The reason why this is not in production is obvious. The energy capturing efficiency (and hence cost effectiveness) of the solar cell is reduced by 75 %. (Then another 50 % will be lost if the hydrogen is converted back to electricity.)
Physical efficiency may not be a big deal here. If you are using inexpensive materials and can get the device built reasonably cheaply and it has long term stability (several largish engineering 'ifs' here) then overall energy conversion rates aren't too critical. There is lots of sunlight and lots of water so you can trade off efficiency for square footage (to some degree, it can't be terribly bad at conversion).
The devil will be in the details and as TFA states, there is a lot of engineering work to be done.
Should be ready about the time that holographic storage comes on line.
No Worries for the Greens, The government will give a couple billion dollars to prop up yet another failing "solar" company that cannot make it without a handout.
As opposed to the trillions of dollars in 'handouts' to Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East to keep the oil flowing? Or did you think we like to support backwards misogynist despots because they're just like us? (A reasonable supposition, I suppose).
But a mule is thousands of times cheaper (don't actually know how much the military pays for one of these, but I would guess it's in the millions, plus R&D costs). And providing fuel for the war in remote parts of Afghanistan is a huge cost, in money and lives (lots of troops die protecting fuel convoys). So it's really rather ridiculous to try to replace a mule with this thing, especially for a nation that is spiraling into financial disaster.
Ever worked with a mule? There is a reason that the phrase "mule headed" exists. It takes a skilled handler to get mules to go where you want them to. In xstan, granted, there are probably lots of people with mule herding experience. When we invade Canada, not so much. Shoot at the mule, the mule goes the other way. Mule food is expensive and bulky and they don't do well on a diet of JP8. Want to drop a dozen mules out of a C17? Go ahead. We'll watch.
So there are reasons for Alpha dog, aside from the techno cool factor. Horses for courses, I suppose.....
I read many years ago on Chinese media (can't find the source anymore) when they first launched Shenzhou that the docking port is imported from Russia for the explicit goal of compatibility with other vehicles as the Russian design is now the de factor standard.
If mankind had been as prissyfooted as Homo Americanus, we'd still be sucking our thumbs in a South African cave peering out at the scary ungulates. Somewhere we lost our cojones big time.
By "hospitable zone requirement" do they mean hospitable for life in general, or hospitable for humans? If life in general then that's ridiculous, of course life can form without water. If hospitable for humans, then I'd think water would be a pretty important thing to have.
No, they mean 'hospitable' for carbon based life-as-we-know-it. It doesn't have to have air conditioning or WIFI and thus may not be habitable for humans.
There are lot of things that can be done on the phone, but visiting a doctor is not one of them. Diagnosis requires physical presence, a doctor can't examine a patient that is not there.
I'm gonna call BS on that. At least to some degree. About 85% of diagnoses come from the history (listening to what the patient says, correlating that with their age, sex, comorbid conditions, etc.). Maybe 10% is physical exam and maybe 50% of that at the level of looking generally at the patient (as opposed to doing a pelvic exam or something equally annoying). Sometimes you really need to do that and of course sometimes a doc in the box (or a doc in the tube, as in TFA) should work just fine.
Sometimes you need expensive tests but as Dunbal points out a bit above, much of 'routine' medicine is just that. I can justify not handing out antibiotics in the pharmacy (like, for example in Mexico) because the decision whether or not to use one and which one to use does take some training and there are good societal reasons to avoid overuse of the drug. But it's hard to justify $200 or so just to see somebody for a prolonged cold.
Unfortunately, in the US, overdiagnosis is Standard of Care. If Dr. Dunbal were to offer someone with say, sarcoma, some antibiotics for the cough they developed and they worsened and had some sort of bad outcome because they didn't show back up in a doctor's office for six weeks in which time the (rare, very rare) thing spread all over the place AND the patient (or family) was annoyed at you and decided to sue you, it would be difficult to defend. Although, in all fairness to the system, the plaintiff would probably NOT get any money (unless they were cute or had some other emotional tap to the jury), however the good doctor would go through an time consuming and largely pointless exercise in legal jurisprudence.
Now, various (poorly done) studies estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of US healthcare costs are due to a combination of malpractice insurance and defensive medicine, but I think it's a much higher number. In the US, we've removed the patient as being a stakeholder in their own care. Legally, we don't expect patients to be interested or able to make decisions or be responsible for them. Therefore, you are taught that trying something simple (waiting it out, maybe an antibiotic) isn't such a good idea. Instead of having, for example, an 80% confidence in your diagnosis, you want something "better". Hence, doing "a few more things". And really, as an American physician, it's pretty easy to order 'a couple of tests' right off the bat 'to be sure'.
