by the emerging New Car Assessment Program standards) and bulking up the various pillars (already required by the NHTSA for improved rollover crush resistance) is easier/cheaper if they widen them (unfortunately widening pillars creates larger blind spots which need to be accommodated by automotive architects), so if they just don't need to install mirrors, it is one less thing to install in the car and one less constraint on the automotive architects.
Ok, but I still think it is a poor choice of words, when a more appropriate (and understandable) term would be leases.
Depends on which English. For example, in British English** an appropriate (and understandable) term would be hire... /. folks, I imagine the most English speakers can muddle their way through... ;^)
However, even though "hire" might confuse the USA
Besides, there is no such thing as proper english, right?
**the reporter who wrote the article worked in Hong Kong a few years and she was apparently named after a song written by an London based band (Led Zeppelin)...
The increase of the size of the "A" pillar has been a result of US Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 216. The NHTSA based their proposal on the following analysis.
The agency used two alternative methods to estimate the benefits of this proposal. Under the first alternative, we estimate that this proposal would prevent 793 non-fatal injuries and 13 fatalities. Under the second alternative, we estimate that this proposal would prevent 498 non-fatal injuries and 44 fatalities. The annual equivalent lives saved are estimated at 39 and 55, respectively. The estimated average cost in 2003 dollars, per vehicle, of meeting the proposed requirements would be $10.67 per affected vehicle. Added weight from design changes is estimated to increase lifetime fuel costs by $5.33 to $6.69 per vehicle. The cost per year for the vehicle fleet is estimated to be $88-$95 million. The cost per equivalent life saved is estimated to range from $2.1 to $3.4 million.
Since they had no data yet, they of course did not factor in visibility concerns into the proposal.
Although you might think it's "easy" to simply just manufacture the A-pillar out of high-strength steel, the A-pillar must also be soft enough to meet federal head impact standards which generally requires some sort of foam and other energy absorbing materials which adds bulk. Also to meet the federal mileage requirements, you want small side mirrors and to steeply sweep back the windshield to reduce drag putting more structural requirements on the A-pillar.
In comparison, let's look at the K.T. Safety Act of 2007 (apparently, 70 percent of all non-traffic, car-related childhood fatalities are due to limited visibility according to kidsandcars.org the folks that lobbied to make rear view camera mandatory on new cars by 2018). Providing for rear-view cameras, the NHTSA estimated the cost per equivalent life saved is estimated to range from $15.9 to $26.3 million and annually, it would save 13-15 lives (vs ~210 today) and reduce about 1125-1332 injuries (vs ~15,000 today). Interestingly, though a rear backup camera could potentially be a source of additional repair costs, it is estimated to provide a net *reduction* in repair costs of about $10-$13/year by helping drivers avoid damage in the first place. The estimated average cost per vehicle, of meeting the proposed requirements would be $43-$45 per affected vehicle ($132-$142 for those w/o displays). The cost per year for the vehicle fleet is estimated to be $546-$620 million.
That's quite a bit more than the A-pillar "costs" (but of course we need to think of the children).
Interestingly, though since car manufacturers will need to put in at least 1 camera to meet new safety requirements, they are all on track to eventually use cameras replace *all* mirrors for all the blind spots, so this blind spot problem may only be a temporary issue for new cars (and I'm sure after-market will be coming soon)... Maybe even your insurance company will pay for it (by giving you a discount)...
Except I drive a manual civic and don't have cruise control.
Cruise control has been an option on MT (including civics) for quite a while. Generally, on MT, CC works in gears 4-5, but won't engage in 3rd gear. The stock CC will dis-engage automatically if you touch the break (same as auto) or the clutch pedal (w/o actually engaging the clutch).
My 1984 Nissan Maxima 5-speed MT had cruise control. Worked about the same as my 1989 Honda civic MT (but maybe CC only came with the power windows package, I can't remember, it's been too long). Given how loaded civics have become, I'm a bit surprised that it isn't a standard feature yet...
