In the current political environment, asking such a question accomplishes little, if anything at all. If such a question were to posed in a debate format, I don't think it's likely that any candidate would directly answer the question, but instead use it as a springboard for a tangent they are more comfortable discussing. At the end of the day, the worst that could happen is a candidate squirms for a few seconds, but even that is unlikely.
Well, AFAIK, microwaves are indeed light, i.e. composed of photons. "Microwave photons" is somewhat redundant, "microwaves" alone should have sufficed. And while you are correct, an individual microwave photon has less energy than a visible light photon, they are still more energetic than say a radio wave, so it's all a matter of what you are comparing. Plus, in sufficient intensity, microwaves can demonstrate their energy quite easily- ever heat up leftovers without using your stove or oven?
7.3% sounds right. I know of several people affected by this- but rest assured, the great state of Ohio is promising one full year of ID theft protection. Bet that makes those folks sleep better at night. One friend that got a letter informing him of his SSN being stolen was told why- he was one of many Ohio taxpayers who has not yet cashed their state tax refund, and as a result, was kept in a database on the stolen tapes. As the Prentenders said, "Way to go Ohio!"
My guess is that these are not just any mice they are using, but "lab grade" mice, whose "properties" are well understood. I am not a biologist, so if someone could help explain this better, please jump in. But basically the mice need to be well characterized so you have some notion of a control when comparing results. That is much more difficult to accomplish with humans.
I have finally settled on a way of making good coffee that is not outrageously expensive. First off, I found myself a good local roaster (Stauf's in Columbus/Grandview Heights, OH). I usually only buy a half a pound of whole beans at a time- that way it never gets too stale. Next, I use a blade grinder that costs 20 bucks. A lot of purists will scream in horror, but for the type of coffee maker I use (see below), this is fine- I don't really need a homogeneous distribution of particle sizes. I usually grind my beans for 15-30 seconds. The time varies depending on the beans, and the sharpness of the blade. Eventually, the blade becomes dull, in which case I toss the grinder, and buy a new one. That's only happened once so far, and 20 bucks is not a huge loss. Buying a burr grinder is 5X more expensive for a cruddy model, and 10X or more for a decent one.
After grinding my beans, I dump them into a Melitta filter in my drip brewer (Braun KF-400), which I have already filled with an appropriate amount of filtered water (prevents mineral scaling of the coffee maker's innards). Then I turn on the switch and wait till its finished brewing. I like to have everything ready on the coffee maker so there is a minimal amount of time from finishing grinding the beans to actual brewing. The KF-400 runs about 20 bucks or so, and has no bells and whistles (except for an auto-shutoff)- but then again, why would I need an alarm if I grind my beans in a separate device every morning? Added bonus- the drip method is not particularly sensitive to particle size, and besides, I am not making espresso, so what do I care if the powder is a bit "uneven"?
The result- good coffee on the cheap, with just a hint of aromatic oils floating on the surface. Stauf's has a lost of different varieties of coffee, so not getting a large amount of beans allows me to sample new coffees all the time. The only downside to this whole process is that it happens when first waking up- despite that, I've gotten the whole ritual down to about a 2 or 3 minute process of setting up the coffee maker, getting the beans and grinding them, and then transferring them to the filter and pushing "ON". Then I do my SS&S, and when I come out smelling like roses, my coffee is ready to drink. Voilà!
I've been a beta tester for Google TISP for the last 3 months. Without any reservations, it simply beats the shit out the competition. And it's free! Only caveat- you might have difficulty taking a dump and surfing the net at the same time, unless you have more than one bathroom (I've got 1.5, so no problems).
I was at this talk yesterday morning, front row, about 20 or 25 feet from Senator Glenn. The man is as sharp now as he was 45 years ago- completely aware of the world around him, even more so than many younger people. Senator Glenn spoke of his Friendship 7 orbit for about an hour, and in the last 30 minutes or so took questions from the audience.
