The FAI's rules state that a record attempt like this must start and finish at the same airfield and cross all meridians of the globe. What's more the course must not be less than the very precise figure of 36,787.559 kilometres (around 23,000 miles) which is equal in length to the Tropic of Cancer. To allow the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer to catch the vital jet stream winds, the FAI rules don't oblige that record attempts follow the imaginary line of the Tropic itself but simply that the distance flown exceeds it.
Are they really the same thing though? I believe the point of the Biological Engineering major is that you focus specifically on biology with the addition of engineering principles, while its the other way around in the other options. For example, course 6 with a BME minor would mean you focus on EE, but with a biological bent, rather than a biological focus with an EE bent. The difference in the end might be insignificantly subtle, but MIT seems to think its important enough.
Cancer cells do appear to be different from normal cells since they manufacture surface molecules at unusual rates. However, because these are molecules that appear in normal cells, viruses can't tell the difference between cancer cells and normal cells, so designing a virus to specifically target cancer cells would be difficult. But not necessarily impossible as you describe.
There is an interesting strategy in development that will allow viruses to specifically attack cancerous cells. Basically, find a molecule that cancerous cells will absorb in extraordinary quantities. These molecules are absorbed in extraordinary quantities because of the fact that cancer cells manufacture surface molecules at unusual rates. Then manufacture a virus that will only be active in the presence of that molecule. The virus will generally only grow in cancerous cells, eventually killing them off.
I don't know if this strategy is yet actively being used anywhere, or if it works as effectively as it sounds like it should. But once again, designing viruses to specifically attack cancerous cells is not impossible. Grandparent could very well be right.
The G4 chip has always shown that clock speed is an inaccurate measure of performance. While G4s generally operate at lower clock speeds, people have found that they compete with Intel processors of higher clock speeds. A multiplier of about 1.5 to 2 seems about reasonable.
Hm, this has been discussed so often, especially with the recent release of Mac Mini, I thought everyone knew this already.
Grandparent was addressing why alarm clocks that play MP3s make use of CDs. He was saying that it was impractical otherwise as it would necessitate the use of a computer. He demonstrated this by showing what dialog would occur if a designer came up with an alarm clock that played MP3s, but didn't make use of CDs.
...and how well do these equations produce the warming from 1900-1950?...and the cooling from 1945-1975?
I took a closer look at the website, and it turns out that testing for this data set has actually not yet begun, which is disappointing. The researchers state that they have tweaked the model to fit today's weather, but I don't know exactly where to find those results.
So yeah, your idea is good and it has already been planned by the researchers, but it hasn't happened yet.
So I can't actually comment on the present accuracy of the model other than they've tweaked it for current data.
Is it so much better to leave those radioactive materials lying around the landscape as they originally were? And a lot of the "waste" in the USA is fuel which has been used one time. It could be reused, rather than having to set it aside and use another batch of fuel. But the USA has decided to not recycle.Fuel can't be reused indefinitely. Ultimately you will end with a product that can't be used, and yet will still be radioactive. What can you do with this waste product other than store it? The problem is that we don't have a storage method that will last long enough for the waste to fully decay to a state that is no longer hazardous to the environment.
Burying the waste is actually just an irrelevant issue that I inadvertantly included. The problem is the relatively indefinite, indestructable storage. How can it be done?
I will need to make an amendment to this post. Rereading the website, it turns out that the model has been tweaked to fit current day weather. It has yet to be tested with the data set from 1950-2000. This testing is set to begin this year.
Which means that I have no idea how accurate the current findings of this project are. Its a good idea and I'm sure that reasonable accuracy will eventually be there, but I can't comment on how accurate it is at the moment.
I did not say anywhere that Venice is sinking because of global warming. I said that its already struggling, global warming will make it even harder. This was my example to show how global warming will affect people.
And my statement was clearly a literary device called a hyperbole meant to emphasis the invalidity of your assumption. If you wish to attack a generally accepted literary practice, please be my guest.
This is indeed a reasonable argument, and one that I had in my mind as I made the post you were replying to. I don't think that I am qualified enough to make an accurate statement at this point. However, I think there are rather significant differences in the examples that you pose.
In your second example, the equation that you suggest writing incorporates no general understanding of the underlying economic principles at work. Essentially, you would be curve-fitting an enormous number of data points. Its no wonder that the resulting equation has no predictive power.
