I'm no expert on this stuff but my interpretation of what is being discussed is that the use of vacancies in graphene allows interesting conduction properties and the control of the magnetic properties of the graphene in a manner that does not exist in metals.
From the article:
"The result would be a ferromagnet, like iron, but instead made only of carbon. Magnetism in graphene could lead to new types of nanoscale sensors of magnetic fields. And, when coupled with graphene's tremendous electrical properties, magnetism in graphene could also have interesting applications in the area of spintronics, which uses the magnetic moment of the electron, instead of its electric charge, to represent the information in a computer.
"This opens the possibility of 'defect engineering' in graphene -- plucking out atoms in the right places to design the magnetic properties you want," said Fuhrer.
I don't know about you but that does seem interesting to me.
For many people acceptance of science is Faith. Not a very desirable situation really. The consequences are that if something comes along that has more of a "faith attraction" then people start believing in that instead. Which is pretty depressing.
The fault, of course, is our education system. We don't teach enough of experimentation. Or, I should say generally it is the past education system. Where I am I see many critically thinking young people, a refreshing change. Hope it persists. I may not agree with their atheism (smacks of too much belief for me) but I like their willingness to question.
Back to the issue at hand. Science delivers. Yes it does. But in a world where this is done seamlessly people first take it for granted, and then forget that the process even exists. Then you see stuff like homeopathy and crystals and god knows what. In a more general way we can all be said to have a faith in the laws of logic, mathematics and observation. But these seem like pretty lame objections. The core issue is the willingness of most people to treat science and technology as magic. e.g. People use laptops and smart phones every day. Can they even give a rough conceptual description of how they function? Just magic boxes.
The truly newsworthy part of that is that the workers suffered radiation burns from standing in a puddle of water. What does that tell you? That there must be a crack in the containment vessel for radiation levels to be that high. That is serious.
The thing about nuclear power is that yes it can be very safe but when something goes badly wrong it can taint an area for thousands of years. It is a moderate reward / high stakes scenario. That is the real reason for all the concern. The reason techies like it is because it is technological. So much cooler than solar power or wind turbines, which seem sort of medieval in spite of the advanced materials. I've been subject to the bias myself. If nuclear power is to continue, then the industry is going to have to come up with some seriously soothing designs. Yes they have been known for ages. But if they aren't adopted now then the nuclear power industry is in trouble.
Personally, I don't like nuclear fission in its current form. Messy, dangerous, badly thought out (disposal etc), and more and more not such a cool technology at all.
You haven't read The Critias or The Timaeus have you?
Plato goes to great lengths to try to persuade the reader that this is in fact a true story based on the what was told to a relative of his which Plato committed to memory when he was a boy.
Quite some time back I grew curious about the legend and invested some time in trying to find out if it is just an invention or whatever. And if there is any truth then where is the "real" Atlantis. My conclusion was that Plato probably heard some stories about past disasters (it is a tectonically active area), and maybe even got the gist of the destruction of Minoa from the Egyptians (via his relative Solon). Then he just wove a story to suit his own ends. The proof of the invention part is in the design of the city and the statistics on the army and navy. Wont go into details but it reveals when the story is written. It is a product of its time. But looking for where the story might have come from reveals something surprising: the world is filled with lost civilisations and cities. They are not unusual. We know very little about the past.
The Kepler Mission can only detect planets whose orbits cross the disc of the star relative to the space probe. See here for a description of the methods. The result is that if Kepler was looking for the Earth from a suitable distance then it would only have a 0.465% chance of detecting it assuming a randomly oriented ecliptic plane. So even though it only found 5 Earth sized planets in the habitable zone that extrapolates to many more since only 1 in 215 stars would have the orbit oriented in a way that would be detectable.
It is assumed and reasonable that we do not occupy a privileged position in space. This is called the Cosmological Principle. It is a surprisingly old, well thought out idea. Read and learn. Cosmology is full of fun, mind expanding concepts and this is one of them.
Huh? The correct process is for independent reproduction of the experiment. If that doesn't happen then "so what". If it confirms it then I would be interested. However, nickel is not a substance I would like as a fuel. Even in the unlikely event that this process is valid then it seems a very impractical technology. As it stands that is. But at the moment it doesn't stand, it is just a claim. Wake me when there are multiple confirmations.
