Well, the thing about small science is that if you look at the cracks between big science projects, there's always more small science to be found.
I recently finished a project that deals with light scattering in biological tissues. All told, that project generated half a dozen or so published papers (not all written by me) in peer reviewed journals. Most of the work was done by undergraduates, and the total cost for equipment was well under ten thousand Canadian dollars.
One of my colleagues was testing new treatments for basal cell carcinomas (a relatively mild form of skin cancer). For the pilot study, he spent a couple of thousand dollars on light sources, less than a thousand on drugs, and did treatments in a converted broom closet at the hospital. By far the largest cost to the hospital was the time he and his coworkers contributed.
Interesting science, on useful problems, on shoestring budgets. You can't discover extrasolar earthlike planets by yourself (I would love to see a large space-based interferometer funded for just such a purpose) or test Grand Unified Theories in your basement. Big science is important, and needs to be funded. But to say that all the small science has been done shows an unfortunate lack of vision.
Penicillin was too good to be true. Yes, resistance is more common now--mostly through our own misuse of antibiotics--but it's still pretty amazing stuff.
A wonder drug that can stop thousands of different species of bacteria dead in their tracks. Quite something. Almost miraculous, really. Certainly would have seemed that way if you asked a doctor two hundred years ago.
Re:Perhaps the book covers it...
on
The Space Elevator
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· Score: 2, Informative
If you can accelerate/decelerate at 1g with a 20 tonne vehicle (40 tonnes of force ) then you can accelerate at 4g's with a 10 tonne vehicle ( also 40 tonnes of force ). This means you can go ~4 times as fast which is a very significant difference when dealing with long transit distances.
The thing is, all the space elevator concepts I've seen have put the crawler in physical contact with the cable. There are limits on maximum speed imposed by the mechanical strength of all the other components--not just the cable. Realistically, I would expect an acceleration relative to the cable of maybe a tenth of a gee for the first and last three minutes of the trip.
That results in a cruising speed of over six hundred kilometers per hour (better than 400 mph in the United States) and climbs the cable in a little less than four days. If the maximum acceleration were limited to 0.01 g, the acceleration phase would last a full half hour--but the whole trip would be lengthened by only about three percent.
If the vehicle actually were to accelerate (at 0.1 g) for the entire journey, at the halfway point the top speed would be a hellish 25000 km/h--a little hard on your crawler wheels and bearings, even though the trip would only be four hours long.
That said, if the cable had a 20 ton breaking tension (estimated), I probably wouldn't ever put more than a two or three ton load on it. I could jerk a crawler through a five gee mishap and not have to worry. (Actually, one wonders how much the nanotubes can stretch longitudinally before failing. Can we get away with large transient loads that get soaked up by the cable stretching?) For the first few years, I'd want most of the payloads going up to be more nanotubes, leading ultimately to several parallel ribbons--and crawler tracks.
...at River Oaks Public School in Oakville (near Toronto), Canada.
River Oaks is a K-8 elementary school with a student population of about 800. A little over a decade ago, the new school was built, fully wired, and loaded with technology through partnerships with Apple (among others). There was one computer for every three students and a computer for every teacher.
I was a student in Oakville during River Oaks' heyday. I attended a less well-funded school in the same district, but was bused to River Oaks once a week to use their shop and kitchen facilities for classes. The school had some neat toys, there's no doubt about it--instead of paper sketches in shop class, we were using proper CAD software. We also did some work with computer controlled Lego Technics sets.
Did we actually learn any more? Nope. Was the technology overkill? Probably. I typed my papers on a Commodore 64 until my parents bought their first 386 when I was in Grade 8--but there I was, surrounded by all these shiny new Macs. (I thought that flying toasters were just the coolest thing...)
Now, River Oaks can't afford to upgrade or even maintain the technology they have in place. I imagine that other school districts face similar problems. After the 'gee whiz' wears off, what do you really need computers for in a school environment? Typing assignments. Doing research on the net. Preparing presentations.
How do you do these things? Have a few well-maintained computer labs in the school. As for those students who don't have a computer at home--they'll get by. I've been without a home computer for a month because I haven't gotten around to ordering some parts to repair my old clunker. I do my computer work on campus, and life goes on.
So, now there's some new drink from Dr. Pepper. I'll probably hear about it on the radio, or maybe see a blog. I'll buy a bottle some day. If I like it, I buy more. If I don't, I won't buy it ever again.
That's what advertising is supposed to do.
You heard about the product; you tried buying the product.
