Pinning a long term program on a single nation is a bad idea because some time during the program the administration changes and often changes the funding or program. Then things fall apart. When we teamed with Russia things went more slowly than they would otherwise but they kept going when they might have faltered.
I've always been of the mind that space exploration should be an international endeavor. ESA is a good start. So is the US/Russia team. If we add China, we'll have a 3 country team. At that point there's two international teams. When confronted with a major program, say data indicates the probability of life on Europa and they want to send people to explore, they'll consider then about a consolidation to get the job done.
I think this should be made easier for them by creating an international organization for them all to join, with administration already in place, but that only handles the cooperation aspect and leaves the program to the people who run the national portions. Such an office could be set up by the UN. A benefit to this is that the charter could be written so that nations unable to have a space program could participate in at least a small way in this.
When humans land on Mars, I think it would say more that they came from Earth itself in name rather than a particular country, than it would that humans got there at all.
Providing a sales brochure with sales points tailored to a couple of different potential customer groups is perfectly normal. It is fervently hoped that they, having tried the drug, will sing its praises. The provided talking points may or may not get used, but if they do it'll sound like they've been reading the same sales brochure -- they have. There is nothing unusual or unethical about providing sales and marketing information openly. Not even if, say the brochure provides information on a drug intended for users who take it to (1) control high blood pressure, or (2) grow hair in spots losing hair due to male pattern baldness. The same drug does both.
Politicians are likely to talk about the drug and related laws and regulations, and the marketoids hope very much they'll read the brochures and use the provided talking points. If they use their own, albeit perfectly aligned with one of the major party platform planks regarding it, the points get made, but haphazardly. Those not provided with the brochure will only have others to listen to. It is no less illegal or unethical to provide congresscritters with sales brochures so they can talk about it without having to write their own material. Two versions might be produced, say (1) for those who want oversight regulations to be relaxed vs (2) those who want to have greater specific oversight over certain drugs regardless of their position on oversight on the FDA in general. Providing both is no more problematic than providing one or the other.
Now, the article summary's title as presented here on/., it implies some sort of wrong doing, despite the fact that the material out there which educates people about its uses and possible problems. Even though some of the other summarizes repeat a known issue with voting lobbyists, it is only incorrect, not attempting to manipulate anyone's opinions other than letting them spout off random concepts, as the title seems intended to accuse the lobbyists of doing. The situation is intended that one should more comply than have to drive around forever, using an old tow truck and 20 year old trailer. It is not likely you would have heard the provided material before haring congress talking about it. It happens to make use of the same 'word-of-mouth' advertising proven to work so well with the population. This is neither illegal nor unethical.
Now, for an article's summary to include a statement to be used as a title, that implies that a/the main character is in danger, this is all perfectly normal MPAA activity. It also suggests that should one or another congresscritter use the talking points, they'll be in error . If the brochure were intended to hasten the break up to find some relief then it was meddling, which is unethical. But it doesn't, it just provides likely word-of-mouth phrases so that everybody is talking on the same boat.
When we do find a planet fairly like Earth, will we then finally be able to stop having news stories that start off making noises about "Earth-like" but quickly devolve into "having one characteristic that can be compared to Earth, such as a particular element, but in all other respects are entirely unlike Earth"? This particular story was perfectly good without the bogus 'grabber'.
Could you please tell me what that is in metric time? These crazy 60 second minutes and 60 minute hours are too confusing. It might have been ok for the Summarians, but it's time to use a modern unit divisible by 10.
Metric and English seconds are exactly the same, if you start at minus 40. You can also use the metric version called Absolute Seconds, which start at minus 273 seconds (minus 4 minutes, 33 seconds). I'm pretty sure this is what NASA is using since they have an automatic hold scheduled into all their count downs at around T minus 4 minutes. It probably takes them that 33 seconds to change the clock faces from 60/60/24 markings to 10/10/10 markings. Actually, the time researcher Vernor Vinge presented a time standard in one of his studies "A Fire Upon The Deep" based on a 100/100/100 (100, 10,000, 1,000,000 seconds; about a minute and a half, 2 3/4 hours and 11.5 days) scale. The proposed system suffers from association with a communications system proposed to allow open discussion between individuals in distant locations, with intermediaries assisting in the transmission either in order simply to participate, or if providing large amounts of bandwidth, for a fee. This ridiculous concept is obviously untenable, and having it intermixed with this time standard causes one to disbelieve both.
As far as I know, it has only been seen in Pioneers, although that may be due to the particular nature of those spacecraft that make them excellent tests for this effect.
According to Wikipedia the problem is that other spacecrafts have too much built-in disturbance (e.g. from thrusters) to measure such a small effect.
However I wonder why no one has built a spacecraft that explicitly avoids all such disturbances so the effect can be checked with the best accuracy possible. Also, put all sorts of additional measurement devices on it (of course only of the sort that doesn't disturb the path measurement, e.g. nothing producing large amounts of heat), e.g. to look at the matter density around (maybe there's simply more gas out there than expected, which is slowing down the space craft by friction). And of course, also measure as much of the internal state as possible, in order to find out about unexpected effects like gas leaks.
The problem with Voyager data is that they course correct using thrusters and so their exact location is more uncertain. Pioneers and most system bound probes are spin stabilized and so can be measured and predicted more reliably.
