Call me biased. Even call me bigoted, but I will stand by this assertion: American, UK, Oz, and Kiwi scientists and engineers, who have grown up around TWO systems of measurement, Imperial and Metric, are far more adept at scale conversion and at thinking in arbitrary units than European scientists who have been coddled into laziness and complacency because they only have one.
I'm not too sure where you are getting your information there. All of the countries, apart from the USA, that you mention are metric countries for just about everything, especially Australia and New Zealand. I've lived with people from Oz and NZ and most of them have no concept of any imperial measurement.
The UK and Ireland (I'm Irish) are slightly different. Most people would have grown up with metric and imperial measurements. The older the person the more imperial units they would have grown up with.
In Ireland just about all measurements in daily use are in the metric system now. Diesel and petrol are sold by the litre, speed limits and distances are in km (changed over from miles in 2005). The only things that are commonly referred to in imperial units are a pint of beer or a pound of butter (454 g on the label) and people's height and weight. Height and weight is usually refereed to in feet and stone (strangely enough very few people know their weight in pounds). The only notable difference between Ireland and the UK in this regard would be that the UK still uses miles on road signs.
With regards to scientists and engineers, no scientist or engineer in any of those countries (apart from the US maybe), would use imperial units (unless for a very specific or unusual purpose). The very idea of using any imperial units would be laughed out of the room so there is no conversion going on. Where there are two units of measurement being used side by side (example of height and weight in the UK and Ireland) they tend to be used independently. For example most people I know in Ireland would tell you their weight and height in stone and feet respectively, but not that many would be able to tell you their weight and height in kg and metres (though more people would know their weight in kg) even though they now use kg and metres for everything else.
As to your comments on European scientists and engineers it would seem to reinforce the first two sentences of your post.
The advantage of the SI system is not in a single measurement like metres or kg but the fact that they all integrate together with grace and simplicity and most importantly consistently. You say we would be better off with more people having an ability to reason fluently in both systems but you give no good reason why this would be so.
Personally I can see no advantage to an engineer working in two units consecutively, in fact I can only see problems. The potential for miscommunication, errors in assumptions and just plain awkwardness would be very high indeed.
Those are nice quotes, well chosen to make your point but as with all things in life things are not that straight forward or black and white.
One acre of land could produce 25 tons of tomatoes, 20 tons of potatoes, 15 tons of carrots... or 250 pounds of beef. (Dworkin, Norine, "22 Reasons to Go Vegetarian Right Now," Vegetarian Times, April 1999, p. 91.)
This makes the classic mistake that people make about agricultural land. 'It's all the same'
The two big deciders on what you can grow on land are the land itself (soil type, drainage, slope, natural fertility) and climate.
Land and climate is not all the same everywhere. For climate and land that will produce 25 tonnes of tomatoes you will need irrigation and a lot of it.
I'm from Ireland, a country famous for our rainfall and potatoes, if there is any kind of dry summer at all potatoes will need irrigation in Ireland and an acre of potatoes will take a lot if irrigation. Carrots are not as bad but you still need the right land to grow them. Most of the agricultural land in Ireland would not be considered suitable for potato or carrot production.
It takes 100 times the amount of water to produce one pound of beef as to produce one pound of wheat. (Jeffrey Hollender. How to Make the World a Better Place, NY: William Morrow & Co., 1990: p. 122.)
I'm not arguing the figure but I'd question why it matters. If both grass and wheat are being rain fed it doesn't matter how much water they require to grow. In fact in low rainfall areas it may be more efficient to produce grass than wheat.
In fact beef can be better in low rainfall conditions as you lower the stocking rate per acre so that the land supports the stock. In similar conditions it might be economical to produce wheat at all.
A good example of rainfall being a key factor in what can be grown is the west of Ireland. For the most part soil type does not suit any tillage crop, the land tends to be wet and the high rainfall makes getting the correct conditions to work on the land difficult.
In these conditions however grass does exceptionally well. So much so that 90% of the beef produced in Ireland is exported.
To produce a year's supply of beef for a family requires over 260 gallons of fossil fuel, or approximately one gallon of gasoline per pound of grain-fed beef. (Ibid)
I won't argue with the figures (though to be honest it sounds very high) but I would like to emphasise the grain fed part.
There is a significant amount of beef around the world that comes from predominantly grazing.
Ireland is a Catholic country. They are to some degree, still very strict. It's the only European country that has a law against abortion (on religious ground), I believe.
Here is a Wikipedia article on abortion law around the world. There are many countries in Europe that have restricted access to abortion.
The wikipeida article on Abortion in Ireland has a good summary of the history and the current status of abortion in Ireland.
The nurses and doctors are not allowed to give information about abortion, even, and England has an influx of Irish girls going over to get an abortion, despite the risk of going to jail.
Abortion is illegal in Ireland (and also for the most part in Northern Ireland as well.)
It has never been illegal to provide medical care to a women which would cause an indirect abortion.
There was also a constitutional referendum in 1993 which guaranteed the right to travel and the right to information.
It is not illegal to provide information about abortion in Ireland.