If 10% of the people in the States buy only one bottle, that's still more than 25 million units sold. Small potatoes, yes--but if they get 10% of those to like the stuff, then that's nearly three million hooked customers. Ka-ching!
Science reporting in the mainstream media [is] increasingly a joke.
The work of honest and legitimate scientists is misquoted, misrepresented, and overstated daily even by supposedly 'serious' media outlets. Toss in a handful of publicity-hungry quacks and other pseudoscientists, and it's no wonder that some people perceive all of science as comical, if not fraudulent.
Very few scientists are interested in their public image beyond earning the respect of their peers, which I think is probably a sound motivation that results in good work. Stating that science and academia are a joke because of a few self-aggrandizing egomaniacs and the odd well-meaning fool (both can be found in any field) is like saying that everyone who plays Quake is a bottled-up serial killer waiting to blow up his high school.
Unfortunately, the media have chosen to tell us only about the most extreme representatives of any field, science included. Learning about the world of science from CNN is akin to learning about computer technology by watching Hackers.
Why aren't these two enzymes used in treatment of radiation exposure? Are they difficult to synthesize or unstable or something?
As another poster has noted, the enzymes described are too large to be delivered through the cell and nuclear membranes to the nucleus in order to protect DNA.
Also, the damage done by ionizing radiation is done quite quickly. The enzymes mentioned might have some protective effect if administered prophylactically--before radiation exposure--and if delivery were not an issue. (There is some experimental work being done that suggests gene therapy could be use to encourage cells to produce their own radioprotective agents This neatly sidesteps delivery problems, since the enzymes are produced in situ.)
Within a few seconds after the end of the exposure, the damage to DNA has been done, and the particularly nasty radicals and peroxides have pretty much been consumed. (The reason why these species are damaging is that they are so reactive--thus they don't last long with lots of tasty biomolecules around.) We would be closing the barn door after the horse is already gone.
Actually, I would say that the American news media have taken a hard right turn in the last few years, not in the least due to the WTC attacks.
I am a Canadian, but I receive quite a bit of U.S. news over the border--including CNN (and CNN Headline News). Aside from the tendency of CNN to loop the same story over and over for days at time without actually delivering much solid content, they have shown a tremendous amount of support for the current Bush Presidency in general, and war in Iraq in particular. I could be extremely cynical and note that wars are newsworthy, but there is also a strong rightward slant to their reporting. (Corporate accounting scandals are also newsworthy, but who has heard anything more about that lately?)
It might be fair to say that Fox News is further to the right than CNN. However, looking at the network and cable news available in the United States there just isn't anything that seems to be left leaning. That entire end of the spectrum is missing. Compare the American coverage of Iraq (any coverage) to that in Canada or the U.K. Look at the attendance numbers that each media outlet chooses to report for peace protests. Fox News isn't a complement to CNN--it's just further out on the same end of the spectrum.
It is only on the Internet that one sees much in the way of balance. (Balance in the sense that the number of left-wing nutjobs and right-wing nutjobs is roughly equal.) It's rather depressing.
Why should we discriminate against bricks-and-mortar retailers? Why should it only be their customers, who support their local economy, who are penalized?
Granted, implementation of sales taxes for all fifty states plus potentially scores of international jurisdictions is a nontrivial endeavour (understatement), but it's part of the cost of doing business. Look on the bright side--online retailers get to save a lot of money on mortar.
If the only added value an online retailer can offer is "I can offer marginally lower prices because I skirt tax laws"--do they deserve to be in business?
Incidentally, they need two perpendicular beams at each location because they don't know in advance from which direction the gravity waves will be coming.
You're often guilty until proven innocent here. For instance, while riding a bus or train in sydney, you often have to prove that you are not riding illegally or face a minimum fine, or (as i learned the hard way) jailtime for giving them the "innocent until proven guilty" speech. If you can't prove you didn't steal, then Aussie law says you did, and lip service to the transportation authority personnel will get you locked up until you can prove that you were, in fact, riding legally.
So, after they asked to see your ticket, you argued with the conductor? Um. If you get on an Amtrak train at Grand Central Station and the conductor sees you don't have a ticket, guess what--he's going to want some money. If you make a fuss, I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up speaking to some boys in blue.
Many countries have public transportation systems that operate on the honour system. In Toronto we have a commuter rail system where on most rides nobody checks your tickets. Station platforms have large yellow signs indicating that you must have proof of payment. Every so often, transit staff will wander down the train checking tickets and issuing $90 fines where appropriate.
