Because there ain't no way the Bush White House is paying for this.
Actually, the Bush administration explicitly gave the go-ahead and requested funding for Project Prometheus. I dislike most of what Bush does, but this was one of the few things he did that I supported.
Of course, this made anti-nuclear folks like Bruce Gagnon quite spastic.
Even better, how about some Non-governmental, non-profit space agency that gets funded by a bunch of geeks with nothing better to spend their money on? (and by the way, avoid paying taxes altogether) I bet there's already a web site...
Like the Planetary Society? On May 31, they'll be launching Cosmos 1, the first solar sail spacecraft. Here's a Nature article. According to the page, it'll be "the first space mission ever flown by a non-governmental advocacy group."
Another interesting philanthropic project was Elon Musk's Mars Oasis project to put an experimental greenhouse on the surface of Mars. He hired a team to do some preliminary designs and cost analysis, and found that actually building the thing was pretty affordable for him. However, the launch costs weren't as affordable as he wanted (they would've been the most expensive part of the entire project), so he decided to redirect his efforts towards SpaceX to lower those costs. I suspect the Mars Oasis project is still on the back-burner, and he may pursue it again once he gets launch costs low enough.
The parent post is a little confrontational, but makes a good point.
Really, people need to get to grips with the idea that bold actions are inherently risky. We should do what we can to reduce risk, but can't let it paralyze us into inaction. When failure isn't an option, success becomes absurdly difficult.
* Pound for pound, none of the 60's launch systems were significantly cheaper than the Shuttle.
* None of the 60's spacecraft flew enough times to make any statistically valid judgement as to their safety. Reading any decent history of manned spaceflight shows numerous problems and close calls on both sides of the Curtain.
The Nobel prize is largely without credibility anyomre becuase of all the political extremism of the Nobel committiee.
That may be an issue with the Peace prize or even the Economics prize, but I've never heard of somebody accuse the Nobel Prize in Chemistry as being politically extreme.
Good point. I wonder if this would be a good way to transition to a cryo-like state for longer-term hibernation. One could use H2S to mostly knock out metabolism, then chill the body to slightly above freezing to prolong the effect and hinder bacterial growth. To restore, you'd warm the body back up and remove the H2S.
The article and research paper note that they placed the mice in the hibernation state for six hours, without any long-term effects. Unfortunately, I can't find in either the article or paper if they tried longer hibernation periods. If they haven't, I suppose that's the next logical thing to try. Looking at their figures, it seems that the 6 hour mark is about when the body temperature finally finishes asymptoting down to the ambient temperature.
Anyways, here's the research abstract from Science:
Mammals normally maintain their core body temperature (CBT) despite changes in environmental temperature. Exceptions to this norm include suspended animation-like states such as hibernation, torpor, and estivation. These states are all characterized by marked decreases in metabolic rate, followed by a loss of homeothermic control in which the animal's CBT approaches that of the environment. We report that hydrogen sulfide can induce a suspended animation-like state in a nonhibernating species, the house mouse (Mus musculus). This state is readily reversible and does not appear to harm the animal. This suggests the possibility of inducing suspended animation-like states for medical applications.
The limitation (passed during the Clinton years) is on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Insulin-producing cells from somebody's mother are not embryonic stem cells.
I happen to disagree with the ban myself, but it's still important to get one's facts straight.
Well, actually in the submission I said that I thought the videos were amazing, and that some of the videos had him blindfolded. I didn't think the blindfolded part was particularly amazing, I just thought it looked cool.
Sorry about the donations link in submission
on
The Video Game Pianist
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Gah, looking through the comments I'm starting to regret adding in an explicit link to this guy's donation page. I figured I was doing him a favor and trying to make up for the inevitable slashdotting, but looking through the comments, the donations link seems to have been received rather poorly.
The impression that I get from him is that he plays video game music because he truly enjoys it, and hopes to broaden the popular perception of piano. I don't think he really cares about the donations very much, just that they help keep things running smoothly. I thought his work and efforts were worthwhile enough to give him $50, but your mileage may vary.
I disagree with the supreme court ruling that says $ = speech, because that implies rich people have a louder voice than poor people, which seems not so good.
And famous people have an even louder voice than rich people. Should we restrict them as well?
As far as political discussion goes, I generally tend to stick to online forums like Livejournal's politicsforum and gop_vs_dem. They actually have intelligent active participants on all sides (liberals, neocons, republicans, communists, and even the occasional self-proclaimed fascist), unlike slashdot's politics section where everybody who isn't liberal or libertarian gets modded down. From politicsforum in particular I've learned a lot about current political issues, and have even changed my stance on several issues.