It is not illegal to travel to another jurisdiction for the purposes of getting an abortion.
It is not illegal to have an abortion in another jurisdiction.
A lot of European satellite providers use conditional access modules (CAM) along with smart cards to decode encrypted satellite television.
All the European satellite providers use DVB as the transmission system. DVB specifies a Common Interface. The CAM module sits in the CI and contains a card reader. With the correct smart card the CAM decodes the encrypted signal and sends it back to the receiver to be displayed.
Usually a particular type of CAM is needed for each encryption system. So if a CAM module is available, you place it in the CI slot of any receiver with supports the CI standard (EN 50221-1997), insert your smart card and watch TV.
In this way you can pick the receiver that you wish (as long as it supports the CI slot), get your CAM and smart card and bob's your uncle.
There are some satellite providers that do not sell separate CAM modules. In this case the CAM is built directly into the receiver and you have to use the providers hardware. Sky in Ireland and the UK are an example of this, though it is possible to legally view their services using the third party Dragon CAM.
The chargers will be usable only for data-enabled phones, which have more capability than just standard calls and SMS texts. Data-enabled phones are expected to account for almost half of all new mobile handset purchases in 2010.
So while definitely a move in the right direction it looks like it's only going to effect around half of the mobile phones sold in Europe initially.
I would expect this proportion to increase as smart phones move down into the lower cost markets though.
It's also not as big a jump for the manufactures this way as most of the smart phones already use some type of usb connection (mini or micro) so it shouldn't require a complete change of designs and tooling.
The 1.9L 2006 VW Golf TDI has a 12.5 gal tank. Here are the numbers. Please notice the EPA ratings barely break 40MPG for the 2006 (newest) and about the same with older models.
The TDI Golf has a 12.5 UK gallon fuel tank, this equates to a ~15 US gallons (the fuel economy site you linked to gives 14.5 US gallons capacity.
While I'm sure the mileage is great, I'm skeptical of the claim that fnj can 'go over 600 miles without coming close to empty' though. With a 'best fillup' of 781 miles, one would be breaking 60MPG. That's barely achievable even with VW's diesel hybrid. fnj must do a lot of modestly paced highway hypermiling down a 700 mile slope or something... heh. Just a quick search around shows anecdotal evidence that people typically get about 45 highway with their Gold TDIs... that's probably more like it.
But yeah, diesel engines are just more efficient than their gasoline counterparts.
With a full tank at 12.5 UK gallons and a best fill up of 781 that would give a fuel efficiency of 62.48 miles per UK gallon (53.86 miles per US gallon), which is achievable.
I have a 2000 1.9 90bhp TDI Golf and I often get between 55 and 60 miles per UK gallon (46 - 50 miles per US gallon) so I wouldn't find the idea of 62.5 miles per UK gallon (52 miles per US gallon) that far out. Driving style and reading road conditions can have dramatic effects on fuel efficiency especially when driving long distances
Here in Ireland, double glazing is used as standard now. However, in Dublin at least, there are no rules on insulation, so despite fitting double glaze windows, the crazy builders/developers are allowed to build single-wall buildings with a simple damp-seal and plasterboard on the interior. No attic insulation either.
I'm not too sure where you're getting your information from but it's very wrong. Under the Irish building regulations insulation standards along with other building standards are laid out. (See Part L which was last amended in 2008.
Depending on the construction type single leaf walls may be allowed but a large amount of insulation would be required on the inside of the wall before the plasterboard and hardwall.
And yet rather than tackle such pathetic building standards (other regions of the country do have double-walled insulated buildings) our fanatical Green Party are insistant on focussing instead on having us all dwell in a netherworldish CFL-lit glow as they scrap ordinary light bulbs (you know, the non mercury-containing kind that don't make as much money for light bulb manufacturers).
Again you seem to be very uninformed, building standards are set for the country as a whole, the various councils in the Dublin region do not have any say over building standards, they do however have say over what structures can gain planning permission etc., this has nothing to do with the energy standards that the building is constructed to though.
That said, much anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that building insulation standards were not met in many building built in the last 10 years, but even then this normally cases of substandard insulation, not the total lack of it.
Also the Building Energy Rating (BER system came into force for all new buildings that have gained planning permission since January 2007, and all domestic building for sale or let after the 1st of January 2009. This is an energy rating certification giving an energy rating from A (Best) to G (Worst) in a similar format the energy ratings seen on electrical appliances in the EU. This gives buyers and renters an idea of the energy efficiency of a building and should help, in time, improve insulation values in buildings.
As for the Green Party, while I'd consider myself fairly environmentally conscious, I've never been a fan of the Irish Green Party. A large amount of their support seems to come from NIMBY issues. Becoming part of the coalition government has, in my opinion, been good for them. It has forced them to become more pragmatic. They have plans as far as I'm aware to increase the Part L building requirments over the next few years.
Also our builders/plumbers haven't a clue about properly designing a heating system, and work on an ad-hoc basis of randomly sticking in a few radiators around the place in an ineffectual manner and plumbing them in such a way that they barely work, with overpowered gas boilers that consume gas like anything to very little effect.