Several probes have been testing some of the relevant effects in Earth orbit for years. LAGEOS I and II detected an effect of relativity called frame dragging. This is an effect which is hypothisized to be greater near a planet, but also noticeable across great solar system distances. Gravity Probe B has measured it to a greater degree, is still collecting data, and is observing some unusual effects within the data. One of the LAGEOS teams is planning another probe, LARES, to be launched within a year or so, looking at this effect (also called the Lense-Thirring effect) with greater accuracy. Getting good numbers on this effect will allow others to determine if the effect is involved in any of the cases noted. It may also help to explain why it is not seen in different instances on the same probe (Rosetta 2005 vs. 2007) if the frame dragging is due to rotation, is asymmetrical, and the probes are found to have passed through the planetary field with vs, opposite the direction of rotation.
This effect is a flyby effect and is different from the Pioneer Anomaly, as the article itself pretty clearly notes.
The situations in which they are measured differ. This is what TFA states. But it is by no means certain that the cause differs, and TFA makes no claims one way or the other. John Anderson of JPL and colleagues published in 1998 and 2002 examinations of the Pioneers, Ulysses and Galileo trajectories and hypothesized a single phenomenon, a time dilation effect due to gravity. The fly by effects may be more pronounced due to greater frame dragging than trajectories more or less straight to the heliopause, but the velocity changes when noted are of the same magnitude. Mbelek's recent paper looks at fly by data to determine whether special relativity may account for the anomalies in fly bys, but does not exclude applying the same to non-fly by situations. If the math proves valid, and sufficient data is obtained, then it may be able to be determined whether the two discrepencies have a single cause. The data collection on Rosetta is being done in part to try to determine whether or not they are the same. If there weren't at least hypothesized 'same or different' consideration, there'd be no mention of Pioneers.
TFA calculates the likely results based on higher dimensional brane physics. It was done earlier in more classical relativity maths and the results summarized in Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log. The max mass was greater and thus life time longer. Still, mass and accretion never crossed the limit that would allow it to reach whatever they call critical mass for these thing. The example given was that if it were charged and it were trapped within the electron cloud of an atom (both conditions lending it additional life span), it would circulate there on the order of weeks before encountering an electron which it could then consume. Even if it did so it would evaporate before it could hit the run away point, and would likely evaporate before eating even one electron. The specific results were different but the conclusion the same - too small to live long enough to do any damage.
Another point made in Cosmic Log (I don't recall if it was the same person/calculations) was that quantum black holes (a more correct descriptor than 'mini-') of the mass and life span hypothesized would be likely to occur regularly in the atmosphere due to incoming primary cosmic rays. Those have been impacting the Earth for billions of years, and we're still here. The hypothesized Hawking radiation is not obvious, thus these may not even be occurring. In any case, their creation would be a highly improbable event.
That last assertion is strictly conjecture based on calculations by my Brambleweeny 57 sub-meson brain. Now if you'll excuse me I'm for a nice hot cup of tea.
d00d! Awesome solution to detection. All we had (harumph, get off my lawn!) was blink comparators. Hey, they were good enough for Clyde Tombaugh.
As for detection by reflection, the albedo (per cent of light reflected) depends on the composition (thus is used with spectrals for classification):
Type Albedo Carbonaceous.03 to.09 Silicate.1 to.22 Metallic.1 to.18
By comparison the moon has an albedo of.12. The Earth's is very high due to atmosphere, oceans and clouds: Albedo 0.39 (thank you Professor Vangelis) Not listed but becoming a point of concern is cometary material NEOs. High albedo due to ices so easy to see, but may be infalling from the Kuiper belt so have small lateral motion. 82 are listed among the NEOs. Whereas the harder rocks might shatter upon entry into atmosphere and the parts carry off the kinetic energy, these snowballs might heat and explode almost entirely, causing a pretty hefty air blast. The Tunguska event may have been caused by such a snowball, a fragment of Comet Encke.
Whenever there's one of these asteroid articles I go to JPL's impact risk page and calculate the current cumulative impact risk of all listed NEOs. I do this by taking the tables at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/ and copying them into a spreadsheet. Column D is the cumulative impact risk per entry. I take the sum down both tables in that column.
According to the 10 NOV 2009 list of 259 NEOs, the cumulative impact risk over the next 100 years (plus a few extra years for the couple rocks calculated farther out) is 1.52%, or a 1 in 66 chance, or a 98.48% chance that none of these will hit Earth in the next hundred years.
None of THESE. This is the list of *known* NEOs. As TFA testifies, sometimes they sneak up on us.
I didn't fully appreciate this obvious tidbit until I saw the nifty fictional end of the world done as a news program, "Without Warning".
Detecting these rocks depends in large part on their lateral motion with respect to the star field -- we see them as moving across the stars. Those that are headed right for us are not moving across the star field. They appear (or would if we detect them) to be stationary or nearly so, and simply growing in size as they approach. The small ones don't become visible at all until very close, so it's not uncommon to detect them after closest approach much less in that very short period when there is visible lateral motion -- as it whizzes by close enough to smell.
There are about 30,000 deployable nuclear warheads (strategic and tactical) on this planet. 45% of them are "in storage", mostly referring to those dismantled enough to satisfy SALT definitions but able to be rebuilt in short order should it be necessary. If the 14,000 in storage were dismantled and turned to fuel there would be no shortage. The number of warheads dismantled since 1980, whether turned to fuel or any other use, is 10,000. The "lack of funds for dismantling" is a fiction narrative that pops up regularly, probably in attempt to boost the price of the liberated fuel and/or the price of energy generated from it.
"Still, it's comforting to know that satire — the only weapon politicians and talking heads fear — is still safely in the hands of the public where it belongs."