It looks like indexing will initially be manual, but it'll be interesting to see what sorts of content-based searching and indexing methods Google will end up implementing. For those unfamiliar with it, content-based methods allow for information extraction based on the actual video data, rather than manually-added metadata. Searching google scholar and google web for "content-based video" methods comes up with some interesting results. The current state-of-the-art can do some impressive things, but there's clearly still lots of room for improvement.
Now that I think about it, having uploaders manually index the videos the submit is a fantastic way for Google to bootstrap an automated video indexing system.
One neat project is Sivic & Zisserman's Video Google (no relation to the Google company, I think). They have a demo available where you can search for automatically-extracted objects in a movie. They also show the results of doing things like detecting Bill Murray's tie throughout the movie Groundhog Day.
With peer review and intensive copy editing, there's often a fairly large difference between the initial pre-print submitted and the final research paper (at least if you're submitting to a worthwhile journal).
It costs money to produce a peer-reviewed, edited, and formatted article that is ready for online publication, and to host it on a server that is accessible around the clock. Prior to that, a public or private funding agency has already paid a great deal more money for the research to be undertaken in the interest of the public. This real cost of "producing" a paper can be calculated by dividing your laboratory's annual budget by the number of papers published. We ask that--as a small part of the cost of doing the research--the author, institution, or funding agency pays a modest fee, $1500, to help cover the actual cost of the essential final step, the publication. (As it stands, authors now often pay for publication in the form of page or color charges.) Endorsing the view that biomedical research should published in a manner that is accessible without barriers, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has committed to supplementing publication costs (of up to US$3000 per year) for the scientists whose work it funds, so long as the work is published in an open-access journal.
We realize that not everyone who does research can afford to pay publication charges through their grants. PLoS waives those fees, no questions asked, for anyone who can't pay. Our editors and peer reviewers have no knowledge of who can pay, so papers are accepted only on their merit. Authors may also qualify for discounts on publication charges via their institution or a funded program; see our institutional members page for more information.
Re:Symbolism or hedging your bets?
on
Hope for Hubble
·
· Score: 1
As prior art, I cite the X-33 and other Shuttle replacements, all of which were canned years ago.
The various shuttle replacements, like the X-30, X-33, X-34, OSP, SLI, VentureStar, etc, were all horrific boondoggles and rightfully canned. They relied on large amounts of unobtanium and various nonexistent technologies.
In an attempt to promote something resembling intelligent discussion, here's a link to official information on NASA's budget.
In particular, I'd like to point out the $4.5 billion devoted solely to the Space Shuttle for FY2005, and the $1.6 billion devoted to the International Space Station.
Hubble Origins Probe: the best option
on
Hope for Hubble
·
· Score: 2, Informative
As I often mention, a solution that everybody seems to be ignoring is putting up a new telescope, the Hubble Origins Probe. This new telescope would be more capable than the original Hubble and cost less than a robotic repair mission. For whatever reason, this possibility is almost never mentioned, although it's IMHO the best option by far.
Obligatory blurb:
Astronomy Magazine reports that an international team of astronomers has proposed an alternative to sending a robotic or human repair mission to the ailing Hubble Space Telescope. Their proposal is to build a new Hubble Origins Probe, reusing the Hubble design but using lighter and more cost-effective technologies. The probe would include instruments currently waiting to be installed on Hubble, as well as a Japanese-built imager which 'will allow scientists to map the heavens more than 20 times faster than even a refurbished Hubble Space Telescope could.' It would take an estimated 65 months and under $1 billion to build, less than the estimated cost of a service mission.
See, here's the problem: what Meetup did is really not that far beyond a good PHP programmer who knows a thing or two about MySQL. It's cool, but we're not talking about something like Salesforce.com or Turbo Tax Online. This is a simple web app.
And here's the thing, someone is going to recreate Meetup.
I just got an email from the guy who organizes a Meetup event that I sometimes go to. He pointed out http://www.mypeopleconnection.com/ as an alternative.
Speak for yourself. I use (or at least used to use) meetup.com myself, and know of many other slashdotters who do.
C) IS probably being paid for to mention
It always amuses me when I see somebody claiming this. You do realize that -anybody- can submit stories, right? I've submitted 41 in the past year, 21 of which were accepted. I assure you that I didn't pay for any of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Because there ain't no way the Bush White House is paying for this.
Actually, the Bush administration explicitly gave the go-ahead and requested funding for Project Prometheus. I dislike most of what Bush does, but this was one of the few things he did that I supported.
Of course, this made anti-nuclear folks like Bruce Gagnon quite spastic.