It really sounds like you've an axe to grind here, while it's true that heating systems can be badly designed and installed, labelling all the plumber and builders in Ireland as incompetent seems a little extreme. There are many very competent builders and plumbers in this country
Note I'm not involved in the building industry in any way or means, so I don't have professional pride at stake.
For anyone that hasn't seen the Cadbury's Gorilla Advert, it's definitely worth a look. Probably one of the best adverts that I've seen in a long time.
For those of you that don't know Cadbury are a chocolate company that are big in the UK and Ireland, I'm not sure if their products are sold elsewhere. They are most popular for their milk chocolate, not to get into a flame war about chocolate, but for mass produced stuff it bloody good:)
Yep the Irish power sockets are the same as the British ones. A lot of our fittings and standards are based on the British ones.
The main exception I can think of offhand is the phone sockets, the British ones use a BT socket, while the Irish ones use a RJ11 socket.
In the past this has caused a wee bit of consternation, as many retailers that service both the UK and Ireland sold phones with BT sockets in Ireland, leading to many WTFs as people tried to connect them:-)
I don't think it's quite as simple as that.
At the moment there are two major markets for barley:
Animal Feed
Malting
A minority of the barley grown goes for malting, with the remaining majority going for animal feed.
Malting barley has stricter requirements that that used for feed, there are max protein levels and germination percentage used along with the normal grain quality indexes (hectolitre weight, screening % etc.)
The interesting thing as regards to beer (larger, ale and stout) is that the price of the malting barley has very little impact on the price paid for a pint.
I don't have a quick reference but in Ireland the cost of malting barley works out at around 1-2 cent per pint, out of an average price of around €4.00 or so (pub price).
The problem is that barley as animal feed is easily subsisted for by other feeds such as wheat, soya, maize etc. This means that the price of barley moves in relation to the prices of these other grains. It is also important to note these these grains along with rice are the base constituents of most alcohol produced.
As regard to New Zealand, one of its biggest exports are milk products. As NZ sells on the world market the recent increase in milk and milk product prices is pushing up demand for animal feeds such as barley. This is because one of the ways of getting higher output from dairy cows in increasing the levels of concentrates (such as barley wheat etc.) feed.
So even with higher yields the price of barley may or may not decrease the price of barley depending on the market prices of the other grains.
By chance I was at a climate change talk hosted by the Irish EPA. The talk was given by Dr Martin Manning, Head of Technical Support Unit, IPCC Working Group 1, who by chance is as a native of New Zealand. As Ireland is a large livestock producer, one of the questions which came up was why methane produced by ruminants is produces net global warming.
The way it works is that carbon that's absorbed by the growing plants that the ruminants eat is converted to methane in their rumen. This is then burred by the animal during the day. The problem is that methane is a much more potent green house gas then CO2. Methane has a global warming potential of 25. This means that methane has 25 times the global warming potential of CO2.
There has been work done with ruminant diet to reduce methane production here and other work done to reduce total green house gas production from livestock using LCAhere. It's no use reducing the methane emissions if by doing so you increase your total global warming potential...
More parties you have more room for compromise, because the lines aren't drawn so firmly, and coalition is pretty much the only way to fly. Of course, look at the Brits...They've got multiple parties, but one is utterly dominant, with no need of compromise. Ugly scene.
First past the post elections systems tend to become two party systems after a long enough period of time. The UK would be considered a two party system, the Labour and Conservative parties are the major parties with the Liberal Democrats a distant third (the 2005 UK election results shows this well, even though the Lib Dem got 22.1% of the vote they only got 9.6% of the seats. Also look at the difference between Labour and the Conservative vote, 35.3% vs. 33.3% of the vote but 55.2% vs. 32.7% of the seats respectively. Just for note, the small parties with a few seats each are mostly parties with significant local issues i.e. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales)
In order to have a strong multi party system you would need to change election system from a first past the post system. My personal experience is with proportional representation as used in Ireland (single transferable vote).
This uses multi seat constituencies with a single transferable vote. Looking at the results of the 2007 election you can see that while two major parties still exist, there exists a number of strong smaller parties. It is also interesting to see that the percentage of seats in the Dáil (parliament) is relatively close to the percentage of first preference votes. This also means that in order to have a single party government you need the majority or very close to the majority of the votes.
The satellite service is not the main method which the BBC broadcasts its channels to the public. The UK is moving from analogue to digital broadcasting at the moment and the digital service (which uses DVB-T) is called freeview. From the freeview link you'll see that as of December 2006 just over 50% of televisions received their signal from analogue terrestrial, and just over 25% by digital terrestrial, which adds up to over 75% of the total televisions in the UK. Digital satellite covers nearly 17%, this is BSkyB and freesat. The BSkyB equipment receives the standard DVB-S as well BSkyB's encrypted broadcasts.
The satellite service is seen as an extension of coverage of the freeview service, at maximum coverage the freeview digital service is expected to cover 90% of the population and before the analogue signal is turned off this is down to 73% of households*.