The ISS was discussed in the course of this Q&A. It came about because someone had asked what Senator Glenn thought about the future of spaceflight. Glenn mentioned President Bush's plans for manned voyages to the Moon and Mars, but how there was no funding created for this purpose. Instead, funds were being diverted from other NASA projects, usually research dollars. This was reminiscent of what happened to the ISS, which repeatedly was improperly funding, causing both self-cannibalization of NASA funds and a reduction in the research potential of the ISS. To paraphrase Glenn, currently, there are only two people up there who are tending to systems [maintainence]. The original station design called for six inhabitants and a rigorous course of experimentation.
So Glenn used the mediocrity of the ISS as a potential warning for what can happen to the Moon/Mars initiative if it is not properly funded by Congress, and is instead forces NASA to shift money around internally. IMO, the AP article doesn't really put Glenn's comments in context enough that one can see the point he was trying to make.
Quick note- the Nature synopsis contains a graphic that is NOT in the original article. This experiment was a straight-up NMR spectroscopy/relaxation time experiment, not an imaging experiment. NMR Imaging is more commonly known as MRI. Basically, they looked at how Silicon-29 nuclei's magnetic moments precessed in an external magnetic field. Usually this should happen only within a narrow range of frequencies; in the article, their data shows a broadening of the frequencies at which the nuclei precess, implying a breakdown in the crystal structure of the material. This results from a lack of periodicity, which normally would lead to a very specific distribution of local magnetic fields (and thus precessional frequencies). The amorphous silicon has a wider range of local magnetic fields that the nuclei experience, and thus a wider band of precessional frequencies.
This is an interesting experiment- I had heard of NMR being used to analyze containment materials in a talk just a couple of months ago, but this is a different group and a different experiment. Good to see that basic NMR is still alive and well.
You are right in some respects. The moment to which you refer is the nuclear magnetic moment of the hydrogen atom, which are quite plentiful in most living things, ourselves included, due to the prevalence of water. In MRI, the torque these moments experience causes them to change their alignment from being in the same direction as an externally applied magnetic field (hence the big MRI magnet), to one that lies perpendicular to the direction of the external field. As they do this, the precess about the external field axis at a rate called the "Larmor frequency" (i.e. they rotate about it). This causes the magnetic flux inside the MRI receiver coil (more or less a loop of wire) to change, and by Lenz's Law, an EMF (voltage) will be induced. This is the signal that is detected.
Note that while the magnetic moments are being manipulated, the actual water molecules themselves are more or less unaffected. This is one reason that MRI/NMR is such a great way to measure molecular self-diffusion- the phenomenon of diffusion is unaffected by all the magnetic fields being bandied about the sample. So to sum up, the "torque" the water molecules experience is one that affects only the magnetic orientation of the hydrogen atoms in your body, and not the actual physical orientation. And the signal that an MRI machine detects is not coming from the return to equilibrium of the water molecules as much as it comes from the precession of the asffected magnetic moments about the direction of the external field.
Anecdotally, I have heard of many people "sensing" the magnetic field of an MRI scanner. I have had a few MRI's done on myself, and can attest to this feeling. It is strange, mostly in the head, somewhat like when one feels dizzy or just a tinge of seasickness. I think that is has something to do with the fact that as you enter the scanner, the field you experience changes quite rapidly. Once you are in the scanner, I haven't really noticed the queasiness as much, though it still feels strange. However, I attribute this second sensation more to the fact that one is contained inside a small tube with all kinds of weird noises and vibrations going around. So at the very least, some people seem to be sensitive to changing fields above some threshold.
"It's a well-known fact that wearing corrective lenses causes the eye to learn to depend on the lense, causing the eye to weeken and need a higher perscription. Even your optometrist will tell you that. That said, there are limits to how well using alternative measures will work, or how well standard measures such as glasses work. Uncorrected, I'm legally blind in one eye, 20/600 (I've done the math, that's like a football field being nearly 2 miles). Even with glasses, it can only be corrected to 20/45"
I disagree. If my eyes have learned to depend on their lenses, then why hasn't my prescription changed in over 10 years? Why is this the case for so many adults? I could be wrong, but isn't it true that myopia typically changes only during childhood/adolesence, and that an overwhelming percentage of adults over age 45 develop far-sightedness? Could it be that if you have experienced changes in your vision, they have occurred because you are very young (near-sighted changes) or have reached middle age (far-sighted)? I have yet to meet an optometrist, or even better and opthamologist, who has put forth an opinion similar to yours. Finally, my vision in both eyes is worse than your 20/600. My focal length is about 6, maybe 6.5 inches, a dipoter of about -7.00 for contacts, equivalent to something around 20/800, or maybe even 20/1000. I see 20/20 with my contact lenses. My uncorrected vision does not make me legally blind- legally blind is only when it cannot be corrected. I just want to be clear that while you are legally blind, it is not how bad your uncorrected vision is that defines that, it is that it cannot be corrected, as people with worse uncorrected vision can see just fine after lenses are used.