Unless the parody is a rewriting of an instrumental techno song used during a fight scene in a movie, with samples from "ALIENS" ("nuke 'em from orbit" and "game over man, game over") pasted onto it, and it presented as an anti-spam fight song. Despite being clearly labeled as a parody using a non-original form of the music and fair use sized vocal samples, we got a very pleasant request explaining why they were asking us to remove it, and after having done so a regular snotty legalistic bombast C&D. I've been writing Weird Al style parody songs for 20 years and know the laws. This one was legal. But we got the ding letters anyway. Their tone and intentions change when there's money to be made or not from the material.
Handing back the domain after the decision strikes me as a way of setting a precident protecting such usage of a public figure's name, while gracefully ending the joke when it's done what it's supposed to. Well done.
The precedent was set several times more than a decade ago. Persons tagged as major spammers and usenet kooks were parodied mercilessly by the renegade white hat group SP(UTU)M and others. If and when they ceased being a problem they were removed from public listings of problem makers, parody and satire materials removed, and a public announement to these ends and acceptance of their agreement (we never made it a 'surrender') was made. The result was just as you said. In one case a group hijacking a newsgroup for warez use was given their own clear channel, in another a person ceased using a spambot, and both changed sides, publicly crediting the way the end of hostilities was handled.
Title should read "dopamine producing cell killers"
The research may lead to a treatment to stop the progression. It cannot lead to a 'cure'. By the time symptoms are noticed, about 2/3 of the dopamine producing cells are dead. No matter how loud and clear you tell the remaining cells to stop dying off ('halting apoptosis'; essentialy what the research is about), the dead ones stay dead.
There is already a (partial) cure for Parky's: fetal stem cell injection. It worked 20 years ago, and it'd work today if it were allowed. The above research isn't required for this, but it would prevent loss of other original neurons.
Why so defensive? I haven't heard a discouraging word about comics since specialty stores started pulling in big bucks and especially since Bruce Willis made it a habit of using them as a primary source. Perhaps TFA wouldn't get get as much milage here if it made the generalization explicit and said that narrated dialog with action directions given as illustrations improved etc. etc. And the author may not have been confident of the attention to be had except when there's a condescending offstage character tossing off connotations. But frankly I haven't heard a new one of those since Heavy Metal appeared. Still, how he arrives at the criticism that kids are looking at the pictures but not the words is beyond me. It'd be demonstrable either way in any case, and that's on the kid, not the medium. If the medium were to blame, doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms around the world wouldn't have books of bible stories done up in this format, since the people who make these available tend to want to be taken seriously more so than most others producing material in this form.
Dr. Tilley isn't exactly putting up a straw man, but he's definitely dragging out a wimpy old adversary who's long past his prime.
"for a variety of reasons some have no incentive to try and improve their speech."
Their problem isn't speech impairment (though they may have some), it's motivation. Don't coddle them with the games they like so much, it will only encourage them. As each of these problem children come to a session, present them with their discharge papers with a sticky note next to the signature line that says SIGN HERE, and a bag of dry dog food (kibbles to you folks in the UK) with a note that says "Get used to it, if you refuse to participate in therapy you lose your disability payments." Either they'll come around, or they'll free up the slot for someone else who'll try harder.
Aw, seems I rubbed someone the wrong way and they modded me down. What's the matter did I dis one of your fellow gamerboi's posts by replying with humor?
No longer under development, but who cares? It works. Was intended to run from one floppy with additionals running from a second, but has other configuration options. I ran it on a 386 Thinkpad with DOS 6.3
muLinux is a minimalistic Linux distribution, suitable for old computers. X11, GCC, VNC, SSH, Samba, Netscape etc. are supported on additional addon floppies. It can be installed from DOS/Win9x or Linux, without repartitioning.
Plus the head developer's personal project a single floppy Linux, Lepton, at the same site:
Lepton is the temporary name for a single floppy Linux, based on the kernel series 2.4.x. It is my lab where I do experiment with the framebuffer device in Linux.
"a platform for Dungeons and Dragons — the true test of success for any new communications technology"
"Can you roll 8 or better on 2d6 so you can hear me now? Good."
d00d! grab your manuals and head for Hat Creek, CA. The Allen Telescope Array needs to be tested so it can tell when it's picking up alien transmissions. We're going to need to know whether to consider them monsters or non-player characters.
I don't expect there to be any worth while reading from this source, unless one decides to treat it all as fiction and therefore entertainment. As far as I can tell, it's all either fiction or facts being used to support the fiction.
Last week clinical depression was a fun deficiency.
Now an experimental fusion reactor that might break even over an 8 minute run is 'commercially viable'.
The writers aren't just writing badly, they're making shit up badly. The editors can't tell or don't care.
[This is a non-answer to your question. But it's a good non-answer if my success and student and teacher is any measure.]
Don't take notes in class. Seriously. I've forbidden note taking in some of my classes. I hand out copies of material not in the book. But when I lecture, I do so with the intention that what I say be listened and paid attention to. If someone's trying to write what I say, their attention and working memory is so divided that they can't be picking up much of anything.
This is especially true for maths. Of what purpose is it for you to have to watch someone write out equations? Of what purpose to write them down at the same time? Is the content of so little importance that they can waste their time and yours with speed writing exercises? The writing/rewriting is important for memory. That being so, why tax the memory with the process, reducing the result?
Ask your instructors for copies of their class notes. Explain why. If they feel it's somehow cheating, ask to record their lecture. If they're not saying the equations out loud, record in video. Then whether paper copies, audio or video, transcribe. More than once if need be. Work with them on this. It'll be to everyone's benefit. If they can't believe that, prove it by recording a class with them writing stuff as usual and people copying, and calculate how much more time it takes for them to write, you to write, you to ask what that wiggly thing is, them to tell you, them to write, them to ask if everyone is caught up, on and on; vs. hand out a paper copy, them lecture, you listen (and add just tiny clarifications if necessary on their notes).
