1) These images are not photoshopped (at least not the ones on uahirise.org). If you knew anything about remote sensing, CCD sensors, image processing, or science, you'd know that. http://www.uahirise.org/pdf/color-products.pdf
2) Press releases do absolutely nothing for scientists except get their work out to the public. In a "publish or die" world, press releases are absolutely worthless. In a "publish or die" world, peer-reviewed work is publishing.
3) All scientists in a given field (and often across fields) compete with each other for funding, so making claims that are easily refutable (by real scientists, not worthless internet trolls like yourself) means you won't get funding in the future because a) your work is peer reviewed by your competitors, and b) your grant proposals are peer-reviewed by your competitors. If you're a shit scientist, your competitors will point it out to the funding and publishing agencies and your papers won't be published anymore and you won't get any more funding.
4) Do a little research yourself before making such asinine claims about "weasel words" and "without a single theory." Scientists use words like "may" and "could" and "potentially" when they have good reason to believe it's possible, but also good reason NOT to state something with certainty.
Here, I'll do it for you.
scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Holden+crater+lake+deposits&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=801&as_sdtp=on
scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Holden+crater+megabreccia&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=801&as_sdtp=on
Has anyone bemoaning the new rules actually read them? No, of course not. They read an opinion, with which they already agreed, and then started whining. Typical of the American public, really.
More definitions are included in the document above, as well as additional discussion.
Following are key excerpts from the Report and Order adopted by the Commission to preserve the open Internet: Rule 1: Transparency
A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service shall publicly disclose accurate information regarding the network management practices, performance, and commercial terms of its broadband Internet access services sufficient for consumers to make informed choices regarding use of such services and for content, application, service, and device providers to develop, market, and maintain Internet offerings.
Rule 2: No Blocking
A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices, subject to reasonable network management.
A person engaged in the provision of mobile broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block consumers from accessing lawful websites, subject to reasonable network management; nor shall such person block applications that compete with the provider’s voice or video telephony services, subject to reasonable network
Rule 3: No Unreasonable Discrimination
A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic over a consumer’s broadband Internet access service. Reasonable network management shall not constitute unreasonable discrimination.
Select Definitions
Broadband Internet access service: A mass-market retail service by wire or radio that provides the capability to transmit data to and receive data from all or substantially all Internet endpoints, including any capabilities that are incidental to and enable the operation of the communications service, but excluding dial-up Internet access service. This term also encompasses any service that the Commission finds to be providing a functional equivalent of the service described in the previous sentence, or that is used to evade the protections set forth in this Part.
Reasonable network management. A network management practice is reasonable if it is appropriate and tailored to achieving a legitimate network management purpose, taking into account the particular network architecture and technology of the broadband Internet access service. Legitimate network management purposes include: ensuring network security and integrity, including by addressing traffic that is harmful to the network; addressing traffic that is unwanted by users (including by premise operators), such as by providing services or capabilities consistent with a user’s choices regarding parental controls or security capabilities; and by reducing or mitigating the effects of congestion on the network.
Do you have physics to back you up? No, I didn't think so.
Take a new Toyota Tacoma. Assume weight savings in replacing bumper with foam metal is used elsewhere so you have the same mass vehicle. A Tacoma weighs approximately 4000 pounds, which is approximately 1800 kg.
Kinetic energy is given by: e=0.5*m*v^2 m = mass v = velocity (or speed for our purposes).
The kinetic energy of a Tacoma moving at 28 miles per hour is approximately 141 kJ. The kinetic energy of a Tacoma moving at 5 miles per hour is approximately 4.5 kJ.
That is, the foam bumper only has to absorb 31 times as much energy as the solid bumper to perform to the quoted standard.
See quote below, which is from here: http://www.rexresearch.com/rabiei/rabiei.htm We see they estimate a factor of 80 improvement of energy absorption over the foam metal's equivalent bulk material. They don't say, but let's assume (reasonably) that they are talking about linear compression. Let's assume for a second that the stock bumper is made of a block of solid steel that doesn't absorb any energy. It's not, and it does, obviously.
If their estimate is correct, and a foam bumper of the same size will absorb 80 times as much energy as its solid counterpart, then the passenger in the 28 mph impact would feel 1-2 kJ of energy instead of ~140 kJ of energy. Obviously the bumpers are not solid metal, and they already have some energy absorption capabilities built into them.
Based on the factor of 31 between the kinetic energies of the vehicle at different speeds, I think their claim is the opposite of bullshit. It's reasonable.
Researchers at NC State have developed, processed, and tested a new high-strength ultra-light material that combines the advantages of metal matrix composites with metallic foams. Dr. Afsaneh Rabiei has produced a new generation of metal foams showing 5 to 6 times greater strength to density ratio and over 7 times higher energy absorption than that of currently available metallic foams. As a result, the energy absorption of these materials is estimated to be over 80 times greater than the bulk material from which the foam is made. Dr. Rabiei was interested in maintaining the advantages of metallic foams (excellent rigidity/ weight ratio, durability, isotropic absorption of energy at low and constant stress) while improving the mechanical properties under cyclic compression loading. The performance advantages of this metal foam are based on improving foam cell structure and reinforcing the cells with a metallic matrix. The resulting novel, closed-cell, metallic foam composite is made from preform hollow metallic spheres and exhibits a strength of over 130 MPa in compression. The densification for the new foam occurs at strains of approximately 50-65%.