I lived in Ottawa a few years ago. To speed boarding of the articulated buses during rush hour, commuters were allowed to board at the rear set of doors as well as up by the driver, as long as they had a valid transfer or pass. Again, there were little signs everywhere warning that you had to be able to prove you paid, or face a nasty fine.
If you don't like the ticket policies of the local transit system, don't use it. If the policy isn't clearly posted on each vehicle, that's worth complaining over. It's probably also printed on each ticket, if you turn it over.
Guilty until proven innocent? I'm pretty sure that Australia's criminal law system looks quite similar to those in most of the rest of the Commonwealth--trials involving judges, juries, and presumption of innocence. Their rules are different with respect to search and seizure, but I don't think Australia is known for being a particularly totalitarian regime.
Just RTFA and I cringed when I saw the bit about the instant sharing of files and images to the entire group. Crap like this is going to play havoc with business networks.
You're absolutely right. It's fortunate that people haven't been sharing files, spreading viruses, and wasting corporate/university/other bandwidth for the last half decade or more using ICQ, AIM and predecessors, Kazaa, Morpheus, Napster...Yes, it runs on a proprietary operating system, and yes, it requires the installation of software that most of/. probably don't like. (I know I don't like Messenger, and try to kill it on every machine over which I have control.)
Quite frankly, it seems that Microsoft may well have had some new people do something that's actually innovative (well, maybe). It certainly sounds like a very intuitive interface. Moreover, it is something that the target market might be interested in.
This is what software development is supposed to be about! Make a product that people like, and that does what they want. Kudos to Microsoft if they're trying to do that. There are lots of legitimate reasons to bash MS--save the petty remarks for when they are appropriate. (Windows XP comes to mind.)
However, the syntheses involved in making organophosphate nerve agents are nontrivial.
On the other hand, organophosphate pesticides are still used in Central and South America. They are quite nasty in their own right (not quite as bad as the nerve agents) but can be purchased legally in many places. These pesticides already kill quite a number of farmers--released into a confined space, they would definitely have the desired effect.
The feds seem so concerned about smallpox, for whatever reason, when the nations that have had Ebola outbreaks (Congo, Cote D'Ivoire, and Sudan) are in so much political chaos that setting up a lab and collecting and amplifying virus appears quite possible (whereas the only known smallpox stocks in the world are being kept in cold storage in Russia and the US).
We know how to deal with smallpox, so some countries are preparing strategies. Immunize fast. Try to isolate infected areas. That's about it. It's also pretty nasty stuff. The mortality rate is a few tens of percent, depending on treatment available and timeliness of diagnosis.
Hemorrhagic fevers have no know cure, no vaccine, no good treatment. They certainly kill infected individuals at a greater rate (call it 90%, give or take a bit depending on the flavour) but they are less transmissible--notably, they're not airborne. They also have a very short incubation period, making containment potentially easier. (It's hard to hide bleeding from all your bodily orifices.)
Politically, then, it makes sense to talk about smallpox, because while it is possible to do something about it (immunization is effective even a little while after exposure to the smallpox virus) significant advance planning must be done. There is little that can be done to prepare for another Ebola (that isn't already part of preparations for other natural or artificial disease outbreaks), so politicians are loath to discuss it.
They're not open source. They're just examples the best of what closed-source companies should be. They respond quickly to customer issues, they patch rapidly, and they make a superb product. For the record, 'OSS' is not always equivalent to 'good', and 'closed source' doesn't always have to mean 'crappy abominable bloatware'.
'modelling' -> 2.6e6 hits, 'modeling' -> 5.7e6 hits. Close call, perhaps both are acceptable?
Indeed they are.
'Modeling' is the accepted form in United States English. In the UK (English English) the form 'modelling' is most appropriate.
In most jurisdictions, either form can be used without comment. (Sad to say, most employers are impressed if a person shows even the most rudimentary spelling skills.)
There are also a few EULAs which consider consent to be physically opening the package which contains the software (Old School M$, and Iomega).
On the other hand, a lot of these older pieces of software shipped with paper copies of the license agreement. The software media were inside a sealed envelope within the box, so you could read the license agreement before deciding whether or not to open the envelope with the disks inside. Seems like a system that made sense, and it did at least tip its hat towards trying to make the contract binding.
Whether or not the contract provisions were legal in the first place is for another post, but at least MS used to recognize that you needed to be able to read (and agree to) a contract before you could be bound by it.
Except for one thing, most of the things listed are already in effect in most of Europe.
I am an US citizen living and working in Europe. If I change anything about my status, work address, home address, etc I have a few days where in which to inform the state and federal government. That is in addition to the yearly letters informing them about me and my living location.