I really am serious about this, and pushing this agenda has made me a favorite of students (who get better grades; I've tracked that too) but gotten me all kids of grief from other instructors. They see the process as one of confrontation, forcing students to do things a certain way and any other is 'cheating', or could be used for cheating, and frankly very little rational explanations are forthcoming. I picked it up from instructors who were more concerned their students learn than jump through hoops like speed writing as the sole means to collect material covered in class. I hated hoops as a student and refused to use them as a teacher. Instructors that can't get away from hoops are using them as a crutch. Help them learn to do better.
Headline: Russia Develops Subline: has developed a design Article text: the draft design would be finalized by 2012 Translation: we're drawing stuff. we're going to draw more stuff
FACT: The picture is of an RD-410, a 7 tonne thrust nuclear thermal/LH2, developed by Glushko for the N-1 during 1960-61 under Korolev. It was abandoned in 1963 when Korolev chose nuclear/ion as a preferable technology, and Glushko dropped it in favor of the gas core reactor design.
Except for a few motors (mainly Glushko's) intended for the N-1 and some early nuclear thermal/ammonia long range missiles, Russia's nuclear motors have been intended for Mars missions. The designs were all fair to good, the planning rational. However, during the first decade of design funding was increasingly, then entirely, diverted to Korolev's N-1 booster, counterpart to the Saturn V, on which Soviet moon race hopes were pinned. After the 3 July 1969 explosion of the N-1, funding became scarce for all design work. In the 1 Sept 1969 post mortem report for the Soviet space program, Kamanin lists among the mistakes Korolev and Mishin's rejections of Glushko's motors.
Since relinquishing the moon landing, all Russian nuclear motors have been intended for Mars flights. However, since the US canceled the NERVA and thus its Mars plans in 1972, there was no pressure for Russia to produce and funding was rare. Still, a few were built and tested. After 12 years of testing the official proposal was put forth to develop the RD-0140, a 3.5 tonne version of Glushko's original design, as well as a 70 tonne RD-0411. Two years later there was no longer any Soviet Union. But Glushko's design survived even this, and in 1994 no less than 3 designs emerged from Kuchatov (one) and Keldysh (two) institutes, for Mars craft using 3 or 4 of the RD-0410, for a 460 day round trip.
There have been no Glushko motors built in over 20 years, but there could be. And obviously no Mars mission craft are being built. Designs and plans that persist for 50 years are rare in space exploration. There's little evidence to say whether yet another redesign by Ruskosmos is just another flag waving ritual by a home team that refuses to give up, or whether Glushko's creations have taken on a life of their own, and are simply successes waiting for their time. In any case, present 'development' is restricted to speculative design/redesign, yet more pictures on paper, hoping to become proposals.
Also, manned missions to Mars are not "cost effective" but you can't beat the sizzle effect that you get from the "boots on the ground" of a live mission. Best bang for the buck there comes from the unmanned and robotic research.
From 1963 to 1970 was a great time to be a kid watching all this stuff happen.
How about a space elevator project? Arthur C Clarke said we would build one roughly 50 years after we stopped laughing at teh concept. Well, the laughing seems to have died down.
[Quotes sliced up to minimize]
Start from the middle and touch the top: You know that slight feeling of vertigo, the flush of warmth, the urge to laugh and the filling of the eyes when stuff like Armstrong's first step, Apollo 13's recovery at sea and the Apollo-Soyuz handshake happened? That's what human space exploration is about. It was never about the science. Sure, while they're there and they have some time on their hands, best to give them something to do that produces hard results that can be shown to those with hard questions. But to think that 'justifies' anything even in part is to fool one's self. Humans explore because, there is no because, exploration is a defining trait humanity. We have always done this and always will or else suffer stagnation and decline. We've explored enough of the Earth to know its nature, yet exploration continues. Exploration, discovery and triumph over natural adversity feed the human spirit, something as necessary for future survival as sustainable agriculture is for a population at 3 times the carrying capacity of the planet without technological assistance and still growing. For science, robots can't be beat. But you can't compare science and the needs of the human spirit. There is no 'cost effective' to be found there. Manned space flight is a continuation of an activity that defines us and is carrying on a legacy that has made us what we are. The future of what we will be rests in large part in the acceleration seats, orbiting structures, and especially the descent, stay and return modules yet to be built. Not many have the balls to admit stuff like this in public. Sit down to a private meal with anyone who's been there and see how easily the conversation turns that direction and what gets said. Even those who're tasked with overseeing major portions of the programs that put others up there will say the same. Knowing, feeling and performing this activity is instinctive, because despite the lack of Human Spirit 101, these people seem to come up with the same things to say.
We stopped laughing at the elevator when it became clear that (1) vibrations of any sort and the actions of the atmosphere and spinning Earth would inevitably induce oscillations which would make it at best a very difficult ride and most likely result in a pile of broken pieces of carbon nanotube material, and (2) the ride that would almost certainly never occur would take weeks or months, requiring a life support and supply system that'd make the elevator too heavy to use. Developing the technology necessary for an elevator would require stripping all the funding from space flight, manned and robotic, as well as many other programs. In fact the costs would be so high that it would take an enormous sacrifice on the part of the citizens. If they stopped spending any money on pizza, cosmetics and porn, totals of which have been between one and two orders of magnitude greater than NASA's budget ever since Mercury, and sent all that money in, we might then have enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Pinning a long term program on a single nation is a bad idea because some time during the program the administration changes and often changes the funding or program. Then things fall apart. When we teamed with Russia things went more slowly than they would otherwise but they kept going when they might have faltered.
