So, just because he's smart, he's more suited to planning educational reform than other people?
You want to fix the education system? Create a panel of fully nationally credentialed teachers (certified and educated to masters or above), let them create a plan, and then fund it.
Education is the only profession in which the certified professionals are not in charge of their own system.
that online sales are part of the problem with the writer's strike?
Seriously. This is the sort of thing that is causing the writers to strike. If it doesn't stop, all we'll be able to download from iTunes is reruns of "The Today Show", and "The Running Man" -- The new reality show where criminals are released into a deathtrap maze. You think I'm joking, but I'm pretty sure that that'll be the last line of reality TV.
1) Humans need OXYGEN to survive. Increased CO2 and changes in ocean temperatures will massively impact the growth of pyhtoplankton, the largest producer of oxygen in the world (look it up yourselves.
2) "Scientists" are not acting as preachers here. In fact, the only people who think we are actually shrieking that the world is ending is people who don't want to have to change our CO2 emmissions.
3) I actually agree about climate change changing economic tourism etc. That's well and good.
Hawaii will be either A) underwater, or B) uninhabitable.
6 kW. That's good. 6 kW per Hour? per Minute? per 660 gallons? One of the biggest problems with biological fuel cells is not their byproducts, but the rate of electricity generation.
Set the electrons free.
I'd also like to point out that this is using waste water, not alcohol laden beer. This is what's left. This is along the same lines as generating methane from your cow's waste to power your farm. It's useful, but mostly as a way to get rid of the poop.
Personally, I'm less interested in global warming than the influence the increased CO2 levels we're causing (this part is incontrovertable fact, btw) is having on the pH of the ocean. We may run out of fish, and CO2 fixing bacteria well before we melt all the ice caps.
Just my meta thoughts on the comments I have read so far:
1) To the camp who feel that we are acting "irresponsibly" to engineer drastic changes in the earth's atmosphere: We, over the course of the last 150 years have been progressively, accidentally, altering the atmospheric content of the earth. This has had two main results, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increased acidity of the ocean. Subsequent effects of these man-made changes in the atmosphere are believed (note the lack of claims that cannot be proven) to include increased temperature in both water and air temperatures, increased growth of plants and trees (unfortunately mostly the fast growing, less functionally useful plants) and potentially alterations in the ocean microbial and macrobiological populations. To claim that this is less dangerous or harmful to the environment than those changes that are engineered deliberately by humans is irresponsible and dangerous.
2) To those of you who are attacking the scientific consensus, I challenge you to do a complete, or semicomplete review of scientific literature, starting with those statements released last week, and attempt to argue those specific points, rather than the media talking points. I believe you will find highly convincing arguments for the contribution of CO2 to global warming and the influence of human consumption on the levels of CO2
let me stop attacking users and move on to things I agree with:
1) our solutions tend to be shortsighted and not useful. This is mostly the fault of scoping. It is true, for example that Iron will increase biological activity in the oceans. It is not likely that this will have a long term effect, as the subsequent sinking of dead cyanobacteria will fix carbon for the short term, but the alteration in the community of bacteria in those areas of the ocean may be forever altered to fix less carbon. There are a multitude of other suggestions that are equally shortsighted. We need to find good, quick ways to fix carbon while altering as few biological or geological processes as possible.
You have failed to raise any points directly or indirectly disputing the science. The fact is that there has been a global increase in carbon levels correlating directly to increases in human consumption of carbon fuels from fossilized deposits. Temperature change is a modelable, direct result of increased carbon levels in the atmosphere.
Please stop playing Ad Hoc Attacker (TM), and look at the issues.
The difference here is that they have shown that the wires are conductive, and carbon based. This too is something that has been worked on for a while.
Very well, if you can first explain to me how a situation involving a sublimating solid in low atmospheric pressure with solar input orders of magnitude lower than earth's applies to this discussion, I will explain to your heart's content.
And again... RHETORIC?!??!?
I am going to assume that you did not mean definition 1: "The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively." but rather definition 3: "Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous"
if so, would you care to justify your ad hominim attack by perhaps elaborating on this claim? or is it, (and pardon the pun) all hot air?
Having spent a lot of time analyzing the hydrogen economy in terms of generation, this topic is near and dear to my heart.
Hydrogen is a method of TRANSPORTING and STORING energy. It is not a solution to energy generation. As a storage and transport method, IMSO (S=Scientific), it is not particularly cost effective, and has as much potential for unforseen concequenses as any other untested energy method.
That said, I am highly in favor of fuel cells in general, and am happy to see them adopted more often.