It's truly sad. But getting back to the parent topic, IBM is to be commended for keeping on with basic, fundamental research at its labs. The same can not be said for most mega-corporations, but IBM is doing so, creating competition between industry, academica, and the government labs. I still hope that one day Bell Labs will be cut away from Lucent and made into its own entity, and get contracted to do market-targeted research, and then use the profits to fund basic reasearch that it can turn into patents for further income in the long term.
I agree. I was a summer intern at Bell Labs in 2000, and more or less watched the disintegration of one of the greatest research institutions ever happen in realtime. It was a sad thing to witness, though much of what led to Bell Labs current situation occurred before summer of '00, but the financial situation and layoffs are what began then. If you want to talk about interesting groundbreaking research, it's Bell Labs hands down. These are the people that invented the transistor and the laser, discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, and churned out multiple generations of talented chemists, engineers, physicists, and computer scientists (I believe UNIX and the C programming language also came out of Bell Labs). It's demise should be lamented, though I still have hope that one day it might return to its former glory as a place of fundamental research, instead of research oriented exclusively towards developing profitable merchandise in the short term due to the demands of Wall Street.
Superconductivity was not discovered by IBM, and it also occurred much earlier than 1987. The BCS theory of superconductivity came out in 1957, and the phenomenon itself was first seen in mercury by Onnes in 1911. And while high-Tc superconducters were first seen at IBM, this occurred in 1986.
When will the AI advance enough to actually play by the same terms as the human player? I have found through experience with Civ3 that it is very difficult to have an enjoyable game with just any random map, that often times the human player is shut out from success early on by a combination of geography (i.e. lack of resources) and the ability of the AI to outproduce the human players several times over, most notably with the number of settlers and military units. When will the AI advance to the point that it is actually crippled compared to the player when playing at the easier difficulty levels, and unaided when playing at the more difficult ones?
We were experimenting to find out if light was a wave [or] a particle. (its a wave of particles).
Light is definitely not a wave of particles. In fact, light is the propogation of two orthogonal (perpendicular) oscillating fields, one electric, and the other magnetic, through space, with the oscillations being centered about a point traveling at speed c.
There is no such thing as a "gram-force". That is a made up term, even if a bunch of people are going around using it. It's net worth in the realm of science is zero. On the earth, a gram has a weight of about.01 Newtons. That's because its gravitational acceleration is 9.8 m/s^2.
What doesn't make sense is for a manufacturer to make up terms that have no real meaning, and to incorrectly use scientific units. The world would be a better place if we stopped dumbing things down for people. If people can't understand spring constants, fine, but the only way to properly understand their claim is with spring constants, as the force changes as the key is depressed. Or to explicitly say that in order to maintain maximum compression requires a force equal to the weight of an x-gram mass. One doesn't have to be confusing in order to state things in a scientifically accurate manner.
One gram most certainly is NOT equivalent to one newton. One Newton of force is what is generated by the gravitational attraction between the earth and a mass of about 100 grams. It follows that one gram experiences a gravitation force of only.01 Newtons.
I stand by my original point. This form of advertisement is not informational because either:
A. You know enough physics to see that this is pseudoscientific marketing bullshit.
or
B. You don't know enough physics to see through it and are hopefully bedazzled by the use of scientific words that you only vaguely understand, and from which you are unable to draw conclusions.