When we say we have "proved" something, we generally mean we've shown, to our satisfaction, that the competing hypotheses are not as strong as the hypothesis we have "proven."
So, what these guys are doing is working to show why these possible fossils are not likely to have formed on Earth, are not likely to have formed as precipitates, etc. Eventually, they expect to show that all of the competing hypotheses for the formation are weaker than (or have even been falsified) their hypothesis that they were formed by microbial life on Mars.
You're welcome! It's good to see people genuinely interested instead of automatically dismissing because they think they thought of the one thing wrong with the analysis that was missed by the possibly hundreds of scientists who do this day-in and day-out...
A clarification on my post: A) I don't think it was misunderstood, but want to clarify that the "whether they are falsified or not..." statement was meant to say that whatever the final conclusion about the possible fossils, the initial (1996) work raising the possibility that AH84001 had fossilized martian life was good work, not that the authors might have faked their data. They did not.
I'm of two minds about holding press releases about these kinds of conclusions. 1) It's important to share this with the world. 2) It's important to be sure you've accounted for as many of the possible controversies with your data before going to the public who may not understand the details.
2) The age(s) of the possible fossils are greater than the time the meteorites have been on Earth. Again, this can be calculated using various isotope ratios. In essence, these things formed while the rocks were still on Mars.
3) I agree with your discomfort with the word "prove." Most scientific study is based on the Popper philosophy of disproving something rather than proving its opposite.
A) The new instrumentation and techniques being used on these meteorites are greatly advancing our understanding of them. The press announcement that AH84001 might have evidence of life was premature (what we call "science by press release"), but the publications by the team were certainly good and valid work, whether they are falsified or not...
B) The scientific word "prove" is more about the lack of any valid competing hypotheses. If you can't come up with a reasonable alternative explanation for the data, you have to accept the presented explanation.
1) Your 9 billion value is wrong, as already pointed out. 2) Sure, we can make the reasonable assumption that we'll eventually (centuries, probably) be so far over the carrying capacity of the Earth that we'll need to move or a lot of us will die off. 3) Before that, however, we need to deal with some other problems like human-induced climate change. 4) Human-induced climate change is a problem of resource utilization, not population.
Consider: We're expected to hit seven billion people within the next decade. For this little thought experiment, let's go with something simple and extreme and say we have no (0) births for 10 years. That is, we leave the world population at a maximum of 6,790,062,216 (July 2009 est. from CIA) for the next 10 years. Our emissions of CO2 are growing at a rate of about 2-3% per year. Assuming all of that is due to population increases (which it isn't) and we would stop increasing our CO2 emissions by stopping population growth (but not stop emitting), we'd still be emitting about 1.8 ppmv per year. So, we'd still be increasing our CO2 concentration over the 10 years of no population additions (and some population decreases, which I'm ignoring for the moment). So, we wouldn't stay at 385.99 ppmv over the Decade of No Births. We'd still be increasing, and we'd still be causing irrecoverable harm.
I ignored deaths in the above estimate. Let me correct that here. Let's assume, for a second, that the 1.8 ppmv of CO2 emissions per year is evenly distributed to all humans (it's not--more in a bit). Let's also assume the CIA estimate for death rate (8.2 per 1,000 people) is an accurate average. First, there would be an average of 56 million deaths per year (assuming no increase) for the Decade of No Births. That's a decrease in the world population of 560 million people. Out of 6790 million people. We'd be down to 6230 million people (6.23 billion). Let's now go back to emissions. 1.8 ppmv per year for all 6790 million people is about 2.7 x 10^-4 ppmv per person per year. If we had "only" 6230 million people at the end of the decade, we'd be down to 1.65 ppmv per year. Or a rather slight decrease in emissions by the end of the Decade of No Births. We'd still be emitting too much, and it would be too late to do anything about it.
There's a huge problem with the above estimates: Emissions are not equally divided. In fact, the five largest energy users (68%) account for only 36% of the world's population. That means that controlling population will only have an effect on emissions after many generations, by which time it would be way too late.
We need to control emissions, not population. At some point we'll have to deal with population, but it is NOT the solution to human-induced global climate change. It's not even A solution. It's a solution to exceeding carrying capacity, but it would be too little, way too late to affect human-induced climate change. Unless people are advocating the removal (killing) of the 36% who pollute the most, which I'm sure is not the case since most of the people advocating population control are a part of that 36%. Even if we killed off "the other" 64% of the population as a "solution" we'd only buy ourselves a few decades at our current consumption.
We all know it's faked.
Those slimy scientists will do anything to guarantee their funding for another year. Last year it was a decoupled lithosphere on Titan, now it's lakes of liquid hydrocarbons? Sure! Next it'll be seasonal rivers of liquid hydrocarbons, jets of water escaping from Enceladus, volcanism on Io, meteorites on Mars, people on the moon, etc., etc., etc. We really need to reign in these people.
The Maunder minimum was a period of low sunspot activity in the mid 1600s to early 1700s. The "Little Ice Age" lasted from about 1250 (when the arctic ice pack started to grow at an accelerated rate) to about 1820. What does something that happened around 1650 have to do with something that started in 1250?