In relation to the question asked about poorer countries, I would also hasten to point out that the fuel cells themselves are expensive, as they require (I believe) a platinum catalyst.
The TREND did exist, please do not attempt to dispute that. The runaway fears of a return to pre-industrial temperatures came mainly from mainstream interpretation of the data, and statisticians that used measurement data to make basic predictions. The current general scientific consensus was that this prediction (which was based mostly in industrialized countries) came from the local effects of smog, on which controls were placed, which decreased smog, allowing the air temperature and increased radiation from the sun to warm the soil to a greater degree.
If global warming fears were based soley on observational data, I would be inclined to agree with the idea that there is room for doubt. It is not. Please feel free to look at the scientific literature at any time. Carbon Dioxide levels play a role, as do methane and nitrous oxide. The effect of these compounds is under further investigation, but there is little doubt that increases in their levels contribute to greenhouse effects.
"That's the essential difference between a free market and a monopoly. In a free market, competition will set the price near the cost of producing the book."
In all actuality, this is NOT a monopoly situation, it a case of free market economics interfacing with copyright law. A teacher has to choose a single book, which is protected under copyright, once that is chosen, there are no alternatives. This might result in a textbook having a higher cost than anticipated, but I doubt it. The professor, however, has no incentive to choose the lowest cost book, but the one that conveys the information she or he desires best (or, if you're a cynic, the one that re-imburseses him best), but in any case, there are plenty of options available, all clammoring, in a free market, for the right to be represented in that classroom.
Since I work in academia, let me state this for the record: The cost of textbooks is not a result of the publisher's desire to screw the student (at least not in the biological and physical sciences), it is due to the free-market ownership of individual photographs or charts, which must be paid for by the publisher for the right to publish it.
Additionally, I'd like you to consider that each textbook you buy is at least 300 pages of color printing.
Adding other activities to this program. This may destroy my geekdom, but not all kids like video games. In fact, a number of them probably think they are "teh Ghey", and would rather be out impressing thier friends.
Now that they have a valid starting point for gathering kids around a singular area, what about incorporating other options, like sports, or refitting abandoned cars, or something.
This appears to have been a decent, if pointless bit of research. They found fungus in pillows. Then some idiot came up with stuff like this:
"Aspergillus fumigatus, the species most commonly found in the pillows, is most likely to cause disease; and the resulting condition Aspergillosis has become the leading infectious cause of death in leukaemia and bone marrow transplant patients. Fungi also exacerbate asthma in adults."
The reason aspergillus is the leading cause of death in leukaemia patients is because their immune systems are comprimized. This is similar to Candida Albicans (see: yeast infections), which is THE leading cause of death in transplant patients, IIRC, due to its buildup on cathoders, and on implant devices. For normal people, Aspergillus has only minor effects.
This article continues to raise the areas of danger including this gem: "Invasive Aspergillosis occurs mainly in the lungs and sinuses, although it can spread to other organs such as the brain, and is becoming increasingly common across other patient groups. It is very difficult to treat, and as many as 1 in 25 patients who die in modern European teaching hospitals have the disease. "
Wow. 4% of deaths can be attrubuted to aspergillis species. Pardon me, but this is not particularly impressive.
My best guess is that this press release is either because the researchers are working with a pillowcase disinfectant company, or because they're trying to play up the importance of their research to get more funding.
All in all, unimpressive, and I expect better of slashdot than to blindly believe headlines.
It seems to be a sad but true fact that the tools are fractured, and most definately NOT user friendly. BioPerl is nothing more than a perl module allowing you to plug into the NCBI blast tools to automate processes. It was truly the most useful module I ever found, but I was writing web-scripts in perl at the time, not attempting to plug ready made systems in.
My ex-employer had produced a standalone/server webserver that integrated many of these tools, but market forces, and a lack of VC forced them to shut down.
The problem will continue because every scientist has specific needs. Until there are defined protocols for identification of new genes, or processing of data, there will be no ready made products for them.
I encourage everyone interested to check out www.bioinformatics.org for ways to contribute to the cause in the meantime.
ALL THE FREAKING TIME, I would like to say that this is a very useful tool, but hardly more than a new business model.
No researcher I know goes about their searches by saying "which journal has free access"? Instead, we search web of science, or pubmed, and then try to gain access to the articles one by one. There are so many journals out there, that even with the clearinghouses mentioned below (elsever, etc), there are a multitude of smaller journals that my library cannot afford to allow me electronic access to.
