You are absolutely right that the way to sequester carbon is through biology, not depending on rain to take it magically away.
Obviously the whole system is much more complicated than simple thermodynamics, but it's also much more complicated than your article puts it, and it's certainly more complex than rain water scrubbing CO2 out of the air (which was my whole point).
I would suggest looking at some more recent Nature papers, there were a few at the beggining of last summer which were good. One thing which is not clearly stated in the news article you link to is that biology does not violate thermodymanics. What is the rate of biological sequesterization versus the rate of concentration driven outgassing? Sequesterization is a correction to the basic thermodynamics, not the other way around. Driving sequesterization (again, see more recent Nature papers) is a perfectly good way to allow more CO2 to be dissolved in the ocean, but it has little to do with rain, and everything to do with thermodynamics.
Physicists may assume a spherical cow, but at least we deal with the whole cow and not just the bull shit.
Thermodynamics is not a one-way street, nor is it limited simply to gasses. Liquids (such as rain) must come to thermal and chemical equilibrium with the atmosphere. Mass and chemicals (including CO2) do not just go away.
If the increasing temperature is decreasing the solubility of CO2 into the oceans, where is the rain "scrubbing" the CO2 away to, and how is it keeping it from coming back out into the atmosphere via normal thermodynamic means?
So now we know these people are either morons or economics students who think that "lost gaming time" is worth at least $900. I really don't see a difference between those two groups.
Just because you can assign numbers to something doesn't mean it's rational. Having a PS3 just to brag about it is irrational.
(I believe "rational" in the real world means something different than it does in economics, and I prefer the real world version).
Can we save the prefix "nano" for when it is scientifically appropriate? Nanorust is the kind of word you throw around at an internal group meeting to be cute, but it shouldn't find it's way into a publication.
I would be fine with iron-oxide nanoparticles, or even rust nanoparticles, but there are plenty of perfectly good non-scientifically-embarassing names for this stuff such as simply iron-oxide clusters.
NPR has three stations on Sirius, so why are they going after them?
The article states that many of the violations measured by NPR are probably MP3 players with FM transmitters.
Is there anything concrete to this at all, or is this just an outdated medium trying to get the government to kill the compitition (i.e. anything that allows people to choose their own music)? The best thing about satellite radio to me is the selection I can get from it over the internet, and they do a much better job of that than most other internet radio streams I've tried. The actual radio part is nice on my commute, but I don't really care about it.
Keep in mind that the University of California system payed $8 million to one publisher (Elsevier), just for access (not rights) to that publisher's journals for only two years. Those journals make up only 25% of the journal subsciptions in the UC system.
Getting broad rights to scientific articles across many fields would be nearly impossible in the current culture of journal price-gouging. Support of one of the many attempts to break this business practice would be great.
Which article are you talking about? The Journal article referenced in the Reuters blurb? The blurb certainly doesn't define it. I'm not talking about the study on the high school seniors.
Everyone assumes that the students were asked: "Were you cheating?" They way as well have been asked "Have you used other students or outside materials for help during your exams?"
Yeah, I have to wonder at the definition of cheating here. I don't think it would be possible to "cheat" on some of the exams I've been given.
For example, in one class I had, the professor had done research on the theory of high temperature superconductivity. He gave us a bunch of papers and told us to "fill in the blanks", basically to derive the theories used. It was perfectly acceptable for the three of us in the class to work together, or even to go to any professor and get advice on our work. At a certain point, you have to stop jumping through hoops and start training for the real world.
If people in graduate school are taking the kind of exams where cheating is possible, they're not getting the training they need. In those cases where cheating was possible, everyone I went through classes with was similarly very careful about not cheating.
It's not your job to make the class interesting or hard enough to attend. Be flexible and just post the podcasts when you get them, or when the professors ask you to.
To paraphrase Perelman, mathmaticians are not policians. I am sure that none of these guys had any idea what their words would look like on paper after going through a journalist's filter. Evidently, they have not learned their lesson.
Look at the comment by Anderson that "I spent several hours talking with Sylvia Nasar trying to dissuade her from incorporating the Tian-Yau fights into the article." By attacking the inclusion of that in the article, he opens himself up as an example of the declining morality of science and willingness for scientists to be put under public scrutiny. Often in science it is true that we would rather the public not know about the (sometimes very personal) fights which accompany scientific criticism. It is interesting that Yau is an outspoken advocate of scientific reform in China, and has been willing to subject his past feuds to public scrutiny.
