They are claiming libel, which requires maliciousness or deception on the part of the researchers.
It would if the case were tried in a U.S. court. Since this case involves Swedish scientists criticising an Israeli company in an English journal, I somehow doubt that U.S. rules apply.
Under English defamation law, defamatory statements are presumed false unless proven true, and the 'actual malice' standard from U.S. jurisprudence is applied quite a bit differently. The much lower bar of simple 'negligence' is all that is required to libel private individuals.
You do know that working Plutonium implosion devices are super-hard to create, right?
Well, not really. If you want to create a 'suitcase nuke' or other highly-compact, highly-efficient design, then sure -- you need lots of testing and a pile of supercomputers.
On the other hand, if you're willing to be a bit sloppy and settle for less than the maximum possible yield - not a fizzle, mind you, just less than 100% efficiency - then you can do quite well without Cray supercomputers.
Since the grandparent post mentioned a grapefruit-sized chunk of plutonium, let's see how the numbers work. Figure a good-sized grapefruit has a total volume of about 600 mL (for US readers, that's a shade over a pint, or a grapefruit about 4 inches in diameter). The density of pure plutonium is almost exactly 20 grams per cubic centimeter (mL). A grapefruit-sized lump, then, is about 12 kilograms (26 pounds).
For comparison, the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki contained 6.2 kg (less than 14 lbs) of plutonium. (Indeed, a grapefruit-sized lump of weapons-grade plutonium would be dangerously supercritical.)
Are the calculations complex? Yep. You'd want to have at least one or two modern-day physics and EngSci grad students working on your project.
Do you need supercomputers? In 1945, you needed the best they had to offer. In 2009, your cellular phone has more computing power than the entire Manhattan Project. Dell will set you up with a suitable laptop for less than $1000. You only need to call Cray if you're trying to construct a suitcase nuke or ballistic missile warhead - projects where the size and weight of the device are critical - or if you need to use the absolute minimum possible amount of plutonium.
Is the manufacturing difficult and exacting? Sure. You'll want a skilled machinist or two, a good CNC mill, and the ability to work under inert gas. All of that, you can buy off the shelf today.
I could find you the people with the necessary skills in a week, have the workshop up and running in a month, and build a replica of the Fat Man in a year. Capital costs for the project would be less than a million dollars. The big challenge is locating people who want to participate and who won't blow the whistle -- the technical stuff, while difficult, is nowhere near insurmountable.
...there will be more trips to developing countries. Countries that do not have the runway, airport, and infrastructure that the Western world has. Sure, other arrangements can be made, but there would be nothing like having Air Force One fly into their country.
Suitable runways actually aren't that hard to come by. Lightly loaded, the 747-8 and the A380 can both take off from a one-mile (1600 meter) runway. Fully-tricked out and at its maximum takeoff weight, the longest runway the 747-8 could require is a bit less than two miles (about 3000 meters).
Any nation that has now (or had in the last couple of decades) the ability to build a few miles of good highway could build a suitable runway. That includes virtually every country on earth, and nearly all of them did.
All of the colored-in countries on this map have at least one paved runway longer than 2400 meters; all could safely land and launch a new 747-8-based Air Force One. (Altogether, 119 countries are on that list, and the data are incomplete - for some reason several countries, including Sweden, South Africa, Spain, and the United States, have been omitted.)
The obstacles associated with Air Force One visits to developing countries are political and security-related, not primarily a technical inability to land.
...pilots who fly the planes are a higher threat on the ground where they can do less damage than a pilot in the air flying a jet full of fuel and passengers.
While I fully agree that much of what the TSA does is near-useless security theater, the statement I've quoted isn't necessarily as absurd as it appears at first glance. Sure, a pilot in the air with a jet full of fuel and passengers could do a tremendous amount of damage. But - and this 'but' is key - he can only do that damage by sacrificing himself.
On the other hand, a pilot on the tarmac doesn't have to expose himself to death or near-certain capture to be a very useful accomplice in a malicious act. Being able to move contraband freely from tarmac to terminal could be quite useful.
That said, if you're at the point where your security depends on catching airline pilot conspirators as they smuggle bomb-making materials or firearms in from the tarmac, you might as well just give up.
I have a few concerns with the analysis -- and some more serious concerns with the 'spin' on the numbers.
For reference, the carbon dioxide emissions cost of thermal generation from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.) is roughly 1000 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour (g/kWh).