As a Canadian citizen who has lived and worked in the United States, I can tell you that the paperwork and bureaucratic misery associated with crossing the world's longest undefended border is nothing to sneeze at. The U.S. government was very interested in knowing where I worked and for whom; where I lived; what I earned. Getting a social security number so I could fill out other forms, open a bank account, and get a phone line required three visits to the Social Security Administration office on the far side of town.
The last time I was in the States for an extended period was in August of 2001--I expect that things have become much more difficult since then. Even then, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service reserved the right to bar me from entering the country for any reason whatsoever, or none at all, at their sole discretion. Deportation would also have been a snap.
Governments have always kept a close eye on foreign nationals, whether in Europe or in North America. As someone voluntarily entering another country, one can choose whether or not the conditions imposed by the host government are too onerous. If you don't like the rules, leave. Whether appropriate or not, enforcement agencies have always had a freer hand in dealing with noncitizens.
What Patriot II (as described) does is lower the bar significantly for everyone. Don't like it? You can't pack up and go home. You are home. Does it bother you that the police can tap your phone lines, read your email, rifle your records, and steal your lunch money? Don't you dare whisper a protest. John Ashcroft can now strip your citizenship and deport you if you're part of any 'terrorist' organizations on his list. (Stay away from the ACLU--he'll be watching them.) You think it's tough being an American in Europe? Try being officially stateless.
Does Europe have a lot of red tape? Parts of it, sometimes, yes. Will you encounter the occasional petty middle management tyrant who won't give you the rubber stamp you want? Yep. (Good thing that the public service is so efficient on this side of the Atlantic.)
Is the European Union an aspiring police state, seeking the power to indefinitely detain or permanently deport its own citizens? Nope.
I don't know if it's quite that simple. Even with mixed isotopes of plutonium, it is possible to build a bomb. It's not going to be a terribly efficient device, but it would get the job done. If you're satisified with working in the range of a few tens of kilotons, then you can be quite sloppy with thirty or forty kilos of mixed plutonium isotopes and still be effective. (It goes without saying that this would be a large device. No suitcase bombs, nor something that could be delivered on a lightweight missile--maybe something that would fit on a regular shipping pallet.)
Uranium bombs are a different beast. Without highly (isotopically) enriched uranium, it is flat out impossible to produce a useful explosion.
With chemically separated plutonium, you can build an inefficient bomb. With chemically separated uranium--you can warm your toes.
All that said, a terrorist group would still be better off leaving plutonium or uranium dust in the streets or in a major building. Much bigger fear factor for the masses.
You know, I should have sympathy for the victims of this, but I don't. The solution is simple; don't use IE!
And the woman who wears provocative clothing is asking to get raped.
What about the poor sods who have to use IE at work? What about technical neophytes? Should nobody be allowed to use a computer until they've studied CS for a couple of years and know who RMS is? I use Opera--quite happily--at home but I'm posting this (unfortunately) from a machine at work with IE, on which another browser is not an option. Educating an employer is often a slow, painful, laborious process. I'm trying, but it takes time.
Freezing actually is not such a bad way to kill microorganisms in water.
Cells tend to rupture when frozen, either because the ice inside expands and bursts them (fast freezing) or because long, sharp, pointy ice crystals inside form and pierce the cell membrane (slow freezing). The temperatures typically found on ski slopes (within a few degrees of zero Celsius) are ideal for the formation of large ice crystals. There are also dehydration processes at work. Finally, cells left outside in slightly warmer weather still don't do well, because they'll starve to death. (Researchers who want to preserve cells long-term store them at liquid nitrogen temperatures to stop all metabolism.)
Recent research has suggested that freezing and thawing will also disable many viruses--apparently it damages the surface proteins they use to bind to our cells. Experiments conducted on freezing whole blood for storage revealed that freezing also inactivated much of the HIV in test samples. Some jurisdictions are now considering freezing all donated blood as an additional safety precaution before transfusion.
Not so say that freezing is a panacea--there are a number of nasties that will survive the process (encysted bad guys are often reisistant) but the frozen stuff is significantly cleaner than what came in, and it may well be cleaner than what's in most rivers.
Yes, I read the article, and yes, I realize that they filter and treat the water extensively before turning it to snow...but all that work might be overkill.
Gotta love thermodynamics midterms where 11/50 gets you a B+
That might be a bit misleading. Perhaps the professor wanted to have more resolution of marks in the top of the class. If the test is too easy and half the class gets forty-five or more marks out of fifty, it's useless from an evaluation standpoint.