The idea behind the climateprediction.net model is that it incorporates actual science in its predictions. Scientifically established rules and concepts are actually written into the model first, and then the model is tweaked to fit historically known data. The model has some idea of the underlying principles at work. In other words, its much more like educated guessing where you already have some idea of what is supposed to happen.
For example, let's try and model two balls colliding. If you built a model incorporating inelastic/elastic collision laws and fed it data, you would have a fairly reasonable prediction of what will happen. Meanwhile, if you attempted to extrapolate the position of the balls without knowing any laws, you may have the balls passing through each other.
Personally I also feel that scientists have a much better understanding of the fundamentals of weather than the fundamentals of economics. Weather arises simply from physical laws that can never be violated, and can be measured and quantified directly. You can't quite say the same thing about economics. Its true that both systems are chaotic. However, I feel that we can study one better than the other.
I wish I had a better understanding of both fields to say more. I am not aware of the circumstances surrounding any failed economic models, and so I cannot really comment. All I can say is that the climateprediction.net project appears to have something going for it since it has international backing. It's also an evolving project, and so has the potential to succeed.
I know you're probably joking, but just to clarify for people who don't know.
People who make statements similar to parent's generally have a misunderstanding of global warming. Global warming states that the average temperature of the planet will increase. However, due to complex climate interactions, the temperatures in many areas will actually decrease. As long as this is countered with other areas increasing in temperature, the average temperature can still increase.
For example, one area may have an increase of 88 degrees, while another area may have a decrease of 66 degrees. On average, that's warming on the global scale.
It has been said many times that "global warming" is a bad name since it leads to confusion among the general populace.
According to the climateprediction.net website, the researchers are trying exactly that with weather data from 1950-2000. The equations are tweaked, within reasonable boundaries, so that the model does as well as possible at producing past and current climates (compared to archived observations).
And the reason "greenies" don't support nuclear power is because it also has environmental impacts. Nuclear waste is something everyone has heard about, and is an issue that most people dismiss as irrelevant. "It's waste, just dump it into a barrel and bury it somewhere." However, what people don't realize is that nuclear waste becomes a rather large problem when it lasts hundreds of thousands of years longer than our best containers. Even present theoretical solutions are acknowledged as stopgap solutions that will require additional intervention in the future. In other words, we can store waste safely for awhile, but we will need future generations to find a better way to deal with the waste that we have already buried.
I think once this problem is solved, many more people will support nuclear power. I think there are a few other problems involved, not to mention politics. We'll see where things go.
Re:Since when did computer models become gospel?
on
New Climate Change Warning
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· Score: 3, Informative
The model involved in this research was tweaked to reproduce the climate data for the last 50 years. I do make the presumption that if the model can do so with reasonable accuracy that it can predict the future with reasonable accuracy.
ClimatePrediction.net is meant to be a full climate prediction model. The fact that they choose to look at specific aspects (in this case C02) does not mean that they were modeling only for those aspects. An examination of the model shows that it is rather extensive.
To demonstrate the extensiveness of the model, the researchers have had the model reproduce as best as it can the weather patterns from 1950 to 2000. These simulation runs are termed hindcast on the ClimatePrediction.net website.
"The equations are tweaked, within reasonable boundaries, so that the model does as well as possible at producing past and current climates (compared to archived observations)."
Please see here for more information about their model: http://www.climateprediction.net/science/index.php
Haha sorry, I misinterpreted your previous post as attacking the work rather than attacking the article. I am in agreement that science articles written for the masses are in general rather poorly done. Unfortunately it has become a necessary evil since that masses are largely uneducated to such topics as these.
I was going to say something along the lines of "well, what do you expect from journalism?;)" when I realized just how sad such a statement is for the world today.
Wow, that is true faith in technology. However, optimism must be paired alongside with realistic expectations. I'm sure that 100 years ago people thought that by now we would be living in paradise. It hasn't happened. Paralleling this, in 100 years you predict that we will have the technology to fix whatever mistakes we have made. What if we don't? Should we take that chance? I would personally rather take precautions now rather than find out how screwed we are later.
Yeah, you probably won't be affected too much by climate change. But other people certainly will.
You make the assumption that because the average temperature is increasing that the planet will warm up uniformly. This isn't true, many places will actually get colder. That's why "global warming" is such a bad name.
You also make the assumption that because the average temperature change is small, that localized changes will be small. Suppose in one place the temperature increases 88 degrees, while elsewhere it decreases 66 degrees. The average temperature change is 11, but I surely wouldn't want to be in either places.