While the synopsis criticises nuclear power as being "25 times" (or worse) more polluting that the best-case solar and wind, the lifecycle emissions cost of nuclear power (including emissions in facility construction, decommissioning, and fuel mining and refining) is pegged in the study at between 9 and 70 g/kWh: more than 90% better than conventional coal.
The analysis also imposes on nuclear an "opportunity cost" on top of that of 59-106 g/kWh, based on the long time required to secure financing, permits, and complete construction and commissioning of nuclear plants, as well as anticipated downtimes for refurbishment at the end of each lifecycle. Finally, there's an additional 0-4.1 g/kWh penalty assessed based on increased risk of a 'limited nuclear exchange' (small nuclear war).
In other words, the actual lifecycle carbon dioxide cost of nuclear energy is less than 10% that of dirty coal. Even if one includes the rather-dubious 'opportunity cost' penalties, nuclear is still about an 85% reduction over coal. Not bad for one of the 'worst' options, and not a convincing argument that we should abandon nuclear energy as one tool to reduce emissions.
When the military gets laser rifles, it'll be that much easier for to make the case for why "assault rifles" should be regulated like bb guns.
In much the same was as how after the military got nuclear bombs, it became possible for homeowners to purchase 2000-pound iron bombs from Wal-mart, without a permit.
Though I've heard this procedure is quite painful, breaking into bones to dig out (or stuff in) marrow.
The final stage of bone marrow transplantation - the delivery of bone marrow to the recipient - is pretty much painless. The bone marrow can be delivered through an ordinary IV, just like a blood transfusion. (The blood-making cells - hematopoietic stem cells - are smart enough to find their way to the marrow of the recipient's bones; there's no need to put them back in bones manually.)
The collection of bone marrow can be painful, but doesn't have to be. The old-school way was to jab large needles into the donor's pelvic bone under general anaesthetic. It can be done as an outpatient procedure, but most centers prefer to have donors stay overnight. There's usually soreness for a few weeks afterward (rather like falling - hard - on your ass) that is generally controlled with oral painkillers. It's not fun, but it's not the end of the world.
The newfangled technique is to administer G-CSF (granulocyte colony-stimulating factor) to the donor for a few days. G-CSF stimulates the donor's bone marrow to dramatically increase its production of stem cells; it also mobilizes those stem cells out of the bones and into the blood. Side effects may include a bit of fatigue and a day or two of bone soreness (rather like the flu).
A so-called peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) collection takes a few hours, requires a couple of IV lines in the donor's arms, and has essentially zero aftereffects. (A continuous flow cell separator draws blood from the donor, retains the white cell fraction containing the stem cells, and returns the rest of the blood to the body.) The donor can return to work the next day; the side effects of G-CSF injection fade almost immediately.
I was a donor for a PBSC collection earlier this year. (I've been in my country's bone marrow donor registry for about ten years; this was the first time I was matched to a recipient.) All told, it probably cost me a couple of work days - a pair of half-days to do blood workups and physicals (including, appropriately enough, HIV and other infectious disease testing) plus a full day off for the collection itself. No biggie.
No, the real problem here isn't the transplant itself; it's the recipient preparation. Right now, the workup includes some really nasty chemo and/or radiation to wipe out the recipient's own marrow. The side effects of chemo/radiation treatment are brutally unpleasant (massive nausea, digestive problems, hair loss, the whole shebang). The recipient is badly immunocompromised until the new bone marrow gets settled in and starts cranking out new immune system cells. (Interesting fact: the recipient often acquires the donor's allergies.) Even minor infections can be life-threatening during this period.
Something like one in three people won't survive the procedure. Until we can fix that, this treatment option will remain a laboratory curiosity for the bulk of HIV-positive individuals.
But "Civil Security Force" are Obama's words and to my knowledge the Peace Corp doesn't "secure" anything.
'Security' doesn't just mean meatheads with guns going out to kill bad guys. (See, for example, 'Social Security'.)
Though in a 'physical safety' sense, it can certainly be argued that the Peace Corps serves to advance that aim as well. In addition to the direct benefits they provide around the world in terms of medical care, training, disaster relief, etc., an effective Peace Corps can improve the safety and security of the United States by alleviating poverty and by building international goodwill.
So the Packers pay Qualitex a royalty or somethin' to use the colors?
Trademark rights aren't necessarily all-or-nothing in that way. In the Qualitex decision, the Court held that a color could be protected by trademark rights if it was used to identify a specific brand of a particular product. Since the Packers aren't trying to sell green-gold dry cleaning press pads, it seems unlikely that Qualitex's trademark would apply.
