A Majorana particle is it's own antiparticle; such as, for example, a photon.
Most fermions have different antiparticles from themselves: Protons are notably different from anti-protons, electrons are different from positrons, and so on. The one exception is the neutrino, for which the question is not yet settled.
If the neutrino is its own antiparticle, we should see double-beta-decay events. A beta decay emits a neutrino, so if two happen simultaneously the neutrinos should annihilate if they are their own antiparticle. (Wikipedia link)
As yet no experiment has seen double-beta-decay, so it's likely that the neutrino has a distinct anti-neutrino - an intriguing prospect.
The article referenced in the post does not identify the fermion involved, so one can only assume that it's a "quasi particle", which is a type of vibration. Essentially a phonon (sound wave) with fermion-like properties.
Would you be in favor of gun control if it made your children less safe?
The studies and statistics about guns have been so completely obfuscated by special interests that it's nigh impossible for an average citizen - even smart ones like Slashdot readers - to answer the simple question: "is free access to guns good or bad?".
Looking into this in depth is really hard, but when you go back to basics there's a glimmer of truth.
Firstly, the thing to measure is mortality rate. Not all gun incidents lead to death, and if you have no money for medicine (or food) because you were robbed at gunpoint, it affects your chance of death.
Secondly, socialized medicine has such an enormous impact on mortality that you can't simply compare American mortality with, for example, the UK. You could compare UK mortality with, say, Swiss, or you could compare areas within the US which allow/disallow free access to guns. New Hampshire versus Michigan, for example.
When you do the proper comparison, you find that easy access to guns lowers the mortality rate.
This is counter intuitive simply due to the badly-cited statistics. Yes, if you let your kids play in the front yard of a gun owner their chance of death by accidental shooting goes up; however, their chance of death by all causes drops precipitously. You can believe the chosen statistic and it's unspoken implication, or you can dig into the real issues.
I'll leave you with this recent paper which attempts to sort out the issues in an academically rigorous manner. Here's a quote from that paper:
On the one hand, despite constant and substantially increasing gun ownership, the United States saw progressive and dramatic reductions in criminal violence in the 1990s. On the other hand, the same time period in the United Kingdom saw a constant and dramatic increase in violent crime to which England’s response was evermore drastic gun control including, eventually, banning and confiscating all handguns and many types of long guns.
[...] To conserve the resources of the inundated criminal justice system, English police no longer investigate burglary and “minor assaults. As of 2006, if the police catch a mugger, robber, or burglar, or other “minor” criminal in the act, the policy is to release them with a warning rather than to arrest and prosecute them.
I'm happy to discuss the advisability of gun control with anyone, so long as they don't cite a misleading statistic out of context, or focus on the wrong issues.
I like to form my opinions based on science. If you know of convincing counter studies, I'd like to read them.
nice gesture, but the reason this is inadequate may be summed up with the monkey-water-spray experiment. http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_t...
Did I mention that it's anonymous? No lists, no donations, no polls, no canvassing. Just resolve to vote against all incumbents when you're in the voting booth.
Thanks for the threat, but I think everyone here realizes that voting in the US is safe.
Overwhelming response telling our leaders exactly what we wanted through our only feedback system. And it is blatently IGNORED in favor of paid interests. It's not a surprise, considering that the FCC leader is ex-cable, and they are appointees directly from big business. However it obviously shows just how badly this country is broken. I'm not an alarmist, but it this simply isn't going to change with the current US government system. They have no REASON to change it.
Would you consider voting out the incumbents?
It's the only voting strategy that can make a difference, the only one that matters.
When congressmen realize that they can be voted out after a single term, we'll have pro-public policies.
And the best part is it's completely anonymous! No registration, no donations, no E-mail lists, no paper trail. Just resolve that "if this doesn't go in favor of the people, I'm voting against the incumbents".
Secondly, you are confusing the possibility of injury with its probability.
If the probability of injury is small and the cost of injury is also appreciably small, the expected cost of using Lyft or Uber may be much less than the expected cost of using a cab.
For an example, if a ride-share is $6 less than a cab fare, and if there is an average of 1 injury every 100,000 rides, then if the average injury costs less than $600,000 then it's a better deal for everyone to use the ride share.
Using this reference, cabs crash about once every 300,000 miles.
Also note, the number of crashes in regular driving has decreased dramatically over the last few years, probably due to increased safety measures in vehicles and modern roadway improvements (Denver Barriers around bridge supports, for example).
And in any event, most people have health insurance. At the very least, a significant portion of riders would have health insurance - enough to reduce the risk by a further factor of four or more.
SHELL GAME is where you can't win. CASINO GAME is where the odds are against you. Uber and Lyft seem to be decidedly in the passenger's favor.
Cue the irrational fearmongering reply: "unless you are the one injured, then how would you feel!".
Apropos of nothing, when did we allow unelected regulators complete authority over the law?
It seems that every regulator now has the authority to declare something illegal, judge that an infraction has occurred, assess fines, and force collection.
If someone is in violation of a regulation, shouldn't the regulator present their evidence before a judge? Don't we want an unbiased 3rd party to chime in on whether the law is clear, whether the evidence merits a violation, and whether there are extenuating circumstances?
The policy of default judgement by fiat, with a "go to court to reverse it if you think you've been wronged" is a recipe for injustice and corruption.
When did we lose judicial oversight of our regulations? Did it happen slowly, or was it a sudden change?
The debate on this issue is far from over, and it'll take years to sort out all the contradictory evidence.
Once again, science is reduced to debate and belief. Medicine is rife with these sorts of "schools of thought"(*), it's almost as bad as economics. This is not the "more refined theory supplants approximate theory" that one finds in, for example, physics. It's "yeah, this looks good and makes sense, so we're 'gonna go with it" science.