Even better, how about some Non-governmental, non-profit space agency that gets funded by a bunch of geeks with nothing better to spend their money on? (and by the way, avoid paying taxes altogether) I bet there's already a web site...
Like the Planetary Society? On May 31, they'll be launching Cosmos 1, the first solar sail spacecraft. Here's a Nature article. According to the page, it'll be "the first space mission ever flown by a non-governmental advocacy group."
Another interesting philanthropic project was Elon Musk's Mars Oasis project to put an experimental greenhouse on the surface of Mars. He hired a team to do some preliminary designs and cost analysis, and found that actually building the thing was pretty affordable for him. However, the launch costs weren't as affordable as he wanted (they would've been the most expensive part of the entire project), so he decided to redirect his efforts towards SpaceX to lower those costs. I suspect the Mars Oasis project is still on the back-burner, and he may pursue it again once he gets launch costs low enough.
The parent post is a little confrontational, but makes a good point.
Really, people need to get to grips with the idea that bold actions are inherently risky. We should do what we can to reduce risk, but can't let it paralyze us into inaction. When failure isn't an option, success becomes absurdly difficult.
How long will it take before we can clear the aura of fear surrounding space missions?
Indeed. I look forward to the day that a spacecraft landing or taking off is as routine and non-newsworthy as an airplane landing or taking off.
* Pound for pound, none of the 60's launch systems were significantly cheaper than the Shuttle.
* None of the 60's spacecraft flew enough times to make any statistically valid judgement as to their safety. Reading any decent history of manned spaceflight shows numerous problems and close calls on both sides of the Curtain.
Erm... Soyuz?
The Nobel prize is largely without credibility anyomre becuase of all the political extremism of the Nobel committiee.
That may be an issue with the Peace prize or even the Economics prize, but I've never heard of somebody accuse the Nobel Prize in Chemistry as being politically extreme.
It disturbs the neighbors, which I consider adequate payback - ok, it's the only revenge I can afford right now :)
I'm a little confused... you're seeking revenge on your neighbors simply because they're human beings?
Good point. I wonder if this would be a good way to transition to a cryo-like state for longer-term hibernation. One could use H2S to mostly knock out metabolism, then chill the body to slightly above freezing to prolong the effect and hinder bacterial growth. To restore, you'd warm the body back up and remove the H2S.
The article and research paper note that they placed the mice in the hibernation state for six hours, without any long-term effects. Unfortunately, I can't find in either the article or paper if they tried longer hibernation periods. If they haven't, I suppose that's the next logical thing to try. Looking at their figures, it seems that the 6 hour mark is about when the body temperature finally finishes asymptoting down to the ambient temperature.
Anyways, here's the research abstract from Science:
H2S Induces a Suspended Animation-Like State in Mice
Eric Blackstone, Mike Morrison, Mark B. Roth
Mammals normally maintain their core body temperature (CBT) despite changes in environmental temperature. Exceptions to this norm include suspended animation-like states such as hibernation, torpor, and estivation. These states are all characterized by marked decreases in metabolic rate, followed by a loss of homeothermic control in which the animal's CBT approaches that of the environment. We report that hydrogen sulfide can induce a suspended animation-like state in a nonhibernating species, the house mouse (Mus musculus). This state is readily reversible and does not appear to harm the animal. This suggests the possibility of inducing suspended animation-like states for medical applications.
The limitation (passed during the Clinton years) is on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Insulin-producing cells from somebody's mother are not embryonic stem cells.
a te_in_the_U.S.
I happen to disagree with the ban myself, but it's still important to get one's facts straight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stem_cell#Policy_deb
Or even worse, orbital sniping:
Orbital Eunuchs Sniper (very fun game, btw, and runs on Linux)
Relevant article from last year:
A DART Near Miss: Infighting at Orbital - and Deceiving NASA
Well, actually in the submission I said that I thought the videos were amazing, and that some of the videos had him blindfolded. I didn't think the blindfolded part was particularly amazing, I just thought it looked cool.
Gah, looking through the comments I'm starting to regret adding in an explicit link to this guy's donation page. I figured I was doing him a favor and trying to make up for the inevitable slashdotting, but looking through the comments, the donations link seems to have been received rather poorly.
The impression that I get from him is that he plays video game music because he truly enjoys it, and hopes to broaden the popular perception of piano. I don't think he really cares about the donations very much, just that they help keep things running smoothly. I thought his work and efforts were worthwhile enough to give him $50, but your mileage may vary.
I disagree with the supreme court ruling that says $ = speech, because that implies rich people have a louder voice than poor people, which seems not so good.
And famous people have an even louder voice than rich people. Should we restrict them as well?