Similarly, there's nothing that prevents me from selling brown laptops (except good taste), but a court likely could sanction me if I were to start an express parcel delivery service that used the color brown extensively in its marketing and livery (infringing UPS' trademarked color).
Lake Michigan is entirely within the bounds of the US. Chicago is nowhere near the border.
Perhaps not, but one can cross from Canada ('Red' Canada, with its dirty hippie Liberals, socialist single-payer healthcare, and marriage between sodomites) to Lake Michigan without stopping at a land border. Take a boat from the Canadian shores of Lake Huron through the Straits of Mackinac and you're in Lake Michigan. Hydrologists sometimes treat Huron and Michigan as a single large lake with a narrow point at the Straits; see also Lake Michigan-Huron.
A great deal of international shipping comes through the Port of Chicago via the Great Lakes. While the blatant power grab here by the border patrol is appalling, it is at least logical to include the shores of Lake Michigan in the United States' borders.
why not consider the possibility of offering a once-in-a-short-lifetime trip to people who have a terminal illness...
I like the outside-the-box thinking, but there's at least a few problems with that strategy.
You've got to find people who have a) a terminal illness, b) that almost certainly won't kill them for at least five years (time of training, plus time of journey, plus at least a year on Mars), c) who can still function normally (mentally and physically), d) and will continue to be able to function effectively up until near the time of their deaths, e) who are willing to give up any hope of getting a cure if one should happen to be developed in the meantime on Earth.
The list of diseases and illnesses that qualify for (a) through (d) is relatively short. The only large pool that I can think of is individuals with an HIV infection, and they'd be taking a big chance on (e). As well, there might be a reluctance to form a crew from individuals carrying a mix of different transmissible diseases.
So cheating is enormously difficult and only really happens in regional areas, where the volunteers are all from one party and the election official is also corrupt....
In Canadian elections (and I suspect in many other jurisdictions as well), staff at polling places are drawn from lists provided by the local party associations. The two parties which received the most votes in the previous election each get to submit a list of names of people the party thinks are sufficiently trustworthy and competent to check names off the voters' list and count ballots. Each polling place is then run by two people: one from each party's list.
In other words, representatives from two different parties have to sign off on everything, from the fact that the ballot box started out empty to the ballot counts at the end of the day. These staff are supervised and paid for their work by a non-partisan body, Elections Canada. (Paying people sometimes works better than relying on volunteers....)
As an additional check, any candidate in the election can send representatives ('scrutineers') to monitor any part of the process for irregularities. Because the whole system is based on paper ballots in a cardboard box, there are no problems with making sure that everyone understands the technology. (It's a lot easier for the average layperson to understand paper ballot stuffing compared to corruption of an electronic voting system.)
Whisky, and any other alcoholic drink for that matter, has one and only one alcohol, ethanol, C2H5OH. At least, it better, since any other form of alcohol is quite poisonous.
Yes, the other alcohols are toxic (to varying degrees), but no, ethanol isn't the only alcohol present in fermented beverages. For that matter, ethanol is toxic by itself, if you take enough of it. It's the dose that makes the poison.
Small amounts of methanol can be produced in fermentation, as well as a number of heavier alcohols. These heavier alcohols are collectively called fusel alcohols or fusel oils, and may impart significant flavour to the final beverage. Whiskeys are generally fairly high in fusel oils; these heavier alcohols contribute some 'spiciness' or 'heat' to the drink.
That said, I agree with part of the parent post. The idea that fusel oils are lost to evaporation during aging is indeed nonsense. If anything, these higher-mass alcohols will have a lower vapour pressure than ethanol, and will be concentrated relative to ethanol. (Fusel oils are - partly - removed during the distillation process, not during aging.)
if there's 2000 of them 1 or 2 failing isn't that big of a deal
Yeah, 1 or 2 failing is a big deal because there is no redundancy.
You're both right; you're just talking past each other.
Consider any fairly complex, fairly expensive piece of technology. Think new automobile, or (for the Slashdot crowd) new file server. If you order 1238 of them from the factory, do you expect them all to work perfectly, out of the box? Hell no. Even if someone did some sort of testing prior to delivery, you never know if there's a component hanging by a thread, or something that got jostled on the truck.
Most of us would be thrilled if only one or two out of a thousand items failed, and we don't usually buy equipment that carries thousand-ampere currents, contains both liquid helium and hard vacuum, and is exposed to hard radiation. In that sense, if one or two magnets give up during their initial burn-in, it isn't particularly surprising or worrying. If dozens started popping seals in the next couple of months then it would be a big deal, suggusting some sort of serious and costly design flaw.