Sounds like the prof in your case might have given a tough test, or marked extremely hard, or both, then scaled everything up. The question is, was the final class average a 70% (or equivalent)? 80%? 60%?
In the physics program at my university, courses almost universally get scaled, normed, or belled in some way to bring the class averages to around 70%. It's not grade inflation--in large classes one expects average marks to be at around a certain level. It's just a way of accounting for different types of testing that may have different goals. Look at it this way--if a large number of students all apparently fail to master the material based on their raw test scores, what does it mean? Might it suggest that the choice of material is too ambitious, or the prof is presenting ideas poorly? Should students be penalized for a poor quality of teaching?
On the other hand, maybe your grade was inflated. Are you dumber than I think you are?;)
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Well, the thing about small science is that if you look at the cracks between big science projects, there's always more small science to be found.
I recently finished a project that deals with light scattering in biological tissues. All told, that project generated half a dozen or so published papers (not all written by me) in peer reviewed journals. Most of the work was done by undergraduates, and the total cost for equipment was well under ten thousand Canadian dollars.
One of my colleagues was testing new treatments for basal cell carcinomas (a relatively mild form of skin cancer). For the pilot study, he spent a couple of thousand dollars on light sources, less than a thousand on drugs, and did treatments in a converted broom closet at the hospital. By far the largest cost to the hospital was the time he and his coworkers contributed.
Interesting science, on useful problems, on shoestring budgets. You can't discover extrasolar earthlike planets by yourself (I would love to see a large space-based interferometer funded for just such a purpose) or test Grand Unified Theories in your basement. Big science is important, and needs to be funded. But to say that all the small science has been done shows an unfortunate lack of vision.
Penicillin was too good to be true. Yes, resistance is more common now--mostly through our own misuse of antibiotics--but it's still pretty amazing stuff.
A wonder drug that can stop thousands of different species of bacteria dead in their tracks. Quite something. Almost miraculous, really. Certainly would have seemed that way if you asked a doctor two hundred years ago.
The thing is, all the space elevator concepts I've seen have put the crawler in physical contact with the cable. There are limits on maximum speed imposed by the mechanical strength of all the other components--not just the cable. Realistically, I would expect an acceleration relative to the cable of maybe a tenth of a gee for the first and last three minutes of the trip.
That results in a cruising speed of over six hundred kilometers per hour (better than 400 mph in the United States) and climbs the cable in a little less than four days. If the maximum acceleration were limited to 0.01 g, the acceleration phase would last a full half hour--but the whole trip would be lengthened by only about three percent.
If the vehicle actually were to accelerate (at 0.1 g) for the entire journey, at the halfway point the top speed would be a hellish 25000 km/h--a little hard on your crawler wheels and bearings, even though the trip would only be four hours long.
That said, if the cable had a 20 ton breaking tension (estimated), I probably wouldn't ever put more than a two or three ton load on it. I could jerk a crawler through a five gee mishap and not have to worry. (Actually, one wonders how much the nanotubes can stretch longitudinally before failing. Can we get away with large transient loads that get soaked up by the cable stretching?) For the first few years, I'd want most of the payloads going up to be more nanotubes, leading ultimately to several parallel ribbons--and crawler tracks.
Yes. Preferably, something about pancakes.
Actually, I've found that more stupid things are accomplished due to a "Just because you can't, doesn't mean you shouldn't" attitude.
Not only that, but it could readily be made compatible with a large installed base of legacy technology.
River Oaks is a K-8 elementary school with a student population of about 800. A little over a decade ago, the new school was built, fully wired, and loaded with technology through partnerships with Apple (among others). There was one computer for every three students and a computer for every teacher.
I was a student in Oakville during River Oaks' heyday. I attended a less well-funded school in the same district, but was bused to River Oaks once a week to use their shop and kitchen facilities for classes. The school had some neat toys, there's no doubt about it--instead of paper sketches in shop class, we were using proper CAD software. We also did some work with computer controlled Lego Technics sets.
Did we actually learn any more? Nope. Was the technology overkill? Probably. I typed my papers on a Commodore 64 until my parents bought their first 386 when I was in Grade 8--but there I was, surrounded by all these shiny new Macs. (I thought that flying toasters were just the coolest thing...)
Now, River Oaks can't afford to upgrade or even maintain the technology they have in place. I imagine that other school districts face similar problems. After the 'gee whiz' wears off, what do you really need computers for in a school environment? Typing assignments. Doing research on the net. Preparing presentations.