This is what allows vested interests to decry science in favor of their own agenda. Who is the average person supposed to trust when scientists keep making and overturning bad conclusions, in the face of authority figures pushing their own agenda?
All I see here, in this forum, is appeal to the difficulty of experimentation. If the original single experiment is so hard or expensive to reproduce, should we be basing our conclusions on the single experiment?
Scientists need to kick it up a notch.
(*) As a typical example (dozens more are easy to find), Helicobacter pylori was identified as the source of gastric ulcers, yet the medical community didn't believe the results for many years. The amount of suffering and loss that occurred while this "school of thought" was slowly overturned is incalculable.
So the question isn't really one of giving up... the question is one of choice and priority. If you have no vision and no real sense of purpose beyond enriching yourself when you occupy a position of influence, then the rot will spread and not just Scientists but many others will wither away as well.
I'm starting a new movement "The Boot Party": everyone promises to vote *against* the incumbent regardless of political party.
Government not acting in the interests of the people? Give 'em the boot!
The obvious solution is to return to traditional methods: establish an independent income, then take up scientific research as a hobby.
Historically, our most notable scientists were working at day jobs or otherwise independently wealthy, and did amazing research on their own as a hobby. Some devoted entire wings of their house towards scientific research, amassing a collection of equipment (or specimens) over decades.
Henry Cavendish, of the Cavendish experiment, is one such example. The experiment was so delicate that air currents would affect the measurements, so Cavendish set up the experiment in a shed on his property and measured the results from a distance, using a telescope.
There used to be a term "Gentleman Scientist" for this, but it might more accurately be called "self-funded research".
Consider Paul Stamets as a modern example. With only an honorary doctorate, he is co-author on many papers and has proposed several medications, including treatments for cancer.
The benefits are obvious: You get to work on whatever you think is interesting (or fruitful), you can set your own pace, and you can draw your own line between supporting your dreams and your lifestyle: If you have a family emergency, you can pause your research and spend more money on personal welfare. It also forces you to come up with more efficient (read: less expensive) ways to work.
There's a wealth of useful equipment on eBay and other places, big expensive equipment is not out of the reach of the dedicated researcher. Ben Krasnow has three (I think) electron microscopes. I personally own a UV/VIS spectrophotometer. a microgram scale, and a Weston cell.
The idea that "research can only be done at the behest of government" or "is only associated with university" is a modern fiction. Government would *like* you to believe that everything depends on their whim and largesse, but it's not the only, nor even the best way.
Build a lab and start tinkering, or join a hackerspace. Lots of people do it. Lots of good science is done this way.
People sign up and never finish because the courses are downright awful. And there's no mind nor incentive for them to get better. Instructors think that just recording a lecture and putting it online is good education, but it isn't.
Watch Daphne Koller droning on about graphical models as the video shows her standing at a lectern talking, or showing a powerpoint-style frame while she reads the text on the frame to us.
Watch Anant Agarwal go through a *hugely* dense and boring derivation, only to stop before the end and say "but this derivation is too hard, there's an easier way". Twice. For the same result.
Try to figure out how many degrees of freedom a soccer ball has, then argue with Sebastian Thrun because the answer he thought you should have entered is not the mathematically correct one. (Also, see if you can figure out what this has to do with AI.)
For a breath of fresh air, watch Donald Sadoway take you through a delightful and satisfying explanation of chemistry. (Ignore the 1st lecture which is about class scheduling.) It's wonderful.
I could cite two dozen *major* problems with selected online courses - things that go counter to the fundamental goal of learning that would be obvious to someone familiar with human learning mechanisms or a testing group or even a member of Toastmasters. When I point these out to the chief scientist at edX, he responds with "we can't change the way we do things because of X".
Let me repeat that: the *chief scientist* at edX has no control over teaching techniques or video methods or course quality.
Some people (ie - Dr. Sadoway in the link above) have figured out how to do it right, but the vast majority aren't interested in quality. It's unfortunate that edX got all those millions in seed money, because we'll have to wait until they burn through it before they get hungry enough to worry about quality and effectiveness.
Fungi can be used to remove heavy metal contaminants in flowing water. Place a bunch of fungi mycelium in sandbags in the water stream and the fungi will filter out the contaminants as the water flows through. Come back later, remove the bags and replace with a fresh batch.
Contact Paul Stamets' group over at Fingi Perfecti and see what their experts have to say. They might even have a product you could buy for the purpose.
Here's a paper and some contact info to get you started:
There's been a lot of interest in using Zeolites to absorb heavy metal contamination in water. One specific experiment involved dragging a bag of zeolites through ocean water, the zeolites absorbed enough Thorium to be industrially useful as an ore (if there were a demand for Thorium, which there isn't).
I've found papers that indicate that Zeolites will absorb copper and lead, two of the contaminants listed for the Mount Polley disaster; chances are likely that zeolites would absorb the other contaminants as well.
There's been some success in removing non-volatile organic pollutants from soil using steam injection. Essentially, sink a pipe into the soil, inject steam, cover the area with a tarp, and collect the steam/water as it percolates up through the soil. This method can be used to extract non-volatile organic components including tetra-ethyl-lead. (I found that last bit surprising, but this was directly confirmed to me by one of the scientists involved.)
Depending on the chemical nature of the contaminants (ie - solubility, polar/non-polar character &c) this might prove useful in decontaminating some of the mud slurry.
Before I get slammed by a P-Chem major, here's what's really going on with the entropy.
The reaction is exothermic, and this release of heat increases the entropy of the universe. At the same time, 4 atoms of source become 1 atom of product, so this aspect of the reaction *decreases* the entropy of the universe. (There's more ways that 4 atoms can be arranged in a box than there is to arrange 1 atom.)
