They're using a liquid called "deuterated acetone" as the liquid. From the science daily article:
The acetone contains a form of hydrogen called deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, which contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Normal hydrogen contains only one proton in its nucleus.
From the Business Week article, it looks like they're making stronger vessels to hold the liquids at very high pressures:
"Since ordinary sonoluminescence delivers so much energy at pressures of only one or two atmospheres," he says, "you could hope that at 1,000 atmospheres, you'd be in fusion territory -- if the temperature also scaled up. But that's a really big 'if."'
I'm also surprised that this isn't on the main page of Slashdot. When reading the previous article on the discovery, there was a lot of "let's wait for confirmation" messages. Now we have it and it seems an appropriate time to get excited.
The coolest part about all of this is that it's relatively cheap, with the possibility of inexpensive and clean energy. The scary aspect that I haven't seen mentioned is that it could be an good source of neutrons used to enrich uranium and make weapons-grade material.
The battery can also discharge power in a short time, making it useful in applications requiring a large amount of power.
One of the nice things about current batteries is that you can't get them to discharge very quickly. Shorting these out might cause excessive heat issues.
Reminds me of wings
on
Fish with Limbs
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
One of the typical arguments by creationists is how can evolution make these jumps from legs to fully functional wings. The latest thinking is that there's wasn't a giant leap, but rather a series of gradual steps between limbs that didn't impart flying, but still had some use.
For example, chickens don't fly very well, but have you ever tried to catch a chicken? Those "vestigial" wings sure impart bursts of speed and the ability to leap over obstacles.
It's neat to see the discovery of similar intermediaries between swimming and walking limbs. Evolution is an amazing and beautiful thing.
There have been documented problems that can occur after harvest as well.
I personally don't have anything against generically engineered organisms, only that you have to be very careful managing them. While they shouldn't be able to compete as well as "natural" varieties, all it takes are a few big screw-ups to destroy the industry.
Indoor growing helps, as do a number of other controls that can be put in place. Moderate regulation is a good thing, in my opinion.
I'm sure you're right. Here's a recent blurb about them in the news. It looks like they do a fair bit of business with the Air Force, so NASA's practically sending one of their own.
Sensors Unlimited, Inc. (Princeton, NJ), provider of short wave IR imaging products based on indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) technology, has received a follow-on, Phase 1b contract from the U.S. Air Force, for a twelve month, $2 million program to develop the industry's first high frame rate camera for combined imaging and ranging, using an in-pixel digitized, monolithic PIN/APD focal plane array. The Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency is providing the funding under a contract managed by the Air Force. Sensors Unlimited was the only vendor to address both imaging and ranging within a single focal plane array and camera. The company says that it will "significantly advance the state-of-the-art in infrared imaging."
I fondly remember the day I discovered Farscape while in the middle of of season 3. I spent a month watching one or two episodes a day, living and breathing the stuff.
It's a truly heady experience and one I heartily recommend. Being able to pull down the entertainment you want, when you want it is going to change the way things work at a very basic level. Media executives should be scrambling to figure out how to switch to a subscription model before their ad dollars dry up.
I think a t.v. show is quite unlikely considering the budget required to do it well. A movie's been talked about for years, but no movement has happened.
What's most likely is that we see a NeverwinterNights module based on Dragonlance. Think I'm kidding? Take a look at these folks.
Well, I'm here in Oregon and I'd like to reassure everyone that there's no giant fungus gobbling up cities left and right.
It's a bit of a stretch to call it a single giant organism. Think of it as a single mutated fungus that was particularly successful and kept reproducing as a giant mat of intertwined fungal fibers. It does a poor job at creating spores and spreading with the wind, but seems to do quite well at slowly expanding under the soil.
In their fourth and most successful protocol, the researchers got 19 of 66 cloned eggs to develop into blastocysts -- the embryonic stage when it becomes possible to derive stem cells.
This is actually astounding success if others are able to duplicate their process.
Once again this reminds me of how dangerous Mars is. I'd very much like to see a large number of successful probe and robotic missions before we even think of sending people there.
Manned missions are far more complicated and have greater risks of failure. The public outcry over their deaths will be much greater than for a robot probe.
As a kid, I loved Legos. As a parent, I'm finding that it's one of the few things my five-year-old son will do my himself that doesn't involve computers, movies, or television. Strangely, even his pediatrician brought it up when discussing alternatives to video games and cartoons.
My son is also a giant Star Wars fan, so I made him sit down when I told him the news that they were no longer going to be made. Of course, we do have dozens of the sets already, though perhaps now it's the time to get the Millenium Falcon that he's always wanted.
