... the same study indicates that the majority of Democrats feel that banks and financial institution have a negative effect on the country.
And at first glance, it kind of makes sense - look at the very real problems these institutions have. For example, their role in causing the 2008 meltdown. It is totally plausible to imagine them being much better.
But then go and imagine a U.S. without banks and financial institutions at all. What would that be like? Unless a person is a pretty committed communist, they would agree that it would be decidedly not good!
While there are some extremists on both sides, I think that in the case of both the Republicans and the Democrats in the study, people focus in on 'non-optimalities' of the respective institutions, and answer accordingly, rather than seeing the tremendous good that these institutions provide, even with their problems.
Who owns the rights to intellectual property from research?
NSERC does not retain or claim any ownership of, or exploitation rights to, the intellectual property resulting from your NSERC funding. However, since NSERC's role includes promoting the use of knowledge to build a strong national economy and improving the quality of life of Canadians, every effort should be made to have the results of NSERC-funded research exploited in Canada, for the benefit of Canadians. You are encouraged to discuss intellectual property rights with all parties and organizations involved in the research.
My read: if the University decides to keep the IP, they can. In fact elsewhere, the Industrial USRA documentation explicitly gives the employing company the IP.
From what you said, I understand that your University's policy depends on if you were acting as an employee or as a student. So, what were you? Did they/will they pay you as a T4 (withheld tax) or a T4A (no withholding). If they payed you with a T4A, they were claiming you were a student, not an employee.
LOFAR is a predecessor for the SKA. It is much smaller than the SKA, and has much narrower range of frequencies over which it is designed to operate (but will happen much sooner, and a lot will be learned applicable to SKA).
The "Square Kilometer" part of SKA refers to the total collecting area, not to the length of the baselines. In this sense, it will be, by far, the largest telescope ever built.
The telescope with the largest baselines that I am aware of is the VSOP VLBI system, which includes an 8m dish in orbit. But its total collecting area (and therefore, sensitivity) is vastly less than LOFAR or SKA.
The point is that we know where they are now: at the centre of every Galaxy. We believe this based, among other things, on studies of the orbits of stars near the centres of galaxies - if you know the orbit, you can calculate the mass that is being orbited. Our galaxy has a compact object (ie, a Black Hole) about 100,000 times the mass of the sun in its centre.
The question was: when did they form?
If a Black Hole is in a region with lots of material...it grows. Here's (roughly) how: most of material will orbit the black hole so the Black hole won't grow. BUT: if the density is high enough, it will form an orbiting disk of material. The particles in the disk will collide with each other in their mad dash around the black hole, heating the disk up, and knocking some of the material out of orbit, into the black hole. So you end up with the black hole growing, and an extremely hot disk shining X-rays across the Universe. This has been seen in more nearby quasars. Here they have found the X-rays from the more distant hot disks.
This discovery should be classified as excellend confirmation of what most astronomers thought must be true.
A question that I could imagine asking any of the candidates of either party:
I am a cosmologist. Based on my research, and that of others, I am convinced that the Universe is about 13.8 billion years old, started with the event we can call the Big Bang, and behaves according to physical laws. Futher, I am convinced that human life evolved on Earth from earlier forms over the past few billion years.
I am also a Christian. I believe that the Universe was created by the sovereign God described in the Bible, and behaves according to his will.
Do you feel that I am wrong in my science, in my religion, or both, or neither? Why?
This whole fiasco (including the slashdot commentary) reeks of what has become the norm of American Politics.
(1) How serious people think the crime is seems to be only dependant on what colour team they support: either (blue) "Complicit in the outing of a CIA operative - bordering on treason!" or (red) "No crime (she wasn't a covert operative), no harm (he had nothing to do with the news stories), no foul". Who is right? Who cares?