On the flip side, failure of even one magnet is serious from a scientific perspective, as the beamline can't operate (AFAIK) without all of its magnets humming. Nevertheless, I doubt that anyone working on the project is panicking. These sorts of delays are par for the course for any major engineering endeavour, and a delay of a month or two - or even a year - is going to be disappointing but entirely expected for the scientists involved.
If you're afraid that you can't afford adequate health care for your children, you'll want socialized medicine.
Or, possibly, you're afraid that sometimes other people might - from time to time - be unable to afford adequate health care for their children.
I come from a mid-sized, stable family. I have a good university education. My parents are enjoying (and can afford) their comfortable retirement. I have a roof over my head, a share of a nice vacation property, and a healthy nest egg in the bank. I'm smarter than average; I write and speak fluently; I am adept at mental math. I can write code, work a cash register, operate a linear accelerator, cook on a barbecue, drive a forklift, change a tire, solve differential equations, make a delicious cream of mushroom soup, deliver newspapers, split wood, describe the differences - general and specific - between Old and New World wines, and push a wheelbarrow. I will always be able to find a job. Short of a genuinely global disaster, it's astonishly unlikely I'll ever have to worry about where my next meal or my medical care will come from. And yet I still think socialized medicine is a good idea. What's up with that?
Perhaps I just want to live in a society where I know the other guy isn't worried about getting medical care for his kids. We hold these truths to be self-evident, do we not? In order to be free to pursue happiness, we must first be secure in both our liberty and in our very lives.
Of course, the greedy, grasping Republican in me also wonders if we're not getting ripped off in the United States. For some reason, we pay roughly twice as much per capita for health care as people in Canada, or Sweden, or Japan, or the Netherlands. While I know that those are poor, squalid, backward, unpleasant places to live when compared to the U.S. of A., my wallet still tells me that we ought to be asking some very pointed questions.
Consensus (among psychologists) is that IQ scores are following a normal distribution....
That's not so much 'consensus' as a part of the actual definition of IQ. Raw test results are renormed to give IQ scores which are normally distributed.
I like knowing that the power cable on my blender contains lead and that I should wash my hands after plugging it in and before touching food.
Ah, but do you really know anything useful? Where is the lead? Is it in the wire? Is it in the male contacts? The female contacts? The insulation?
At what concentration is the lead? Are you getting more lead exposure from washing your hands because your home is old and still has leaded solder in its copper plumbing?
In what chemical form is the lead? Is it solid metal? Is it part of an alloy? Is it part of an organometallic complex? Is it part of a water-soluble ion? Fat-soluble?
Is your exposure significantly higher when the cord is warm (after use, or when stored on a sunny windowsill)? Is the exposure negligible if you only handle the cord when it's cool?
The Prop 65 warning tells you nothing about the degree of risk to which you are exposed, nor does it guide you as to what precautions are adequate. By being vague to the point of uselessness, it puts people at risk because they won't know when they are being warned of a genuine danger. I was in a hotel gift shop in San Diego a little while ago, and the shelf of souvenir shot glasses had a Prop 65 warning on it. (I think it had something to do with the exterior glazes on the glasses, but I'm not certain.) If a product from which I am likely to consume beverages - and which is sold for that purpose - carries a Prop 65 warning but is still legal for sale, then I have no reason to ever believe in the future that any Prop 65 warning represents the presence of something particularly worrying.
Oh, and shouldn't you be washing your hands before handling food anyway?
It seems that if you wanted to change it's course by a continuous amount, that simply increasing it's mass by pushing other material into it's field would make the sun do the work. Just a random thought.
Nope. The acceleration felt by an object in a gravitational field is going to be essentially independent of mass. As you increase the mass of the object, the gravitational force on it will increase, but so will the force required to accelerate the larger combined object. Consequently, the (now-slightly-heavier) asteroid will follow the same course.
Briefly, neither harpooning nor landing (followed by continuous thrust) work if the asteroid is rotating at all. A cable gets all twisted and the lander might only be pointed in the right direction for a small fraction of the asteroid's rotation period.
Both of those solutions also assume that the asteriod's surface has sufficient mechanical strength to hold a harpoon or a thrusting lander. What do you do if there's an icy crust that breaks up when you harpoon or land? What if you land in a crater at a funny angle? What if your craft sinks out of radio contact with its ground station? What if there's appreciable outgassing as the asteroid warms near the sun, and your lander or harpoon gets blown off?