Also, you say that presently unused land will be converted to farmland. However, at the same time you don't acknowledge that much of presently usable farmland will become useless to us.
Finally, while its true that the Salt Lake won't be affected by an 8-10 meter increase in water height, don't be quick to assume that no one will be affected. An 8-10 meter increase in water height would bury most of the shoreland on the planet. Guess where most of our biggest cities are? How about on the edge of water? For example, Venice, Italy is already struggling with preventing their city from flooding entirely. An 8-10 meter increase in water height would truly devastate their city.
The quote doesn't say that the safest level of C02 to have is 0 ppm, it says that there is no way you can define a certain level as safe and unsafe. The fact that you choose to interpret the quote in the way that you did shows that you read the article with a bias against the ideas of global warming.
I also find it funny that you criticize the results of a very well-known study without actually seeing the results, then you proceed to ask for definitive results. Maybe you could actually visit the climateprediction.net website for more information before criticizing their research? For example, go here for a detailed description of their model: http://www.climateprediction.net/science/index.php
If you had opened your Mac Mini, you would have voided your warrenty. Voiding your warrenty to save some money (less than $75 as that includes the cost of memory) is quite the gambit, especially when one considers how generous Apple's warrenty policies are. In many cases they will replace your broken product for free.
I would advise some caution in buying the Entempo Spirit 20. There are apparently hardware-related problems that will cause the player to do unusual things when working with headphones that are not supplied with the player. Apparently most headphones will cause the player to spontaneously enter voice recording mode, and mp3s may end up sounding tinny.
See this Yahoo group for more info: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/entempo_mp3_players/ messages/1
The point isn't that it shouldn't be illegal. The point is that its incredibly difficult to enforce a ban on it, and so banning it would be a waste of effort.
Actually it is severely patent encumbered. There is absolutely no way to create an MPEG4 codec without violating *a lot* of patents. How does XviD get around this? The XviD project claims to be an educational/research project. Note that the XviD project cannot officially release binaries as I believe this would require the payment of royalties. Otherwise its in a gray area of the law.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually landing required a shorter distance than taking off.
The FAI's rules state that a record attempt like this must start and finish at the same airfield and cross all meridians of the globe. What's more the course must not be less than the very precise figure of 36,787.559 kilometres (around 23,000 miles) which is equal in length to the Tropic of Cancer. To allow the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer to catch the vital jet stream winds, the FAI rules don't oblige that record attempts follow the imaginary line of the Tropic itself but simply that the distance flown exceeds it.
f t/ RecordAttempt/index.jsp
http://www.virginatlanticglobalflyer.com/Aircra
Are they really the same thing though? I believe the point of the Biological Engineering major is that you focus specifically on biology with the addition of engineering principles, while its the other way around in the other options. For example, course 6 with a BME minor would mean you focus on EE, but with a biological bent, rather than a biological focus with an EE bent. The difference in the end might be insignificantly subtle, but MIT seems to think its important enough.
Cancer cells do appear to be different from normal cells since they manufacture surface molecules at unusual rates. However, because these are molecules that appear in normal cells, viruses can't tell the difference between cancer cells and normal cells, so designing a virus to specifically target cancer cells would be difficult. But not necessarily impossible as you describe.
There is an interesting strategy in development that will allow viruses to specifically attack cancerous cells. Basically, find a molecule that cancerous cells will absorb in extraordinary quantities. These molecules are absorbed in extraordinary quantities because of the fact that cancer cells manufacture surface molecules at unusual rates. Then manufacture a virus that will only be active in the presence of that molecule. The virus will generally only grow in cancerous cells, eventually killing them off.
I don't know if this strategy is yet actively being used anywhere, or if it works as effectively as it sounds like it should. But once again, designing viruses to specifically attack cancerous cells is not impossible. Grandparent could very well be right.
The G4 chip has always shown that clock speed is an inaccurate measure of performance. While G4s generally operate at lower clock speeds, people have found that they compete with Intel processors of higher clock speeds. A multiplier of about 1.5 to 2 seems about reasonable.
Hm, this has been discussed so often, especially with the recent release of Mac Mini, I thought everyone knew this already.
Grandparent was addressing why alarm clocks that play MP3s make use of CDs. He was saying that it was impractical otherwise as it would necessitate the use of a computer. He demonstrated this by showing what dialog would occur if a designer came up with an alarm clock that played MP3s, but didn't make use of CDs.
When one makes statements about objectivity, it would be very wise to appear objective yourself. Otherwise you'll just end up sounding stupid.