(2) accusations of potentially politically motivated judicial decisions: The penalty given, and the refusal to allow appeals before incarceration has been argued to be at least marginally unusual for this sort of case (IANAL, but I've occasionally glanced at Google News), like the blue team finding a chance to make the red team make themselves look bad by drawing commutation out of wildly unpopular red team president: maybe, maybe not, but in this climate, who is to say? (hint, if you support the red team, the judgement was wrong and politically motivated. If you support Blue team, it was just and right and appropriate to the seriousness of the crime - see (1))
(3) Shrill condemnation for a completely inevitable act by the red team: but, regardless of what team is in power, what do you expect? Either they honestly believe that the judgement was a miscarriage of justice (in which case, what else is the power to commute sentences supposed to be for) or he was actually up to no good, on orders from the government (in which case leaving the guy out to dry would go past the line of unethical).
See (1) for a guide on how you should fall on this.
Is this fiasco really factor for anyone? Wouldn't it be better if we stuck to what is *really* bothering us? There is plenty there, and it actually matters!
The U.S. State Dept couldn't get overflight permissions from Russia (diplomatic issues).
> What is the primary failure mode? Loss of lifting gas?
Yes. For healthy (non leaking) balloons, this is primarily due to diurnal cycles. These are 0 pressure balloons. The gas expands and heats, and vents (to maintain 0 pressure) in the sun, but then cools contracts at night, so to avoid this, long duration flights are done above or below the arctic circle. The longest flights have been ~1 month (over Antarctica) and were terminated (Still flying well) because the McMurdo station summer season was closing.
> Is battery power an issue and is the payload powered by solar cells?
Yes (6 hrs on 4x12vx85Ah NiMH batteries) and Yes.
> What kind of ambient buffetting ocurrs at float altitude? Is there any percieved motion?
The outer frame of the gondola moves around by ~0.1 degree, with important resonances at 0.5 Hz and 0.05 Hz. The inner frame is stabilized to
> Is it difficult to create a parachute and floatation system to sheild the payload in various failure modes?
BLAST comes down on a 'standard' ~140' parachute. Take a look at Don or Gaelan's web pages linked off the story for launch pictures where you can see it.
If it lands in a lake, we are very sad. If it lands in the Ocean, we are even more sad. NASA/NSBF decides when to release the gondola, so that neither will happen.
> What percent of the cost of the mission is the balloon, and what is the payload?
~20% Balloon + launch campaign costs/80% instrument and development for Long Duration experiments.
> What kind device or systems keep the orientation correct?
For Elevation: the inner frame is balanced and controlled with a torque motor.
For Azimuth, on short time scales (
> Can someone contact them?
You just did.
We sort of mean the 'shape'.
It is easy to talk about 2 dimensional surfaces in a three dimensional universe - planes, spheres, funnels, etc. But the Universe has 3 (large) dimensions, not 2, so it is much harder. Normally, we think of the universe as a 3 dimensional equivalent to a plane - that is, in space, straight lines are straight, never curve back on themselves, and go on forever. Another common topologies which arise naturally from gravity theory are 'spherical' - where parallel lines eventually cross, and you can see the back of your head. The group in questions is proposing that the Universe is a 3d analog to the surface of a horn. Others have proposed 3d analogs to the surface of a doughnut....
How can one possibly determine what this shape is?
If the Universe is actually curved in some way, then light coming from distant objects will be bent on its way to us, distorting the images. For the global topology of the Universe, one wants to use the largest, most distant thing you can look at. The Universe is expanding and cooling. Light takes time to travel, so if you look far enought away, you can look far enough back in time to when the whole Universe was filled with a hot H-He plasma. This is called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Most recent topology studies have looked at the statistics of the fluctuations of this distant plasma for distortion in the image from what is predicted.
So, is this true?
Could be.... but the evidence is not compelling. The anomalies they are looking at are of rather low statistical significance, and the idea that the universe is just 'straight/flat' and boring still fits pretty well. And unfortunately, for the large scale stuff, the data isn't going to get any better. The problem is, we only have one Universe, and COBE and WMAP have measured the large scales as well as can be measured.