The gravity tractor works regardless of what the asteroid is made of, how it tumbles, and what shape it has.
I disagree, giving someone a key to your house DOES give them the right to enter. Maybe not ethically without knocking, but they do legally have a right to enter your home.
The details will depend on jurisdiction, but no--the right to enter your home at any time does not necessarily come with the voluntarily-given key. If I gave the maid a key so she could clean once a week, she would be committing trespass if she used the key to enter my house at four in the morning. If I fired the maid but forgot to take my key back, she would be trespassing if she used the key again--even if she showed up on Tuesday morning and cleaned my kitchen.
More generally, when a key is given it is often accompanied (explicitly or implicitly) by conditions determining the situations wherein its use would be appropriate. Mere possession of a key is not necessarily sufficient to grant the would-be trespasser the rights and privileges of an invitee.
Slashdot Mirror
It would if the case were tried in a U.S. court. Since this case involves Swedish scientists criticising an Israeli company in an English journal, I somehow doubt that U.S. rules apply.
Under English defamation law, defamatory statements are presumed false unless proven true, and the 'actual malice' standard from U.S. jurisprudence is applied quite a bit differently. The much lower bar of simple 'negligence' is all that is required to libel private individuals.
You might be interested in Wikipedia's smaller sister project, Wiktionary.
There you can find the definitions of all kinds of useful words, like disenfranchise and, perhaps, disenchant .
Well, not really. If you want to create a 'suitcase nuke' or other highly-compact, highly-efficient design, then sure -- you need lots of testing and a pile of supercomputers.
On the other hand, if you're willing to be a bit sloppy and settle for less than the maximum possible yield - not a fizzle, mind you, just less than 100% efficiency - then you can do quite well without Cray supercomputers.
Since the grandparent post mentioned a grapefruit-sized chunk of plutonium, let's see how the numbers work. Figure a good-sized grapefruit has a total volume of about 600 mL (for US readers, that's a shade over a pint, or a grapefruit about 4 inches in diameter). The density of pure plutonium is almost exactly 20 grams per cubic centimeter (mL). A grapefruit-sized lump, then, is about 12 kilograms (26 pounds).
For comparison, the Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki contained 6.2 kg (less than 14 lbs) of plutonium. (Indeed, a grapefruit-sized lump of weapons-grade plutonium would be dangerously supercritical.)
Are the calculations complex? Yep. You'd want to have at least one or two modern-day physics and EngSci grad students working on your project.
Do you need supercomputers? In 1945, you needed the best they had to offer. In 2009, your cellular phone has more computing power than the entire Manhattan Project. Dell will set you up with a suitable laptop for less than $1000. You only need to call Cray if you're trying to construct a suitcase nuke or ballistic missile warhead - projects where the size and weight of the device are critical - or if you need to use the absolute minimum possible amount of plutonium.
Is the manufacturing difficult and exacting? Sure. You'll want a skilled machinist or two, a good CNC mill, and the ability to work under inert gas. All of that, you can buy off the shelf today.
I could find you the people with the necessary skills in a week, have the workshop up and running in a month, and build a replica of the Fat Man in a year. Capital costs for the project would be less than a million dollars. The big challenge is locating people who want to participate and who won't blow the whistle -- the technical stuff, while difficult, is nowhere near insurmountable.
Suitable runways actually aren't that hard to come by. Lightly loaded, the 747-8 and the A380 can both take off from a one-mile (1600 meter) runway. Fully-tricked out and at its maximum takeoff weight, the longest runway the 747-8 could require is a bit less than two miles (about 3000 meters).
Any nation that has now (or had in the last couple of decades) the ability to build a few miles of good highway could build a suitable runway. That includes virtually every country on earth, and nearly all of them did.
All of the colored-in countries on this map have at least one paved runway longer than 2400 meters; all could safely land and launch a new 747-8-based Air Force One. (Altogether, 119 countries are on that list, and the data are incomplete - for some reason several countries, including Sweden, South Africa, Spain, and the United States, have been omitted.)
The obstacles associated with Air Force One visits to developing countries are political and security-related, not primarily a technical inability to land.
While I fully agree that much of what the TSA does is near-useless security theater, the statement I've quoted isn't necessarily as absurd as it appears at first glance. Sure, a pilot in the air with a jet full of fuel and passengers could do a tremendous amount of damage. But - and this 'but' is key - he can only do that damage by sacrificing himself.