We've been experiencing a low sunspot activity period since about 1985, during which time we have experienced the highest temperatures on record.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg
Your math only applies if the bulbs are broken before use. As the CFL is used, Hg becomes chemically bound to the glass of the bulb, with only about 14% remaining at end-of-life. The EPA math is for that end-of-life of the bulb, broken at disposal.
Of course, use CFLs. The same CFLs that contain large amounts of mercury. The same CFLs that cost an environmental cleanup crew $2000 to clean up if you break one and follow proper procedure. Mercury that one broken bulb can raise airborne mercury levels in your house to above safe levels. No thanks, I'll stick to incandescent and halogen until LED bulbs are consumer-ready.
The amount of mercury released in coal-fired electricity generation far exceeds the amount of mercury in CFLs. Do some research and math before spouting talking points, please.
First, as the CFL is used, the mercury vapor becomes chemically bound to the glass, leaving only about 14% to be released, assuming breakage, at the end of the life of the bulb. The EPA http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf estimates that if all 290 million CFLs sold in 2007 were destroyed in a landfill (each one broken), they would add about 0.16 metric tons of mercury to the environment. That's 0.16 percent of the mercury released by humans by all other sources.
Electricity generation is the main source of mercury emissions in the US; the average mercury emissions from electricity generation in the US is 0.012 mg/kWh.
The CFL above would---if broken and assuming 4 mg of mercury (worst-case from several CFL generations ago) in the original bulb---add about 0.012*368+0.14*4 = 4.98 mg mercury. The incandescent bulb would produce 0.012*800 = 9.6 mg mercury.
Here's a table for your edification:
__________"CFL (26 W)_____Incan (100W)
Hg (mg)_________4.98______9.6
Elec. (kWh)_____368______800
Cost ($)________42.48____89.15
Life (hours)____8000_____1950x4bulbs=7800
Total cost of the CFL includes the cost to the electric company for the ~50% inefficiency causing line losses that the customer will not see.
There is no scenario in which an incandescent beats a CFL for efficiency, environmental benefit, or monetary concerns. The remaining reason to use an incandescent instead of a CFL is personal preference for the light from an incandescent.
Why is it that the people of Slashdot always seem to get their panties in a twist over things they don't even bother to read?
The actual resolution is:
RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois' night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status, and that March 13, 2009 be declared "Pluto Day" in the State of Illinois in honor of the date its discovery was announced in 1930.
So, all this really says is that 1) the Illinois State Senate would like to see Pluto reestablished, in name, as a planet, and 2) that March 13, 2009 is declared "Pluto Day". There's nothing here about requiring the science books to be changed in Illinois, nothing about legislating the value of Pi, nothing important. Did anyone bother to go through the other resolutions that the 96th general assembly pass? Are they meddling in peoples' ages by passing a resolution that citizens over the age of 49 should be, in their opinion, considered wise and be treated with respect?
Here's why this is important. If this silly overreaction to unimportant issues continues, when it is finally important, your voices are ignored because you all sound like a bunch of whining losers who don't understand the difference between a law and a resolution so your opinion is unimportant.
Actually, in 4x4 recovery, there's a strap called a "snatch-strap" used to pull stuck vehicles out of mud, etc. It's basically a bungee (with much less elasticity and much higher strength). You attach it to both vehicles, and the recovery vehicle gets a running start, pulls the snatch strap taught, stretching it in the process. The pulling vehicle eventually comes to a stop.
There's a bunch of energy stored in the snatch-strap, which wants to go back to its original shape. It eventually does return to its original shape, pulling either the stuck or unstuck vehicle toward the other (usually both toward a common "center"). As long as the frictional forces acting on the recovery vehicle are greater than those acting on the stuck vehicle, and the energy stored in the strap is high enough to overcome the forces acting on the stuck vehicle, the stuck vehicle will move.
This is used to avoid the dangerous situation of a cable suddenly and violently releasing its stored energy as it breaks. The snatch-strap deforms elastically while the cable deforms plastically and catastrophically.
But, yes, your analogy has some application to muscle strain.;)
There is absolutely no evidence that stretching before exercise weakens muscles (note I used the exact same phrase as the title) so long as you don't over do it.
if you haven't actually read any peer-reviewed articles about it?! You do know about scholar.google.com, right? It's not that hard to check on the people interviewed in the NYTimes article. There are many papers on the subject. Yes, there is still work to be done to answer all the questions, but your ridiculous statement that there is absolutely no evidence that stretching (static) before exercise weakens muscles just shows that you haven't bothered to read about it.
Here's your spoon-fed google search with links to a few abstracts for your edification.
Except that the court(s) found that the USER is not the OWNER of the software. They are licensees.
Whether you agree with this or not is beside the point. The point is that the court is not being inconsistent with previous court rulings here. A software developer may, if they so choose, retain ownership of all copies of their software (or they may give it away under public domain). They may license certain users to use that code to whatever extent they like. They may allow anyone anywhere to use or modify that software and further use it and distribute it in any way they like (BSD). They may allow anyone anywhere to use and modify the software in any way they like as long as they share the modifications (GPL), or they may require (or forbid) specific actions before or during use of the software (Blizzard's terms of use).
These generalizations are to make a point and are not meant to perfectly summarize the various licenses.