At room temperature, the entropy increase from the release of heat is greater than the entropy decrease from the reduction in states, so the reaction is favored.
The entropy from the release of heat is inversely proportional to temperature. Double the [absolute] temperature and you halve the increase in entropy from the release of heat. With higher temperatures, the entropy increase from "release of heat" is smaller than the entropy decrease from "change of states", the total change of entropy is negative, and the reaction is no longer favored.
I wrote a simpler/shorter explanation to avoid losing sight of the main point.
Here's some background on the Bosch Haber process.
Whether a reaction will occur is based on whether energy is required and whether the reaction increases entropy. In the case of nitrogen+hydrogen => ammonia, the reaction is both exothermic and increases entropy at room temperature and pressure. If one could somehow ignite the process it would be self-sustaining.
The problem is, to ignite the reaction you first need to break N2 molecules into individual N atoms, and this requires a great deal of initial energy which is regained in subsequent steps. Something like 7eV per molecule to break them apart. The molecules in normal air have a bell-curve spread of energies, but very few of them reach energies this high: the reaction happens at room temperature, but very *very* slowly. A handful of molecules per second will react.
To get around this you can raise the temperature, increasing the probability that molecules will have enough energy to break apart. The entropy produced is inversely proportional to temperature, so when you start to have N2 molecules with enough energy to break apart, the reaction is no longer favored because it would result in an entropy decrease.
Since 4 moles of reactants result in 1 mole of product, increasing the pressure of the reactants will tend to favor the products, so you can use this to offset the deficit in entropy.
The Bosch-Haber process tries to find a "sweet spot" by increasing the temperature to get a reasonable number of N2 molecules to break apart, and high pressure to make the process favor the products.
At 200 ATM and 400 degrees, the yield is 15% (!).
Reaction vessels for this pressure and temperature are expensive, and the process requires multiple cycles of compression, decompression, removal of ammonia, and recompression. This takes a *lot* of energy and uses *very* expensive compressors which wear out over time and have to be replaced.
I haven't read the paywalled article yet, but if I'm understanding the abstract, they are breaking apart the nitrogen electrochemically. Just as running a current through molten NaCl will break it into atomic sodium and chlorine, running a current through nitrogen dissolved in KOH and NaOH breaks it apart and the reaction then proceeds at normal conditions. The reaction also supplies its own hydrogen by breaking apart water.
Much of the "green revolution" is due to the use of nitrate fertilizers, and the source material is finite: guano from Peru, for example.
If this process is as efficient as the abstract suggests and can be industrialized, it would be *huge*. It would give us an essentially infinite source of nitrogen-based fertilizer and reduce the worldwide consumption of energy by a couple of percent.
Coupled with a source of renewable energy, it would mean that the world could sustain its food production at current levels indefinitely.
Remember the movie wall-e? All those fat people on the ship, we're going to end up like them if we don't tackle the root problem. A cure for type II diabetes is great and all, but it does nothing to solve the root problem(s).
This is an echo-chamber response: someone on the internet heard something, and keeps repeating it. It's rooted in emotional superiority, and comes from someone with no background in scientific research or statistics.
All attempts to pin obesity on the "that sounds about right" reasons have failed, including exercise and food intake - for both amounts and types of food.
In particular, lab animals grown today are fatter than the ones grown decades ago, despite having the same (and well-documented) diets and exercise. (Source.) Same with pets.
Current opinion holds that there is something in the environment that causes obesity - some agent that wasn't pervasive a couple of decades ago. Over 700 possible causes have been suggested, including your favorite bugaboo (whatever that is). We're slowly going through the options looking for the cause.
No diet will work, even that great "miracle cure" you heard about on Oprah. Lack of exercise doesn't cause it. Diets and exercise regimes work for *some* people because in changing their behaviour they eliminate the causal factor inadvertently - without knowing what it is. It wasn't the diet and it wasn't the exercise.
Try to keep current with scientific theory, otherwise we'll be repeating these old wives tales forever.
As a definition, the Turing test has problems - it assumes communication, it conflates intelligence with human intelligence, and humans aren't terribly good at distinguishing chatbots from other humans.
Also, using a test for a definition works well in mathematics, but not so much in the real world. Imagine defining a car as "anything 5 humans say is a car" and then trying to develop one. Without feedback or guidance, the developers have to trot every object in the universe in front of a jury, only to receive a yes/no answer to the question: "is this a car?"
Many AI texts have a 'kind of fuzzy, feel-good definition of AI that's useless for construction or distinguishing an AI program from a clockwork one. Definitions like "the study of programs that can think", or "programs that simulate intelligent behaviour" shift the burden of definition (of intelligence) onto the reader, or become circular.
One could define a car as "a body, frame, 4 wheels, seats, and an engine in this configuration", and note that each of these can be further defined: a wheel is a rim and a tire, a tire is a ring of steel-belted rubber with a stem valve, a stem valve is a rubber tube with a schrader valve, a schrader valve is a spring and some gaskets...
With a constructive definition, one could distinguish between a car and, say: a tractor, a snowmobile, a child's wagon, a semi, and so on. Furthermore, it would be conceptually straightforward to build one: you know where to start, and how to get further information if you are unsure.
Compare with a group from mathematics: a closed set plus an operator with certain features (associativity, identity, inverses), and each feature can be further defined (an identity element is...). Much of mathematics is this way: concepts constructed from simpler concepts with a list of requirements.
The study of AI seems to be founded in mathematics. At least, all the AI papers I've read are heavy with mathematical notation - usually obscure and very dense mathematical notation. It should be possible to determine with some rigor what the papers are talking about.