The small scale distortions have more potential given upcoming experiments like Planck, and the WMAP year2 data.
Nice machine, but this January, CITA and the astro department at the University of Toronto brought a 256 node dual Xenon system on line: "1.2 trillion floating point mathematical operations per second (Tflops) on the standard LINPACK linear algebra benchmark." Total cost: CDN$900K (including tax) (in January prices, that's $600K U.S. or $0.50USD/GFlop.) It's being used for some very cool Astro simulations...
Young earthism and Intelligent Design need to be differentiated.
Young Earthism attempts to make scientific statements, and fails the tests of observation. (ie, attempts to describe the history of the Universe, and is quite falsifiable). So Young Earthism is bad science, **not religion**.
Intelligent Design says that a Designer is behind the behavior of the universe, but makes no scientific statements, and can not be falsified observationally, so it is not science: it is Religion, **not science**. For the beliver in Intelligent Design, scientific observations about the behavior and history of the Universe tell about God's nature (since, by presumption, God exists). For the non-beliver, they do not (since, by presumption, there is no God). But science can make no (firm) statement about which is true.
Religious descisions (for both the believer and the non-believer) are descisions of faith and experience. No amount of science will (or can) ever change this.
First a correction: This was not a weather balloon, but a stratospheric scientific balloon: these can carry payloads up to 8000lbs (on the extreme upper limit) and can keep them up for weeks (the current record is 31 days)
Now my question: what was the link they were using? What was the bit rate? What what was the bit loss rate? Were they shipping TCP/IP, or was it special purpose format. If the former, I'm intriged - how nice it would be to log into one's balloon borne stratospheric telescope and fix those lingering bugs (bugs? what bugs? never...)! If the latter... well, at this very moment I am monitoring data from our stratospheric balloon instrument which is currently at -80.5 lat, and -78.2 lon and an altitude of 31.2km (ie, over the antarctic plateau). We're only getting a 6kbit link (through the TDRSS sattelite) now that we are out of line of sight, but -80.5 lat, -78.2 lon is a *long* way from here in Toronto:)
Slashdot Mirror
... the same study indicates that the majority of Democrats feel that banks and financial institution have a negative effect on the country. And at first glance, it kind of makes sense - look at the very real problems these institutions have. For example, their role in causing the 2008 meltdown. It is totally plausible to imagine them being much better. But then go and imagine a U.S. without banks and financial institutions at all. What would that be like? Unless a person is a pretty committed communist, they would agree that it would be decidedly not good! While there are some extremists on both sides, I think that in the case of both the Republicans and the Democrats in the study, people focus in on 'non-optimalities' of the respective institutions, and answer accordingly, rather than seeing the tremendous good that these institutions provide, even with their problems.
NSERC's web USRA web page says:
Who owns the rights to intellectual property from research?
NSERC does not retain or claim any ownership of, or exploitation rights to, the intellectual property resulting from your NSERC funding. However, since NSERC's role includes promoting the use of knowledge to build a strong national economy and improving the quality of life of Canadians, every effort should be made to have the results of NSERC-funded research exploited in Canada, for the benefit of Canadians. You are encouraged to discuss intellectual property rights with all parties and organizations involved in the research.
My read: if the University decides to keep the IP, they can. In fact elsewhere, the Industrial USRA documentation explicitly gives the employing company the IP.
From what you said, I understand that your University's policy depends on if you were acting as an employee or as a student. So, what were you? Did they/will they pay you as a T4 (withheld tax) or a T4A (no withholding). If they payed you with a T4A, they were claiming you were a student, not an employee.
fwiw, I hire my USRAs as T4A
LOFAR is a predecessor for the SKA. It is much smaller than the SKA, and has much narrower range of frequencies over which it is designed to operate (but will happen much sooner, and a lot will be learned applicable to SKA). The "Square Kilometer" part of SKA refers to the total collecting area, not to the length of the baselines. In this sense, it will be, by far, the largest telescope ever built. The telescope with the largest baselines that I am aware of is the VSOP VLBI system, which includes an 8m dish in orbit. But its total collecting area (and therefore, sensitivity) is vastly less than LOFAR or SKA.