Since the users of WoW+Glider are not conforming to the contract they explicitly agreed to when they started WoW, they have no license to use the software at all. Therefore, they have no right, under copyright law, to make a copy of the software. Therefore, Glider's developer is contributing to copyright infringement.
Anyone who takes issue with the copyright laws is essentially irrelevant to this case. The judge did exactly what he was supposed to do: apply the law as written and as interpreted by precedent.
MDY didn't argue that the contract was invalid. They argued that they didn't facilitate illegal copying after their users broke their previous contract with Blizzard.
MDY might have been successful if they had argued that the contract is invalid (for numerous reasons), but they were concerned with only their skins, not the broader applications of law.
In oral arguments, they made a half-hearted attempt to claim that the license wasn't valid based on previous law that actually found the opposite of what they claimed in their oral arguments. Poor quality lawyers on MDY's side means more confusing precedent for future cases. Too bad.
However, a reading of what the court actually found is much less worrisome.
The Court reaches the following conclusions on the basis of undisputed facts,
construction of the EULA and TOU, and controlling Ninth Circuit law: Blizzard owns a
valid copyright in the game client software, Blizzard has granted a limited license for WoW
players to use the software, use of the software with Glider falls outside the scope of the
license established in section 4 of the TOU, use of Glider includes copying to RAM within
the meaning of section 106 of the Copyright Act, users of WoW and Glider are not entitled
to a section 117 defense, and Glider users therefore infringe Blizzardâ(TM)s copyright. MDY
does not dispute that the other requirements for contributory and vicarious copyright
infringement are met, nor has MDY established a misuse defense. The Court accordingly
will grant summary judgment in favor of Blizzard with respect to liability on the contributory
and vicarious copyright infringement claims in Counts II and III.
Basically, because the users of Glider are violating the terms of the contract with Blizzard, their copying of the software (to RAM or not to RAM) is not covered under US Title 17, Section 117 (regardless of what the sibling post states).
Have you read the letter? The summary and its source are utter bullshit. The letter is about figuring out how to allow House members to post official videos on their official pages without going over their disk space quotas, while still conforming to existing regulations on how a Member may present official documents.
Pelosi has nothing to do with this. Censorship has nothing to do with this.
These scare tactics work for and on conservatives so very well.
I agree that the statements, if true do not necessarily imply divine construction.
My point was that (and I should have stated it more clearly) we don't know how long complex, living structures take to evolve. Therefore, the argument that the complexity of living creatures is too high to have evolved on the earth from non-living structures is specious.
Additionally, the argument that the age of the universe is insufficient for panspermia to act over large distances doesn't make any sense:
Fact: Our Milkyway Galaxy is ~100,000 light years in diameter. Fact: 1 lightyear is ~ 10^13 km Fact: The solar system moves at roughly 250 km/s relative to the center of our galaxy.
So, assume life was created on the other side of the galaxy. Also assume its carrier is moving at 125 km/s directly toward the sun (ignore rotation for this).
It would have to travel 10^18 km. 10^18 km / 125 km/s = 8*10^15 s = 253,510,117 years.
That's nothing compared with the age of the solar system (~4.5 x 10^9 years) to say nothing of the age of the galaxy or of the universe. Panspermia is a fine theory as far as time and distance is concerned. As you point out, comets could easily incubate/shelter life for long periods of time (and 253 million years isn't that long). It's easy to imagine that life on Earth originated from across the galaxy...
So, to my point: when making such a grand claim in a scientific article, one needs to either present the work that supports the claim in the article or cite previous articles that have been peer-reviewed and published. Simply stating it as fact is pseudoscience at its worst.
Something that bothers me about the article is this paragraph (which has no references, though he claims this to be a well-known problem):
"Self-organization of any structure needs energy sources and sinks in order to decrease the entropy locally. Dissipation usually serves as a sink, while external sources (such as radiation of the Sun for organic life) provide the energy input. Furthermore, memory and reproduction are necessary for a self-organizing dissipative structure to form a `living material'. The well known problem in explaining the origin of life is that the complexity of living creatures is so high that the time necessary to form the simplest organic living structure is too large compared to the age of the Earth. Similarly, the age of the Universe is also not sufficient for organic life to be created in a distant environment (similar to that on the Earth) and then transferred to the Earth."
Emphasis mine.
Sounds a little like this guy's been buying into "Intelligent" design a little too much...
Strangely, the rest of his article doesn't look terrible to me. I do not do plasma physics--slept through that class--but I do publish scientific articles for a living.
The reason they wait until early morning/pre-dawn is due to a property called thermal inertia (the rate at which an object responds to changes in energy input). Boulders have different thermal inertia from sand or dust.
Have you ever gone for a walk on the beach in a warm place (southern California or Florida, for example) in mid-day? The sand is usually too hot to walk on. This is because sand has a low thermal inertia and responds quickly changes in energy input. If you walk on that same beach in early evening, after the sun's light has faded, it's nice an cool
Now, if there was a boulder on that beach, its behavior would be slightly different: At mid-day, the rock is relatively cool (compared with the sand). By early evening, it's warmed up quite a bit and stays warm through most of the night. By about 5 AM, it'll be the only (natural) thing around that has any "memory" of the temperatures the day before. It will be warm enough compared to its surroundings to detect via thermal imaging.