It's also important to note that before the BBC (and ITV) went free to air on digital satellite that they were available on BSkyB encrypted. In order to go free to air significant rights issues for programming for both the BBC and ITV had to be overcome. This was so that people were not forced to use a specific pay service (BSkyB) in order to receive the programming.
From the freeview page you can see that only 1.4% of televisions are receiving programming using the free to air digital satellite transmission. When the freesat brand is launched in 2008 this figure should increase, however it does show the BBC's determination to extend their service to as much of the UK population as posable. It's also interesting to note that this 1.4% figure is smaller than the percentage of people using alternative operating systems which can not use the iplayer.
Finally they are expanding their service, but in doing so it should be available to as many of their views as possible, with the least restrictions on what equipment and contracts are required to receive it. See the above BSkyB example above where they have done this before.
*I know I'm using two different measurements of coverage/usage, the number of televisions and the percentage of households.
The BBC is relatively unique as broadcasters go. Unlike most broadcasters its market is not selling air time to advertisers but as a public service broadcaster. There are no outside adverts on the BBC network (though they do advertise their own programmes, similar to other broadcasters).
All funding for the BBC comes from the UK tv licence and the sales of programming and other commercial activity (e.g. selling Dr. Who and publishing magazines such as the Radio Times)
The BBC added free to air distribution of its programming over satellite in order to provide maximum access to its services to its viewers. One of the side effects of this is that the BBC channels can be received with standard DVB-S equipment across most of western Europe.
This is the reason that people are angry with the iplayer situation. It artificially restricts the service to Windows users and prevents full access by all of the licence paying population of the UK. This is completely the opposite of the satellite case where reception is open to others extremely outside the borders of the UK to ensure that UK licence payers have access to the service (note it is possible to receive this as far away as Bulgaria and beyond, so we are not talking about a small over-spread here!
Yields in agriculture are nearly always measured on a yearly basis as that's normally the production period. The yearly part is normally taken for granted
In cases where the crop takes multiple years to mature or is a perennial (this is the case for most of the crops which could be efficiently used to produce cellulose like miscanthus and short rotation coppice) it is usually given as the average yield over the expected lifetime of the crop.
Between miscanthus and sort rotation coppice my personal choice would be the miscanthus.
It produces a crop each year
It usually does not need to be dried, unlike the coppice
It required very little additional fertiliser
It can be harvested and stored efficiently using current agricultural equitment i.e. mowers and big square balers
Most new European cars come with engine immobilisers.
This prevents the car from being hot-wired.
All new cars sold in the UK since 1997 and Australia since 2001 have to have engine immobilisers fitted and this has drastically reduced opportunistic car thefts,
In other European countries immobilisers are very common on medium to high value cars.
Ireland was in a similar situation until two and a half years ago.
In January 2005 road signs were changed over from miles to km. It was a fairly major changeover, 35,000 signs were replaced and an additional 23,000 signs were added.
It was kinda cool, all the new signs were erected, with black plastic over the information, and then on the night of the changeover all the plastic was removed. Then after al the old signs were removed.
So there is no ambiguity, all the new signs have km/h written under the speed, one reason for this is that the speed limits and distances in Northern Ireland (as part of the UK) are still in mph.
As a side note most people still refer to fuel consummation in miles per gallon (UK), even though it has been a very long time since fuel has been sold in gallons in Ireland
Husqvarna has produced automatic lawn mowers for at lest 6-7 years.
Look under products and automatic mowers, they have two types an auto mower which can operate 24 hours a day and goes back to it's base station to charge and a solar powered version.
According to the site the auto mower is good for up to 1500 m, while the solar version is good for up to 1200 m.
They both use a safe cutting system and operate similar to grazing animal, in that they wonder around randomly, with sensors to go around any stationary objects.
The parameter of the tended area is marked with a electric loop
Just re-read the rules [PDF].
For the two passenger car, the passengers need to be seated side by side, which would rule out the VW 1-litre in its current form.
The 3-litre Lupo should be a different matter. Its based on the normal Lupo, though with a lot of the steel replaced with aluminium.
It's kerb weight is 853 kg or 1,882 pounds, which for the competition, I'm sure could be improved. As far as aerodynamics, well it's a super mini, so massive gains could be taken there.
Now the 0 to 100 km/h is 14.5 seconds which would be probably the main problem, however remember this car was introduced in 2003, so some gains should have been made in the meantime.
All figures taken from the VWvortex review.
All in all I would be very happy to be in the position that VW are in, at the start of this competition.
You are probably correct in stating that the 0-100 kph would be more than 12 seconds, however I can't seem to find any figures.
It does however have a very low coefficient of drag and low unmanned weight, 0.16 and 290 kg respectively.
Now if we take it that they double the engine power to 13 kW and also double the fuel consumption to 2 litres per 100 km, it would still meet the targets as regard to fuel consumption and I would be willing to bet easily reach 100 kph in 12 seconds.
According to the VWvortex article
Even with this apparently low output and power development, the extremely light vehicle weight (which is comparable to that of an average touring motorcycle) and the excellent aerodynamics (with a drag coefficient of 0.159 -- much better that a motorcycle and far better any series production vehicle) provide for a lively performance. For example, the 1-litre car reaches a top speed of 120 km/h.