Yeah I liked that aspect too. It did seem very much like the hacker belief that software writing was a creative act like art. So the software would reflect the personality or character of the writer. Of course in Tron it is take to an extreme but gees... something doesn't have to be literally true to be enjoyable and interesting. Plenty of movies have been based on more flimsy ideas.
Actually I thought the special effects were pretty ingenious, for the day. I rewatched it a few years ago and I still liked it. The main problem was that it had the Disney disease... too much niceness, 2D characters, superficial. But fun. My major disappointment when I first saw it was that the movie didn't have the music that was in the trailer.. which was pretty cool. But this one should be better with Daft Punk at the music helm. Just hope they don't try to play the God card on this one like the last one.
We might NEVER figure it out, but simple logic says that there is a unified equation.
Well that is the problem right there. I am sure there is a unified set of ideas that explains the universe. But I think it is unlikely that human beings, or anyone else, will ever find it. There is the issue of Gödel Incompleteness in any unified physical theory but also the fact that the scientific method demands the ability to falsify a theory. If we develop 10 different cool theories about the nature of the universe but they all require experiments that are completely infeasible then we have a big problem. I think this will happen one day. Not quite yet but inevitably our theories will require such exotic tests that we cannot perform the experiment and possibly nature itself doesn't supply any examples. The universe doesn't have to care about supplying us with answers, we have to find them... if we can.
What is more, by describing the pattern of a formulaic article he is encouraging writers to experiment and not give us hack work. It also encourages readers to criticize such poor quality when they come across it.
To paraphrase an old saying: "There is nothing so crazy, that some supposedly educated group wont believe it."
Let's face it every idea has a community of critics these days no matter what it is. On the Internet there should be a new rule for it. Like a new law of thermodynamics, reeking of inevitability.
It's bad because it makes you feel good. That is the real reason. The "kill joys" who clamp down on this are pretty consistent whether it is sex, recreational drugs (including alcohol), music whatever. I was raised a strict Roman Catholic in mixed faith family, I saw enough of this attitude growing up. These days I count myself a Possibilian when I bother to classify myself at all.
There are plenty of people who peddle guilt over sexual desire because it allows the peddler of the guilt to control people. Sexual desire can be channeled in other directions. And sometimes not very nice directions. If sex is so bad, evolution wouldn't have made it such a strong desire... it is there for a reason and not just procreation. It bonds us and inspires us.
Manifest Destiny... look it up. Think of it as a democratic jihad. Not a good idea. The British had a similar notion: The White Man's Burden. Well meaning ideas that just result in a lot misfortune.
It would be helpful if people actually read reports of ball lightning sightings before they jump to conclusions.
Is this a possible explanation of some ball lightning sightings? Well it could be.
Does it explain them all? Definitely not. Ball lightning has been observed many times to do lots of damage. It has also been observed in areas where there has been no lightning or storm activity at all. Including sunny days. Read up on it then make up your own mind. This is not a simple phenomenon. No one explanation seems to explain it all and perhaps there are multiple physical mechanisms to create the reported glowing balls of light with wildly different properties. I read a monograph some years back which detailed about 2 dozen different scientific theories and many good witness accounts showing the mismatch to each of these theories. Well there have been even more theories since, each of them compelling and reasonable... and contradictory. The real problem of course is that the data is from witnesses, it is not repeatable so the theories cannot be tested against each other.
I remember I was doing C++ in a small company back in 95 and the topic of games came up. A guy I was working next to wrote something on a piece of paper and carefully handed to me. He looked me in the eye and said in an ominous whisper, "This is the most addictive game I have ever played. Just remember, I warned you!" On the paper of course was "Civilization II". I think I deleted it off my hard drive about 6 times, and always got reinstalled. Was so distressed / relieved when the CD got too scratched to play. I discovered my limits, some things are not meant for the mind of man (or his too eager children).
And yes my daughter has Civ 3, which she prefers to Civ 4.I have Civ 4. Neither are as addictive or overwhelming as Civ II, for which I thank Sid Meier.
What? Can't/. moderators handle the truth? This particular forum has such bad moderation I'm considering giving up on/. after 10 years. Full of morons. Truly. Not flamebait, just the truth.
Slashdot Mirror
If only multiple mod points were possible ... Hilarious.
Please people RTFA before you comment.
I'm no expert on this stuff but my interpretation of what is being discussed is that the use of vacancies in graphene allows interesting conduction properties and the control of the magnetic properties of the graphene in a manner that does not exist in metals.