Can you tell us what that is? What *exactly* is AI?
There is an argument to make that he was intentionally trying to make a martyr out of himself [...] he wasn't exactly rational himself.
There is an argument to be made that Jesus was intentionally trying to make a martyr out of himself. He failed to put up a defense when asked.
Your statement fairly reeks of the innuendo "this isn't something to get angry over, because he wasn't normal".
It dulls the impact of an important event, it's unfalsifiable (you cite no evidence, just "there's an argument to make"), and it serves to quell any discontent over the current political situation.
I like it. Can the technique be reversed in future incidents? Can a properly crafted response be used to whip up political discontent and restlessness?
McDonalds notes that the best people to own franchises are farmers, because they follow instructions to the letter. Since the McDonalds franchise model has been honed to perfection, the farmer-owned franchise is a guaranteed success.
The worst franchise owners are MBAs. They want to make changes, to do things "better", and this never works out in practice. The franchise instructions do things in specific ways for a reason, all the bugs have been worked out, and the franchise model really is the best way.
Slashdot is run by MBAs, they won't listen to us. They know better, because they are, like, business majors... ya know?
The biggest mistake MBAs make is thinking that management/administration is a plug-in skill - you can move to a different business and manage it without knowing the ins and outs of the business.
Any MBA can become a middle manager in, for example, a newspaper without knowing the newspaper business. It's all about managing people, getting projects done on time, and being a buffer between management and workers.
Any MBA can manage Slashdot, you only need to survey the landscape and implement all the features that make other news sites great.
Being like other sites will make Slashdot even greater!
Wind and solar have variable output, so they need to be partnered with flexible power generation.
Another option is to partner variable output with consumption that can tolerate the variation.
For example, a nitrogen fixation plant based on the Haber process. Fertilizer from this process is responsible for about 1/3 of Earth's food production, and uses 3-5% of our natural gas supply (some for raw Hydrogen, some burned to generate electricity on-site).
Instead of letting excess energy generation lay fallow, we could route the excess into ad-hoc, non-demand-generated production. For fixing Nitrogen, you could conceivably crack water to get Hydrogen, and distill Nitrogen from the air. Conceivably, a solar panel array in Arizona could make fertilizer out of nothing.
Does anyone know of other types of production which can tolerate quick start-up and shut-down?
Maybe some sort of automatic loom system for weaving cloth? Some sort of commodity cloth which is always in demand as a raw material for other products. Something like that.
Maybe something that can be produced using a lot of smaller installations, such as the loom idea noted above - a factory floor with 1,000 smaller looms computer controlled could fire up individual looms as energy becomes available. Would you need "wear leveling" as used for thumb drives?
Conspiracy is when you invent an implausible explanation for something. Like aliens or Illuminati or such (Dingoes ate my baby!).
This is more correlative prediction. You know, learning from history and all that.
Or did you really think that
1) The government will mandate security within this protocol 2) The mandates will not be farcical to a casual observer 3) The resulting system will be safety certified 4) Hackers won't present a "proof of concept" way to cause accidents at a black-hat conference 5) The NSA and CIA won't build devices that hack cars in specific ways 6) The police and local government won't use this for tracking and surveilance
Do you really think we'll get all these right... this time?
Take note that the government isn't requiring the communication be secure from hacking, spoofing, or eavesdropping.
I can see this as another police tactic, where they can force your car to stop by spoofing that it's about to be rammed from all directions by other cars.
Of course, this presents a wide range of hilarious opportunities for hackers!
Quantum effects are not hard to understand, they're just counter-intuitive to everyday experience. This site has a good explanation of QM, and how it differs from normal experience.
The universe doesn't work in specifics until something is measured. It doesn't choose parameters for particles (spin, position, &c) at the outset and let things evolve like little billiard balls.
Instead, it uses probabilities which flow and interact with one another. These probabilities have both amplitude and phase, so that the interactions are wave-like as well as probability-like. For example, because of this wave-like interaction it's possible for two non-zero probability flows to completely cancel to zero.
The universe appears to calculate probabilities for all possible outcomes and only choose one when the measurement is made. When particles are entangled, you increase the number of possible outcomes. For each new particle that becomes entangled you increase the number of possible outcomes by a factor of two. Ten particles will have 2^10 = 1024 possible outcomes, and so on.
So to do math at the quantum level, you take a set of entangled particles and set up the measurement so that division with no remainder has probability one while division with any other remainder has probability zero. Then load your register with all the integers, let the probabilities interact, and take the measurement.
You have just performed division using all the integers at once.
If you can do this with a reasonably large register you can check all the factors of a composite number in linear time - the time it takes you to load sqrt(P) divisors into the register.
Easy peasy!
An interesting side-note is the idea of the universe keeping track of all possible outcomes until a measurement is made. If this works as predicted, the universe will have to keep track of 2^3000 possible outcomes, depending on the key length (3000 is the recommended RSA key length to be secure until 2030).
There are only ~10^80 = 2^240 atoms in the universe. If a quantum computer works as predicted, one wonders how and where the universe keeps track of all these states. At the very least, quantum computing is interesting because it will allow us to probe the limits of the universe in an entirely new domain.
Here's hoping we don't encounter a buffer overflow.
(Note: Some facts were harmed in the making of this explanation.)
Slashdot Mirror
A Majorana particle is it's own antiparticle; such as, for example, a photon.
Most fermions have different antiparticles from themselves: Protons are notably different from anti-protons, electrons are different from positrons, and so on. The one exception is the neutrino, for which the question is not yet settled.
If the neutrino is its own antiparticle, we should see double-beta-decay events. A beta decay emits a neutrino, so if two happen simultaneously the neutrinos should annihilate if they are their own antiparticle. (Wikipedia link)
As yet no experiment has seen double-beta-decay, so it's likely that the neutrino has a distinct anti-neutrino - an intriguing prospect.