So it might reach the standard with the 1 litre engine.
VW already have a concept 1 litre car. The 1 litre refers to the fuel consummation of 1 litre per 100 km. Now for the non metric people here this equates to 235 miles per US gallon or 282 mpg Imperial.
More pictures and info here and here. Now this is a two seat car, and if you follow the links above, you'll see not the most spacious.
VW also produce a 3 litre car, the Lupo. The fuel consummation here is 78 miles per US gallon or 94 miles per Imperial gallon and this car is in production, and will hold four people and a wee bit of luggage.
With this in mind, does this competition sound like its really pushing the envelope?
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Needs a rabbit with a switch-blade though...
Call me biased. Even call me bigoted, but I will stand by this assertion: American, UK, Oz, and Kiwi scientists and engineers, who have grown up around TWO systems of measurement, Imperial and Metric, are far more adept at scale conversion and at thinking in arbitrary units than European scientists who have been coddled into laziness and complacency because they only have one.
I'm not too sure where you are getting your information there. All of the countries, apart from the USA, that you mention are metric countries for just about everything, especially Australia and New Zealand. I've lived with people from Oz and NZ and most of them have no concept of any imperial measurement.
The UK and Ireland (I'm Irish) are slightly different. Most people would have grown up with metric and imperial measurements. The older the person the more imperial units they would have grown up with.
In Ireland just about all measurements in daily use are in the metric system now. Diesel and petrol are sold by the litre, speed limits and distances are in km (changed over from miles in 2005). The only things that are commonly referred to in imperial units are a pint of beer or a pound of butter (454 g on the label) and people's height and weight. Height and weight is usually refereed to in feet and stone (strangely enough very few people know their weight in pounds). The only notable difference between Ireland and the UK in this regard would be that the UK still uses miles on road signs.
With regards to scientists and engineers, no scientist or engineer in any of those countries (apart from the US maybe), would use imperial units (unless for a very specific or unusual purpose). The very idea of using any imperial units would be laughed out of the room so there is no conversion going on. Where there are two units of measurement being used side by side (example of height and weight in the UK and Ireland) they tend to be used independently. For example most people I know in Ireland would tell you their weight and height in stone and feet respectively, but not that many would be able to tell you their weight and height in kg and metres (though more people would know their weight in kg) even though they now use kg and metres for everything else.
As to your comments on European scientists and engineers it would seem to reinforce the first two sentences of your post.
The advantage of the SI system is not in a single measurement like metres or kg but the fact that they all integrate together with grace and simplicity and most importantly consistently. You say we would be better off with more people having an ability to reason fluently in both systems but you give no good reason why this would be so.
Personally I can see no advantage to an engineer working in two units consecutively, in fact I can only see problems. The potential for miscommunication, errors in assumptions and just plain awkwardness would be very high indeed.
One acre of land could produce 25 tons of tomatoes, 20 tons of potatoes, 15 tons of carrots... or 250 pounds of beef. (Dworkin, Norine, "22 Reasons to Go Vegetarian Right Now," Vegetarian Times, April 1999, p. 91.)
This makes the classic mistake that people make about agricultural land. 'It's all the same'
The two big deciders on what you can grow on land are the land itself (soil type, drainage, slope, natural fertility) and climate. Land and climate is not all the same everywhere. For climate and land that will produce 25 tonnes of tomatoes you will need irrigation and a lot of it.
I'm from Ireland, a country famous for our rainfall and potatoes, if there is any kind of dry summer at all potatoes will need irrigation in Ireland and an acre of potatoes will take a lot if irrigation. Carrots are not as bad but you still need the right land to grow them. Most of the agricultural land in Ireland would not be considered suitable for potato or carrot production.
It takes 100 times the amount of water to produce one pound of beef as to produce one pound of wheat. (Jeffrey Hollender. How to Make the World a Better Place, NY: William Morrow & Co., 1990: p. 122.)
I'm not arguing the figure but I'd question why it matters. If both grass and wheat are being rain fed it doesn't matter how much water they require to grow. In fact in low rainfall areas it may be more efficient to produce grass than wheat.
In fact beef can be better in low rainfall conditions as you lower the stocking rate per acre so that the land supports the stock. In similar conditions it might be economical to produce wheat at all.
A good example of rainfall being a key factor in what can be grown is the west of Ireland. For the most part soil type does not suit any tillage crop, the land tends to be wet and the high rainfall makes getting the correct conditions to work on the land difficult.
In these conditions however grass does exceptionally well. So much so that 90% of the beef produced in Ireland is exported.
To produce a year's supply of beef for a family requires over 260 gallons of fossil fuel, or approximately one gallon of gasoline per pound of grain-fed beef. (Ibid)
I won't argue with the figures (though to be honest it sounds very high) but I would like to emphasise the grain fed part.
There is a significant amount of beef around the world that comes from predominantly grazing.
Ireland is a Catholic country. They are to some degree, still very strict. It's the only European country that has a law against abortion (on religious ground), I believe.
