This is from the main page of Angewandte, the "International English" link is in english, and it's also been reposted below. Fwiw, The link in the article isn't broken, it just only works if you're logged in via an institution with access to the full paper. IAAC (I Am A Chemist). Cool stuff!
Gosh, perhaps the dozens of robots with bright lights and cameras scouring the seabed looking for a broken oil pipe can also spot fish? This is no coincidence. There's hundreds of unique species per square mile of ocean.
But seriously though, as a brit I see a few stories a day here that are from my country, and almost every comment involves US litigation law, or US gun law, or US copyright law, or US constitutional rights. I just chose a poor time to go mental about it.
My understanding of superconductors was that High Tc used a departure from standard superconducting theory that meant they couldn't survive/sustain a magnetic field. All I know is, if a usable NMR was possible using nitrogen only, it'd exist and everyone would have one. Perhaps the relatively small cost of helium compared to the rest of the machine is what's been suppressing research in the field so far.
If the cost of helium spikes by a factor of 20, then so does the cost of an MRI and the costs of medicinal chemical research. At least they won't be able to scan for the cancers they can no longer cure, right?
The problem is that precision gets lost in the conversion. I'm sick of seeing news reports that claim something like "The accident may cost over £658,891" when what they're actually doing is reporting too many sig figs on an ass-sourced "$1 million". Or "PRECISELY 91 CENTIMETERS" when the source was "feh, about 3 feet" and a meter would suffice.
My "local town" is a datacentre in a field somewhere. Whenever I see an advert telling me that something's big in Cheltenham (a dump; over half the length of my country away) I usually laugh like a drain and then forget what the product was.
Every new death is attributable to the pressmen that created the negative public opinion that caused Foxconn to consider the move in the first place. Nobody else.
What's the matter? disappointed you missed your chance to piss and moan? They took it down after 14 hours. Nobody needs to read another post full of righteous indignationand regurgitated groupthink.
Were these the same voters that asked for reduced class sizes and better grades for their precious snowflake? The same voters that sued the school for sports injuries?
Oh COME ON. The situation is: "here's some money, make our computer infrastructure work. But wait! We'll micromanage even though we know fuck-all." It's not like there isn't already accountability in the total budget, and if nothing else just dump all the data in a public repository somewhere and let paranoid netizens crawl it. Some red tape is an appropriate thing, but this isn't going to stop typical budgetary BS politics like blowing it all before the end of the fiscal year.
Well basically, because nerve agents are reactive (reactive enough to react with your nerves) they're also reasonably chemically unstable. If you left some mustard gas out for a few weeks it would all break down, but we don't usually have that long. Harsh chemicals like mineral acids or strong alkali (lye) are the gold standard for decontamination. The radioactive materials reference is likely things like dirty bomb fallout on walls, roofs. If the radioactive isotopes can be dissolved in water and washed away, they'll break down by the time the water cycle ends up somewhere near humans again.
Problem is, pouring a thousand tuns of sulfuric acid or sodium hydroxide solution into a local drain/river/water table isn't good for anyone. Another class of "really really awesome cleaners" are the peroxy anions, which are made on demand from hydrogen peroxide and weaker bases like baking soda. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down very quickly in the environment and isn't very toxic (don't go swimming in it though).
The actual cleaning mixture is still bloody harsh, but the post-cleanup cleanup is nicer, it's probably cheaper, it's less harmful to people, and the environment is a nice PR bonus.
The important question is, How close can this get us to space? The concept can double the top speed of something like SpaceShip 1 (and I guess the top speed, being limited by air friction, goes up as you do) but you'd still need a rocket booster to make a stable orbit. It always struck me as incredibly wasteful to fill up all those rockets with propellant, and then use it from ground level. It was always... odd to see the space shuttle consume vast quantities of booster fuel to hover stationary above the earth before pulling away slowly.
They wouldn't, but consider this: what's the smallest hard drive you can buy, and when was that capacity first launched? In 10 years, this drive will be the only type of technology available...
Amen to that. I've worked MedChem in both industry and academia, and neither of them are particularly cheap. In industry we were shovelling cash into furnaces (automated chromatography, LC/MS on every floor, 2 fume hoods each, 400MHz NMR for 12 scientists) because the relative cost of the trials were something like 90-95% of the total cost of bringing a drug to market.
Lots of things that oil is used for today could be done by other methods only marginally more expensive (power, car fuel). However, lots of things that oil does can't be easily replaced, such as aromatic hydrocarbon feedstocks, or most plastics precursors. Now I know oil won't stop, it'll just make a lot of things a lot more expensive that have absolutely nothing to do with what the public thinks of as oil-derived.
To me, using oil for cars is like heating your home by burning toilet paper. When you've run out, you're going to regret it, and there are plenty of other things you can use instead.
The journal "Synthesis" only publishes procedures that have been independantly verified. It's used as a gold standard for reaction conditions. If the chemistry you want to do is in Synthesis, you're sorted. Problem is, it's also very elite and very expensive. It'll always be possible to publish fraudulent data in a mediocre journal.
Slashdot Mirror
This is from the main page of Angewandte, the "International English" link is in english, and it's also been reposted below. Fwiw, The link in the article isn't broken, it just only works if you're logged in via an institution with access to the full paper. IAAC (I Am A Chemist). Cool stuff!
Gosh, perhaps the dozens of robots with bright lights and cameras scouring the seabed looking for a broken oil pipe can also spot fish? This is no coincidence. There's hundreds of unique species per square mile of ocean.
Get the money flowing to places it hasn't gone before.