So, this is why they compare visible-light images of the area (HiRISE) to nighttime thermal images of the area (THEMIS). The rocks in the scenes are still warm compared with the dust in the scene at 5:00 AM.
You might expect that the imaging would work just as well in the day, but with inverted temperatures. This is true, except that reflected sunlight becomes a problem and cannot be de-convolved from thermal emission.
Slashdot Mirror
Time to feed the troll.
1) These images are not photoshopped (at least not the ones on uahirise.org). If you knew anything about remote sensing, CCD sensors, image processing, or science, you'd know that.
http://www.uahirise.org/pdf/color-products.pdf
2) Press releases do absolutely nothing for scientists except get their work out to the public. In a "publish or die" world, press releases are absolutely worthless. In a "publish or die" world, peer-reviewed work is publishing.
3) All scientists in a given field (and often across fields) compete with each other for funding, so making claims that are easily refutable (by real scientists, not worthless internet trolls like yourself) means you won't get funding in the future because a) your work is peer reviewed by your competitors, and b) your grant proposals are peer-reviewed by your competitors. If you're a shit scientist, your competitors will point it out to the funding and publishing agencies and your papers won't be published anymore and you won't get any more funding.
4) Do a little research yourself before making such asinine claims about "weasel words" and "without a single theory." Scientists use words like "may" and "could" and "potentially" when they have good reason to believe it's possible, but also good reason NOT to state something with certainty.
Here, I'll do it for you.
scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Holden+crater+lake+deposits&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=801&as_sdtp=on
scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Holden+crater+megabreccia&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=801&as_sdtp=on
Why does /. never link to the original source?
http://www.uahirise.org/
Has anyone bemoaning the new rules actually read them? No, of course not. They read an opinion, with which they already agreed, and then started whining. Typical of the American public, really.
Here, read the summary and then whine.
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-303745A1.doc (PDF wasn't available.)
More definitions are included in the document above, as well as additional discussion.
Do you have physics to back you up? No, I didn't think so.
Take a new Toyota Tacoma. Assume weight savings in replacing bumper with foam metal is used elsewhere so you have the same mass vehicle. A Tacoma weighs approximately 4000 pounds, which is approximately 1800 kg.
Kinetic energy is given by:
e=0.5*m*v^2
m = mass
v = velocity (or speed for our purposes).
The kinetic energy of a Tacoma moving at 28 miles per hour is approximately 141 kJ.
The kinetic energy of a Tacoma moving at 5 miles per hour is approximately 4.5 kJ.
That is, the foam bumper only has to absorb 31 times as much energy as the solid bumper to perform to the quoted standard.
See quote below, which is from here: http://www.rexresearch.com/rabiei/rabiei.htm
We see they estimate a factor of 80 improvement of energy absorption over the foam metal's equivalent bulk material. They don't say, but let's assume (reasonably) that they are talking about linear compression. Let's assume for a second that the stock bumper is made of a block of solid steel that doesn't absorb any energy. It's not, and it does, obviously.
If their estimate is correct, and a foam bumper of the same size will absorb 80 times as much energy as its solid counterpart, then the passenger in the 28 mph impact would feel 1-2 kJ of energy instead of ~140 kJ of energy. Obviously the bumpers are not solid metal, and they already have some energy absorption capabilities built into them.
Based on the factor of 31 between the kinetic energies of the vehicle at different speeds, I think their claim is the opposite of bullshit. It's reasonable.
Dangit! Missed another point I wanted to make..
When we say we have "proved" something, we generally mean we've shown, to our satisfaction, that the competing hypotheses are not as strong as the hypothesis we have "proven."
So, what these guys are doing is working to show why these possible fossils are not likely to have formed on Earth, are not likely to have formed as precipitates, etc. Eventually, they expect to show that all of the competing hypotheses for the formation are weaker than (or have even been falsified) their hypothesis that they were formed by microbial life on Mars.
You're welcome! It's good to see people genuinely interested instead of automatically dismissing because they think they thought of the one thing wrong with the analysis that was missed by the possibly hundreds of scientists who do this day-in and day-out...
A clarification on my post:
A) I don't think it was misunderstood, but want to clarify that the "whether they are falsified or not..." statement was meant to say that whatever the final conclusion about the possible fossils, the initial (1996) work raising the possibility that AH84001 had fossilized martian life was good work, not that the authors might have faked their data. They did not.
I'm of two minds about holding press releases about these kinds of conclusions. 1) It's important to share this with the world. 2) It's important to be sure you've accounted for as many of the possible controversies with your data before going to the public who may not understand the details.
Disclaimer: I am a planetary scientist but do not work directly on the martian meteorites.
1) We know that the rocks are from Mars because they all have consistent isotope ratios between the various meteorites that are inconsistent with those isotope ratios on Earth but consistent with isotopic ratios on Mars
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Neutron_activation_analysis
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V6T-41WBDHD-8&_coverDate=10%2F31%2F2000&_alid=445411040&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=5823&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000053194&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=1495569&md5=1c1b0d04dba7f06365b072655bef68b3 (May need a subscription)
2) The age(s) of the possible fossils are greater than the time the meteorites have been on Earth. Again, this can be calculated using various isotope ratios. In essence, these things formed while the rocks were still on Mars.
3) I agree with your discomfort with the word "prove." Most scientific study is based on the Popper philosophy of disproving something rather than proving its opposite.