I'm personally rooting for Armadillo Aerospace, which has John Carmack's involvement. He's got some great comments on his news page - feels much more open and less corporate than some of the other X-Prize contenders.
I watched the first episode last night (minus the commercials) and woke up this morning thinking about it. I'm glad that the Firefly special effects team lived on, as their portrayal of combat in space is fresh and interesting. Nice physics touches too, though I admit it's unrealistic that everyone is so close together. Some of the nuclear bombardment scenes were truly chilling.
A big "Ditto" on the actors. Though the younger ones were a bit rough, the president and Adama were great.
So, I think this one will hit my short list of shows, though I think I will perhaps delay watching so as to skip all the commercials.
Perhaps this is a clear signal that Japan should give up on building rockets and focus on what they're good at - constructing giant robots.
Neverwinter Nights hasn't been mentioned yet?
on
NYT on Game Mods
·
· Score: 1
Neverwinter Nights, in my opinion, was basically designed from the ground up for the mod community. The core game was somewhat "vanilla", but Bioware has tirelessly supported the community, adding requested features and even Linux support over the last year.
As one of those crazy folks who have been writing modules, it's interesting to see how my freely donated time has affected the community. NWN modules are quite a bit different, focused primarily on story and character development instead of twitch action. It's interesting that my rewards tend to be in the satisfaction that others are enjoying my work, rather than hard cash.
I've had cancer patients, Israeli soldiers, people who have lost family members, to ordinary people around the world drop me e-mails telling me how much they appreciate my work. It still amazes me that one person can reach out and touch the lives of so many.
-Adam Miller (author of the Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher campaigns)
Each year, the president pardons the Thanksgiving turkeys and they're sent off to some farm to live out their lives.
Unfortunately, since they're bred to be meat animals, they don't survive very long. Some last a week. The lucky ones last a year.
Virtually all of the food we eat has been genetically engineered, just using very primitive methods over long periods of time. I bet we could even breed glowing goldfish using traditional methods . . . given a few hundred million years.
Personally, I'll give it a chance. When I was a kid, there was an early 2-hour episode and I pestered my parents to leave the pizza place so I could make it back in time. We returned to find the rug burning in front of our fireplace. Our parents ran into the kitchen to fill pots and pour it on the fire. Us kids ran into the t.v. room to huddle under the smoke and watch our show.
I now refer to the tale as the time Battlestar Galactica saved our house.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, if "bubble fusion" can produce neutrons, I'm willing to give them the opportunity to explain themselves.
They're using a liquid called "deuterated acetone" as the liquid. From the science daily article:
The acetone contains a form of hydrogen called deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, which contains one proton and one neutron in its nucleus. Normal hydrogen contains only one proton in its nucleus.
From the Business Week article, it looks like they're making stronger vessels to hold the liquids at very high pressures:
"Since ordinary sonoluminescence delivers so much energy at pressures of only one or two atmospheres," he says, "you could hope that at 1,000 atmospheres, you'd be in fusion territory -- if the temperature also scaled up. But that's a really big 'if."'
I'm also surprised that this isn't on the main page of Slashdot. When reading the previous article on the discovery, there was a lot of "let's wait for confirmation" messages. Now we have it and it seems an appropriate time to get excited.
The coolest part about all of this is that it's relatively cheap, with the possibility of inexpensive and clean energy. The scary aspect that I haven't seen mentioned is that it could be an good source of neutrons used to enrich uranium and make weapons-grade material.
"However, while Spirit is past its 'warranty', we look forward to continued discoveries by both rovers in the months ahead."
Maybe they should have gotten that rust-proof coating after all.
After all, the ringworld is unstable.
One of the nice things about current batteries is that you can't get them to discharge very quickly. Shorting these out might cause excessive heat issues.
One of the typical arguments by creationists is how can evolution make these jumps from legs to fully functional wings. The latest thinking is that there's wasn't a giant leap, but rather a series of gradual steps between limbs that didn't impart flying, but still had some use.
For example, chickens don't fly very well, but have you ever tried to catch a chicken? Those "vestigial" wings sure impart bursts of speed and the ability to leap over obstacles.
It's neat to see the discovery of similar intermediaries between swimming and walking limbs. Evolution is an amazing and beautiful thing.
There have been documented problems that can occur after harvest as well.
I personally don't have anything against generically engineered organisms, only that you have to be very careful managing them. While they shouldn't be able to compete as well as "natural" varieties, all it takes are a few big screw-ups to destroy the industry.
Indoor growing helps, as do a number of other controls that can be put in place. Moderate regulation is a good thing, in my opinion.