I've always been of the mind that space exploration should be an international endeavor. ESA is a good start. So is the US/Russia team. If we add China, we'll have a 3 country team. At that point there's two international teams. When confronted with a major program, say data indicates the probability of life on Europa and they want to send people to explore, they'll consider then about a consolidation to get the job done.
I think this should be made easier for them by creating an international organization for them all to join, with administration already in place, but that only handles the cooperation aspect and leaves the program to the people who run the national portions. Such an office could be set up by the UN. A benefit to this is that the charter could be written so that nations unable to have a space program could participate in at least a small way in this.
When humans land on Mars, I think it would say more that they came from Earth itself in name rather than a particular country, than it would that humans got there at all.
The summary is bogus. Cuban speculated on it being done, but did not speculate on who would much less claim he intended to himself.
Providing a sales brochure with sales points tailored to a couple of different potential customer groups is perfectly normal. It is fervently hoped that they, having tried the drug, will sing its praises. The provided talking points may or may not get used, but if they do it'll sound like they've been reading the same sales brochure -- they have. There is nothing unusual or unethical about providing sales and marketing information openly. Not even if, say the brochure provides information on a drug intended for users who take it to (1) control high blood pressure, or (2) grow hair in spots losing hair due to male pattern baldness. The same drug does both.
Politicians are likely to talk about the drug and related laws and regulations, and the marketoids hope very much they'll read the brochures and use the provided talking points. If they use their own, albeit perfectly aligned with one of the major party platform planks regarding it, the points get made, but haphazardly. Those not provided with the brochure will only have others to listen to. It is no less illegal or unethical to provide congresscritters with sales brochures so they can talk about it without having to write their own material. Two versions might be produced, say (1) for those who want oversight regulations to be relaxed vs (2) those who want to have greater specific oversight over certain drugs regardless of their position on oversight on the FDA in general. Providing both is no more problematic than providing one or the other.
Now, the article summary's title as presented here on /., it implies some sort of wrong doing, despite the fact that the material out there which educates people about its uses and possible problems. Even though some of the other summarizes repeat a known issue with voting lobbyists, it is only incorrect, not attempting to manipulate anyone's opinions other than letting them spout off random concepts, as the title seems intended to accuse the lobbyists of doing. The situation is intended that one should more comply than have to drive around forever, using an old tow truck and 20 year old trailer. It is not likely you would have heard the provided material before haring congress talking about it. It happens to make use of the same 'word-of-mouth' advertising proven to work so well with the population. This is neither illegal nor unethical.
Now, for an article's summary to include a statement to be used as a title, that implies that a/the main character is in danger, this is all perfectly normal MPAA activity. It also suggests that should one or another congresscritter use the talking points, they'll be in error . If the brochure were intended to hasten the break up to find some relief then it was meddling, which is unethical. But it doesn't, it just provides likely word-of-mouth phrases so that everybody is talking on the same boat.
When we do find a planet fairly like Earth, will we then finally be able to stop having news stories that start off making noises about "Earth-like" but quickly devolve into "having one characteristic that can be compared to Earth, such as a particular element, but in all other respects are entirely unlike Earth"? This particular story was perfectly good without the bogus 'grabber'.
Could you please tell me what that is in metric time? These crazy 60 second minutes and 60 minute hours are too confusing. It might have been ok for the Summarians, but it's time to use a modern unit divisible by 10.
Metric and English seconds are exactly the same, if you start at minus 40. You can also use the metric version called Absolute Seconds, which start at minus 273 seconds (minus 4 minutes, 33 seconds). I'm pretty sure this is what NASA is using since they have an automatic hold scheduled into all their count downs at around T minus 4 minutes. It probably takes them that 33 seconds to change the clock faces from 60/60/24 markings to 10/10/10 markings. Actually, the time researcher Vernor Vinge presented a time standard in one of his studies "A Fire Upon The Deep" based on a 100/100/100 (100, 10,000, 1,000,000 seconds; about a minute and a half, 2 3/4 hours and 11.5 days) scale. The proposed system suffers from association with a communications system proposed to allow open discussion between individuals in distant locations, with intermediaries assisting in the transmission either in order simply to participate, or if providing large amounts of bandwidth, for a fee. This ridiculous concept is obviously untenable, and having it intermixed with this time standard causes one to disbelieve both.
According to Wikipedia the problem is that other spacecrafts have too much built-in disturbance (e.g. from thrusters) to measure such a small effect.
However I wonder why no one has built a spacecraft that explicitly avoids all such disturbances so the effect can be checked with the best accuracy possible. Also, put all sorts of additional measurement devices on it (of course only of the sort that doesn't disturb the path measurement, e.g. nothing producing large amounts of heat), e.g. to look at the matter density around (maybe there's simply more gas out there than expected, which is slowing down the space craft by friction). And of course, also measure as much of the internal state as possible, in order to find out about unexpected effects like gas leaks.
The problem with Voyager data is that they course correct using thrusters and so their exact location is more uncertain. Pioneers and most system bound probes are spin stabilized and so can be measured and predicted more reliably.
Several probes have been testing some of the relevant effects in Earth orbit for years. LAGEOS I and II detected an effect of relativity called frame dragging. This is an effect which is hypothisized to be greater near a planet, but also noticeable across great solar system distances. Gravity Probe B has measured it to a greater degree, is still collecting data, and is observing some unusual effects within the data. One of the LAGEOS teams is planning another probe, LARES, to be launched within a year or so, looking at this effect (also called the Lense-Thirring effect) with greater accuracy. Getting good numbers on this effect will allow others to determine if the effect is involved in any of the cases noted. It may also help to explain why it is not seen in different instances on the same probe (Rosetta 2005 vs. 2007) if the frame dragging is due to rotation, is asymmetrical, and the probes are found to have passed through the planetary field with vs, opposite the direction of rotation.