On the other hand, a pilot on the tarmac doesn't have to expose himself to death or near-certain capture to be a very useful accomplice in a malicious act. Being able to move contraband freely from tarmac to terminal could be quite useful.
That said, if you're at the point where your security depends on catching airline pilot conspirators as they smuggle bomb-making materials or firearms in from the tarmac, you might as well just give up.
For reference, the carbon dioxide emissions cost of thermal generation from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.) is roughly 1000 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour (g/kWh).
While the synopsis criticises nuclear power as being "25 times" (or worse) more polluting that the best-case solar and wind, the lifecycle emissions cost of nuclear power (including emissions in facility construction, decommissioning, and fuel mining and refining) is pegged in the study at between 9 and 70 g/kWh: more than 90% better than conventional coal.
The analysis also imposes on nuclear an "opportunity cost" on top of that of 59-106 g/kWh, based on the long time required to secure financing, permits, and complete construction and commissioning of nuclear plants, as well as anticipated downtimes for refurbishment at the end of each lifecycle. Finally, there's an additional 0-4.1 g/kWh penalty assessed based on increased risk of a 'limited nuclear exchange' (small nuclear war).
In other words, the actual lifecycle carbon dioxide cost of nuclear energy is less than 10% that of dirty coal. Even if one includes the rather-dubious 'opportunity cost' penalties, nuclear is still about an 85% reduction over coal. Not bad for one of the 'worst' options, and not a convincing argument that we should abandon nuclear energy as one tool to reduce emissions.
In much the same was as how after the military got nuclear bombs, it became possible for homeowners to purchase 2000-pound iron bombs from Wal-mart, without a permit.
Wait...what?
Link.
The final stage of bone marrow transplantation - the delivery of bone marrow to the recipient - is pretty much painless. The bone marrow can be delivered through an ordinary IV, just like a blood transfusion. (The blood-making cells - hematopoietic stem cells - are smart enough to find their way to the marrow of the recipient's bones; there's no need to put them back in bones manually.)
The collection of bone marrow can be painful, but doesn't have to be. The old-school way was to jab large needles into the donor's pelvic bone under general anaesthetic. It can be done as an outpatient procedure, but most centers prefer to have donors stay overnight. There's usually soreness for a few weeks afterward (rather like falling - hard - on your ass) that is generally controlled with oral painkillers. It's not fun, but it's not the end of the world.
The newfangled technique is to administer G-CSF (granulocyte colony-stimulating factor) to the donor for a few days. G-CSF stimulates the donor's bone marrow to dramatically increase its production of stem cells; it also mobilizes those stem cells out of the bones and into the blood. Side effects may include a bit of fatigue and a day or two of bone soreness (rather like the flu).
A so-called peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) collection takes a few hours, requires a couple of IV lines in the donor's arms, and has essentially zero aftereffects. (A continuous flow cell separator draws blood from the donor, retains the white cell fraction containing the stem cells, and returns the rest of the blood to the body.) The donor can return to work the next day; the side effects of G-CSF injection fade almost immediately.
I was a donor for a PBSC collection earlier this year. (I've been in my country's bone marrow donor registry for about ten years; this was the first time I was matched to a recipient.) All told, it probably cost me a couple of work days - a pair of half-days to do blood workups and physicals (including, appropriately enough, HIV and other infectious disease testing) plus a full day off for the collection itself. No biggie.
No, the real problem here isn't the transplant itself; it's the recipient preparation. Right now, the workup includes some really nasty chemo and/or radiation to wipe out the recipient's own marrow. The side effects of chemo/radiation treatment are brutally unpleasant (massive nausea, digestive problems, hair loss, the whole shebang). The recipient is badly immunocompromised until the new bone marrow gets settled in and starts cranking out new immune system cells. (Interesting fact: the recipient often acquires the donor's allergies.) Even minor infections can be life-threatening during this period.
Something like one in three people won't survive the procedure. Until we can fix that, this treatment option will remain a laboratory curiosity for the bulk of HIV-positive individuals.
'Security' doesn't just mean meatheads with guns going out to kill bad guys. (See, for example, 'Social Security'.)
Though in a 'physical safety' sense, it can certainly be argued that the Peace Corps serves to advance that aim as well. In addition to the direct benefits they provide around the world in terms of medical care, training, disaster relief, etc., an effective Peace Corps can improve the safety and security of the United States by alleviating poverty and by building international goodwill.