You'd be surprised how much time scientists spend away from their families. I've worked with two people now who have had a significant other a few thousand miles away for a few years while they were doing research. Eventually both pairs found their way to jobs in the same place. It's a very common and accepted part of science culture to do this. It's not so much that we would have a year to spare but if anyone can be found who thinks this is more important or professionally prestigious than the research they are currently doing.
As a physicist, I have been forced to think about the real world impact of physics (Hiroshima). Unlike other fields, most physicists have grappled internally with the unintended consequences of their research. Some of us are pro-military, and others pacifists, but none of us are naieve enough to assume that our work will be used only for the uses we intend. I would not for a second assume that any condition I placed on using my research would be respected by any group of people desperate enough to start killing eachother.
You have a good point about schools outside the US. I don't know much about what someone in Europe goes through to get a PhD. I hear in Germany, you have to do two dissertations?
In my program, you also must have your masters to become a PhD candidate. Someone getting a masters to get a PhD is just a PhD student. I was talking about what graduate school is from the point of view of a university: the faculty and administration. From that particular point of view, there are only two types of people: those with PhDs and those without.
I know people with masters who are better scientists than many PhDs, and who very easily could have a PhD. Getting a PhD is not necessarily about being a great researcher, it's about wanting membership into a very particular society (usually academia). It seems more common to "fail" a PhD due to boredom, poverty, or life moving on than an inability to do the work. Those are the main points I was trying to make. You're right, it is a mistake to assume that someone with a PhD is "better" than someone without one, that's simply not true.
Getting a PhD is about making generalizations, even where it's not warranted. Piled higher and Deeper and all that...
I spent a year leading the grad student government at my school and spent an insane amount of time talking with students, administrators and faculty about graduate education. From that point of view, graduate school is getting a PhD. Masters and professional students serve two purposes: fund raising and an outlet for failed/burned out Ph.D. students. If you're not paying tuition and you're getting a master's, someone somewhere thinks you'll end up getting a doctorate. The difference in research and learning between a 2 year master's and a 6 year doctorate is huge. Getting a master's degree is a continuation of your bachelor's work. Getting a PhD redefines your life. It can be good, it can be bad, but it forces you to see what you are capable of.
If you're not exited by the chance to do research, if you wouldn't work in the best lab for (insert your favorite area of research here) for free, grad school may not be for you. Universally, if you do not love your subject, you will not finish. No matter how important or cool your research is, no one is going to care about it. Sure, at the end, someone may be interested, but you're not going to get a lot of attention even from friends and family while in the middle of the project. Your boss may not care about it. Many people drop out of grad school not because it is too hard, but because it's too long. Family emergencies, health problems, getting older, poverty and boredom are all killers in grad school. Anything that can distract you at a crucial moment can lead to someone else publishing that great paper that would have finished your dissertation.
That's not say it's all bad. There are reasons to be here. It's a bit difficult (not quite impossible) to get into science without a PhD. Certainly, being invited to work on things like fusion and nanotechnology is better than begging for it. If what motivates you is science, technology and shaping the future, then go to graduate school. It's an opportunity to work on what you think really matters. For example, many people today think we're too dependant on oil, graduate school is one opportunity to actually do something about it. If what motivates you is money, fame, personal freedom, video games, sports, politics, or anything like that, maybe it's not for you.
Another interesting thing about grad school is the age of the people here. At my school, the average grad student is 30 (there are 5000 of us, so that's not just a few old-timers). Either we've been in grad school forever, or we've been out to the world and discovered that it's not all we'd hoped for. Grad school is a place where you really can get out as much as you put in. Working for the right people can lead you to opportunities to do things you were told were impossible in college. It's a place where you can work on things you've only read about in science fiction. It's a place where you really can get a lot done, and you can see the frantic pace of progress first hand. It's also a place that can chew you up, spit you out, openly treat you like a second class citizen and ruin your life.
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You are absolutely right that the way to sequester carbon is through biology, not depending on rain to take it magically away.
Obviously the whole system is much more complicated than simple thermodynamics, but it's also much more complicated than your article puts it, and it's certainly more complex than rain water scrubbing CO2 out of the air (which was my whole point).