The question was: when did they form?
If a Black Hole is in a region with lots of material...it grows. Here's (roughly) how: most of material will orbit the black hole so the Black hole won't grow. BUT: if the density is high enough, it will form an orbiting disk of material. The particles in the disk will collide with each other in their mad dash around the black hole, heating the disk up, and knocking some of the material out of orbit, into the black hole. So you end up with the black hole growing, and an extremely hot disk shining X-rays across the Universe. This has been seen in more nearby quasars. Here they have found the X-rays from the more distant hot disks.
This discovery should be classified as excellend confirmation of what most astronomers thought must be true.
I am a cosmologist. Based on my research, and that of others, I am convinced that the Universe is about 13.8 billion years old, started with the event we can call the Big Bang, and behaves according to physical laws. Futher, I am convinced that human life evolved on Earth from earlier forms over the past few billion years.
I am also a Christian. I believe that the Universe was created by the sovereign God described in the Bible, and behaves according to his will.
Do you feel that I am wrong in my science, in my religion, or both, or neither? Why?
(1) How serious people think the crime is seems to be only dependant on what colour team they support: either (blue) "Complicit in the outing of a CIA operative - bordering on treason!" or (red) "No crime (she wasn't a covert operative), no harm (he had nothing to do with the news stories), no foul". Who is right? Who cares?
(2) accusations of potentially politically motivated judicial decisions: The penalty given, and the refusal to allow appeals before incarceration has been argued to be at least marginally unusual for this sort of case (IANAL, but I've occasionally glanced at Google News), like the blue team finding a chance to make the red team make themselves look bad by drawing commutation out of wildly unpopular red team president: maybe, maybe not, but in this climate, who is to say? (hint, if you support the red team, the judgement was wrong and politically motivated. If you support Blue team, it was just and right and appropriate to the seriousness of the crime - see (1))
(3) Shrill condemnation for a completely inevitable act by the red team: but, regardless of what team is in power, what do you expect? Either they honestly believe that the judgement was a miscarriage of justice (in which case, what else is the power to commute sentences supposed to be for) or he was actually up to no good, on orders from the government (in which case leaving the guy out to dry would go past the line of unethical). See (1) for a guide on how you should fall on this.
Is this fiasco really factor for anyone? Wouldn't it be better if we stuck to what is *really* bothering us? There is plenty there, and it actually matters!
The U.S. State Dept couldn't get overflight permissions from Russia (diplomatic issues).
> What is the primary failure mode? Loss of lifting gas?
Yes. For healthy (non leaking) balloons, this is primarily due to diurnal cycles. These are 0 pressure balloons. The gas expands and heats, and vents (to maintain 0 pressure) in the sun, but then cools contracts at night, so to avoid this, long duration flights are done above or below the arctic circle. The longest flights have been ~1 month (over Antarctica) and were terminated (Still flying well) because the McMurdo station summer season was closing.
> Is battery power an issue and is the payload powered by solar cells?
Yes (6 hrs on 4x12vx85Ah NiMH batteries) and Yes.
> What kind of ambient buffetting ocurrs at float altitude? Is there any percieved motion?
The outer frame of the gondola moves around by ~0.1 degree, with important resonances at 0.5 Hz and 0.05 Hz. The inner frame is stabilized to
> Is it difficult to create a parachute and floatation system to sheild the payload in various failure modes?
BLAST comes down on a 'standard' ~140' parachute. Take a look at Don or Gaelan's web pages linked off the story for launch pictures where you can see it. If it lands in a lake, we are very sad. If it lands in the Ocean, we are even more sad. NASA/NSBF decides when to release the gondola, so that neither will happen.