Learn 2 math? Your fusion reactors are off by several orders of magnitude compared to consumption. So to answer your question: Fusion reactors produce a tiny, tiny amount of helium - certainly not enough to even cover the cost of collecting it, let alone hoping to commercialize it. So yeah, we will eventually run out.
Non sequitor. Sure, getting helium from fusion reactors is probably a futile exercise, but that doesn't mean we'll run out.
Although there's some evidence that helium can come from alpha particle emitters (and we have a pretty much endless supply of radioactive rocks), apparently this research ignores the original source of the helium and simply postulates that volcanic activity can release helium stored in deep rocks where it can be dissolved in water and transported to the same types of formations that natural gas collects. So there may be much more of it available than we know about.
Actually, if don't want to relieve yourself on the sidewalk, San Francisco has open-air urinals now... Please keep up with the times ;^p
All the British want is control of their borders. They are a nation after all.
As if Chancellor Merkel had any say in this at all.
Maybe you should be directing your derision at Martin Schulz, Donald Tusk, Mark Rutte, and Jean-Claude Juncker...
They (and their cohorts in Brussels) are the ones that control the EU policies on immigration.
FWIW, although the UK currently has an "opt-out" concerning Schengen so they actually have technical control over their border, they don't have an opt-out when it comes to actual granting of work visas to other EU citizens (which is what this is really about, not borders).
If anyone cares to read the actual draft document...
As you might expect, the summary doesn't completely reflect what this document says. Basically, it a long kitchen sink document that says the EU should try to figure out how best to get ahead of the curve in legal framework for this inevitable AI revolution. The document contains a big laundry list of stuff like...
- making sure AIs are all "registered" (that's a bit ominous)
- allowing you to "sue" an AI (force owners to carry insurance and producers to contribute to a compensation fund in case owners don't carry enough insurance)
- require access to source code (presumably for forensic purposes)
- code of conduct/ethics for the AI researcher and developers (including the AI "teachers")
- make sure AIs are developed to respect European values of dignity freedom and justice (including privacy and data sharing issues)
- provide basic income to support all the people that are going to become unemployed by AIs (a commonly recurring EU parliament theme, not a scheme to give social security to robots)
http://arstechnica.com/busines...
Huh?
The chip in question is shen1-wei1, which is more like "superior-power" as in lots of MIPS (not wrath of god?).
The spaceship is slightly different shen2-zhou1, which is more like "divine-ship" rather than god's personal ship.
Firstly, although they have the same root (shen1), they are not the same character. Secondly, although they are pronounced similar (belying their shared root), they are pronounced with a different tone (one is 1st tone, one is 2nd tone). Saying god's ship would imply that it is the ship-of-god, where a divine ship is simply a ship that travels in the heavens (which is basically a spaceship, right?). In chinese, you might say God's boat like shen-de-zhou (God's own boat) which is not at all what people mean when they say spaceship.
Of course you can make up a literal translation that has completely bombastic implication, but you have to remember nouns in chinese are basically mostly compound connections of a limited set of "words" whose compound meaning does not translate directly from the translation of its components. If you want, you can do the same thing in english by twisting etymological root words (e.g., google "mortgage etymology" which yields "death pledge"), but nobody really means that shit even though it might be a legit translation.
FWIW, the historical name china gave itself was shen-zhou (divine state), which is probably why you see so much shen-this, shen-that... Although today calls itself more modestly and less heavenly/divinely zhong-guo (middle nation or perhaps central kingdom), "middle" or "central" doesn't really work as many places as divine...
How's that supposed to work in a country like the USA? Grab power from Mexico when needed?
By starting with building a nation wide grid? So Texas can use power from Nevada or Florida instead of running ist own isolated grid?
Obviously the "German" or "European" way is portable, see India, Australia, Africa, China ...