This effect is a flyby effect and is different from the Pioneer Anomaly, as the article itself pretty clearly notes.
The situations in which they are measured differ. This is what TFA states. But it is by no means certain that the cause differs, and TFA makes no claims one way or the other. John Anderson of JPL and colleagues published in 1998 and 2002 examinations of the Pioneers, Ulysses and Galileo trajectories and hypothesized a single phenomenon, a time dilation effect due to gravity. The fly by effects may be more pronounced due to greater frame dragging than trajectories more or less straight to the heliopause, but the velocity changes when noted are of the same magnitude. Mbelek's recent paper looks at fly by data to determine whether special relativity may account for the anomalies in fly bys, but does not exclude applying the same to non-fly by situations. If the math proves valid, and sufficient data is obtained, then it may be able to be determined whether the two discrepencies have a single cause. The data collection on Rosetta is being done in part to try to determine whether or not they are the same. If there weren't at least hypothesized 'same or different' consideration, there'd be no mention of Pioneers.
TFA calculates the likely results based on higher dimensional brane physics. It was done earlier in more classical relativity maths and the results summarized in Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log. The max mass was greater and thus life time longer. Still, mass and accretion never crossed the limit that would allow it to reach whatever they call critical mass for these thing. The example given was that if it were charged and it were trapped within the electron cloud of an atom (both conditions lending it additional life span), it would circulate there on the order of weeks before encountering an electron which it could then consume. Even if it did so it would evaporate before it could hit the run away point, and would likely evaporate before eating even one electron. The specific results were different but the conclusion the same - too small to live long enough to do any damage.
Another point made in Cosmic Log (I don't recall if it was the same person/calculations) was that quantum black holes (a more correct descriptor than 'mini-') of the mass and life span hypothesized would be likely to occur regularly in the atmosphere due to incoming primary cosmic rays. Those have been impacting the Earth for billions of years, and we're still here. The hypothesized Hawking radiation is not obvious, thus these may not even be occurring. In any case, their creation would be a highly improbable event.
That last assertion is strictly conjecture based on calculations by my Brambleweeny 57 sub-meson brain. Now if you'll excuse me I'm for a nice hot cup of tea.
d00d! Awesome solution to detection. All we had (harumph, get off my lawn!) was blink comparators. Hey, they were good enough for Clyde Tombaugh.
As for detection by reflection, the albedo (per cent of light reflected) depends on the composition (thus is used with spectrals for classification):
Type Albedo .03 to .09 .1 to .22 .1 to .18
Carbonaceous
Silicate
Metallic
By comparison the moon has an albedo of .12.
The Earth's is very high due to atmosphere, oceans and clouds: Albedo 0.39 (thank you Professor Vangelis) Not listed but becoming a point of concern is cometary material NEOs. High albedo due to ices so easy to see, but may be infalling from the Kuiper belt so have small lateral motion. 82 are listed among the NEOs. Whereas the harder rocks might shatter upon entry into atmosphere and the parts carry off the kinetic energy, these snowballs might heat and explode almost entirely, causing a pretty hefty air blast. The Tunguska event may have been caused by such a snowball, a fragment of Comet Encke.
Whenever there's one of these asteroid articles I go to JPL's impact risk page and calculate the current cumulative impact risk of all listed NEOs. I do this by taking the tables at http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/ and copying them into a spreadsheet. Column D is the cumulative impact risk per entry. I take the sum down both tables in that column.
According to the 10 NOV 2009 list of 259 NEOs, the cumulative impact risk over the next 100 years (plus a few extra years for the couple rocks calculated farther out) is 1.52%, or a 1 in 66 chance, or a 98.48% chance that none of these will hit Earth in the next hundred years.
None of THESE. This is the list of *known* NEOs. As TFA testifies, sometimes they sneak up on us.
I didn't fully appreciate this obvious tidbit until I saw the nifty fictional end of the world done as a news program, "Without Warning".
Detecting these rocks depends in large part on their lateral motion with respect to the star field -- we see them as moving across the stars. Those that are headed right for us are not moving across the star field. They appear (or would if we detect them) to be stationary or nearly so, and simply growing in size as they approach. The small ones don't become visible at all until very close, so it's not uncommon to detect them after closest approach much less in that very short period when there is visible lateral motion -- as it whizzes by close enough to smell.
There are about 30,000 deployable nuclear warheads (strategic and tactical) on this planet. 45% of them are "in storage", mostly referring to those dismantled enough to satisfy SALT definitions but able to be rebuilt in short order should it be necessary. If the 14,000 in storage were dismantled and turned to fuel there would be no shortage. The number of warheads dismantled since 1980, whether turned to fuel or any other use, is 10,000. The "lack of funds for dismantling" is a fiction narrative that pops up regularly, probably in attempt to boost the price of the liberated fuel and/or the price of energy generated from it.
"Still, it's comforting to know that satire — the only weapon politicians and talking heads fear — is still safely in the hands of the public where it belongs."
Unless the parody is a rewriting of an instrumental techno song used during a fight scene in a movie, with samples from "ALIENS" ("nuke 'em from orbit" and "game over man, game over") pasted onto it, and it presented as an anti-spam fight song. Despite being clearly labeled as a parody using a non-original form of the music and fair use sized vocal samples, we got a very pleasant request explaining why they were asking us to remove it, and after having done so a regular snotty legalistic bombast C&D. I've been writing Weird Al style parody songs for 20 years and know the laws. This one was legal. But we got the ding letters anyway. Their tone and intentions change when there's money to be made or not from the material.