How do you do these things? Have a few well-maintained computer labs in the school. As for those students who don't have a computer at home--they'll get by. I've been without a home computer for a month because I haven't gotten around to ordering some parts to repair my old clunker. I do my computer work on campus, and life goes on.
That's what advertising is supposed to do.
You heard about the product; you tried buying the product.
If 10% of the people in the States buy only one bottle, that's still more than 25 million units sold. Small potatoes, yes--but if they get 10% of those to like the stuff, then that's nearly three million hooked customers. Ka-ching!
How about rephrasing that this way:
Science reporting in the mainstream media [is] increasingly a joke.
The work of honest and legitimate scientists is misquoted, misrepresented, and overstated daily even by supposedly 'serious' media outlets. Toss in a handful of publicity-hungry quacks and other pseudoscientists, and it's no wonder that some people perceive all of science as comical, if not fraudulent.
Very few scientists are interested in their public image beyond earning the respect of their peers, which I think is probably a sound motivation that results in good work. Stating that science and academia are a joke because of a few self-aggrandizing egomaniacs and the odd well-meaning fool (both can be found in any field) is like saying that everyone who plays Quake is a bottled-up serial killer waiting to blow up his high school.
Unfortunately, the media have chosen to tell us only about the most extreme representatives of any field, science included. Learning about the world of science from CNN is akin to learning about computer technology by watching Hackers.
As another poster has noted, the enzymes described are too large to be delivered through the cell and nuclear membranes to the nucleus in order to protect DNA.
Also, the damage done by ionizing radiation is done quite quickly. The enzymes mentioned might have some protective effect if administered prophylactically--before radiation exposure--and if delivery were not an issue. (There is some experimental work being done that suggests gene therapy could be use to encourage cells to produce their own radioprotective agents This neatly sidesteps delivery problems, since the enzymes are produced in situ.)
Within a few seconds after the end of the exposure, the damage to DNA has been done, and the particularly nasty radicals and peroxides have pretty much been consumed. (The reason why these species are damaging is that they are so reactive--thus they don't last long with lots of tasty biomolecules around.) We would be closing the barn door after the horse is already gone.
Actually, I would say that the American news media have taken a hard right turn in the last few years, not in the least due to the WTC attacks.
I am a Canadian, but I receive quite a bit of U.S. news over the border--including CNN (and CNN Headline News). Aside from the tendency of CNN to loop the same story over and over for days at time without actually delivering much solid content, they have shown a tremendous amount of support for the current Bush Presidency in general, and war in Iraq in particular. I could be extremely cynical and note that wars are newsworthy, but there is also a strong rightward slant to their reporting. (Corporate accounting scandals are also newsworthy, but who has heard anything more about that lately?)
It might be fair to say that Fox News is further to the right than CNN. However, looking at the network and cable news available in the United States there just isn't anything that seems to be left leaning. That entire end of the spectrum is missing. Compare the American coverage of Iraq (any coverage) to that in Canada or the U.K. Look at the attendance numbers that each media outlet chooses to report for peace protests. Fox News isn't a complement to CNN--it's just further out on the same end of the spectrum.
It is only on the Internet that one sees much in the way of balance. (Balance in the sense that the number of left-wing nutjobs and right-wing nutjobs is roughly equal.) It's rather depressing.
Why should we discriminate against bricks-and-mortar retailers? Why should it only be their customers, who support their local economy, who are penalized?
Granted, implementation of sales taxes for all fifty states plus potentially scores of international jurisdictions is a nontrivial endeavour (understatement), but it's part of the cost of doing business. Look on the bright side--online retailers get to save a lot of money on mortar.
If the only added value an online retailer can offer is "I can offer marginally lower prices because I skirt tax laws"--do they deserve to be in business?
Actually, you probably will owe tax, as well as import duties on many products.
On the bright side, Canadian dollars only cost about sixty-seven cents U.S., so it might still be worthwhile.
You mean like this?
Incidentally, they need two perpendicular beams at each location because they don't know in advance from which direction the gravity waves will be coming.
So, after they asked to see your ticket, you argued with the conductor? Um. If you get on an Amtrak train at Grand Central Station and the conductor sees you don't have a ticket, guess what--he's going to want some money. If you make a fuss, I wouldn't be surprised if you ended up speaking to some boys in blue.
Many countries have public transportation systems that operate on the honour system. In Toronto we have a commuter rail system where on most rides nobody checks your tickets. Station platforms have large yellow signs indicating that you must have proof of payment. Every so often, transit staff will wander down the train checking tickets and issuing $90 fines where appropriate.