Here is a Wikipedia article on abortion law around the world. There are many countries in Europe that have restricted access to abortion.
The wikipeida article on Abortion in Ireland has a good summary of the history and the current status of abortion in Ireland.
The nurses and doctors are not allowed to give information about abortion, even, and England has an influx of Irish girls going over to get an abortion, despite the risk of going to jail.
Abortion is illegal in Ireland (and also for the most part in Northern Ireland as well.)
It has never been illegal to provide medical care to a women which would cause an indirect abortion.
There was also a constitutional referendum in 1993 which guaranteed the right to travel and the right to information.
It is not illegal to provide information about abortion in Ireland.
It is not illegal to travel to another jurisdiction for the purposes of getting an abortion.
It is not illegal to have an abortion in another jurisdiction.
A lot of European satellite providers use conditional access modules (CAM) along with smart cards to decode encrypted satellite television.
All the European satellite providers use DVB as the transmission system. DVB specifies a Common Interface. The CAM module sits in the CI and contains a card reader. With the correct smart card the CAM decodes the encrypted signal and sends it back to the receiver to be displayed.
Usually a particular type of CAM is needed for each encryption system. So if a CAM module is available, you place it in the CI slot of any receiver with supports the CI standard (EN 50221-1997), insert your smart card and watch TV. In this way you can pick the receiver that you wish (as long as it supports the CI slot), get your CAM and smart card and bob's your uncle.
There are some satellite providers that do not sell separate CAM modules. In this case the CAM is built directly into the receiver and you have to use the providers hardware. Sky in Ireland and the UK are an example of this, though it is possible to legally view their services using the third party Dragon CAM.
The chargers will be usable only for data-enabled phones, which have more capability than just standard calls and SMS texts. Data-enabled phones are expected to account for almost half of all new mobile handset purchases in 2010.
So while definitely a move in the right direction it looks like it's only going to effect around half of the mobile phones sold in Europe initially.
I would expect this proportion to increase as smart phones move down into the lower cost markets though.
It's also not as big a jump for the manufactures this way as most of the smart phones already use some type of usb connection (mini or micro) so it shouldn't require a complete change of designs and tooling.
The 1.9L 2006 VW Golf TDI has a 12.5 gal tank. Here are the numbers. Please notice the EPA ratings barely break 40MPG for the 2006 (newest) and about the same with older models.
The TDI Golf has a 12.5 UK gallon fuel tank, this equates to a ~15 US gallons (the fuel economy site you linked to gives 14.5 US gallons capacity.
While I'm sure the mileage is great, I'm skeptical of the claim that fnj can 'go over 600 miles without coming close to empty' though. With a 'best fillup' of 781 miles, one would be breaking 60MPG. That's barely achievable even with VW's diesel hybrid. fnj must do a lot of modestly paced highway hypermiling down a 700 mile slope or something... heh. Just a quick search around shows anecdotal evidence that people typically get about 45 highway with their Gold TDIs... that's probably more like it. But yeah, diesel engines are just more efficient than their gasoline counterparts.
With a full tank at 12.5 UK gallons and a best fill up of 781 that would give a fuel efficiency of 62.48 miles per UK gallon (53.86 miles per US gallon), which is achievable. I have a 2000 1.9 90bhp TDI Golf and I often get between 55 and 60 miles per UK gallon (46 - 50 miles per US gallon) so I wouldn't find the idea of 62.5 miles per UK gallon (52 miles per US gallon) that far out. Driving style and reading road conditions can have dramatic effects on fuel efficiency especially when driving long distances
as gaeilge (in Irish) it'd be sneachta.
Another one for your list :)
Here in Ireland, double glazing is used as standard now. However, in Dublin at least, there are no rules on insulation, so despite fitting double glaze windows, the crazy builders/developers are allowed to build single-wall buildings with a simple damp-seal and plasterboard on the interior. No attic insulation either.
I'm not too sure where you're getting your information from but it's very wrong. Under the Irish building regulations insulation standards along with other building standards are laid out. (See Part L which was last amended in 2008.
Depending on the construction type single leaf walls may be allowed but a large amount of insulation would be required on the inside of the wall before the plasterboard and hardwall.
And yet rather than tackle such pathetic building standards (other regions of the country do have double-walled insulated buildings) our fanatical Green Party are insistant on focussing instead on having us all dwell in a netherworldish CFL-lit glow as they scrap ordinary light bulbs (you know, the non mercury-containing kind that don't make as much money for light bulb manufacturers).
Again you seem to be very uninformed, building standards are set for the country as a whole, the various councils in the Dublin region do not have any say over building standards, they do however have say over what structures can gain planning permission etc., this has nothing to do with the energy standards that the building is constructed to though.
That said, much anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that building insulation standards were not met in many building built in the last 10 years, but even then this normally cases of substandard insulation, not the total lack of it.
Also the Building Energy Rating (BER system came into force for all new buildings that have gained planning permission since January 2007, and all domestic building for sale or let after the 1st of January 2009. This is an energy rating certification giving an energy rating from A (Best) to G (Worst) in a similar format the energy ratings seen on electrical appliances in the EU. This gives buyers and renters an idea of the energy efficiency of a building and should help, in time, improve insulation values in buildings.