What do you mean by threshold force? I am not entirely clear on that. Perhaps you meant the force generated by the spring at maximum compression? My point was that the force experience by a finger as it presses the key will vary as the key is depressed (F=-kx). If you have all your keys depress the exact same amount, then yes, a threshold force (if I understand you correctly to mean maximum compression) is a useful comparison, given that you actually use the units of force.
Yes a machine, that's implied. The point is that I can't see every keyboard spending 13 hours being tested. Factory tested to me says that this individual item has been tested for functionality and durability to some extent, not that we picked one of the production line and tested it and said all the rest will do the same.
Can this be real folks? How do you factory test something to withstand 20 million keystrokes? At 4 keystrokes per key per second, it would still take a half a day to achieve 20 million keystrokes distributed over the entire keyboard. And how can springs have a "force" of 35-80 grams? Force is measured in newtons, or pounds, not grams, which is a measure of mass. Also, a much more useful characterization of a springs "springiness" is the so called spring constant, as the force generated depends on the amount of compression or extension of the spring. And what exactly is "premium keyswitch technology"? Finally, how is a keyboard without ID really going to make a touch typist faster? They don't look at the keyboard to begin with! Sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me.
Slashdot Mirror
In the current political environment, asking such a question accomplishes little, if anything at all. If such a question were to posed in a debate format, I don't think it's likely that any candidate would directly answer the question, but instead use it as a springboard for a tangent they are more comfortable discussing. At the end of the day, the worst that could happen is a candidate squirms for a few seconds, but even that is unlikely.
Well, AFAIK, microwaves are indeed light, i.e. composed of photons. "Microwave photons" is somewhat redundant, "microwaves" alone should have sufficed. And while you are correct, an individual microwave photon has less energy than a visible light photon, they are still more energetic than say a radio wave, so it's all a matter of what you are comparing. Plus, in sufficient intensity, microwaves can demonstrate their energy quite easily- ever heat up leftovers without using your stove or oven?
No, they are general population. For instance, if you hadn't cashed your state tax refund, your name and SSN was on the backup.
7.3% sounds right. I know of several people affected by this- but rest assured, the great state of Ohio is promising one full year of ID theft protection. Bet that makes those folks sleep better at night. One friend that got a letter informing him of his SSN being stolen was told why- he was one of many Ohio taxpayers who has not yet cashed their state tax refund, and as a result, was kept in a database on the stolen tapes. As the Prentenders said, "Way to go Ohio!"
My guess is that these are not just any mice they are using, but "lab grade" mice, whose "properties" are well understood. I am not a biologist, so if someone could help explain this better, please jump in. But basically the mice need to be well characterized so you have some notion of a control when comparing results. That is much more difficult to accomplish with humans.
After grinding my beans, I dump them into a Melitta filter in my drip brewer (Braun KF-400), which I have already filled with an appropriate amount of filtered water (prevents mineral scaling of the coffee maker's innards). Then I turn on the switch and wait till its finished brewing. I like to have everything ready on the coffee maker so there is a minimal amount of time from finishing grinding the beans to actual brewing. The KF-400 runs about 20 bucks or so, and has no bells and whistles (except for an auto-shutoff)- but then again, why would I need an alarm if I grind my beans in a separate device every morning? Added bonus- the drip method is not particularly sensitive to particle size, and besides, I am not making espresso, so what do I care if the powder is a bit "uneven"?
The result- good coffee on the cheap, with just a hint of aromatic oils floating on the surface. Stauf's has a lost of different varieties of coffee, so not getting a large amount of beans allows me to sample new coffees all the time. The only downside to this whole process is that it happens when first waking up- despite that, I've gotten the whole ritual down to about a 2 or 3 minute process of setting up the coffee maker, getting the beans and grinding them, and then transferring them to the filter and pushing "ON". Then I do my SS&S, and when I come out smelling like roses, my coffee is ready to drink. Voilà!
I've been a beta tester for Google TISP for the last 3 months. Without any reservations, it simply beats the shit out the competition. And it's free! Only caveat- you might have difficulty taking a dump and surfing the net at the same time, unless you have more than one bathroom (I've got 1.5, so no problems).