I would LOVE for this not to be the case. But I don't see how it can without putting the companies out of business, or making this a backdoor government funded access (note that the majority of publishing costs are paid from grants, which are usually granted by a federal agency), not that this is much different from my library paying for access to them, except with the library system, more people get access, most likely for more money.
Not much to say here, just pointing out that it's never simple.
and this would be applicable to martian microbes if there were humans there for them to evolve with.
Your example is a brilliant one of what happens when a finely tuned virus or bacteria is exposed to a new subset of its target species who are "naive", or have never been exposed to it.
This would not be the case for martian bacteria. Microbes evolve the ability to change their metabolic pathways to take advantage of higher temperatures, and particular levels of sugars, salts, and nutrients available in mammals. Those which have not been constantly exposed to humans are far less pathogenic than those that are.
In all, I fear martian microbial infection about as much as I fear the uprising of the penguins.
Recently I have started drinking Mt Dew. This is a new experience for me, and I am largely curious as to which one I will like better. Do you have any advice for me?
Seriously, this is like asking everyone in the pentagon "What's the best kind of bomb?"
this was a school event that was being funded by the district.
They are well within their rights to say "no" to anything they feel is inappropriate. Just because the parents signed the waivers wouldn't really solve anything.
And apparently, as far as I can see, they didn't clear WHICH game they would be playing with the board. Just switch the fucking game. Jesus.
While agree with the second half of your statement, I would like to point out that the army is perfectly within their rights to say "The Army is angry and we're coming for you". If the actually DO come for you, let me know, so I can flee to haiti, or something.
you take a quote indicating that this MAY NOT be a cataclysmic event and say "Oh, this shows that there's nothing to worry about"?
So, if all the potatos are dying, and some guy says, "there are climatic effects that can cause this", are you just going to assume he's right, and wait for the climate to change?
Slashdot Mirror
So, just because he's smart, he's more suited to planning educational reform than other people?
You want to fix the education system? Create a panel of fully nationally credentialed teachers (certified and educated to masters or above), let them create a plan, and then fund it.
Education is the only profession in which the certified professionals are not in charge of their own system.
that online sales are part of the problem with the writer's strike?
Seriously. This is the sort of thing that is causing the writers to strike. If it doesn't stop, all we'll be able to download from iTunes is reruns of "The Today Show", and "The Running Man" -- The new reality show where criminals are released into a deathtrap maze. You think I'm joking, but I'm pretty sure that that'll be the last line of reality TV.
I have to say, I'm a big fan of your attitude.
Biotech researchers have a bias.
Academic researchers have an agenda.
Statisticians expect everyone to listen to them.
This is awful!
Please resection this article to FICTION.
1) Humans need OXYGEN to survive. Increased CO2 and changes in ocean temperatures will massively impact the growth of pyhtoplankton, the largest producer of oxygen in the world (look it up yourselves.
2) "Scientists" are not acting as preachers here. In fact, the only people who think we are actually shrieking that the world is ending is people who don't want to have to change our CO2 emmissions.
3) I actually agree about climate change changing economic tourism etc. That's well and good.
Hawaii will be either A) underwater, or B) uninhabitable.
Ummm...
6 kW. That's good. 6 kW per Hour? per Minute? per 660 gallons? One of the biggest problems with biological fuel cells is not their byproducts, but the rate of electricity generation.
Set the electrons free.
I'd also like to point out that this is using waste water, not alcohol laden beer. This is what's left. This is along the same lines as generating methane from your cow's waste to power your farm. It's useful, but mostly as a way to get rid of the poop.
you could provide links, if you wanted....
Personally, I'm less interested in global warming than the influence the increased CO2 levels we're causing (this part is incontrovertable fact, btw) is having on the pH of the ocean. We may run out of fish, and CO2 fixing bacteria well before we melt all the ice caps.
Just my meta thoughts on the comments I have read so far:
1) To the camp who feel that we are acting "irresponsibly" to engineer drastic changes in the earth's atmosphere:
We, over the course of the last 150 years have been progressively, accidentally, altering the atmospheric content of the earth. This has had two main results, increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and increased acidity of the ocean. Subsequent effects of these man-made changes in the atmosphere are believed (note the lack of claims that cannot be proven) to include increased temperature in both water and air temperatures, increased growth of plants and trees (unfortunately mostly the fast growing, less functionally useful plants) and potentially alterations in the ocean microbial and macrobiological populations. To claim that this is less dangerous or harmful to the environment than those changes that are engineered deliberately by humans is irresponsible and dangerous.