...and how well do these equations produce the warming from 1900-1950? ...and the cooling from 1945-1975?
I took a closer look at the website, and it turns out that testing for this data set has actually not yet begun, which is disappointing. The researchers state that they have tweaked the model to fit today's weather, but I don't know exactly where to find those results.
So yeah, your idea is good and it has already been planned by the researchers, but it hasn't happened yet.
So I can't actually comment on the present accuracy of the model other than they've tweaked it for current data.
Is it so much better to leave those radioactive materials lying around the landscape as they originally were? And a lot of the "waste" in the USA is fuel which has been used one time. It could be reused, rather than having to set it aside and use another batch of fuel. But the USA has decided to not recycle.Fuel can't be reused indefinitely. Ultimately you will end with a product that can't be used, and yet will still be radioactive. What can you do with this waste product other than store it? The problem is that we don't have a storage method that will last long enough for the waste to fully decay to a state that is no longer hazardous to the environment.
Burying the waste is actually just an irrelevant issue that I inadvertantly included. The problem is the relatively indefinite, indestructable storage. How can it be done?
I will need to make an amendment to this post. Rereading the website, it turns out that the model has been tweaked to fit current day weather. It has yet to be tested with the data set from 1950-2000. This testing is set to begin this year.
Which means that I have no idea how accurate the current findings of this project are. Its a good idea and I'm sure that reasonable accuracy will eventually be there, but I can't comment on how accurate it is at the moment.
Certainly a very valid concern, its good to have people judging what is good science and what isn't.
As for tweaking carefully, I would certainly hope so!
I did not say anywhere that Venice is sinking because of global warming. I said that its already struggling, global warming will make it even harder. This was my example to show how global warming will affect people.
And my statement was clearly a literary device called a hyperbole meant to emphasis the invalidity of your assumption. If you wish to attack a generally accepted literary practice, please be my guest.
This is indeed a reasonable argument, and one that I had in my mind as I made the post you were replying to. I don't think that I am qualified enough to make an accurate statement at this point. However, I think there are rather significant differences in the examples that you pose.
In your second example, the equation that you suggest writing incorporates no general understanding of the underlying economic principles at work. Essentially, you would be curve-fitting an enormous number of data points. Its no wonder that the resulting equation has no predictive power.
The idea behind the climateprediction.net model is that it incorporates actual science in its predictions. Scientifically established rules and concepts are actually written into the model first, and then the model is tweaked to fit historically known data. The model has some idea of the underlying principles at work. In other words, its much more like educated guessing where you already have some idea of what is supposed to happen.
For example, let's try and model two balls colliding. If you built a model incorporating inelastic/elastic collision laws and fed it data, you would have a fairly reasonable prediction of what will happen. Meanwhile, if you attempted to extrapolate the position of the balls without knowing any laws, you may have the balls passing through each other.
Personally I also feel that scientists have a much better understanding of the fundamentals of weather than the fundamentals of economics. Weather arises simply from physical laws that can never be violated, and can be measured and quantified directly. You can't quite say the same thing about economics. Its true that both systems are chaotic. However, I feel that we can study one better than the other.
I wish I had a better understanding of both fields to say more. I am not aware of the circumstances surrounding any failed economic models, and so I cannot really comment. All I can say is that the climateprediction.net project appears to have something going for it since it has international backing. It's also an evolving project, and so has the potential to succeed.
I know you're probably joking, but just to clarify for people who don't know.
People who make statements similar to parent's generally have a misunderstanding of global warming. Global warming states that the average temperature of the planet will increase. However, due to complex climate interactions, the temperatures in many areas will actually decrease. As long as this is countered with other areas increasing in temperature, the average temperature can still increase.
For example, one area may have an increase of 88 degrees, while another area may have a decrease of 66 degrees. On average, that's warming on the global scale.
It has been said many times that "global warming" is a bad name since it leads to confusion among the general populace.
According to the climateprediction.net website, the researchers are trying exactly that with weather data from 1950-2000. The equations are tweaked, within reasonable boundaries, so that the model does as well as possible at producing past and current climates (compared to archived observations).
And the reason "greenies" don't support nuclear power is because it also has environmental impacts. Nuclear waste is something everyone has heard about, and is an issue that most people dismiss as irrelevant. "It's waste, just dump it into a barrel and bury it somewhere." However, what people don't realize is that nuclear waste becomes a rather large problem when it lasts hundreds of thousands of years longer than our best containers. Even present theoretical solutions are acknowledged as stopgap solutions that will require additional intervention in the future. In other words, we can store waste safely for awhile, but we will need future generations to find a better way to deal with the waste that we have already buried.