The article referenced in the post does not identify the fermion involved, so one can only assume that it's a "quasi particle", which is a type of vibration. Essentially a phonon (sound wave) with fermion-like properties.
Would you be in favor of gun control if it made your children less safe?
The studies and statistics about guns have been so completely obfuscated by special interests that it's nigh impossible for an average citizen - even smart ones like Slashdot readers - to answer the simple question: "is free access to guns good or bad?".
Looking into this in depth is really hard, but when you go back to basics there's a glimmer of truth.
Firstly, the thing to measure is mortality rate. Not all gun incidents lead to death, and if you have no money for medicine (or food) because you were robbed at gunpoint, it affects your chance of death.
Secondly, socialized medicine has such an enormous impact on mortality that you can't simply compare American mortality with, for example, the UK. You could compare UK mortality with, say, Swiss, or you could compare areas within the US which allow/disallow free access to guns. New Hampshire versus Michigan, for example.
When you do the proper comparison, you find that easy access to guns lowers the mortality rate.
This is counter intuitive simply due to the badly-cited statistics. Yes, if you let your kids play in the front yard of a gun owner their chance of death by accidental shooting goes up; however, their chance of death by all causes drops precipitously. You can believe the chosen statistic and it's unspoken implication, or you can dig into the real issues.
I'll leave you with this recent paper which attempts to sort out the issues in an academically rigorous manner. Here's a quote from that paper:
I'm happy to discuss the advisability of gun control with anyone, so long as they don't cite a misleading statistic out of context, or focus on the wrong issues.
I like to form my opinions based on science. If you know of convincing counter studies, I'd like to read them.
nice gesture, but the reason this is inadequate may be summed up with the monkey-water-spray experiment.
http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_t...
Did I mention that it's anonymous? No lists, no donations, no polls, no canvassing. Just resolve to vote against all incumbents when you're in the voting booth.
Thanks for the threat, but I think everyone here realizes that voting in the US is safe.
Join the boot party: anonymous and safe!
ask yourself: which candidate will sell us out and cave to the surveillance state?
answer: both. the fix is in.
happy voting! now move along.
I don't live in California, but I'm voting against anyone currently in office.
Keep churning the pot. Eventually, they'll become pro-public just to stay in office.
Overwhelming response telling our leaders exactly what we wanted through our only feedback system. And it is blatently IGNORED in favor of paid interests. It's not a surprise, considering that the FCC leader is ex-cable, and they are appointees directly from big business. However it obviously shows just how badly this country is broken. I'm not an alarmist, but it this simply isn't going to change with the current US government system. They have no REASON to change it.
Would you consider voting out the incumbents?
It's the only voting strategy that can make a difference, the only one that matters.
When congressmen realize that they can be voted out after a single term, we'll have pro-public policies.
And the best part is it's completely anonymous! No registration, no donations, no E-mail lists, no paper trail. Just resolve that "if this doesn't go in favor of the people, I'm voting against the incumbents".
Join the boot party - give 'em the boot!
(P.S. - Pass this along)
I know everyone is all over Uber and and the other one because the cars are "nicer" and the service "better" than cabs. But [...]
Um... isn't that enough?
Firstly, you're wrong about the liability.
Secondly, you are confusing the possibility of injury with its probability.
If the probability of injury is small and the cost of injury is also appreciably small, the expected cost of using Lyft or Uber may be much less than the expected cost of using a cab.
For an example, if a ride-share is $6 less than a cab fare, and if there is an average of 1 injury every 100,000 rides, then if the average injury costs less than $600,000 then it's a better deal for everyone to use the ride share.
Using this reference, cabs crash about once every 300,000 miles.
Also note, the number of crashes in regular driving has decreased dramatically over the last few years, probably due to increased safety measures in vehicles and modern roadway improvements (Denver Barriers around bridge supports, for example).
And in any event, most people have health insurance. At the very least, a significant portion of riders would have health insurance - enough to reduce the risk by a further factor of four or more.
SHELL GAME is where you can't win. CASINO GAME is where the odds are against you. Uber and Lyft seem to be decidedly in the passenger's favor.
Cue the irrational fearmongering reply: "unless you are the one injured, then how would you feel!".
Apropos of nothing, when did we allow unelected regulators complete authority over the law?
It seems that every regulator now has the authority to declare something illegal, judge that an infraction has occurred, assess fines, and force collection.
If someone is in violation of a regulation, shouldn't the regulator present their evidence before a judge? Don't we want an unbiased 3rd party to chime in on whether the law is clear, whether the evidence merits a violation, and whether there are extenuating circumstances?
The policy of default judgement by fiat, with a "go to court to reverse it if you think you've been wronged" is a recipe for injustice and corruption.
When did we lose judicial oversight of our regulations? Did it happen slowly, or was it a sudden change?
The debate on this issue is far from over, and it'll take years to sort out all the contradictory evidence.
Once again, science is reduced to debate and belief. Medicine is rife with these sorts of "schools of thought"(*), it's almost as bad as economics. This is not the "more refined theory supplants approximate theory" that one finds in, for example, physics. It's "yeah, this looks good and makes sense, so we're 'gonna go with it" science.
This is what allows vested interests to decry science in favor of their own agenda. Who is the average person supposed to trust when scientists keep making and overturning bad conclusions, in the face of authority figures pushing their own agenda?
All I see here, in this forum, is appeal to the difficulty of experimentation. If the original single experiment is so hard or expensive to reproduce, should we be basing our conclusions on the single experiment?
Scientists need to kick it up a notch.