2) To those of you who are attacking the scientific consensus, I challenge you to do a complete, or semicomplete review of scientific literature, starting with those statements released last week, and attempt to argue those specific points, rather than the media talking points. I believe you will find highly convincing arguments for the contribution of CO2 to global warming and the influence of human consumption on the levels of CO2
let me stop attacking users and move on to things I agree with:
1) our solutions tend to be shortsighted and not useful. This is mostly the fault of scoping. It is true, for example that Iron will increase biological activity in the oceans. It is not likely that this will have a long term effect, as the subsequent sinking of dead cyanobacteria will fix carbon for the short term, but the alteration in the community of bacteria in those areas of the ocean may be forever altered to fix less carbon. There are a multitude of other suggestions that are equally shortsighted. We need to find good, quick ways to fix carbon while altering as few biological or geological processes as possible.
"Hardcore scientists?"
"(())"?
You have failed to raise any points directly or indirectly disputing the science. The fact is that there has been a global increase in carbon levels correlating directly to increases in human consumption of carbon fuels from fossilized deposits. Temperature change is a modelable, direct result of increased carbon levels in the atmosphere.
Please stop playing Ad Hoc Attacker (TM), and look at the issues.
Hope that you're right.
Speaker Pelosi (heh) has a 100 hour plan with a number of very good ideas, if you ask me.
Because it's the opposite of what slashdot usually does...
0 9/0348241
This has been around for at least a year, and the first group to find it was NOT PNL. It was Derek Lovely.
OH WAIT!!! Here's the original story:
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/08/
The difference here is that they have shown that the wires are conductive, and carbon based. This too is something that has been worked on for a while.
Rhetoric?
Very well, if you can first explain to me how a situation involving a sublimating solid in low atmospheric pressure with solar input orders of magnitude lower than earth's applies to this discussion, I will explain to your heart's content.
And again... RHETORIC?!??!?
I am going to assume that you did not mean definition 1:
"The art or study of using language effectively and persuasively."
but rather definition 3: "Language that is elaborate, pretentious, insincere, or intellectually vacuous"
if so, would you care to justify your ad hominim attack by perhaps elaborating on this claim? or is it, (and pardon the pun) all hot air?
Having spent a lot of time analyzing the hydrogen economy in terms of generation, this topic is near and dear to my heart.
Hydrogen is a method of TRANSPORTING and STORING energy. It is not a solution to energy generation. As a storage and transport method, IMSO (S=Scientific), it is not particularly cost effective, and has as much potential for unforseen concequenses as any other untested energy method.
That said, I am highly in favor of fuel cells in general, and am happy to see them adopted more often.
In relation to the question asked about poorer countries, I would also hasten to point out that the fuel cells themselves are expensive, as they require (I believe) a platinum catalyst.
That is all.
How long you could run your laptop over there!!!
The TREND did exist, please do not attempt to dispute that. The runaway fears of a return to pre-industrial temperatures came mainly from mainstream interpretation of the data, and statisticians that used measurement data to make basic predictions. The current general scientific consensus was that this prediction (which was based mostly in industrialized countries) came from the local effects of smog, on which controls were placed, which decreased smog, allowing the air temperature and increased radiation from the sun to warm the soil to a greater degree.
If global warming fears were based soley on observational data, I would be inclined to agree with the idea that there is room for doubt. It is not. Please feel free to look at the scientific literature at any time. Carbon Dioxide levels play a role, as do methane and nitrous oxide. The effect of these compounds is under further investigation, but there is little doubt that increases in their levels contribute to greenhouse effects.
"That's the essential difference between a free market and a monopoly. In a free market, competition will set the price near the cost of producing the book."
In all actuality, this is NOT a monopoly situation, it a case of free market economics interfacing with copyright law. A teacher has to choose a single book, which is protected under copyright, once that is chosen, there are no alternatives. This might result in a textbook having a higher cost than anticipated, but I doubt it. The professor, however, has no incentive to choose the lowest cost book, but the one that conveys the information she or he desires best (or, if you're a cynic, the one that re-imburseses him best), but in any case, there are plenty of options available, all clammoring, in a free market, for the right to be represented in that classroom.
Since I work in academia, let me state this for the record: The cost of textbooks is not a result of the publisher's desire to screw the student (at least not in the biological and physical sciences), it is due to the free-market ownership of individual photographs or charts, which must be paid for by the publisher for the right to publish it.
Additionally, I'd like you to consider that each textbook you buy is at least 300 pages of color printing.
Adding other activities to this program. This may destroy my geekdom, but not all kids like video games. In fact, a number of them probably think they are "teh Ghey", and would rather be out impressing thier friends.