I lived in Ottawa a few years ago. To speed boarding of the articulated buses during rush hour, commuters were allowed to board at the rear set of doors as well as up by the driver, as long as they had a valid transfer or pass. Again, there were little signs everywhere warning that you had to be able to prove you paid, or face a nasty fine.
If you don't like the ticket policies of the local transit system, don't use it. If the policy isn't clearly posted on each vehicle, that's worth complaining over. It's probably also printed on each ticket, if you turn it over.
Guilty until proven innocent? I'm pretty sure that Australia's criminal law system looks quite similar to those in most of the rest of the Commonwealth--trials involving judges, juries, and presumption of innocence. Their rules are different with respect to search and seizure, but I don't think Australia is known for being a particularly totalitarian regime.
You're absolutely right. It's fortunate that people haven't been sharing files, spreading viruses, and wasting corporate/university/other bandwidth for the last half decade or more using ICQ, AIM and predecessors, Kazaa, Morpheus, Napster...Yes, it runs on a proprietary operating system, and yes, it requires the installation of software that most of /. probably don't like. (I know I don't like Messenger, and try to kill it on every machine over which I have control.)
Quite frankly, it seems that Microsoft may well have had some new people do something that's actually innovative (well, maybe). It certainly sounds like a very intuitive interface. Moreover, it is something that the target market might be interested in.
This is what software development is supposed to be about! Make a product that people like, and that does what they want. Kudos to Microsoft if they're trying to do that. There are lots of legitimate reasons to bash MS--save the petty remarks for when they are appropriate. (Windows XP comes to mind.)
On the other hand, organophosphate pesticides are still used in Central and South America. They are quite nasty in their own right (not quite as bad as the nerve agents) but can be purchased legally in many places. These pesticides already kill quite a number of farmers--released into a confined space, they would definitely have the desired effect.
The feds seem so concerned about smallpox, for whatever reason, when the nations that have had Ebola outbreaks (Congo, Cote D'Ivoire, and Sudan) are in so much political chaos that setting up a lab and collecting and amplifying virus appears quite possible (whereas the only known smallpox stocks in the world are being kept in cold storage in Russia and the US).
We know how to deal with smallpox, so some countries are preparing strategies. Immunize fast. Try to isolate infected areas. That's about it. It's also pretty nasty stuff. The mortality rate is a few tens of percent, depending on treatment available and timeliness of diagnosis.
Hemorrhagic fevers have no know cure, no vaccine, no good treatment. They certainly kill infected individuals at a greater rate (call it 90%, give or take a bit depending on the flavour) but they are less transmissible--notably, they're not airborne. They also have a very short incubation period, making containment potentially easier. (It's hard to hide bleeding from all your bodily orifices.)
Politically, then, it makes sense to talk about smallpox, because while it is possible to do something about it (immunization is effective even a little while after exposure to the smallpox virus) significant advance planning must be done. There is little that can be done to prepare for another Ebola (that isn't already part of preparations for other natural or artificial disease outbreaks), so politicians are loath to discuss it.
Opera began as a research project at Norway's national telecom company (Telenor) in 1994. It was spun off into an independent company the following year. Opera Software ASA is privately-owned, mostly by its own employees. If you made them a really good offer, you could probably buy the whole company.
They're not open source. They're just examples the best of what closed-source companies should be. They respond quickly to customer issues, they patch rapidly, and they make a superb product. For the record, 'OSS' is not always equivalent to 'good', and 'closed source' doesn't always have to mean 'crappy abominable bloatware'.
Indeed they are.
'Modeling' is the accepted form in United States English. In the UK (English English) the form 'modelling' is most appropriate.
In most jurisdictions, either form can be used without comment. (Sad to say, most employers are impressed if a person shows even the most rudimentary spelling skills.)
On the other hand, a lot of these older pieces of software shipped with paper copies of the license agreement. The software media were inside a sealed envelope within the box, so you could read the license agreement before deciding whether or not to open the envelope with the disks inside. Seems like a system that made sense, and it did at least tip its hat towards trying to make the contract binding.
Whether or not the contract provisions were legal in the first place is for another post, but at least MS used to recognize that you needed to be able to read (and agree to) a contract before you could be bound by it.
That recognition seems to be gone now.
I am an US citizen living and working in Europe. If I change anything about my status, work address, home address, etc I have a few days where in which to inform the state and federal government. That is in addition to the yearly letters informing them about me and my living location.