(*) As a typical example (dozens more are easy to find), Helicobacter pylori was identified as the source of gastric ulcers, yet the medical community didn't believe the results for many years. The amount of suffering and loss that occurred while this "school of thought" was slowly overturned is incalculable.
So the question isn't really one of giving up... the question is one of choice and priority. If you have no vision and no real sense of purpose beyond enriching yourself when you occupy a position of influence, then the rot will spread and not just Scientists but many others will wither away as well.
I'm starting a new movement "The Boot Party": everyone promises to vote *against* the incumbent regardless of political party.
Government not acting in the interests of the people? Give 'em the boot!
Won't you join me?
The obvious solution is to return to traditional methods: establish an independent income, then take up scientific research as a hobby.
Historically, our most notable scientists were working at day jobs or otherwise independently wealthy, and did amazing research on their own as a hobby. Some devoted entire wings of their house towards scientific research, amassing a collection of equipment (or specimens) over decades.
Henry Cavendish, of the Cavendish experiment, is one such example. The experiment was so delicate that air currents would affect the measurements, so Cavendish set up the experiment in a shed on his property and measured the results from a distance, using a telescope.
There used to be a term "Gentleman Scientist" for this, but it might more accurately be called "self-funded research".
Consider Paul Stamets as a modern example. With only an honorary doctorate, he is co-author on many papers and has proposed several medications, including treatments for cancer.
I could also nominate Robert Murray Smith to the position. His YouTube Videos are as good as many published Chemistry papers.
The benefits are obvious: You get to work on whatever you think is interesting (or fruitful), you can set your own pace, and you can draw your own line between supporting your dreams and your lifestyle: If you have a family emergency, you can pause your research and spend more money on personal welfare. It also forces you to come up with more efficient (read: less expensive) ways to work.
There's a wealth of useful equipment on eBay and other places, big expensive equipment is not out of the reach of the dedicated researcher. Ben Krasnow has three (I think) electron microscopes. I personally own a UV/VIS spectrophotometer. a microgram scale, and a Weston cell.
The idea that "research can only be done at the behest of government" or "is only associated with university" is a modern fiction. Government would *like* you to believe that everything depends on their whim and largesse, but it's not the only, nor even the best way.
Build a lab and start tinkering, or join a hackerspace. Lots of people do it. Lots of good science is done this way.
People sign up and never finish because the courses are downright awful. And there's no mind nor incentive for them to get better. Instructors think that just recording a lecture and putting it online is good education, but it isn't.
Watch Daphne Koller droning on about graphical models as the video shows her standing at a lectern talking, or showing a powerpoint-style frame while she reads the text on the frame to us.
Watch Anant Agarwal go through a *hugely* dense and boring derivation, only to stop before the end and say "but this derivation is too hard, there's an easier way". Twice. For the same result.
Try to figure out how many degrees of freedom a soccer ball has, then argue with Sebastian Thrun because the answer he thought you should have entered is not the mathematically correct one. (Also, see if you can figure out what this has to do with AI.)
For a breath of fresh air, watch Donald Sadoway take you through a delightful and satisfying explanation of chemistry. (Ignore the 1st lecture which is about class scheduling.) It's wonderful.
I could cite two dozen *major* problems with selected online courses - things that go counter to the fundamental goal of learning that would be obvious to someone familiar with human learning mechanisms or a testing group or even a member of Toastmasters. When I point these out to the chief scientist at edX, he responds with "we can't change the way we do things because of X".
Let me repeat that: the *chief scientist* at edX has no control over teaching techniques or video methods or course quality.
Some people (ie - Dr. Sadoway in the link above) have figured out how to do it right, but the vast majority aren't interested in quality. It's unfortunate that edX got all those millions in seed money, because we'll have to wait until they burn through it before they get hungry enough to worry about quality and effectiveness.
It's insane.
Third suggestion:
Fungi can be used to remove heavy metal contaminants in flowing water. Place a bunch of fungi mycelium in sandbags in the water stream and the fungi will filter out the contaminants as the water flows through. Come back later, remove the bags and replace with a fresh batch.
Contact Paul Stamets' group over at Fingi Perfecti and see what their experts have to say. They might even have a product you could buy for the purpose.
Here's a paper and some contact info to get you started:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...
http://www.fungi.com/about-pau...
First suggestion:
There's been a lot of interest in using Zeolites to absorb heavy metal contamination in water. One specific experiment involved dragging a bag of zeolites through ocean water, the zeolites absorbed enough Thorium to be industrially useful as an ore (if there were a demand for Thorium, which there isn't).
I've found papers that indicate that Zeolites will absorb copper and lead, two of the contaminants listed for the Mount Polley disaster; chances are likely that zeolites would absorb the other contaminants as well.
Here's two papers to get you started:
http://www.yourncdinfo.com/cli...
http://cnu.edu/arc/documents/p...
Second suggestion:
There's been some success in removing non-volatile organic pollutants from soil using steam injection. Essentially, sink a pipe into the soil, inject steam, cover the area with a tarp, and collect the steam/water as it percolates up through the soil. This method can be used to extract non-volatile organic components including tetra-ethyl-lead. (I found that last bit surprising, but this was directly confirmed to me by one of the scientists involved.)
Depending on the chemical nature of the contaminants (ie - solubility, polar/non-polar character &c) this might prove useful in decontaminating some of the mud slurry.
Here's a paper to get you started:
http://nepis.epa.gov/Adobe/PDF...
Before I get slammed by a P-Chem major, here's what's really going on with the entropy.
The reaction is exothermic, and this release of heat increases the entropy of the universe. At the same time, 4 atoms of source become 1 atom of product, so this aspect of the reaction *decreases* the entropy of the universe. (There's more ways that 4 atoms can be arranged in a box than there is to arrange 1 atom.)