> What percent of the cost of the mission is the balloon, and what is the payload?
~20% Balloon + launch campaign costs/80% instrument and development for Long Duration experiments.
> What kind device or systems keep the orientation correct?
For Elevation: the inner frame is balanced and controlled with a torque motor.
For Azimuth, on short time scales ( > Can someone contact them? You just did.
What do we mean by the topology of the Universe?
We sort of mean the 'shape'. It is easy to talk about 2 dimensional surfaces in a three dimensional universe - planes, spheres, funnels, etc. But the Universe has 3 (large) dimensions, not 2, so it is much harder. Normally, we think of the universe as a 3 dimensional equivalent to a plane - that is, in space, straight lines are straight, never curve back on themselves, and go on forever. Another common topologies which arise naturally from gravity theory are 'spherical' - where parallel lines eventually cross, and you can see the back of your head. The group in questions is proposing that the Universe is a 3d analog to the surface of a horn. Others have proposed 3d analogs to the surface of a doughnut....
How can one possibly determine what this shape is?
If the Universe is actually curved in some way, then light coming from distant objects will be bent on its way to us, distorting the images. For the global topology of the Universe, one wants to use the largest, most distant thing you can look at. The Universe is expanding and cooling. Light takes time to travel, so if you look far enought away, you can look far enough back in time to when the whole Universe was filled with a hot H-He plasma. This is called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). Most recent topology studies have looked at the statistics of the fluctuations of this distant plasma for distortion in the image from what is predicted.
So, is this true?
Could be.... but the evidence is not compelling. The anomalies they are looking at are of rather low statistical significance, and the idea that the universe is just 'straight/flat' and boring still fits pretty well. And unfortunately, for the large scale stuff, the data isn't going to get any better. The problem is, we only have one Universe, and COBE and WMAP have measured the large scales as well as can be measured. The small scale distortions have more potential given upcoming experiments like Planck, and the WMAP year2 data.
Nice machine, but this January, CITA and the astro department at the University of Toronto brought a 256 node dual Xenon system on line: "1.2 trillion floating point mathematical operations per second (Tflops) on the standard LINPACK linear algebra benchmark." Total cost: CDN$900K (including tax) (in January prices, that's $600K U.S. or $0.50USD/GFlop.) It's being used for some very cool Astro simulations...
See http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/webpages/mckenzie
Young Earthism attempts to make scientific statements, and fails the tests of observation. (ie, attempts to describe the history of the Universe, and is quite falsifiable). So Young Earthism is bad science, **not religion**.
Intelligent Design says that a Designer is behind the behavior of the universe, but makes no scientific statements, and can not be falsified observationally, so it is not science: it is Religion, **not science**. For the beliver in Intelligent Design, scientific observations about the behavior and history of the Universe tell about God's nature (since, by presumption, God exists). For the non-beliver, they do not (since, by presumption, there is no God). But science can make no (firm) statement about which is true.
Religious descisions (for both the believer and the non-believer) are descisions of faith and experience. No amount of science will (or can) ever change this.
First a correction:
:)
This was not a weather balloon, but a stratospheric scientific balloon: these can carry payloads up to 8000lbs (on the extreme upper limit) and can keep them up for weeks (the current record is 31 days)
Now my question: what was the link they were using? What was the bit rate? What what was the bit loss rate? Were they shipping TCP/IP, or was it special purpose format. If the former, I'm intriged - how nice it would be to log into one's balloon borne stratospheric telescope and fix those lingering bugs (bugs? what bugs? never...)! If the latter... well, at this very moment I am monitoring data from our stratospheric balloon instrument which is currently at -80.5 lat, and -78.2 lon and an altitude of 31.2km (ie, over the antarctic plateau). We're only getting a 6kbit link (through the TDRSS sattelite) now that we are out of line of sight, but -80.5 lat, -78.2 lon is a *long* way from here in Toronto