Handing back the domain after the decision strikes me as a way of setting a precident protecting such usage of a public figure's name, while gracefully ending the joke when it's done what it's supposed to. Well done.
The precedent was set several times more than a decade ago. Persons tagged as major spammers and usenet kooks were parodied mercilessly by the renegade white hat group SP(UTU)M and others. If and when they ceased being a problem they were removed from public listings of problem makers, parody and satire materials removed, and a public announement to these ends and acceptance of their agreement (we never made it a 'surrender') was made. The result was just as you said. In one case a group hijacking a newsgroup for warez use was given their own clear channel, in another a person ceased using a spambot, and both changed sides, publicly crediting the way the end of hostilities was handled.
Title should read "dopamine producing cell killers"
The research may lead to a treatment to stop the progression. It cannot lead to a 'cure'. By the time symptoms are noticed, about 2/3 of the dopamine producing cells are dead. No matter how loud and clear you tell the remaining cells to stop dying off ('halting apoptosis'; essentialy what the research is about), the dead ones stay dead.
There is already a (partial) cure for Parky's: fetal stem cell injection. It worked 20 years ago, and it'd work today if it were allowed. The above research isn't required for this, but it would prevent loss of other original neurons.
Why so defensive? I haven't heard a discouraging word about comics since specialty stores started pulling in big bucks and especially since Bruce Willis made it a habit of using them as a primary source. Perhaps TFA wouldn't get get as much milage here if it made the generalization explicit and said that narrated dialog with action directions given as illustrations improved etc. etc. And the author may not have been confident of the attention to be had except when there's a condescending offstage character tossing off connotations. But frankly I haven't heard a new one of those since Heavy Metal appeared. Still, how he arrives at the criticism that kids are looking at the pictures but not the words is beyond me. It'd be demonstrable either way in any case, and that's on the kid, not the medium. If the medium were to blame, doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms around the world wouldn't have books of bible stories done up in this format, since the people who make these available tend to want to be taken seriously more so than most others producing material in this form.
Dr. Tilley isn't exactly putting up a straw man, but he's definitely dragging out a wimpy old adversary who's long past his prime.
"for a variety of reasons some have no incentive to try and improve their speech."
Their problem isn't speech impairment (though they may have some), it's motivation. Don't coddle them with the games they like so much, it will only encourage them. As each of these problem children come to a session, present them with their discharge papers with a sticky note next to the signature line that says SIGN HERE, and a bag of dry dog food (kibbles to you folks in the UK) with a note that says "Get used to it, if you refuse to participate in therapy you lose your disability payments." Either they'll come around, or they'll free up the slot for someone else who'll try harder.
Aw, seems I rubbed someone the wrong way and they modded me down. What's the matter did I dis one of your fellow gamerboi's posts by replying with humor?
No longer under development, but who cares? It works. Was intended to run from one floppy with additionals running from a second, but has other configuration options. I ran it on a 386 Thinkpad with DOS 6.3
muLinux (mu = micro)
http://www.micheleandreoli.it/mulinux/mulinux.html
muLinux is a minimalistic Linux distribution, suitable for old computers. X11, GCC, VNC, SSH, Samba, Netscape etc. are supported on additional addon floppies. It can be installed from DOS/Win9x or Linux, without repartitioning.
Plus the head developer's personal project a single floppy Linux, Lepton, at the same site:
Lepton is the temporary name for a single floppy Linux, based on the kernel series 2.4.x. It is my lab where I do experiment with the framebuffer device in Linux.
Didn't find 3.1 myself, but did find 3.3 circa 1996
http://slackware.mirrors.tds.net/pub/slackware/slackware-3.3/
"a platform for Dungeons and Dragons — the true test of success for any new communications technology"
"Can you roll 8 or better on 2d6 so you can hear me now? Good."
d00d! grab your manuals and head for Hat Creek, CA. The Allen Telescope Array needs to be tested so it can tell when it's picking up alien transmissions. We're going to need to know whether to consider them monsters or non-player characters.
I don't expect there to be any worth while reading from this source, unless one decides to treat it all as fiction and therefore entertainment. As far as I can tell, it's all either fiction or facts being used to support the fiction.
Last week clinical depression was a fun deficiency.
Now an experimental fusion reactor that might break even over an 8 minute run is 'commercially viable'.
The writers aren't just writing badly, they're making shit up badly. The editors can't tell or don't care.
[This is a non-answer to your question. But it's a good non-answer if my success and student and teacher is any measure.]
Don't take notes in class. Seriously. I've forbidden note taking in some of my classes. I hand out copies of material not in the book. But when I lecture, I do so with the intention that what I say be listened and paid attention to. If someone's trying to write what I say, their attention and working memory is so divided that they can't be picking up much of anything.
This is especially true for maths. Of what purpose is it for you to have to watch someone write out equations? Of what purpose to write them down at the same time? Is the content of so little importance that they can waste their time and yours with speed writing exercises? The writing/rewriting is important for memory. That being so, why tax the memory with the process, reducing the result?
Ask your instructors for copies of their class notes. Explain why. If they feel it's somehow cheating, ask to record their lecture. If they're not saying the equations out loud, record in video. Then whether paper copies, audio or video, transcribe. More than once if need be. Work with them on this. It'll be to everyone's benefit. If they can't believe that, prove it by recording a class with them writing stuff as usual and people copying, and calculate how much more time it takes for them to write, you to write, you to ask what that wiggly thing is, them to tell you, them to write, them to ask if everyone is caught up, on and on; vs. hand out a paper copy, them lecture, you listen (and add just tiny clarifications if necessary on their notes).