As for the Green Party, while I'd consider myself fairly environmentally conscious, I've never been a fan of the Irish Green Party. A large amount of their support seems to come from NIMBY issues. Becoming part of the coalition government has, in my opinion, been good for them. It has forced them to become more pragmatic. They have plans as far as I'm aware to increase the Part L building requirments over the next few years.
Also our builders/plumbers haven't a clue about properly designing a heating system, and work on an ad-hoc basis of randomly sticking in a few radiators around the place in an ineffectual manner and plumbing them in such a way that they barely work, with overpowered gas boilers that consume gas like anything to very little effect.
It really sounds like you've an axe to grind here, while it's true that heating systems can be badly designed and installed, labelling all the plumber and builders in Ireland as incompetent seems a little extreme. There are many very competent builders and plumbers in this country
Note I'm not involved in the building industry in any way or means, so I don't have professional pride at stake.
For those of you that don't know Cadbury are a chocolate company that are big in the UK and Ireland, I'm not sure if their products are sold elsewhere. They are most popular for their milk chocolate, not to get into a flame war about chocolate, but for mass produced stuff it bloody good :)
Anyway here's a Youtube link to ad.
Also for some reason every time I see it it takes about 20 seconds for me to remember what the ad is for, but it always totally engages me.
Now Bushmills, that might might get along a little better with it.
Hope the birthday doesn't get too messy!
The main exception I can think of offhand is the phone sockets, the British ones use a BT socket, while the Irish ones use a RJ11 socket.
In the past this has caused a wee bit of consternation, as many retailers that service both the UK and Ireland sold phones with BT sockets in Ireland, leading to many WTFs as people tried to connect them :-)
- Animal Feed
- Malting
A minority of the barley grown goes for malting, with the remaining majority going for animal feed.Malting barley has stricter requirements that that used for feed, there are max protein levels and germination percentage used along with the normal grain quality indexes (hectolitre weight, screening % etc.)
The interesting thing as regards to beer (larger, ale and stout) is that the price of the malting barley has very little impact on the price paid for a pint.
I don't have a quick reference but in Ireland the cost of malting barley works out at around 1-2 cent per pint, out of an average price of around €4.00 or so (pub price).
The problem is that barley as animal feed is easily subsisted for by other feeds such as wheat, soya, maize etc. This means that the price of barley moves in relation to the prices of these other grains. It is also important to note these these grains along with rice are the base constituents of most alcohol produced.
As regard to New Zealand, one of its biggest exports are milk products. As NZ sells on the world market the recent increase in milk and milk product prices is pushing up demand for animal feeds such as barley. This is because one of the ways of getting higher output from dairy cows in increasing the levels of concentrates (such as barley wheat etc.) feed.
So even with higher yields the price of barley may or may not decrease the price of barley depending on the market prices of the other grains.
The way it works is that carbon that's absorbed by the growing plants that the ruminants eat is converted to methane in their rumen. This is then burred by the animal during the day. The problem is that methane is a much more potent green house gas then CO2. Methane has a global warming potential of 25. This means that methane has 25 times the global warming potential of CO2.
Methane has a lifetime in the atmosphere of 9.6 years, so during that time it can cause significantly more warming then the same quantity of CO2.
There has been work done with ruminant diet to reduce methane production here and other work done to reduce total green house gas production from livestock using LCA here. It's no use reducing the methane emissions if by doing so you increase your total global warming potential...
First past the post elections systems tend to become two party systems after a long enough period of time.
The UK would be considered a two party system, the Labour and Conservative parties are the major parties with the Liberal Democrats a distant third (the 2005 UK election results shows this well, even though the Lib Dem got 22.1% of the vote they only got 9.6% of the seats. Also look at the difference between Labour and the Conservative vote, 35.3% vs. 33.3% of the vote but 55.2% vs. 32.7% of the seats respectively. Just for note, the small parties with a few seats each are mostly parties with significant local issues i.e. Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales)
In order to have a strong multi party system you would need to change election system from a first past the post system. My personal experience is with proportional representation as used in Ireland (single transferable vote).
This uses multi seat constituencies with a single transferable vote. Looking at the results of the 2007 election you can see that while two major parties still exist, there exists a number of strong smaller parties. It is also interesting to see that the percentage of seats in the Dáil (parliament) is relatively close to the percentage of first preference votes. This also means that in order to have a single party government you need the majority or very close to the majority of the votes.
The satellite service is not the main method which the BBC broadcasts its channels to the public. The UK is moving from analogue to digital broadcasting at the moment and the digital service (which uses DVB-T) is called freeview. From the freeview link you'll see that as of December 2006 just over 50% of televisions received their signal from analogue terrestrial, and just over 25% by digital terrestrial, which adds up to over 75% of the total televisions in the UK. Digital satellite covers nearly 17%, this is BSkyB and freesat. The BSkyB equipment receives the standard DVB-S as well BSkyB's encrypted broadcasts.