Trademark rights aren't necessarily all-or-nothing in that way. In the Qualitex decision, the Court held that a color could be protected by trademark rights if it was used to identify a specific brand of a particular product. Since the Packers aren't trying to sell green-gold dry cleaning press pads, it seems unlikely that Qualitex's trademark would apply.
Similarly, there's nothing that prevents me from selling brown laptops (except good taste), but a court likely could sanction me if I were to start an express parcel delivery service that used the color brown extensively in its marketing and livery (infringing UPS' trademarked color).
Perhaps not, but one can cross from Canada ('Red' Canada, with its dirty hippie Liberals, socialist single-payer healthcare, and marriage between sodomites) to Lake Michigan without stopping at a land border. Take a boat from the Canadian shores of Lake Huron through the Straits of Mackinac and you're in Lake Michigan. Hydrologists sometimes treat Huron and Michigan as a single large lake with a narrow point at the Straits; see also Lake Michigan-Huron.
A great deal of international shipping comes through the Port of Chicago via the Great Lakes. While the blatant power grab here by the border patrol is appalling, it is at least logical to include the shores of Lake Michigan in the United States' borders.
I like the outside-the-box thinking, but there's at least a few problems with that strategy.
You've got to find people who have a) a terminal illness, b) that almost certainly won't kill them for at least five years (time of training, plus time of journey, plus at least a year on Mars), c) who can still function normally (mentally and physically), d) and will continue to be able to function effectively up until near the time of their deaths, e) who are willing to give up any hope of getting a cure if one should happen to be developed in the meantime on Earth.
The list of diseases and illnesses that qualify for (a) through (d) is relatively short. The only large pool that I can think of is individuals with an HIV infection, and they'd be taking a big chance on (e). As well, there might be a reluctance to form a crew from individuals carrying a mix of different transmissible diseases.
In Canadian elections (and I suspect in many other jurisdictions as well), staff at polling places are drawn from lists provided by the local party associations. The two parties which received the most votes in the previous election each get to submit a list of names of people the party thinks are sufficiently trustworthy and competent to check names off the voters' list and count ballots. Each polling place is then run by two people: one from each party's list.
In other words, representatives from two different parties have to sign off on everything, from the fact that the ballot box started out empty to the ballot counts at the end of the day. These staff are supervised and paid for their work by a non-partisan body, Elections Canada. (Paying people sometimes works better than relying on volunteers....)
As an additional check, any candidate in the election can send representatives ('scrutineers') to monitor any part of the process for irregularities. Because the whole system is based on paper ballots in a cardboard box, there are no problems with making sure that everyone understands the technology. (It's a lot easier for the average layperson to understand paper ballot stuffing compared to corruption of an electronic voting system.)
Yes, the other alcohols are toxic (to varying degrees), but no, ethanol isn't the only alcohol present in fermented beverages. For that matter, ethanol is toxic by itself, if you take enough of it. It's the dose that makes the poison.
Small amounts of methanol can be produced in fermentation, as well as a number of heavier alcohols. These heavier alcohols are collectively called fusel alcohols or fusel oils, and may impart significant flavour to the final beverage. Whiskeys are generally fairly high in fusel oils; these heavier alcohols contribute some 'spiciness' or 'heat' to the drink.
That said, I agree with part of the parent post. The idea that fusel oils are lost to evaporation during aging is indeed nonsense. If anything, these higher-mass alcohols will have a lower vapour pressure than ethanol, and will be concentrated relative to ethanol. (Fusel oils are - partly - removed during the distillation process, not during aging.)
You're both right; you're just talking past each other.
Consider any fairly complex, fairly expensive piece of technology. Think new automobile, or (for the Slashdot crowd) new file server. If you order 1238 of them from the factory, do you expect them all to work perfectly, out of the box? Hell no. Even if someone did some sort of testing prior to delivery, you never know if there's a component hanging by a thread, or something that got jostled on the truck.
Most of us would be thrilled if only one or two out of a thousand items failed, and we don't usually buy equipment that carries thousand-ampere currents, contains both liquid helium and hard vacuum, and is exposed to hard radiation. In that sense, if one or two magnets give up during their initial burn-in, it isn't particularly surprising or worrying. If dozens started popping seals in the next couple of months then it would be a big deal, suggusting some sort of serious and costly design flaw.
On the flip side, failure of even one magnet is serious from a scientific perspective, as the beamline can't operate (AFAIK) without all of its magnets humming. Nevertheless, I doubt that anyone working on the project is panicking. These sorts of delays are par for the course for any major engineering endeavour, and a delay of a month or two - or even a year - is going to be disappointing but entirely expected for the scientists involved.