I think once this problem is solved, many more people will support nuclear power. I think there are a few other problems involved, not to mention politics. We'll see where things go.
The model involved in this research was tweaked to reproduce the climate data for the last 50 years. I do make the presumption that if the model can do so with reasonable accuracy that it can predict the future with reasonable accuracy.
ClimatePrediction.net is meant to be a full climate prediction model. The fact that they choose to look at specific aspects (in this case C02) does not mean that they were modeling only for those aspects. An examination of the model shows that it is rather extensive.
p
To demonstrate the extensiveness of the model, the researchers have had the model reproduce as best as it can the weather patterns from 1950 to 2000. These simulation runs are termed hindcast on the ClimatePrediction.net website.
"The equations are tweaked, within reasonable boundaries, so that the model does as well as possible at producing past and current climates (compared to archived observations)."
Please see here for more information about their model: http://www.climateprediction.net/science/index.ph
Haha sorry, I misinterpreted your previous post as attacking the work rather than attacking the article. I am in agreement that science articles written for the masses are in general rather poorly done. Unfortunately it has become a necessary evil since that masses are largely uneducated to such topics as these.
;)" when I realized just how sad such a statement is for the world today.
I was going to say something along the lines of "well, what do you expect from journalism?
Wow, that is true faith in technology. However, optimism must be paired alongside with realistic expectations. I'm sure that 100 years ago people thought that by now we would be living in paradise. It hasn't happened. Paralleling this, in 100 years you predict that we will have the technology to fix whatever mistakes we have made. What if we don't? Should we take that chance? I would personally rather take precautions now rather than find out how screwed we are later.
Yeah, you probably won't be affected too much by climate change. But other people certainly will.
You make the assumption that because the average temperature is increasing that the planet will warm up uniformly. This isn't true, many places will actually get colder. That's why "global warming" is such a bad name.
You also make the assumption that because the average temperature change is small, that localized changes will be small. Suppose in one place the temperature increases 88 degrees, while elsewhere it decreases 66 degrees. The average temperature change is 11, but I surely wouldn't want to be in either places.
Also, you say that presently unused land will be converted to farmland. However, at the same time you don't acknowledge that much of presently usable farmland will become useless to us.
Finally, while its true that the Salt Lake won't be affected by an 8-10 meter increase in water height, don't be quick to assume that no one will be affected. An 8-10 meter increase in water height would bury most of the shoreland on the planet. Guess where most of our biggest cities are? How about on the edge of water? For example, Venice, Italy is already struggling with preventing their city from flooding entirely. An 8-10 meter increase in water height would truly devastate their city.
The quote doesn't say that the safest level of C02 to have is 0 ppm, it says that there is no way you can define a certain level as safe and unsafe. The fact that you choose to interpret the quote in the way that you did shows that you read the article with a bias against the ideas of global warming.
p
I also find it funny that you criticize the results of a very well-known study without actually seeing the results, then you proceed to ask for definitive results. Maybe you could actually visit the climateprediction.net website for more information before criticizing their research? For example, go here for a detailed description of their model: http://www.climateprediction.net/science/index.ph
If you had opened your Mac Mini, you would have voided your warrenty. Voiding your warrenty to save some money (less than $75 as that includes the cost of memory) is quite the gambit, especially when one considers how generous Apple's warrenty policies are. In many cases they will replace your broken product for free.
I would advise some caution in buying the Entempo Spirit 20. There are apparently hardware-related problems that will cause the player to do unusual things when working with headphones that are not supplied with the player. Apparently most headphones will cause the player to spontaneously enter voice recording mode, and mp3s may end up sounding tinny.
/ messages/1
See this Yahoo group for more info: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/entempo_mp3_players
The point isn't that it shouldn't be illegal. The point is that its incredibly difficult to enforce a ban on it, and so banning it would be a waste of effort.
Another context where you may hear painting is in sniping. You paint a target with a laser beam for better accuracy.
Actually it is severely patent encumbered. There is absolutely no way to create an MPEG4 codec without violating *a lot* of patents. How does XviD get around this? The XviD project claims to be an educational/research project. Note that the XviD project cannot officially release binaries as I believe this would require the payment of royalties. Otherwise its in a gray area of the law.