In the US, we basically only have 3 grids. Eastern Interconnection, Western Interconnection and the smaller Texas Interconnection. Because of losses over current transmission lines, it doesn't make sense to ship power from Nevada to Florida, but in times of emergency, the Interconnnections can be "tied" to each other using DC connections or Variable frequency transformers.
The existing Eastern and Wester interconnections reach all the way into energy rich Canada, so, we generally don't need to grab power from our neighbors down south (there exists grid "ties" to Baja and New Mexico and even across the Rio-Grande river through the Sharyland DC Tie). However, now that Mexico has opened their electrical power generation market up (power is constitutionally required to be owned by the Mexican government so it basically takes an act of government to exchange power with the US) we are selling power to Mexico on through these interconnecting "ties"...
FWIW, the Tres Amigas SuperStation project is currently planned to be built to provide a more economical way to transfer power between the 3 interconnections (using DC superconductor technology) in anticipation of the surge in renewable energy plants coming on line in the next decade.
On one hand, I think this whole thing is overblown. On the other hand, playing devil's advocate, the TLAs can't access a machine that is powered down; this potentially allows them to turn it on remotely.
There are many levels of "powered-down". Many enterprise PC have had wake-on-lan and pxe-boot for a while. Often these are simply controlled via bios settings (which we know are completely secure against TLAs)...
Quick shut the barn doors, the horses have escaped!
Seriously, nobody ever actually checks that you signed your name. Just write 'I don't agree' somewhat legibly.
HR drones are fucking morons, use it.
Consider signing actual name on IRS and 401K documents, but even there no big deal, nobody checks.
IANAL, but AFAIK, just signing an "X" in the presence of the counterparty is enough to "sign" a document. All you need is a meeting of the minds for a contract which is why they make you initial here and there when signing important documents, so you later can't claim you didn't get a chance to read a certain clause. This is why square can let you scribble illegibly on an ipad to charge your credit card.
Actually signing "I don't agree" might work against you in this case (since you are kind of admitting you understand it enough to disagree with it). It might be better to legibly write "I don't understand" or "I am incompetent", but it probably legally doesn't make much of a difference if you actually put pen to paper signalling to the counterparty that the contract terms are closed.
The only real argument you probably have if you have already scribbled on the signature line in the presence of the counterparty is that you signed it under duress. However, if you later accept a check, that might be a hard argument to make.
And hotel room numbers often start with 8 as 8 is good luck.
Technically the reason 8 (ba, or baat in Cantonese) is considered auspicious is that it sounds like wealth (fa or faat) or 100 (baak in cantonese). For those that consider luck synonymous with wealth that is a reasonable approximation.
You can be room 14 on the 6th floor and instead of 614 the room will be 8614.
I have only heard of one hotel that actually does that, but I have seen rooms numbered so they skip "4"s.
Also, several skyscrapers in Hong Kong don't number a 4th, 13th, or any floors from 40-49th in a combination of Tetraphobia and Triskaidekaphobia as 4 (si or sei) sounds a bit too much like death (si or sei) and there are quite a few Christians in Hong Kong as well.
Even if the numbers don't come close to the losses in Iraq or Afghanistan, don't expect people to be rational about it even though this is arguably far more important for the human race.
If we are talking about "rationality"...
Odds of a person dying in US: 821.5 deaths/100,000 people/1 year = 0.82%/year (of course includes infant and death by old age)
Odds of troop dying in WW2: 400,000 deaths/16,000,000 troops/6 years = 0.4%/year
Odds of US soldier dying in Iraq: 2000 deaths/150,000 troops/3 years = 0.4%/year
Odds of miner dying in coal mine: 276 deaths/1,286,120 miners/10 years = 0.2%/year (only includes the recent "safer" years)
Odds of 25-34yo dying in US: 102.2 deaths/100,000 people/1 year = 0.1%/year (more representative of troop ages)
Odds of dying in space: 22 deaths/1228 people-flights/48271 people-days/356 days = 0.01%/year (counting time actually spent in space, not including expected mission duration)
I suspect that any mars mission will suffer significantly worse loss rates (and won't be close) than any of these other things.