I would suggest looking at some more recent Nature papers, there were a few at the beggining of last summer which were good. One thing which is not clearly stated in the news article you link to is that biology does not violate thermodymanics. What is the rate of biological sequesterization versus the rate of concentration driven outgassing? Sequesterization is a correction to the basic thermodynamics, not the other way around. Driving sequesterization (again, see more recent Nature papers) is a perfectly good way to allow more CO2 to be dissolved in the ocean, but it has little to do with rain, and everything to do with thermodynamics.
Physicists may assume a spherical cow, but at least we deal with the whole cow and not just the bull shit.
Thermodynamics is not a one-way street, nor is it limited simply to gasses. Liquids (such as rain) must come to thermal and chemical equilibrium with the atmosphere. Mass and chemicals (including CO2) do not just go away.
If the increasing temperature is decreasing the solubility of CO2 into the oceans, where is the rain "scrubbing" the CO2 away to, and how is it keeping it from coming back out into the atmosphere via normal thermodynamic means?
In short, your physics is wrong.
Surely you're joking.
It's just pretentious, rehashed science, that's all. I have no grand opinion on the nature of music.
Somewhere, an ornithologist read that article and died inside...
So now we know these people are either morons or economics students who think that "lost gaming time" is worth at least $900. I really don't see a difference between those two groups.
Just because you can assign numbers to something doesn't mean it's rational. Having a PS3 just to brag about it is irrational.
(I believe "rational" in the real world means something different than it does in economics, and I prefer the real world version).
Right!
Can we save the prefix "nano" for when it is scientifically appropriate? Nanorust is the kind of word you throw around at an internal group meeting to be cute, but it shouldn't find it's way into a publication.
I would be fine with iron-oxide nanoparticles, or even rust nanoparticles, but there are plenty of perfectly good non-scientifically-embarassing names for this stuff such as simply iron-oxide clusters.
I know people who have dropped out of their PhD programs to play MMOs.
This is not good.
Howard Stern is not on XM.
NPR has three stations on Sirius, so why are they going after them?
The article states that many of the violations measured by NPR are probably MP3 players with FM transmitters.
Is there anything concrete to this at all, or is this just an outdated medium trying to get the government to kill the compitition (i.e. anything that allows people to choose their own music)? The best thing about satellite radio to me is the selection I can get from it over the internet, and they do a much better job of that than most other internet radio streams I've tried. The actual radio part is nice on my commute, but I don't really care about it.
laws were made to be broken
I'm here already.
wow, that's even worse than I thought. Thanks.
Keep in mind that the University of California system payed $8 million to one publisher (Elsevier), just for access (not rights) to that publisher's journals for only two years. Those journals make up only 25% of the journal subsciptions in the UC system.
Getting broad rights to scientific articles across many fields would be nearly impossible in the current culture of journal price-gouging. Support of one of the many attempts to break this business practice would be great.
Which article are you talking about? The Journal article referenced in the Reuters blurb? The blurb certainly doesn't define it. I'm not talking about the study on the high school seniors.
Everyone assumes that the students were asked: "Were you cheating?" They way as well have been asked "Have you used other students or outside materials for help during your exams?"
Yeah, I have to wonder at the definition of cheating here. I don't think it would be possible to "cheat" on some of the exams I've been given.
For example, in one class I had, the professor had done research on the theory of high temperature superconductivity. He gave us a bunch of papers and told us to "fill in the blanks", basically to derive the theories used. It was perfectly acceptable for the three of us in the class to work together, or even to go to any professor and get advice on our work. At a certain point, you have to stop jumping through hoops and start training for the real world.
If people in graduate school are taking the kind of exams where cheating is possible, they're not getting the training they need. In those cases where cheating was possible, everyone I went through classes with was similarly very careful about not cheating.
Evidently, there are many people out there who don't know, or don't remember what college was all about.
Do what the professor asks you to do.
It's not your job to make the class interesting or hard enough to attend. Be flexible and just post the podcasts when you get them, or when the professors ask you to.
To paraphrase Perelman, mathmaticians are not policians. I am sure that none of these guys had any idea what their words would look like on paper after going through a journalist's filter. Evidently, they have not learned their lesson.
Look at the comment by Anderson that "I spent several hours talking with Sylvia Nasar trying to dissuade her from incorporating the Tian-Yau fights into the article." By attacking the inclusion of that in the article, he opens himself up as an example of the declining morality of science and willingness for scientists to be put under public scrutiny. Often in science it is true that we would rather the public not know about the (sometimes very personal) fights which accompany scientific criticism. It is interesting that Yau is an outspoken advocate of scientific reform in China, and has been willing to subject his past feuds to public scrutiny.