Oh--right.
I dunno...on the internet, one always assumes that pipingguy is involved with pornography.
Or possibly backbone routers.
Or, possibly, you're afraid that sometimes other people might - from time to time - be unable to afford adequate health care for their children.
I come from a mid-sized, stable family. I have a good university education. My parents are enjoying (and can afford) their comfortable retirement. I have a roof over my head, a share of a nice vacation property, and a healthy nest egg in the bank. I'm smarter than average; I write and speak fluently; I am adept at mental math. I can write code, work a cash register, operate a linear accelerator, cook on a barbecue, drive a forklift, change a tire, solve differential equations, make a delicious cream of mushroom soup, deliver newspapers, split wood, describe the differences - general and specific - between Old and New World wines, and push a wheelbarrow. I will always be able to find a job. Short of a genuinely global disaster, it's astonishly unlikely I'll ever have to worry about where my next meal or my medical care will come from. And yet I still think socialized medicine is a good idea. What's up with that?
Perhaps I just want to live in a society where I know the other guy isn't worried about getting medical care for his kids. We hold these truths to be self-evident, do we not? In order to be free to pursue happiness, we must first be secure in both our liberty and in our very lives.
Of course, the greedy, grasping Republican in me also wonders if we're not getting ripped off in the United States. For some reason, we pay roughly twice as much per capita for health care as people in Canada, or Sweden, or Japan, or the Netherlands. While I know that those are poor, squalid, backward, unpleasant places to live when compared to the U.S. of A., my wallet still tells me that we ought to be asking some very pointed questions.
That's not so much 'consensus' as a part of the actual definition of IQ. Raw test results are renormed to give IQ scores which are normally distributed.
Ah, but do you really know anything useful? Where is the lead? Is it in the wire? Is it in the male contacts? The female contacts? The insulation?
At what concentration is the lead? Are you getting more lead exposure from washing your hands because your home is old and still has leaded solder in its copper plumbing?
In what chemical form is the lead? Is it solid metal? Is it part of an alloy? Is it part of an organometallic complex? Is it part of a water-soluble ion? Fat-soluble?
Is your exposure significantly higher when the cord is warm (after use, or when stored on a sunny windowsill)? Is the exposure negligible if you only handle the cord when it's cool?
The Prop 65 warning tells you nothing about the degree of risk to which you are exposed, nor does it guide you as to what precautions are adequate. By being vague to the point of uselessness, it puts people at risk because they won't know when they are being warned of a genuine danger. I was in a hotel gift shop in San Diego a little while ago, and the shelf of souvenir shot glasses had a Prop 65 warning on it. (I think it had something to do with the exterior glazes on the glasses, but I'm not certain.) If a product from which I am likely to consume beverages - and which is sold for that purpose - carries a Prop 65 warning but is still legal for sale, then I have no reason to ever believe in the future that any Prop 65 warning represents the presence of something particularly worrying.
Oh, and shouldn't you be washing your hands before handling food anyway?
Nope. The acceleration felt by an object in a gravitational field is going to be essentially independent of mass. As you increase the mass of the object, the gravitational force on it will increase, but so will the force required to accelerate the larger combined object. Consequently, the (now-slightly-heavier) asteroid will follow the same course.
Both of those solutions also assume that the asteriod's surface has sufficient mechanical strength to hold a harpoon or a thrusting lander. What do you do if there's an icy crust that breaks up when you harpoon or land? What if you land in a crater at a funny angle? What if your craft sinks out of radio contact with its ground station? What if there's appreciable outgassing as the asteroid warms near the sun, and your lander or harpoon gets blown off?
The gravity tractor works regardless of what the asteroid is made of, how it tumbles, and what shape it has.
The details will depend on jurisdiction, but no--the right to enter your home at any time does not necessarily come with the voluntarily-given key. If I gave the maid a key so she could clean once a week, she would be committing trespass if she used the key to enter my house at four in the morning. If I fired the maid but forgot to take my key back, she would be trespassing if she used the key again--even if she showed up on Tuesday morning and cleaned my kitchen. More generally, when a key is given it is often accompanied (explicitly or implicitly) by conditions determining the situations wherein its use would be appropriate. Mere possession of a key is not necessarily sufficient to grant the would-be trespasser the rights and privileges of an invitee.
That's why I never key my online banking information into an unsecured camera.