Nobody has died from zero g on the space station yet. You don't understand the biology.
Maybe nobody died yet, but many experience severe loss of vision acuity and early symptoms of retinal issues which could lead to retinal detachment and permanent blindness... And *nobody* understands the biology behind this yet...
Not even close.
SpaceX landing uses atmopsheric drag. Most of the landing comes from its terminal velocity. Earths terminal velocity is about 200 km/h, Mars terminal velocity is 1000 km/h (both of which change per shape/density/etc).
This. It is extremely hard to land something heavy on Mars.
Mars is *tweener*. It's got too much atmosphere to land something heavy solely with retro-rockets (more fuel means more mass to slow before it burns up), and too little atmosphere to land something heavy with parachutes like we do on earth.
Landing something around 2000lbs is the limit of current Mars Landing technology. The reason the latest mars science laboratory (MSL) lander used a a powered decent rocket + sky crane and not an inflatable airbag system used by earlier rovers is that with the mass of the MSL (2000lbs rover), the parachute drag didn't slow it enough and it would have gotten crushed with an airbag landing...
Current thinking is that even to get enough interesting mass into Mars orbit, some sort of aerocapture maneuver will need to be performed. That is even before you attempt to land the payload in smaller pieces...
And of course the SpaceX rockets that are currently landed on earth are essentially empty.
Old Father Elon
Went to the von-braun,
To give the poor colonist a bone;
When he came there,
The von-braun was bare,
And so the poor colonist had none.
You underestimate the interest in ancestry.
There's only so much you want to know about your parents (google has only been around less than 20 years)...
Also, even ancestry.com has to make their money selling subscriptions and DNA tests to the living (not adwords)...
Preprint paper here.
Short summary. Old technique using silicon nanowires has shortcomings. Their new technique using a silicon membrane works better (5.2dB gain at 60 mW).
For those that don't know what Brillouin scattering/amplification is all about, it's basically a non-linear scattering effect between two electromagnetic waves and a phonon (usually a "sound" wave, or more specifically spatio-temporal variations in local strain of a structure say like in silicon). A highly simplified way to think about it is if you "vibrate" a crystal you can set up patterns of constructive interference between incoming and outgoing light which results in amplification.
Although there are many Brillouin configurations that are possible, this paper talks a forward scattering scheme that allows one electromagnetic wave to pump another one (basically what is required to make an amplifier or a laser).
Yes. and even counting all the recent terrorists acts in Europe, The European number of death by gun violence is way lower than yours without terrorist acts guys.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
And none of European's school blows up on regularly due to a kids that took daddy's gun.
In the USA, although they make most of the news, terrorist acts make up a minuscule amount of the gun death totals (~2%). US gun deaths are dominated by 2 categories: Suicides (60%), and gang activity (33%). Also despite the notoriety of automatic weapons incidents, about 75% of all firearm homicides and nearly all firearms suicides in the US are committed by standard handguns or rifles/shotguns (because suicides, gangbangers and criminals often use handguns, not automatic assault rifles).
Unfortunately the bulk of these gun deaths are not "newsworthy" as many times the victims are gang members or the victims are members of minority communities (hispanic and black youths are disproportionally impacted by gun violence) so the perception is quite warped. If the goal is to make a real dent in these statistics, it would be better to ban handguns instead of automatic weapons.
If we simply look at mass killings with automatic weapons per capita, surprisingly the US isn't even #1 on that statistic either. Norway, Finland, Slovakia, Israel, and Switzerland rank higher, and the US is on par with countries like Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany.