I fondly remember the day I discovered Farscape while in the middle of of season 3. I spent a month watching one or two episodes a day, living and breathing the stuff.
It's a truly heady experience and one I heartily recommend. Being able to pull down the entertainment you want, when you want it is going to change the way things work at a very basic level. Media executives should be scrambling to figure out how to switch to a subscription model before their ad dollars dry up.
I think a t.v. show is quite unlikely considering the budget required to do it well. A movie's been talked about for years, but no movement has happened.
What's most likely is that we see a NeverwinterNights module based on Dragonlance. Think I'm kidding? Take a look at these folks.
I think I preferred the low-budget version on PBS they aired in the 70's. It seemed to have more heart, plus I missed the aliens at the end.
I suspect that Linux's file system is a bit more robust than what they used on the rovers.
Well, I'm here in Oregon and I'd like to reassure everyone that there's no giant fungus gobbling up cities left and right. It's a bit of a stretch to call it a single giant organism. Think of it as a single mutated fungus that was particularly successful and kept reproducing as a giant mat of intertwined fungal fibers. It does a poor job at creating spores and spreading with the wind, but seems to do quite well at slowly expanding under the soil.
From the wired article:
In their fourth and most successful protocol, the researchers got 19 of 66 cloned eggs to develop into blastocysts -- the embryonic stage when it becomes possible to derive stem cells.
This is actually astounding success if others are able to duplicate their process.
Once again this reminds me of how dangerous Mars is. I'd very much like to see a large number of successful probe and robotic missions before we even think of sending people there.
Manned missions are far more complicated and have greater risks of failure. The public outcry over their deaths will be much greater than for a robot probe.
As a kid, I loved Legos. As a parent, I'm finding that it's one of the few things my five-year-old son will do my himself that doesn't involve computers, movies, or television. Strangely, even his pediatrician brought it up when discussing alternatives to video games and cartoons. My son is also a giant Star Wars fan, so I made him sit down when I told him the news that they were no longer going to be made. Of course, we do have dozens of the sets already, though perhaps now it's the time to get the Millenium Falcon that he's always wanted.
Personally I think it's great that they're moving my job, hopefully to somewhere warm. Uh, I'm going with it, right?
I'm personally rooting for Armadillo Aerospace, which has John Carmack's involvement. He's got some great comments on his news page - feels much more open and less corporate than some of the other X-Prize contenders.
I watched the first episode last night (minus the commercials) and woke up this morning thinking about it. I'm glad that the Firefly special effects team lived on, as their portrayal of combat in space is fresh and interesting. Nice physics touches too, though I admit it's unrealistic that everyone is so close together. Some of the nuclear bombardment scenes were truly chilling.
A big "Ditto" on the actors. Though the younger ones were a bit rough, the president and Adama were great.
So, I think this one will hit my short list of shows, though I think I will perhaps delay watching so as to skip all the commercials.
Perhaps this is a clear signal that Japan should give up on building rockets and focus on what they're good at - constructing giant robots.
Neverwinter Nights, in my opinion, was basically designed from the ground up for the mod community. The core game was somewhat "vanilla", but Bioware has tirelessly supported the community, adding requested features and even Linux support over the last year.
As one of those crazy folks who have been writing modules, it's interesting to see how my freely donated time has affected the community. NWN modules are quite a bit different, focused primarily on story and character development instead of twitch action. It's interesting that my rewards tend to be in the satisfaction that others are enjoying my work, rather than hard cash.
I've had cancer patients, Israeli soldiers, people who have lost family members, to ordinary people around the world drop me e-mails telling me how much they appreciate my work. It still amazes me that one person can reach out and touch the lives of so many.
-Adam Miller (author of the Shadowlords and Dreamcatcher campaigns)
Each year, the president pardons the Thanksgiving turkeys and they're sent off to some farm to live out their lives.
Unfortunately, since they're bred to be meat animals, they don't survive very long. Some last a week. The lucky ones last a year.
Virtually all of the food we eat has been genetically engineered, just using very primitive methods over long periods of time. I bet we could even breed glowing goldfish using traditional methods . . . given a few hundred million years.
Wired has an article on it as well.
Personally, I'll give it a chance. When I was a kid, there was an early 2-hour episode and I pestered my parents to leave the pizza place so I could make it back in time. We returned to find the rug burning in front of our fireplace. Our parents ran into the kitchen to fill pots and pour it on the fire. Us kids ran into the t.v. room to huddle under the smoke and watch our show.
I now refer to the tale as the time Battlestar Galactica saved our house.
Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex. Is there a place on the web that panders to my lust for violence?
I think you can turn to the Internet for that too.