Now that they have a valid starting point for gathering kids around a singular area, what about incorporating other options, like sports, or refitting abandoned cars, or something.
This appears to have been a decent, if pointless bit of research. They found fungus in pillows. Then some idiot came up with stuff like this:
"Aspergillus fumigatus, the species most commonly found in the pillows, is most likely to cause disease; and the resulting condition Aspergillosis has become the leading infectious cause of death in leukaemia and bone marrow transplant patients. Fungi also exacerbate asthma in adults."
The reason aspergillus is the leading cause of death in leukaemia patients is because their immune systems are comprimized. This is similar to Candida Albicans (see: yeast infections), which is THE leading cause of death in transplant patients, IIRC, due to its buildup on cathoders, and on implant devices. For normal people, Aspergillus has only minor effects.
This article continues to raise the areas of danger including this gem:
"Invasive Aspergillosis occurs mainly in the lungs and sinuses, although it can spread to other organs such as the brain, and is becoming increasingly common across other patient groups. It is very difficult to treat, and as many as 1 in 25 patients who die in modern European teaching hospitals have the disease. "
Wow. 4% of deaths can be attrubuted to aspergillis species. Pardon me, but this is not particularly impressive.
My best guess is that this press release is either because the researchers are working with a pillowcase disinfectant company, or because they're trying to play up the importance of their research to get more funding.
All in all, unimpressive, and I expect better of slashdot than to blindly believe headlines.
It seems to be a sad but true fact that the tools are fractured, and most definately NOT user friendly. BioPerl is nothing more than a perl module allowing you to plug into the NCBI blast tools to automate processes. It was truly the most useful module I ever found, but I was writing web-scripts in perl at the time, not attempting to plug ready made systems in.
My ex-employer had produced a standalone/server webserver that integrated many of these tools, but market forces, and a lack of VC forced them to shut down.
The problem will continue because every scientist has specific needs. Until there are defined protocols for identification of new genes, or processing of data, there will be no ready made products for them.
I encourage everyone interested to check out www.bioinformatics.org for ways to contribute to the cause in the meantime.
ALL THE FREAKING TIME, I would like to say that this is a very useful tool, but hardly more than a new business model.
No researcher I know goes about their searches by saying "which journal has free access"? Instead, we search web of science, or pubmed, and then try to gain access to the articles one by one. There are so many journals out there, that even with the clearinghouses mentioned below (elsever, etc), there are a multitude of smaller journals that my library cannot afford to allow me electronic access to.
I would LOVE for this not to be the case. But I don't see how it can without putting the companies out of business, or making this a backdoor government funded access (note that the majority of publishing costs are paid from grants, which are usually granted by a federal agency), not that this is much different from my library paying for access to them, except with the library system, more people get access, most likely for more money.
Not much to say here, just pointing out that it's never simple.
and this would be applicable to martian microbes if there were humans there for them to evolve with.
Your example is a brilliant one of what happens when a finely tuned virus or bacteria is exposed to a new subset of its target species who are "naive", or have never been exposed to it.
This would not be the case for martian bacteria. Microbes evolve the ability to change their metabolic pathways to take advantage of higher temperatures, and particular levels of sugars, salts, and nutrients available in mammals. Those which have not been constantly exposed to humans are far less pathogenic than those that are.
In all, I fear martian microbial infection about as much as I fear the uprising of the penguins.
Recently I have started drinking Mt Dew. This is a new experience for me, and I am largely curious as to which one I will like better. Do you have any advice for me?
Seriously, this is like asking everyone in the pentagon "What's the best kind of bomb?"
The statement he made was that it would be EASIER to harvest new stem cells and grow them in serum which does not contain Neu5Gc.
BTW, if you can figure out how to make SERUM not derived from an animal, let me know, would ya?
this was a school event that was being funded by the district.
They are well within their rights to say "no" to anything they feel is inappropriate. Just because the parents signed the waivers wouldn't really solve anything.
And apparently, as far as I can see, they didn't clear WHICH game they would be playing with the board. Just switch the fucking game. Jesus.
While agree with the second half of your statement, I would like to point out that the army is perfectly within their rights to say "The Army is angry and we're coming for you". If the actually DO come for you, let me know, so I can flee to haiti, or something.
WHAT!?!?!
you take a quote indicating that this MAY NOT be a cataclysmic event and say "Oh, this shows that there's nothing to worry about"?
So, if all the potatos are dying, and some guy says, "there are climatic effects that can cause this", are you just going to assume he's right, and wait for the climate to change?