The satellite service is seen as an extension of coverage of the freeview service, at maximum coverage the freeview digital service is expected to cover 90% of the population and before the analogue signal is turned off this is down to 73% of households*.
It's also important to note that before the BBC (and ITV) went free to air on digital satellite that they were available on BSkyB encrypted. In order to go free to air significant rights issues for programming for both the BBC and ITV had to be overcome. This was so that people were not forced to use a specific pay service (BSkyB) in order to receive the programming.
From the freeview page you can see that only 1.4% of televisions are receiving programming using the free to air digital satellite transmission. When the freesat brand is launched in 2008 this figure should increase, however it does show the BBC's determination to extend their service to as much of the UK population as posable. It's also interesting to note that this 1.4% figure is smaller than the percentage of people using alternative operating systems which can not use the iplayer.
Finally they are expanding their service, but in doing so it should be available to as many of their views as possible, with the least restrictions on what equipment and contracts are required to receive it. See the above BSkyB example above where they have done this before.
*I know I'm using two different measurements of coverage/usage, the number of televisions and the percentage of households.
All funding for the BBC comes from the UK tv licence and the sales of programming and other commercial activity (e.g. selling Dr. Who and publishing magazines such as the Radio Times)
The BBC is controlled by the BBC Trust (formally the BBC governors) and according to its charter is "free from both political and commercial influence and answers only to its viewers and listeners"
The BBC added free to air distribution of its programming over satellite in order to provide maximum access to its services to its viewers. One of the side effects of this is that the BBC channels can be received with standard DVB-S equipment across most of western Europe.
This is the reason that people are angry with the iplayer situation. It artificially restricts the service to Windows users and prevents full access by all of the licence paying population of the UK. This is completely the opposite of the satellite case where reception is open to others extremely outside the borders of the UK to ensure that UK licence payers have access to the service (note it is possible to receive this as far away as Bulgaria and beyond, so we are not talking about a small over-spread here!
Thought I was going to get lucky again as my year and a half old 6230i's battery is heading downhill at the moment.
Was fairly sure it was unlikely when I opened up the phone and the battery said made in Hungary and sure enough it's not one of the affected ones.
Oh well, maybe next time :-)
In cases where the crop takes multiple years to mature or is a perennial (this is the case for most of the crops which could be efficiently used to produce cellulose like miscanthus and short rotation coppice) it is usually given as the average yield over the expected lifetime of the crop.
Between miscanthus and sort rotation coppice my personal choice would be the miscanthus.
All new cars sold in the UK since 1997 and Australia since 2001 have to have engine immobilisers fitted and this has drastically reduced opportunistic car thefts,
In other European countries immobilisers are very common on medium to high value cars.
In January 2005 road signs were changed over from miles to km. It was a fairly major changeover, 35,000 signs were replaced and an additional 23,000 signs were added.
It was kinda cool, all the new signs were erected, with black plastic over the information, and then on the night of the changeover all the plastic was removed. Then after al the old signs were removed.
So there is no ambiguity, all the new signs have km/h written under the speed, one reason for this is that the speed limits and distances in Northern Ireland (as part of the UK) are still in mph.
As a side note most people still refer to fuel consummation in miles per gallon (UK), even though it has been a very long time since fuel has been sold in gallons in Ireland
Look under products and automatic mowers, they have two types an auto mower which can operate 24 hours a day and goes back to it's base station to charge and a solar powered version.
According to the site the auto mower is good for up to 1500 m, while the solar version is good for up to 1200 m.
They both use a safe cutting system and operate similar to grazing animal, in that they wonder around randomly, with sensors to go around any stationary objects.
The parameter of the tended area is marked with a electric loop
So safe and easy, what are you waiting for!
For the two passenger car, the passengers need to be seated side by side, which would rule out the VW 1-litre in its current form.
The 3-litre Lupo should be a different matter. Its based on the normal Lupo, though with a lot of the steel replaced with aluminium. It's kerb weight is 853 kg or 1,882 pounds, which for the competition, I'm sure could be improved. As far as aerodynamics, well it's a super mini, so massive gains could be taken there.
Now the 0 to 100 km/h is 14.5 seconds which would be probably the main problem, however remember this car was introduced in 2003, so some gains should have been made in the meantime.
All figures taken from the VWvortex review.
All in all I would be very happy to be in the position that VW are in, at the start of this competition.
It does however have a very low coefficient of drag and low unmanned weight, 0.16 and 290 kg respectively.
Now if we take it that they double the engine power to 13 kW and also double the fuel consumption to 2 litres per 100 km, it would still meet the targets as regard to fuel consumption and I would be willing to bet easily reach 100 kph in 12 seconds.
According to the VWvortex article
So it might reach the standard with the 1 litre engine.
More pictures and info here and here. Now this is a two seat car, and if you follow the links above, you'll see not the most spacious.
VW also produce a 3 litre car, the Lupo. The fuel consummation here is 78 miles per US gallon or 94 miles per Imperial gallon and this car is in production, and will hold four people and a wee bit of luggage.
With this in mind, does this competition sound like its really pushing the envelope?