I really am serious about this, and pushing this agenda has made me a favorite of students (who get better grades; I've tracked that too) but gotten me all kids of grief from other instructors. They see the process as one of confrontation, forcing students to do things a certain way and any other is 'cheating', or could be used for cheating, and frankly very little rational explanations are forthcoming. I picked it up from instructors who were more concerned their students learn than jump through hoops like speed writing as the sole means to collect material covered in class. I hated hoops as a student and refused to use them as a teacher. Instructors that can't get away from hoops are using them as a crutch. Help them learn to do better.
Headline: Russia Develops
Subline: has developed a design
Article text: the draft design would be finalized by 2012
Translation: we're drawing stuff. we're going to draw more stuff
FACT: The picture is of an RD-410, a 7 tonne thrust nuclear thermal/LH2, developed by Glushko for the N-1 during 1960-61 under Korolev. It was abandoned in 1963 when Korolev chose nuclear/ion as a preferable technology, and Glushko dropped it in favor of the gas core reactor design.
Except for a few motors (mainly Glushko's) intended for the N-1 and some early nuclear thermal/ammonia long range missiles, Russia's nuclear motors have been intended for Mars missions. The designs were all fair to good, the planning rational. However, during the first decade of design funding was increasingly, then entirely, diverted to Korolev's N-1 booster, counterpart to the Saturn V, on which Soviet moon race hopes were pinned. After the 3 July 1969 explosion of the N-1, funding became scarce for all design work. In the 1 Sept 1969 post mortem report for the Soviet space program, Kamanin lists among the mistakes Korolev and Mishin's rejections of Glushko's motors.
Since relinquishing the moon landing, all Russian nuclear motors have been intended for Mars flights. However, since the US canceled the NERVA and thus its Mars plans in 1972, there was no pressure for Russia to produce and funding was rare. Still, a few were built and tested. After 12 years of testing the official proposal was put forth to develop the RD-0140, a 3.5 tonne version of Glushko's original design, as well as a 70 tonne RD-0411. Two years later there was no longer any Soviet Union. But Glushko's design survived even this, and in 1994 no less than 3 designs emerged from Kuchatov (one) and Keldysh (two) institutes, for Mars craft using 3 or 4 of the RD-0410, for a 460 day round trip.
There have been no Glushko motors built in over 20 years, but there could be. And obviously no Mars mission craft are being built. Designs and plans that persist for 50 years are rare in space exploration. There's little evidence to say whether yet another redesign by Ruskosmos is just another flag waving ritual by a home team that refuses to give up, or whether Glushko's creations have taken on a life of their own, and are simply successes waiting for their time. In any case, present 'development' is restricted to speculative design/redesign, yet more pictures on paper, hoping to become proposals.
Also, manned missions to Mars are not "cost effective" but you can't beat the sizzle effect that you get from the "boots on the ground" of a live mission. Best bang for the buck there comes from the unmanned and robotic research.
From 1963 to 1970 was a great time to be a kid watching all this stuff happen.
How about a space elevator project? Arthur C Clarke said we would build one roughly 50 years after we stopped laughing at teh concept. Well, the laughing seems to have died down.
[Quotes sliced up to minimize]
Start from the middle and touch the top: You know that slight feeling of vertigo, the flush of warmth, the urge to laugh and the filling of the eyes when stuff like Armstrong's first step, Apollo 13's recovery at sea and the Apollo-Soyuz handshake happened? That's what human space exploration is about. It was never about the science. Sure, while they're there and they have some time on their hands, best to give them something to do that produces hard results that can be shown to those with hard questions. But to think that 'justifies' anything even in part is to fool one's self. Humans explore because, there is no because, exploration is a defining trait humanity. We have always done this and always will or else suffer stagnation and decline. We've explored enough of the Earth to know its nature, yet exploration continues. Exploration, discovery and triumph over natural adversity feed the human spirit, something as necessary for future survival as sustainable agriculture is for a population at 3 times the carrying capacity of the planet without technological assistance and still growing. For science, robots can't be beat. But you can't compare science and the needs of the human spirit. There is no 'cost effective' to be found there. Manned space flight is a continuation of an activity that defines us and is carrying on a legacy that has made us what we are. The future of what we will be rests in large part in the acceleration seats, orbiting structures, and especially the descent, stay and return modules yet to be built. Not many have the balls to admit stuff like this in public. Sit down to a private meal with anyone who's been there and see how easily the conversation turns that direction and what gets said. Even those who're tasked with overseeing major portions of the programs that put others up there will say the same. Knowing, feeling and performing this activity is instinctive, because despite the lack of Human Spirit 101, these people seem to come up with the same things to say.
We stopped laughing at the elevator when it became clear that (1) vibrations of any sort and the actions of the atmosphere and spinning Earth would inevitably induce oscillations which would make it at best a very difficult ride and most likely result in a pile of broken pieces of carbon nanotube material, and (2) the ride that would almost certainly never occur would take weeks or months, requiring a life support and supply system that'd make the elevator too heavy to use. Developing the technology necessary for an elevator would require stripping all the funding from space flight, manned and robotic, as well as many other programs. In fact the costs would be so high that it would take an enormous sacrifice on the part of the citizens. If they stopped spending any money on pizza, cosmetics and porn, totals of which have been between one and two orders of magnitude greater than NASA's budget ever since Mercury, and sent all that money in, we might then have enough.