At room temperature, the entropy increase from the release of heat is greater than the entropy decrease from the reduction in states, so the reaction is favored.
The entropy from the release of heat is inversely proportional to temperature. Double the [absolute] temperature and you halve the increase in entropy from the release of heat. With higher temperatures, the entropy increase from "release of heat" is smaller than the entropy decrease from "change of states", the total change of entropy is negative, and the reaction is no longer favored.
I wrote a simpler/shorter explanation to avoid losing sight of the main point.
Here's some background on the Bosch Haber process.
Whether a reaction will occur is based on whether energy is required and whether the reaction increases entropy. In the case of nitrogen+hydrogen => ammonia, the reaction is both exothermic and increases entropy at room temperature and pressure. If one could somehow ignite the process it would be self-sustaining.
The problem is, to ignite the reaction you first need to break N2 molecules into individual N atoms, and this requires a great deal of initial energy which is regained in subsequent steps. Something like 7eV per molecule to break them apart. The molecules in normal air have a bell-curve spread of energies, but very few of them reach energies this high: the reaction happens at room temperature, but very *very* slowly. A handful of molecules per second will react.
To get around this you can raise the temperature, increasing the probability that molecules will have enough energy to break apart. The entropy produced is inversely proportional to temperature, so when you start to have N2 molecules with enough energy to break apart, the reaction is no longer favored because it would result in an entropy decrease.
Since 4 moles of reactants result in 1 mole of product, increasing the pressure of the reactants will tend to favor the products, so you can use this to offset the deficit in entropy.
The Bosch-Haber process tries to find a "sweet spot" by increasing the temperature to get a reasonable number of N2 molecules to break apart, and high pressure to make the process favor the products.
At 200 ATM and 400 degrees, the yield is 15% (!).
Reaction vessels for this pressure and temperature are expensive, and the process requires multiple cycles of compression, decompression, removal of ammonia, and recompression. This takes a *lot* of energy and uses *very* expensive compressors which wear out over time and have to be replaced.
I haven't read the paywalled article yet, but if I'm understanding the abstract, they are breaking apart the nitrogen electrochemically. Just as running a current through molten NaCl will break it into atomic sodium and chlorine, running a current through nitrogen dissolved in KOH and NaOH breaks it apart and the reaction then proceeds at normal conditions. The reaction also supplies its own hydrogen by breaking apart water.
Much of the "green revolution" is due to the use of nitrate fertilizers, and the source material is finite: guano from Peru, for example.
If this process is as efficient as the abstract suggests and can be industrialized, it would be *huge*. It would give us an essentially infinite source of nitrogen-based fertilizer and reduce the worldwide consumption of energy by a couple of percent.
Coupled with a source of renewable energy, it would mean that the world could sustain its food production at current levels indefinitely.
This could be really, *really* big news.
Remember the movie wall-e? All those fat people on the ship, we're going to end up like them if we don't tackle the root problem. A cure for type II diabetes is great and all, but it does nothing to solve the root problem(s).
This is an echo-chamber response: someone on the internet heard something, and keeps repeating it. It's rooted in emotional superiority, and comes from someone with no background in scientific research or statistics.
All attempts to pin obesity on the "that sounds about right" reasons have failed, including exercise and food intake - for both amounts and types of food.
In particular, lab animals grown today are fatter than the ones grown decades ago, despite having the same (and well-documented) diets and exercise. (Source.) Same with pets.
Current opinion holds that there is something in the environment that causes obesity - some agent that wasn't pervasive a couple of decades ago. Over 700 possible causes have been suggested, including your favorite bugaboo (whatever that is). We're slowly going through the options looking for the cause.
No diet will work, even that great "miracle cure" you heard about on Oprah. Lack of exercise doesn't cause it. Diets and exercise regimes work for *some* people because in changing their behaviour they eliminate the causal factor inadvertently - without knowing what it is. It wasn't the diet and it wasn't the exercise.
Try to keep current with scientific theory, otherwise we'll be repeating these old wives tales forever.
Can you explain to us exactly what AI is?
As a definition, the Turing test has problems - it assumes communication, it conflates intelligence with human intelligence, and humans aren't terribly good at distinguishing chatbots from other humans.
Also, using a test for a definition works well in mathematics, but not so much in the real world. Imagine defining a car as "anything 5 humans say is a car" and then trying to develop one. Without feedback or guidance, the developers have to trot every object in the universe in front of a jury, only to receive a yes/no answer to the question: "is this a car?"
Many AI texts have a 'kind of fuzzy, feel-good definition of AI that's useless for construction or distinguishing an AI program from a clockwork one. Definitions like "the study of programs that can think", or "programs that simulate intelligent behaviour" shift the burden of definition (of intelligence) onto the reader, or become circular.
One could define a car as "a body, frame, 4 wheels, seats, and an engine in this configuration", and note that each of these can be further defined: a wheel is a rim and a tire, a tire is a ring of steel-belted rubber with a stem valve, a stem valve is a rubber tube with a schrader valve, a schrader valve is a spring and some gaskets...
With a constructive definition, one could distinguish between a car and, say: a tractor, a snowmobile, a child's wagon, a semi, and so on. Furthermore, it would be conceptually straightforward to build one: you know where to start, and how to get further information if you are unsure.
Compare with a group from mathematics: a closed set plus an operator with certain features (associativity, identity, inverses), and each feature can be further defined (an identity element is...). Much of mathematics is this way: concepts constructed from simpler concepts with a list of requirements.
The study of AI seems to be founded in mathematics. At least, all the AI papers I've read are heavy with mathematical notation - usually obscure and very dense mathematical notation. It should be possible to determine with some rigor what the papers are talking about.