I'm working on a PhD right now, and I'll gladly take the side against this Harvard person.
A PhD is not an excuse to live outside the confines (physically or intellectually) of mainstream society.
You'd be surprised how much time scientists spend away from their families. I've worked with two people now who have had a significant other a few thousand miles away for a few years while they were doing research. Eventually both pairs found their way to jobs in the same place. It's a very common and accepted part of science culture to do this. It's not so much that we would have a year to spare but if anyone can be found who thinks this is more important or professionally prestigious than the research they are currently doing.
As a physicist, I have been forced to think about the real world impact of physics (Hiroshima). Unlike other fields, most physicists have grappled internally with the unintended consequences of their research. Some of us are pro-military, and others pacifists, but none of us are naieve enough to assume that our work will be used only for the uses we intend. I would not for a second assume that any condition I placed on using my research would be respected by any group of people desperate enough to start killing eachother.
Carbon nanotube networks do this faster and cheaper, have already been used in solar cells, and are being commercialized right now.
you're kidding, right?
An alternative to off road vehicles? How about a horse?
You have a good point about schools outside the US. I don't know much about what someone in Europe goes through to get a PhD. I hear in Germany, you have to do two dissertations?
In my program, you also must have your masters to become a PhD candidate. Someone getting a masters to get a PhD is just a PhD student. I was talking about what graduate school is from the point of view of a university: the faculty and administration. From that particular point of view, there are only two types of people: those with PhDs and those without.
I know people with masters who are better scientists than many PhDs, and who very easily could have a PhD. Getting a PhD is not necessarily about being a great researcher, it's about wanting membership into a very particular society (usually academia). It seems more common to "fail" a PhD due to boredom, poverty, or life moving on than an inability to do the work. Those are the main points I was trying to make. You're right, it is a mistake to assume that someone with a PhD is "better" than someone without one, that's simply not true.
Getting a PhD is about making generalizations, even where it's not warranted. Piled higher and Deeper and all that...
I spent a year leading the grad student government at my school and spent an insane amount of time talking with students, administrators and faculty about graduate education. From that point of view, graduate school is getting a PhD. Masters and professional students serve two purposes: fund raising and an outlet for failed/burned out Ph.D. students. If you're not paying tuition and you're getting a master's, someone somewhere thinks you'll end up getting a doctorate. The difference in research and learning between a 2 year master's and a 6 year doctorate is huge. Getting a master's degree is a continuation of your bachelor's work. Getting a PhD redefines your life. It can be good, it can be bad, but it forces you to see what you are capable of.
If you're not exited by the chance to do research, if you wouldn't work in the best lab for (insert your favorite area of research here) for free, grad school may not be for you. Universally, if you do not love your subject, you will not finish. No matter how important or cool your research is, no one is going to care about it. Sure, at the end, someone may be interested, but you're not going to get a lot of attention even from friends and family while in the middle of the project. Your boss may not care about it. Many people drop out of grad school not because it is too hard, but because it's too long. Family emergencies, health problems, getting older, poverty and boredom are all killers in grad school. Anything that can distract you at a crucial moment can lead to someone else publishing that great paper that would have finished your dissertation.
That's not say it's all bad. There are reasons to be here. It's a bit difficult (not quite impossible) to get into science without a PhD. Certainly, being invited to work on things like fusion and nanotechnology is better than begging for it. If what motivates you is science, technology and shaping the future, then go to graduate school. It's an opportunity to work on what you think really matters. For example, many people today think we're too dependant on oil, graduate school is one opportunity to actually do something about it. If what motivates you is money, fame, personal freedom, video games, sports, politics, or anything like that, maybe it's not for you.
Another interesting thing about grad school is the age of the people here. At my school, the average grad student is 30 (there are 5000 of us, so that's not just a few old-timers). Either we've been in grad school forever, or we've been out to the world and discovered that it's not all we'd hoped for. Grad school is a place where you really can get out as much as you put in. Working for the right people can lead you to opportunities to do things you were told were impossible in college. It's a place where you can work on things you've only read about in science fiction. It's a place where you really can get a lot done, and you can see the frantic pace of progress first hand. It's also a place that can chew you up, spit you out, openly treat you like a second class citizen and ruin your life.