A) The new instrumentation and techniques being used on these meteorites are greatly advancing our understanding of them. The press announcement that AH84001 might have evidence of life was premature (what we call "science by press release"), but the publications by the team were certainly good and valid work, whether they are falsified or not...
B) The scientific word "prove" is more about the lack of any valid competing hypotheses. If you can't come up with a reasonable alternative explanation for the data, you have to accept the presented explanation.
1) Your 9 billion value is wrong, as already pointed out.
2) Sure, we can make the reasonable assumption that we'll eventually (centuries, probably) be so far over the carrying capacity of the Earth that we'll need to move or a lot of us will die off.
3) Before that, however, we need to deal with some other problems like human-induced climate change.
4) Human-induced climate change is a problem of resource utilization, not population.
Consider:
We're expected to hit seven billion people within the next decade. For this little thought experiment, let's go with something simple and extreme and say we have no (0) births for 10 years. That is, we leave the world population at a maximum of 6,790,062,216 (July 2009 est. from CIA) for the next 10 years. Our emissions of CO2 are growing at a rate of about 2-3% per year. Assuming all of that is due to population increases (which it isn't) and we would stop increasing our CO2 emissions by stopping population growth (but not stop emitting), we'd still be emitting about 1.8 ppmv per year. So, we'd still be increasing our CO2 concentration over the 10 years of no population additions (and some population decreases, which I'm ignoring for the moment). So, we wouldn't stay at 385.99 ppmv over the Decade of No Births. We'd still be increasing, and we'd still be causing irrecoverable harm.
I ignored deaths in the above estimate. Let me correct that here. Let's assume, for a second, that the 1.8 ppmv of CO2 emissions per year is evenly distributed to all humans (it's not--more in a bit). Let's also assume the CIA estimate for death rate (8.2 per 1,000 people) is an accurate average. First, there would be an average of 56 million deaths per year (assuming no increase) for the Decade of No Births. That's a decrease in the world population of 560 million people. Out of 6790 million people. We'd be down to 6230 million people (6.23 billion). Let's now go back to emissions. 1.8 ppmv per year for all 6790 million people is about 2.7 x 10^-4 ppmv per person per year. If we had "only" 6230 million people at the end of the decade, we'd be down to 1.65 ppmv per year. Or a rather slight decrease in emissions by the end of the Decade of No Births. We'd still be emitting too much, and it would be too late to do anything about it.
There's a huge problem with the above estimates: Emissions are not equally divided. In fact, the five largest energy users (68%) account for only 36% of the world's population. That means that controlling population will only have an effect on emissions after many generations, by which time it would be way too late.
We need to control emissions, not population. At some point we'll have to deal with population, but it is NOT the solution to human-induced global climate change. It's not even A solution. It's a solution to exceeding carrying capacity, but it would be too little, way too late to affect human-induced climate change. Unless people are advocating the removal (killing) of the 36% who pollute the most, which I'm sure is not the case since most of the people advocating population control are a part of that 36%. Even if we killed off "the other" 64% of the population as a "solution" we'd only buy ourselves a few decades at our current consumption.
We all know it's faked. Those slimy scientists will do anything to guarantee their funding for another year. Last year it was a decoupled lithosphere on Titan, now it's lakes of liquid hydrocarbons? Sure! Next it'll be seasonal rivers of liquid hydrocarbons, jets of water escaping from Enceladus, volcanism on Io, meteorites on Mars, people on the moon, etc., etc., etc. We really need to reign in these people.
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2002/2001JD000560.shtml
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217075138.htm
The Maunder minimum was a period of low sunspot activity in the mid 1600s to early 1700s. The "Little Ice Age" lasted from about 1250 (when the arctic ice pack started to grow at an accelerated rate) to about 1820. What does something that happened around 1650 have to do with something that started in 1250?
We've been experiencing a low sunspot activity period since about 1985, during which time we have experienced the highest temperatures on record.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Temp-sunspot-co2.svg
Your math only applies if the bulbs are broken before use. As the CFL is used, Hg becomes chemically bound to the glass of the bulb, with only about 14% remaining at end-of-life. The EPA math is for that end-of-life of the bulb, broken at disposal.
You are obviously an idiot. Allow me dissect:
Of course, use CFLs. The same CFLs that contain large amounts of mercury. The same CFLs that cost an environmental cleanup crew $2000 to clean up if you break one and follow proper procedure. Mercury that one broken bulb can raise airborne mercury levels in your house to above safe levels. No thanks, I'll stick to incandescent and halogen until LED bulbs are consumer-ready.
The amount of mercury released in coal-fired electricity generation far exceeds the amount of mercury in CFLs. Do some research and math before spouting talking points, please.
First, as the CFL is used, the mercury vapor becomes chemically bound to the glass, leaving only about 14% to be released, assuming breakage, at the end of the life of the bulb. The EPA http://www.energystar.gov/ia/partners/promotions/change_light/downloads/Fact_Sheet_Mercury.pdf estimates that if all 290 million CFLs sold in 2007 were destroyed in a landfill (each one broken), they would add about 0.16 metric tons of mercury to the environment. That's 0.16 percent of the mercury released by humans by all other sources.
Electricity generation is the main source of mercury emissions in the US; the average mercury emissions from electricity generation in the US is 0.012 mg/kWh.