From the article:
"The result would be a ferromagnet, like iron, but instead made only of carbon. Magnetism in graphene could lead to new types of nanoscale sensors of magnetic fields. And, when coupled with graphene's tremendous electrical properties, magnetism in graphene could also have interesting applications in the area of spintronics, which uses the magnetic moment of the electron, instead of its electric charge, to represent the information in a computer.
"This opens the possibility of 'defect engineering' in graphene -- plucking out atoms in the right places to design the magnetic properties you want," said Fuhrer.
I don't know about you but that does seem interesting to me.
If I hadn't already commented I would have modded you up. Well said.
For many people acceptance of science is Faith. Not a very desirable situation really. The consequences are that if something comes along that has more of a "faith attraction" then people start believing in that instead. Which is pretty depressing.
The fault, of course, is our education system. We don't teach enough of experimentation. Or, I should say generally it is the past education system. Where I am I see many critically thinking young people, a refreshing change. Hope it persists. I may not agree with their atheism (smacks of too much belief for me) but I like their willingness to question.
Back to the issue at hand. Science delivers. Yes it does. But in a world where this is done seamlessly people first take it for granted, and then forget that the process even exists. Then you see stuff like homeopathy and crystals and god knows what. In a more general way we can all be said to have a faith in the laws of logic, mathematics and observation. But these seem like pretty lame objections. The core issue is the willingness of most people to treat science and technology as magic. e.g. People use laptops and smart phones every day. Can they even give a rough conceptual description of how they function? Just magic boxes.
The truly newsworthy part of that is that the workers suffered radiation burns from standing in a puddle of water. What does that tell you? That there must be a crack in the containment vessel for radiation levels to be that high. That is serious.
The thing about nuclear power is that yes it can be very safe but when something goes badly wrong it can taint an area for thousands of years. It is a moderate reward / high stakes scenario. That is the real reason for all the concern. The reason techies like it is because it is technological. So much cooler than solar power or wind turbines, which seem sort of medieval in spite of the advanced materials. I've been subject to the bias myself. If nuclear power is to continue, then the industry is going to have to come up with some seriously soothing designs. Yes they have been known for ages. But if they aren't adopted now then the nuclear power industry is in trouble.
Personally, I don't like nuclear fission in its current form. Messy, dangerous, badly thought out (disposal etc), and more and more not such a cool technology at all.
You haven't read The Critias or The Timaeus have you?
Plato goes to great lengths to try to persuade the reader that this is in fact a true story based on the what was told to a relative of his which Plato committed to memory when he was a boy.
Quite some time back I grew curious about the legend and invested some time in trying to find out if it is just an invention or whatever. And if there is any truth then where is the "real" Atlantis. My conclusion was that Plato probably heard some stories about past disasters (it is a tectonically active area), and maybe even got the gist of the destruction of Minoa from the Egyptians (via his relative Solon). Then he just wove a story to suit his own ends. The proof of the invention part is in the design of the city and the statistics on the army and navy. Wont go into details but it reveals when the story is written. It is a product of its time. But looking for where the story might have come from reveals something surprising: the world is filled with lost civilisations and cities. They are not unusual. We know very little about the past.
Eh? The word is a valid word with a useful meaning. However its typical usage is invalid, as in the quoted text.
The Kepler Mission can only detect planets whose orbits cross the disc of the star relative to the space probe. See here for a description of the methods. The result is that if Kepler was looking for the Earth from a suitable distance then it would only have a 0.465% chance of detecting it assuming a randomly oriented ecliptic plane. So even though it only found 5 Earth sized planets in the habitable zone that extrapolates to many more since only 1 in 215 stars would have the orbit oriented in a way that would be detectable.
It is assumed and reasonable that we do not occupy a privileged position in space. This is called the Cosmological Principle. It is a surprisingly old, well thought out idea. Read and learn. Cosmology is full of fun, mind expanding concepts and this is one of them.
Huh? The correct process is for independent reproduction of the experiment. If that doesn't happen then "so what". If it confirms it then I would be interested. However, nickel is not a substance I would like as a fuel. Even in the unlikely event that this process is valid then it seems a very impractical technology. As it stands that is. But at the moment it doesn't stand, it is just a claim. Wake me when there are multiple confirmations.
Yeah I liked that aspect too. It did seem very much like the hacker belief that software writing was a creative act like art. So the software would reflect the personality or character of the writer. Of course in Tron it is take to an extreme but gees ... something doesn't have to be literally true to be enjoyable and interesting. Plenty of movies have been based on more flimsy ideas.