What, a giant US company that does all its manufacturing in china? I think that's how we got into this mess to begin with.
I lose! Good day sir!
But seriously though, as a brit I see a few stories a day here that are from my country, and almost every comment involves US litigation law, or US gun law, or US copyright law, or US constitutional rights. I just chose a poor time to go mental about it.
This is true, but my comment was more of a visceral attack on the ignorance of the "oh well, no more ballons or fusion, shrug" crowd.
Bzzt, some wrong. This is in the UK. No SSN, different fraud liability laws.
My understanding of superconductors was that High Tc used a departure from standard superconducting theory that meant they couldn't survive/sustain a magnetic field. All I know is, if a usable NMR was possible using nitrogen only, it'd exist and everyone would have one. Perhaps the relatively small cost of helium compared to the rest of the machine is what's been suppressing research in the field so far.
If the cost of helium spikes by a factor of 20, then so does the cost of an MRI and the costs of medicinal chemical research. At least they won't be able to scan for the cancers they can no longer cure, right?
The problem is that precision gets lost in the conversion. I'm sick of seeing news reports that claim something like "The accident may cost over £658,891" when what they're actually doing is reporting too many sig figs on an ass-sourced "$1 million". Or "PRECISELY 91 CENTIMETERS" when the source was "feh, about 3 feet" and a meter would suffice.
For the confused: This was when the source code was released, not the original game. That was way back in '93.
Actual Football Player just owned the typical slashtitude. Right on!
My "local town" is a datacentre in a field somewhere. Whenever I see an advert telling me that something's big in Cheltenham (a dump; over half the length of my country away) I usually laugh like a drain and then forget what the product was.
Every new death is attributable to the pressmen that created the negative public opinion that caused Foxconn to consider the move in the first place. Nobody else.
What's the matter? disappointed you missed your chance to piss and moan? They took it down after 14 hours. Nobody needs to read another post full of righteous indignationand regurgitated groupthink.
Were these the same voters that asked for reduced class sizes and better grades for their precious snowflake? The same voters that sued the school for sports injuries?
Oh COME ON. The situation is: "here's some money, make our computer infrastructure work. But wait! We'll micromanage even though we know fuck-all." It's not like there isn't already accountability in the total budget, and if nothing else just dump all the data in a public repository somewhere and let paranoid netizens crawl it. Some red tape is an appropriate thing, but this isn't going to stop typical budgetary BS politics like blowing it all before the end of the fiscal year.
Well basically, because nerve agents are reactive (reactive enough to react with your nerves) they're also reasonably chemically unstable. If you left some mustard gas out for a few weeks it would all break down, but we don't usually have that long. Harsh chemicals like mineral acids or strong alkali (lye) are the gold standard for decontamination. The radioactive materials reference is likely things like dirty bomb fallout on walls, roofs. If the radioactive isotopes can be dissolved in water and washed away, they'll break down by the time the water cycle ends up somewhere near humans again.
Problem is, pouring a thousand tuns of sulfuric acid or sodium hydroxide solution into a local drain/river/water table isn't good for anyone. Another class of "really really awesome cleaners" are the peroxy anions, which are made on demand from hydrogen peroxide and weaker bases like baking soda. Hydrogen peroxide breaks down very quickly in the environment and isn't very toxic (don't go swimming in it though).
The actual cleaning mixture is still bloody harsh, but the post-cleanup cleanup is nicer, it's probably cheaper, it's less harmful to people, and the environment is a nice PR bonus.
In further pre-empting of people who didn't RTFA, the game is already supported on PC, Mac, and Linux.
The important question is, How close can this get us to space? The concept can double the top speed of something like SpaceShip 1 (and I guess the top speed, being limited by air friction, goes up as you do) but you'd still need a rocket booster to make a stable orbit. It always struck me as incredibly wasteful to fill up all those rockets with propellant, and then use it from ground level. It was always ... odd to see the space shuttle consume vast quantities of booster fuel to hover stationary above the earth before pulling away slowly.
I had a kneejerk thing to say here about software piracy, but then I realised that in my rush to be relevant, I hadn't RTFA and it was irrelevant.
Yes, I know, this is slashdot, I should GTFO with an attitude like this!
They wouldn't, but consider this: what's the smallest hard drive you can buy, and when was that capacity first launched? In 10 years, this drive will be the only type of technology available...
Amen to that. I've worked MedChem in both industry and academia, and neither of them are particularly cheap. In industry we were shovelling cash into furnaces (automated chromatography, LC/MS on every floor, 2 fume hoods each, 400MHz NMR for 12 scientists) because the relative cost of the trials were something like 90-95% of the total cost of bringing a drug to market.
Lots of things that oil is used for today could be done by other methods only marginally more expensive (power, car fuel). However, lots of things that oil does can't be easily replaced, such as aromatic hydrocarbon feedstocks, or most plastics precursors. Now I know oil won't stop, it'll just make a lot of things a lot more expensive that have absolutely nothing to do with what the public thinks of as oil-derived.
To me, using oil for cars is like heating your home by burning toilet paper. When you've run out, you're going to regret it, and there are plenty of other things you can use instead.
The journal "Synthesis" only publishes procedures that have been independantly verified. It's used as a gold standard for reaction conditions. If the chemistry you want to do is in Synthesis, you're sorted. Problem is, it's also very elite and very expensive. It'll always be possible to publish fraudulent data in a mediocre journal.
I got given a packet of bulbs for christmas. The gift-giver later received a beautiful flower. It was only through my nurturing that it was either.