As far as political discussion goes, I generally tend to stick to online forums like Livejournal's politicsforum and gop_vs_dem. They actually have intelligent active participants on all sides (liberals, neocons, republicans, communists, and even the occasional self-proclaimed fascist), unlike slashdot's politics section where everybody who isn't liberal or libertarian gets modded down. From politicsforum in particular I've learned a lot about current political issues, and have even changed my stance on several issues.
how about we get private corps to build even launch vehicles on their own..
http://spacex.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX
It looks like indexing will initially be manual, but it'll be interesting to see what sorts of content-based searching and indexing methods Google will end up implementing. For those unfamiliar with it, content-based methods allow for information extraction based on the actual video data, rather than manually-added metadata. Searching google scholar and google web for "content-based video" methods comes up with some interesting results. The current state-of-the-art can do some impressive things, but there's clearly still lots of room for improvement.
Now that I think about it, having uploaders manually index the videos the submit is a fantastic way for Google to bootstrap an automated video indexing system.
One neat project is Sivic & Zisserman's Video Google (no relation to the Google company, I think). They have a demo available where you can search for automatically-extracted objects in a movie. They also show the results of doing things like detecting Bill Murray's tie throughout the movie Groundhog Day.
With peer review and intensive copy editing, there's often a fairly large difference between the initial pre-print submitted and the final research paper (at least if you're submitting to a worthwhile journal).
From http://www.plos.org/faq.html
Why should I have to pay to publish my paper?
It costs money to produce a peer-reviewed, edited, and formatted article that is ready for online publication, and to host it on a server that is accessible around the clock. Prior to that, a public or private funding agency has already paid a great deal more money for the research to be undertaken in the interest of the public. This real cost of "producing" a paper can be calculated by dividing your laboratory's annual budget by the number of papers published. We ask that--as a small part of the cost of doing the research--the author, institution, or funding agency pays a modest fee, $1500, to help cover the actual cost of the essential final step, the publication. (As it stands, authors now often pay for publication in the form of page or color charges.) Endorsing the view that biomedical research should published in a manner that is accessible without barriers, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute has committed to supplementing publication costs (of up to US$3000 per year) for the scientists whose work it funds, so long as the work is published in an open-access journal.
From the PLoS FAQ:
What if I can't afford publication charges?
We realize that not everyone who does research can afford to pay publication charges through their grants. PLoS waives those fees, no questions asked, for anyone who can't pay. Our editors and peer reviewers have no knowledge of who can pay, so papers are accepted only on their merit. Authors may also qualify for discounts on publication charges via their institution or a funded program; see our institutional members page for more information.
As prior art, I cite the X-33 and other Shuttle replacements, all of which were canned years ago.
The various shuttle replacements, like the X-30, X-33, X-34, OSP, SLI, VentureStar, etc, were all horrific boondoggles and rightfully canned. They relied on large amounts of unobtanium and various nonexistent technologies.
In an attempt to promote something resembling intelligent discussion, here's a link to official information on NASA's budget.
In particular, I'd like to point out the $4.5 billion devoted solely to the Space Shuttle for FY2005, and the $1.6 billion devoted to the International Space Station.
As I often mention, a solution that everybody seems to be ignoring is putting up a new telescope, the Hubble Origins Probe. This new telescope would be more capable than the original Hubble and cost less than a robotic repair mission. For whatever reason, this possibility is almost never mentioned, although it's IMHO the best option by far.
Obligatory blurb:
Astronomy Magazine reports that an international team of astronomers has proposed an alternative to sending a robotic or human repair mission to the ailing Hubble Space Telescope. Their proposal is to build a new Hubble Origins Probe, reusing the Hubble design but using lighter and more cost-effective technologies. The probe would include instruments currently waiting to be installed on Hubble, as well as a Japanese-built imager which 'will allow scientists to map the heavens more than 20 times faster than even a refurbished Hubble Space Telescope could.' It would take an estimated 65 months and under $1 billion to build, less than the estimated cost of a service mission.
See, here's the problem: what Meetup did is really not that far beyond a good PHP programmer who knows a thing or two about MySQL. It's cool, but we're not talking about something like Salesforce.com or Turbo Tax Online. This is a simple web app.
And here's the thing, someone is going to recreate Meetup.
I just got an email from the guy who organizes a Meetup event that I sometimes go to. He pointed out http://www.mypeopleconnection.com/ as an alternative.
Speak for yourself. I use (or at least used to use) meetup.com myself, and know of many other slashdotters who do.
C) IS probably being paid for to mention
It always amuses me when I see somebody claiming this. You do realize that -anybody- can submit stories, right? I've submitted 41 in the past year, 21 of which were accepted. I assure you that I didn't pay for any of them.