Actually I thought the special effects were pretty ingenious, for the day. I rewatched it a few years ago and I still liked it. The main problem was that it had the Disney disease ... too much niceness, 2D characters, superficial. But fun. My major disappointment when I first saw it was that the movie didn't have the music that was in the trailer .. which was pretty cool. But this one should be better with Daft Punk at the music helm. Just hope they don't try to play the God card on this one like the last one.
any material deemed to be 'inaccurate' (good luck with that) or privacy infringing is removed.
I guess that means they'll have to block everything from News Limited then. No loss.
We might NEVER figure it out, but simple logic says that there is a unified equation.
Well that is the problem right there. I am sure there is a unified set of ideas that explains the universe. But I think it is unlikely that human beings, or anyone else, will ever find it. There is the issue of Gödel Incompleteness in any unified physical theory but also the fact that the scientific method demands the ability to falsify a theory. If we develop 10 different cool theories about the nature of the universe but they all require experiments that are completely infeasible then we have a big problem. I think this will happen one day. Not quite yet but inevitably our theories will require such exotic tests that we cannot perform the experiment and possibly nature itself doesn't supply any examples. The universe doesn't have to care about supplying us with answers, we have to find them ... if we can.
What is more, by describing the pattern of a formulaic article he is encouraging writers to experiment and not give us hack work. It also encourages readers to criticize such poor quality when they come across it.
It's been "20 years away" since the 1950s. Now they are saying 50 years ... must mean it is actually near success.
To paraphrase an old saying: "There is nothing so crazy, that some supposedly educated group wont believe it."
Let's face it every idea has a community of critics these days no matter what it is. On the Internet there should be a new rule for it. Like a new law of thermodynamics, reeking of inevitability.
It's bad because it makes you feel good. That is the real reason. The "kill joys" who clamp down on this are pretty consistent whether it is sex, recreational drugs (including alcohol), music whatever. I was raised a strict Roman Catholic in mixed faith family, I saw enough of this attitude growing up. These days I count myself a Possibilian when I bother to classify myself at all.
There are plenty of people who peddle guilt over sexual desire because it allows the peddler of the guilt to control people. Sexual desire can be channeled in other directions. And sometimes not very nice directions. If sex is so bad, evolution wouldn't have made it such a strong desire ... it is there for a reason and not just procreation. It bonds us and inspires us.
... a F#CK is out of the question?
... we can attach the lasers to their heads.
Manifest Destiny ... look it up. Think of it as a democratic jihad. Not a good idea. The British had a similar notion: The White Man's Burden. Well meaning ideas that just result in a lot misfortune.
It would be helpful if people actually read reports of ball lightning sightings before they jump to conclusions.
Is this a possible explanation of some ball lightning sightings? Well it could be.
Does it explain them all? Definitely not. Ball lightning has been observed many times to do lots of damage. It has also been observed in areas where there has been no lightning or storm activity at all. Including sunny days. Read up on it then make up your own mind. This is not a simple phenomenon. No one explanation seems to explain it all and perhaps there are multiple physical mechanisms to create the reported glowing balls of light with wildly different properties. I read a monograph some years back which detailed about 2 dozen different scientific theories and many good witness accounts showing the mismatch to each of these theories. Well there have been even more theories since, each of them compelling and reasonable ... and contradictory. The real problem of course is that the data is from witnesses, it is not repeatable so the theories cannot be tested against each other.
I remember I was doing C++ in a small company back in 95 and the topic of games came up. A guy I was working next to wrote something on a piece of paper and carefully handed to me. He looked me in the eye and said in an ominous whisper, "This is the most addictive game I have ever played. Just remember, I warned you!" On the paper of course was "Civilization II". I think I deleted it off my hard drive about 6 times, and always got reinstalled. Was so distressed / relieved when the CD got too scratched to play. I discovered my limits, some things are not meant for the mind of man (or his too eager children).
And yes my daughter has Civ 3, which she prefers to Civ 4.I have Civ 4. Neither are as addictive or overwhelming as Civ II, for which I thank Sid Meier.
Why is the parent classified as 'Flamebait'?
What? Can't /. moderators handle the truth? This particular forum has such bad moderation I'm considering giving up on /. after 10 years. Full of morons. Truly. Not flamebait, just the truth.
The delicious irony is that most people wont realise how true this is and why.