The CFL above would---if broken and assuming 4 mg of mercury (worst-case from several CFL generations ago) in the original bulb---add about 0.012*368+0.14*4 = 4.98 mg mercury. The incandescent bulb would produce 0.012*800 = 9.6 mg mercury.
Here's a table for your edification:
__________"CFL (26 W)_____Incan (100W)
Hg (mg)_________4.98______9.6
Elec. (kWh)_____368______800
Cost ($)________42.48____89.15
Life (hours)____8000_____1950x4bulbs=7800
Total cost of the CFL includes the cost to the electric company for the ~50% inefficiency causing line losses that the customer will not see.
There is no scenario in which an incandescent beats a CFL for efficiency, environmental benefit, or monetary concerns. The remaining reason to use an incandescent instead of a CFL is personal preference for the light from an incandescent.
The actual resolution is:
So, all this really says is that 1) the Illinois State Senate would like to see Pluto reestablished, in name, as a planet, and 2) that March 13, 2009 is declared "Pluto Day". There's nothing here about requiring the science books to be changed in Illinois, nothing about legislating the value of Pi, nothing important. Did anyone bother to go through the other resolutions that the 96th general assembly pass? Are they meddling in peoples' ages by passing a resolution that citizens over the age of 49 should be, in their opinion, considered wise and be treated with respect?
Here's why this is important. If this silly overreaction to unimportant issues continues, when it is finally important, your voices are ignored because you all sound like a bunch of whining losers who don't understand the difference between a law and a resolution so your opinion is unimportant.
There's a bunch of energy stored in the snatch-strap, which wants to go back to its original shape. It eventually does return to its original shape, pulling either the stuck or unstuck vehicle toward the other (usually both toward a common "center"). As long as the frictional forces acting on the recovery vehicle are greater than those acting on the stuck vehicle, and the energy stored in the strap is high enough to overcome the forces acting on the stuck vehicle, the stuck vehicle will move.
This is used to avoid the dangerous situation of a cable suddenly and violently releasing its stored energy as it breaks. The snatch-strap deforms elastically while the cable deforms plastically and catastrophically.
But, yes, your analogy has some application to muscle strain. ;)
There is absolutely no evidence that stretching before exercise weakens muscles (note I used the exact same phrase as the title) so long as you don't over do it.
if you haven't actually read any peer-reviewed articles about it?! You do know about scholar.google.com, right? It's not that hard to check on the people interviewed in the NYTimes article. There are many papers on the subject. Yes, there is still work to be done to answer all the questions, but your ridiculous statement that there is absolutely no evidence that stretching (static) before exercise weakens muscles just shows that you haven't bothered to read about it.
Here's your spoon-fed google search with links to a few abstracts for your edification.
http://www.acsm-msse.org/pt/re/msse/abstract.00005768-200403000-00004.htm;jsessionid=JJgJGzgYVCy4qyLKzfW21kXYSGvYP3tWmM2WDyC6Nr1nvvvH7ykd!-1853705402!181195629!8091!-1
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED448119 [PDF]
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9368275
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abridged/325/7362/468
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119251161/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
http://www.cjsportsmed.com/pt/re/cjsm/abstract.00042752-200409000-00004.htm;jsessionid=JJgpcrQvSRyyCn1CG2XnW4WS6vzdsmrXnhG43kmLDT1CyhhCknr9!1600976923!181195628!8091!-1
http://apt.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1519%2F1533-4287(2001)015%5B0098%3AAEOSAN%5D2.0.CO%3B2
Whether you agree with this or not is beside the point. The point is that the court is not being inconsistent with previous court rulings here. A software developer may, if they so choose, retain ownership of all copies of their software (or they may give it away under public domain). They may license certain users to use that code to whatever extent they like. They may allow anyone anywhere to use or modify that software and further use it and distribute it in any way they like (BSD). They may allow anyone anywhere to use and modify the software in any way they like as long as they share the modifications (GPL), or they may require (or forbid) specific actions before or during use of the software (Blizzard's terms of use).
These generalizations are to make a point and are not meant to perfectly summarize the various licenses.
Since the users of WoW+Glider are not conforming to the contract they explicitly agreed to when they started WoW, they have no license to use the software at all. Therefore, they have no right, under copyright law, to make a copy of the software. Therefore, Glider's developer is contributing to copyright infringement.
Anyone who takes issue with the copyright laws is essentially irrelevant to this case. The judge did exactly what he was supposed to do: apply the law as written and as interpreted by precedent.
MDY might have been successful if they had argued that the contract is invalid (for numerous reasons), but they were concerned with only their skins, not the broader applications of law.
In oral arguments, they made a half-hearted attempt to claim that the license wasn't valid based on previous law that actually found the opposite of what they claimed in their oral arguments. Poor quality lawyers on MDY's side means more confusing precedent for future cases. Too bad.
However, a reading of what the court actually found is much less worrisome.