As a Canadian citizen who has lived and worked in the United States, I can tell you that the paperwork and bureaucratic misery associated with crossing the world's longest undefended border is nothing to sneeze at. The U.S. government was very interested in knowing where I worked and for whom; where I lived; what I earned. Getting a social security number so I could fill out other forms, open a bank account, and get a phone line required three visits to the Social Security Administration office on the far side of town.
The last time I was in the States for an extended period was in August of 2001--I expect that things have become much more difficult since then. Even then, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service reserved the right to bar me from entering the country for any reason whatsoever, or none at all, at their sole discretion. Deportation would also have been a snap.
Governments have always kept a close eye on foreign nationals, whether in Europe or in North America. As someone voluntarily entering another country, one can choose whether or not the conditions imposed by the host government are too onerous. If you don't like the rules, leave. Whether appropriate or not, enforcement agencies have always had a freer hand in dealing with noncitizens.
What Patriot II (as described) does is lower the bar significantly for everyone. Don't like it? You can't pack up and go home. You are home. Does it bother you that the police can tap your phone lines, read your email, rifle your records, and steal your lunch money? Don't you dare whisper a protest. John Ashcroft can now strip your citizenship and deport you if you're part of any 'terrorist' organizations on his list. (Stay away from the ACLU--he'll be watching them.) You think it's tough being an American in Europe? Try being officially stateless.
Does Europe have a lot of red tape? Parts of it, sometimes, yes. Will you encounter the occasional petty middle management tyrant who won't give you the rubber stamp you want? Yep. (Good thing that the public service is so efficient on this side of the Atlantic.)
Is the European Union an aspiring police state, seeking the power to indefinitely detain or permanently deport its own citizens? Nope.
Uranium bombs are a different beast. Without highly (isotopically) enriched uranium, it is flat out impossible to produce a useful explosion.
With chemically separated plutonium, you can build an inefficient bomb. With chemically separated uranium--you can warm your toes.
All that said, a terrorist group would still be better off leaving plutonium or uranium dust in the streets or in a major building. Much bigger fear factor for the masses.
And the woman who wears provocative clothing is asking to get raped.
What about the poor sods who have to use IE at work? What about technical neophytes? Should nobody be allowed to use a computer until they've studied CS for a couple of years and know who RMS is? I use Opera--quite happily--at home but I'm posting this (unfortunately) from a machine at work with IE, on which another browser is not an option. Educating an employer is often a slow, painful, laborious process. I'm trying, but it takes time.
Cells tend to rupture when frozen, either because the ice inside expands and bursts them (fast freezing) or because long, sharp, pointy ice crystals inside form and pierce the cell membrane (slow freezing). The temperatures typically found on ski slopes (within a few degrees of zero Celsius) are ideal for the formation of large ice crystals. There are also dehydration processes at work. Finally, cells left outside in slightly warmer weather still don't do well, because they'll starve to death. (Researchers who want to preserve cells long-term store them at liquid nitrogen temperatures to stop all metabolism.)
Recent research has suggested that freezing and thawing will also disable many viruses--apparently it damages the surface proteins they use to bind to our cells. Experiments conducted on freezing whole blood for storage revealed that freezing also inactivated much of the HIV in test samples. Some jurisdictions are now considering freezing all donated blood as an additional safety precaution before transfusion.
Not so say that freezing is a panacea--there are a number of nasties that will survive the process (encysted bad guys are often reisistant) but the frozen stuff is significantly cleaner than what came in, and it may well be cleaner than what's in most rivers.
Yes, I read the article, and yes, I realize that they filter and treat the water extensively before turning it to snow...but all that work might be overkill.
That might be a bit misleading. Perhaps the professor wanted to have more resolution of marks in the top of the class. If the test is too easy and half the class gets forty-five or more marks out of fifty, it's useless from an evaluation standpoint.
Sounds like the prof in your case might have given a tough test, or marked extremely hard, or both, then scaled everything up. The question is, was the final class average a 70% (or equivalent)? 80%? 60%?
In the physics program at my university, courses almost universally get scaled, normed, or belled in some way to bring the class averages to around 70%. It's not grade inflation--in large classes one expects average marks to be at around a certain level. It's just a way of accounting for different types of testing that may have different goals. Look at it this way--if a large number of students all apparently fail to master the material based on their raw test scores, what does it mean? Might it suggest that the choice of material is too ambitious, or the prof is presenting ideas poorly? Should students be penalized for a poor quality of teaching?
On the other hand, maybe your grade was inflated. Are you dumber than I think you are? ;)