Can you tell us what that is? What *exactly* is AI?
The problem with the petition is that it has no consequences.
Would it help if petitioners agreed to vote *against* the incumbent president's party at the next election if the issue isn't addressed?
Some of the petitions net upwards of a quarter-million signatures. Is that enough votes to get Washington to take notice?
There is an argument to make that he was intentionally trying to make a martyr out of himself [...] he wasn't exactly rational himself.
There is an argument to be made that Jesus was intentionally trying to make a martyr out of himself. He failed to put up a defense when asked.
Your statement fairly reeks of the innuendo "this isn't something to get angry over, because he wasn't normal".
It dulls the impact of an important event, it's unfalsifiable (you cite no evidence, just "there's an argument to make"), and it serves to quell any discontent over the current political situation.
I like it. Can the technique be reversed in future incidents? Can a properly crafted response be used to whip up political discontent and restlessness?
I wonder...
The survey asks:
What do you like the most about Slashdot Beta?
My response: "It encourages me to find and read new sites."
McDonalds notes that the best people to own franchises are farmers, because they follow instructions to the letter. Since the McDonalds franchise model has been honed to perfection, the farmer-owned franchise is a guaranteed success.
The worst franchise owners are MBAs. They want to make changes, to do things "better", and this never works out in practice. The franchise instructions do things in specific ways for a reason, all the bugs have been worked out, and the franchise model really is the best way.
Slashdot is run by MBAs, they won't listen to us. They know better, because they are, like, business majors... ya know?
The biggest mistake MBAs make is thinking that management/administration is a plug-in skill - you can move to a different business and manage it without knowing the ins and outs of the business.
Any MBA can become a middle manager in, for example, a newspaper without knowing the newspaper business. It's all about managing people, getting projects done on time, and being a buffer between management and workers.
Any MBA can manage Slashdot, you only need to survey the landscape and implement all the features that make other news sites great.
Being like other sites will make Slashdot even greater!
Wind and solar have variable output, so they need to be partnered with flexible power generation.
Another option is to partner variable output with consumption that can tolerate the variation.
For example, a nitrogen fixation plant based on the Haber process. Fertilizer from this process is responsible for about 1/3 of Earth's food production, and uses 3-5% of our natural gas supply (some for raw Hydrogen, some burned to generate electricity on-site).
Instead of letting excess energy generation lay fallow, we could route the excess into ad-hoc, non-demand-generated production. For fixing Nitrogen, you could conceivably crack water to get Hydrogen, and distill Nitrogen from the air. Conceivably, a solar panel array in Arizona could make fertilizer out of nothing.
Does anyone know of other types of production which can tolerate quick start-up and shut-down?
Maybe some sort of automatic loom system for weaving cloth? Some sort of commodity cloth which is always in demand as a raw material for other products. Something like that.
Maybe something that can be produced using a lot of smaller installations, such as the loom idea noted above - a factory floor with 1,000 smaller looms computer controlled could fire up individual looms as energy becomes available. Would you need "wear leveling" as used for thumb drives?
When did slashdot become a conspiracy site?
Conspiracy is when you invent an implausible explanation for something. Like aliens or Illuminati or such (Dingoes ate my baby!).
This is more correlative prediction. You know, learning from history and all that.
Or did you really think that
1) The government will mandate security within this protocol
2) The mandates will not be farcical to a casual observer
3) The resulting system will be safety certified
4) Hackers won't present a "proof of concept" way to cause accidents at a black-hat conference
5) The NSA and CIA won't build devices that hack cars in specific ways
6) The police and local government won't use this for tracking and surveilance
Do you really think we'll get all these right... this time?
Take note that the government isn't requiring the communication be secure from hacking, spoofing, or eavesdropping.
I can see this as another police tactic, where they can force your car to stop by spoofing that it's about to be rammed from all directions by other cars.
Of course, this presents a wide range of hilarious opportunities for hackers!
Quantum effects are not hard to understand, they're just counter-intuitive to everyday experience. This site has a good explanation of QM, and how it differs from normal experience.
The universe doesn't work in specifics until something is measured. It doesn't choose parameters for particles (spin, position, &c) at the outset and let things evolve like little billiard balls.
Instead, it uses probabilities which flow and interact with one another. These probabilities have both amplitude and phase, so that the interactions are wave-like as well as probability-like. For example, because of this wave-like interaction it's possible for two non-zero probability flows to completely cancel to zero.
The universe appears to calculate probabilities for all possible outcomes and only choose one when the measurement is made. When particles are entangled, you increase the number of possible outcomes. For each new particle that becomes entangled you increase the number of possible outcomes by a factor of two. Ten particles will have 2^10 = 1024 possible outcomes, and so on.
So to do math at the quantum level, you take a set of entangled particles and set up the measurement so that division with no remainder has probability one while division with any other remainder has probability zero. Then load your register with all the integers, let the probabilities interact, and take the measurement.
You have just performed division using all the integers at once.
If you can do this with a reasonably large register you can check all the factors of a composite number in linear time - the time it takes you to load sqrt(P) divisors into the register.
Easy peasy!
An interesting side-note is the idea of the universe keeping track of all possible outcomes until a measurement is made. If this works as predicted, the universe will have to keep track of 2^3000 possible outcomes, depending on the key length (3000 is the recommended RSA key length to be secure until 2030).
There are only ~10^80 = 2^240 atoms in the universe. If a quantum computer works as predicted, one wonders how and where the universe keeps track of all these states. At the very least, quantum computing is interesting because it will allow us to probe the limits of the universe in an entirely new domain.
Here's hoping we don't encounter a buffer overflow.
(Note: Some facts were harmed in the making of this explanation.)