The Court reaches the following conclusions on the basis of undisputed facts, construction of the EULA and TOU, and controlling Ninth Circuit law: Blizzard owns a valid copyright in the game client software, Blizzard has granted a limited license for WoW players to use the software, use of the software with Glider falls outside the scope of the license established in section 4 of the TOU, use of Glider includes copying to RAM within the meaning of section 106 of the Copyright Act, users of WoW and Glider are not entitled to a section 117 defense, and Glider users therefore infringe Blizzardâ(TM)s copyright. MDY does not dispute that the other requirements for contributory and vicarious copyright infringement are met, nor has MDY established a misuse defense. The Court accordingly will grant summary judgment in favor of Blizzard with respect to liability on the contributory and vicarious copyright infringement claims in Counts II and III.
Basically, because the users of Glider are violating the terms of the contract with Blizzard, their copying of the software (to RAM or not to RAM) is not covered under US Title 17, Section 117 (regardless of what the sibling post states).
Have you read the letter? The summary and its source are utter bullshit. The letter is about figuring out how to allow House members to post official videos on their official pages without going over their disk space quotas, while still conforming to existing regulations on how a Member may present official documents.
Pelosi has nothing to do with this. Censorship has nothing to do with this.
These scare tactics work for and on conservatives so very well.
Wow.
When are we going to be able to moderate the editors?
In this instance, either Timothy didn't RTFA or he did and chose to post this troll to the front page anyway.
Either way, Timothy needs to lose editor karma.
I agree that the statements, if true do not necessarily imply divine construction.
My point was that (and I should have stated it more clearly) we don't know how long complex, living structures take to evolve. Therefore, the argument that the complexity of living creatures is too high to have evolved on the earth from non-living structures is specious.
Additionally, the argument that the age of the universe is insufficient for panspermia to act over large distances doesn't make any sense:
Fact: Our Milkyway Galaxy is ~100,000 light years in diameter.
Fact: 1 lightyear is ~ 10^13 km
Fact: The solar system moves at roughly 250 km/s relative to the center of our galaxy.
So, assume life was created on the other side of the galaxy. Also assume its carrier is moving at 125 km/s directly toward the sun (ignore rotation for this).
It would have to travel 10^18 km. 10^18 km / 125 km/s = 8*10^15 s = 253,510,117 years.
That's nothing compared with the age of the solar system (~4.5 x 10^9 years) to say nothing of the age of the galaxy or of the universe. Panspermia is a fine theory as far as time and distance is concerned. As you point out, comets could easily incubate/shelter life for long periods of time (and 253 million years isn't that long). It's easy to imagine that life on Earth originated from across the galaxy...
So, to my point: when making such a grand claim in a scientific article, one needs to either present the work that supports the claim in the article or cite previous articles that have been peer-reviewed and published. Simply stating it as fact is pseudoscience at its worst.
The New Journal of Physics, http://www.iop.org/EJ/njp is an open access journal.
j p7_8_263.html
The article is here:
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/1367-2630/9/8/263/n
Something that bothers me about the article is this paragraph (which has no references, though he claims this to be a well-known problem):
"Self-organization of any structure needs energy sources and sinks in order to decrease the entropy locally. Dissipation usually serves as a sink, while external sources (such as radiation of the Sun for organic life) provide the energy input. Furthermore, memory and reproduction are necessary for a self-organizing dissipative structure to form a `living material'. The well known problem in explaining the origin of life is that the complexity of living creatures is so high that the time necessary to form the simplest organic living structure is too large compared to the age of the Earth. Similarly, the age of the Universe is also not sufficient for organic life to be created in a distant environment (similar to that on the Earth) and then transferred to the Earth."
Emphasis mine.
Sounds a little like this guy's been buying into "Intelligent" design a little too much...
Strangely, the rest of his article doesn't look terrible to me. I do not do plasma physics--slept through that class--but I do publish scientific articles for a living.
The reason they wait until early morning/pre-dawn is due to a property called thermal inertia (the rate at which an object responds to changes in energy input). Boulders have different thermal inertia from sand or dust.
Have you ever gone for a walk on the beach in a warm place (southern California or Florida, for example) in mid-day? The sand is usually too hot to walk on. This is because sand has a low thermal inertia and responds quickly changes in energy input. If you walk on that same beach in early evening, after the sun's light has faded, it's nice an cool
Now, if there was a boulder on that beach, its behavior would be slightly different: At mid-day, the rock is relatively cool (compared with the sand). By early evening, it's warmed up quite a bit and stays warm through most of the night. By about 5 AM, it'll be the only (natural) thing around that has any "memory" of the temperatures the day before. It will be warm enough compared to its surroundings to detect via thermal imaging.
So, this is why they compare visible-light images of the area (HiRISE) to nighttime thermal images of the area (THEMIS). The rocks in the scenes are still warm compared with the dust in the scene at 5:00 AM.
You might expect that the imaging would work just as well in the day, but with inverted temperatures. This is true, except that reflected sunlight becomes a problem and cannot be de-convolved from thermal emission.
The problem with ingressing at Duck bay is that it would be on a south-facing slope.
That's bad news for a solar-powered rover in the southern hemisphere.
I agree, though, it looks like the safest place to enter from a slope/scarp point of view.
The Rovers can handle quite a slope. Going down, that is. Coming back out? Well, not so much.
Ah. No, I'm thinking of CRISM, the spectrometer, also on MRO.
MARCI is for weather monitoring (it will be very useful for knowing where there are clouds and haze and avoiding targetting HiRISE there).
There's also CTX, the context imager, clocking in at ~6m/pixel.
Lots and lots of good data is going to come from this mission.