I was at this talk yesterday morning, front row, about 20 or 25 feet from Senator Glenn. The man is as sharp now as he was 45 years ago- completely aware of the world around him, even more so than many younger people. Senator Glenn spoke of his Friendship 7 orbit for about an hour, and in the last 30 minutes or so took questions from the audience.
The ISS was discussed in the course of this Q&A. It came about because someone had asked what Senator Glenn thought about the future of spaceflight. Glenn mentioned President Bush's plans for manned voyages to the Moon and Mars, but how there was no funding created for this purpose. Instead, funds were being diverted from other NASA projects, usually research dollars. This was reminiscent of what happened to the ISS, which repeatedly was improperly funding, causing both self-cannibalization of NASA funds and a reduction in the research potential of the ISS. To paraphrase Glenn, currently, there are only two people up there who are tending to systems [maintainence]. The original station design called for six inhabitants and a rigorous course of experimentation.
So Glenn used the mediocrity of the ISS as a potential warning for what can happen to the Moon/Mars initiative if it is not properly funded by Congress, and is instead forces NASA to shift money around internally. IMO, the AP article doesn't really put Glenn's comments in context enough that one can see the point he was trying to make.
Quick note- the Nature synopsis contains a graphic that is NOT in the original article. This experiment was a straight-up NMR spectroscopy/relaxation time experiment, not an imaging experiment. NMR Imaging is more commonly known as MRI. Basically, they looked at how Silicon-29 nuclei's magnetic moments precessed in an external magnetic field. Usually this should happen only within a narrow range of frequencies; in the article, their data shows a broadening of the frequencies at which the nuclei precess, implying a breakdown in the crystal structure of the material. This results from a lack of periodicity, which normally would lead to a very specific distribution of local magnetic fields (and thus precessional frequencies). The amorphous silicon has a wider range of local magnetic fields that the nuclei experience, and thus a wider band of precessional frequencies.
This is an interesting experiment- I had heard of NMR being used to analyze containment materials in a talk just a couple of months ago, but this is a different group and a different experiment. Good to see that basic NMR is still alive and well.
I doubt it, because you feel the field changes when you first enter the magnet, way before any kind of RF is applied.
Note that while the magnetic moments are being manipulated, the actual water molecules themselves are more or less unaffected. This is one reason that MRI/NMR is such a great way to measure molecular self-diffusion- the phenomenon of diffusion is unaffected by all the magnetic fields being bandied about the sample. So to sum up, the "torque" the water molecules experience is one that affects only the magnetic orientation of the hydrogen atoms in your body, and not the actual physical orientation. And the signal that an MRI machine detects is not coming from the return to equilibrium of the water molecules as much as it comes from the precession of the asffected magnetic moments about the direction of the external field.
Anecdotally, I have heard of many people "sensing" the magnetic field of an MRI scanner. I have had a few MRI's done on myself, and can attest to this feeling. It is strange, mostly in the head, somewhat like when one feels dizzy or just a tinge of seasickness. I think that is has something to do with the fact that as you enter the scanner, the field you experience changes quite rapidly. Once you are in the scanner, I haven't really noticed the queasiness as much, though it still feels strange. However, I attribute this second sensation more to the fact that one is contained inside a small tube with all kinds of weird noises and vibrations going around. So at the very least, some people seem to be sensitive to changing fields above some threshold.
Aip.org is not the American Physical Society, but in fact is the homepage of the American Institute of Physics. The APS website is at www.aps.org.
I disagree. If my eyes have learned to depend on their lenses, then why hasn't my prescription changed in over 10 years? Why is this the case for so many adults? I could be wrong, but isn't it true that myopia typically changes only during childhood/adolesence, and that an overwhelming percentage of adults over age 45 develop far-sightedness? Could it be that if you have experienced changes in your vision, they have occurred because you are very young (near-sighted changes) or have reached middle age (far-sighted)? I have yet to meet an optometrist, or even better and opthamologist, who has put forth an opinion similar to yours. Finally, my vision in both eyes is worse than your 20/600. My focal length is about 6, maybe 6.5 inches, a dipoter of about -7.00 for contacts, equivalent to something around 20/800, or maybe even 20/1000. I see 20/20 with my contact lenses. My uncorrected vision does not make me legally blind- legally blind is only when it cannot be corrected. I just want to be clear that while you are legally blind, it is not how bad your uncorrected vision is that defines that, it is that it cannot be corrected, as people with worse uncorrected vision can see just fine after lenses are used.