If we take a "think-of-the-children" approach, only about 0.5% of accidental gun deaths were among 15 years old or younger (another 0.5% older than 15 years). On the other hand, about 1/2 of suicides are handgun related, so maybe banning handguns would help there. But these have nearly zero to do with automatic weapons used in terrorist incidents.
So what's the problem in the US? It certainly isn't because of automatic weapons. For some hard to fathom reason, the handgun violence rate is significantly higher in the US than in other countries (even compared to countries that have high rates of gun ownership rates like Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and France). Maybe it's some cultural thing, but it isn't something that has a simple fix like banning assault weapons (even if you think that is a good idea in principle, the statistics don't bear out the idea that this would somehow move the needle that much).
But of course we must do something, but we should be thoughtful, not reactionary...
My local school has tried to reassure parents by pointing to the double locked doors, the front desk staff, the required sign-ins, etc...
That "school" sounds more like a prison to me.
It's really sad to see that things have come this far.
But maybe we're on to something here . . . maybe we can consolidate schools and prisons . . . ?
The point of school security to keep the students inside so the school officials don't get blamed if they lose a student to non-custodial parents/relatives, or 22yo internet boyfriends... If someone comes in guns ablazing, that is not part of the threat they are guarding against.
and how were they compensated?
San Bio's SB623 is a stem cell line that was originally derived from adult bone marrow stem cells obtained from a company called Lonza in Maryland.
You can read about this Lonza's product here. In the product flier, they simply claim that there was "Reasonable compensation for participation" (which is the industry standard non-answer). Word on the street is that you can get $3000/100ml for your bone marrow and in their price sheet Lonzas is charging $429/10ml, so certainly they aren't paying them much more than this and operating at a loss...
FWIW, to create the stem cell line, San Bio genetically engineered/manipulated these adult bone marrow stem cells to express a modified version of the “Notch**” gene so it really isn't the original bone marrow cells anyhow. AFAIK, this enhanced Notch signalling pathway is suspected to provide scaffolding for new neuron growth, but it is as of yet unverified which is why I guess they are doing all this testing...
**no relation to minecraft, but named after a mutant "Notch" strain of Drosophila back in 1919 (nothing whimsical like sonic hedgehog genes)
I guess his contractual obligation is now fulfilled.
-jcr
Or perhaps Alphabet's obligation to payout if he was removed as CEO has expired...
...but still the same basic optics solved hundreds of years ago.
Actually, no. More details.
The short story of what is different is described in their paper (preprint here)...
Although visible planar lenses can be realized by diffractive components, high NA and efficiency are not attainable because their constituent structures are of wavelength scale that precludes an accurate phase profile..... To maximize the polarization conversion efficiency, the nanofins should operate as halfwaveplates. This is achieved due to the birefringence arising from the asymmetric cross section of nanofins with appropriately designed height, width, and length
The new idea (well not new, but meta-material approach) is that for each x,y position on the lens, a nanofin is positioned and rotated so that a localized "half-wave-plate" effect created by birefringence of the nanofin crossection modifies the phase profile of incident circularly polarized light to that which propagation through a spherical lens would have produced: All without a refractive component. A fresnel-like lens uses a small refraction (lens) element instead of a nano-sized half-wave plate to accomplish bending, but refraction requires an interface, and you can't make that interface too small without diffractive effects.
The catch? Chromatic aberration will be much worse than a traditional lens because the phase profile is only correct for one wavelength (traditional materials also have a index of refraction that changes with wavelength, but it isn't strictly a linearly proportional geometric effect like rotating nanofins). This new technique would work fine for most scientific purposes where you have monochromatic light, but taking a full color picture with this type of lens might take quite a bit of dsp-post-processing to look reasonable.
Just to point out, that buried in many insurance policies have exceptions for non-common-carrier transport in things like boats and planes. This is why generally people on business trips aren't allowed to fly on their own planes (or planes flown by their collegues) because that render business insurance void.
The insurance industry hasn't caught up to this new sharing economy stuff yet...