Here is a link to a pic.
It's truly sad. But getting back to the parent topic, IBM is to be commended for keeping on with basic, fundamental research at its labs. The same can not be said for most mega-corporations, but IBM is doing so, creating competition between industry, academica, and the government labs. I still hope that one day Bell Labs will be cut away from Lucent and made into its own entity, and get contracted to do market-targeted research, and then use the profits to fund basic reasearch that it can turn into patents for further income in the long term.
I agree. I was a summer intern at Bell Labs in 2000, and more or less watched the disintegration of one of the greatest research institutions ever happen in realtime. It was a sad thing to witness, though much of what led to Bell Labs current situation occurred before summer of '00, but the financial situation and layoffs are what began then. If you want to talk about interesting groundbreaking research, it's Bell Labs hands down. These are the people that invented the transistor and the laser, discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation, and churned out multiple generations of talented chemists, engineers, physicists, and computer scientists (I believe UNIX and the C programming language also came out of Bell Labs). It's demise should be lamented, though I still have hope that one day it might return to its former glory as a place of fundamental research, instead of research oriented exclusively towards developing profitable merchandise in the short term due to the demands of Wall Street.
Superconductivity was not discovered by IBM, and it also occurred much earlier than 1987. The BCS theory of superconductivity came out in 1957, and the phenomenon itself was first seen in mercury by Onnes in 1911. And while high-Tc superconducters were first seen at IBM, this occurred in 1986.
When will the AI advance enough to actually play by the same terms as the human player? I have found through experience with Civ3 that it is very difficult to have an enjoyable game with just any random map, that often times the human player is shut out from success early on by a combination of geography (i.e. lack of resources) and the ability of the AI to outproduce the human players several times over, most notably with the number of settlers and military units. When will the AI advance to the point that it is actually crippled compared to the player when playing at the easier difficulty levels, and unaided when playing at the more difficult ones?
What doesn't make sense is for a manufacturer to make up terms that have no real meaning, and to incorrectly use scientific units. The world would be a better place if we stopped dumbing things down for people. If people can't understand spring constants, fine, but the only way to properly understand their claim is with spring constants, as the force changes as the key is depressed. Or to explicitly say that in order to maintain maximum compression requires a force equal to the weight of an x-gram mass. One doesn't have to be confusing in order to state things in a scientifically accurate manner.
I stand by my original point. This form of advertisement is not informational because either:
A. You know enough physics to see that this is pseudoscientific marketing bullshit.
or
B. You don't know enough physics to see through it and are hopefully bedazzled by the use of scientific words that you only vaguely understand, and from which you are unable to draw conclusions.
What do you mean by threshold force? I am not entirely clear on that. Perhaps you meant the force generated by the spring at maximum compression? My point was that the force experience by a finger as it presses the key will vary as the key is depressed (F=-kx). If you have all your keys depress the exact same amount, then yes, a threshold force (if I understand you correctly to mean maximum compression) is a useful comparison, given that you actually use the units of force.
Yes a machine, that's implied. The point is that I can't see every keyboard spending 13 hours being tested. Factory tested to me says that this individual item has been tested for functionality and durability to some extent, not that we picked one of the production line and tested it and said all the rest will do the same.
Can this be real folks? How do you factory test something to withstand 20 million keystrokes? At 4 keystrokes per key per second, it would still take a half a day to achieve 20 million keystrokes distributed over the entire keyboard. And how can springs have a "force" of 35-80 grams? Force is measured in newtons, or pounds, not grams, which is a measure of mass. Also, a much more useful characterization of a springs "springiness" is the so called spring constant, as the force generated depends on the amount of compression or extension of the spring. And what exactly is "premium keyswitch technology"? Finally, how is a keyboard without ID really going to make a touch typist faster? They don't look at the keyboard to begin with! Sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me.
I want a keyboard with "delete" on all the keys.