Partly it's human nature, partly it's peculiarly American. It is expensive.
But it's only one small part of why health care is expensive. While I firmly believe that US medicine is totally and completely Batshit insane, it's interesting to note that the Western Social Democracies, who are currently being touted as having the most cost and medically effective systems in the world, are all struggling to contain costs. People get sick, machines that go 'ping' get expensive. We can (and should, and need to) work on those costs and (at least in the US, work on effectiveness) but it will always be a fairly expensive endevour.
telecommunications and the internet, are these things really all that relevant to international business? I cant imagine they serve any other purpose than airborne cattle-cars for the unwashed in economy class, and exotic chariots of booze and decadence for wealthy elite.
Funny that humans seem to really want to interact with other humans rather than some simulacrum. If you think this desire for person to person contact just results in an 'unwashed economy class' or 'booze and decadence' I think you need to get out more often.
Basements aren't a very healthy place to spend your entire life.
I called it 'racism plain and simple' because it was 1) directed at only one race 2) overbroad and vague in implementation and 3) in an political environment that has been caught attempting to harass Mexican-Americans or plain ol Mexicans on more than one occasion. A pattern of behavior.
If the state had genuine and consistent metrics for verbal clarity and diction, I would have no issue with it. In fact, given my experience, I would welcome it. But Arizona's attempt had no such requirements.
No, it's a stupid idea, no matter who thought of it. Look, I grew up in Texas and Florida. One of my English teachers had such a thick Southern drawl that even for 'native' speakers it was sometimes a bit hard to figure out what she was saying. I survived. So, I imagine, did everyone else. I even survived learning Russian from a teacher with a pronounced Mexican accent.
The obvious question that wasn't in TFA was - did they go back and look at other 'spikes' to see if they meant anything? From the article, the whole process seemed pretty weak intellectually - in the weeks leading up to Mubarak's fall it was clear to anyone with an IQ higher than a typical US politician^Hsnail that something was going to happen - either Mubarak was going to get canned or a lot of Egyptians were going to get in a shitload of trouble.
I don't see anything here that isn't in Google Trends.
No one has yet succeeded in the marketplace with a collapsible container
Sure they have. Their invention is called 'cardboard boxes'.
There is a reason you don't see cardboard boxes on the back of a flatbed truck or sitting on the deck of a container ship. I'll leave it to you to figure out the actual details.
I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.
If I look at it in full screen I see something that could be a satellite disintegration but could also be a plane running into some clouds or some confused fireflies.
I can see why NASA didn't pay, avoiding to create a precedent for possibly higher claims, but it looks really badly if a reputable organization has to rely on donations to pay its litter bills...
Slashdot Mirror
Group Hug time!
Return on investment was pretty good for Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The space shuttle... not so much.
The X-37B folks beg to differ. Smile for the camera!
The reason why this is not in production is obvious. The energy capturing efficiency (and hence cost effectiveness) of the solar cell is reduced by 75 %. (Then another 50 % will be lost if the hydrogen is converted back to electricity.)
Physical efficiency may not be a big deal here. If you are using inexpensive materials and can get the device built reasonably cheaply and it has long term stability (several largish engineering 'ifs' here) then overall energy conversion rates aren't too critical. There is lots of sunlight and lots of water so you can trade off efficiency for square footage (to some degree, it can't be terribly bad at conversion).
The devil will be in the details and as TFA states, there is a lot of engineering work to be done.
Should be ready about the time that holographic storage comes on line.
No Worries for the Greens, The government will give a couple billion dollars to prop up yet another failing "solar" company that cannot make it without a handout.
As opposed to the trillions of dollars in 'handouts' to Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East to keep the oil flowing? Or did you think we like to support backwards misogynist despots because they're just like us? (A reasonable supposition, I suppose).
But a mule is thousands of times cheaper (don't actually know how much the military pays for one of these, but I would guess it's in the millions, plus R&D costs). And providing fuel for the war in remote parts of Afghanistan is a huge cost, in money and lives (lots of troops die protecting fuel convoys). So it's really rather ridiculous to try to replace a mule with this thing, especially for a nation that is spiraling into financial disaster.
Ever worked with a mule? There is a reason that the phrase "mule headed" exists. It takes a skilled handler to get mules to go where you want them to. In xstan, granted, there are probably lots of people with mule herding experience. When we invade Canada, not so much. Shoot at the mule, the mule goes the other way. Mule food is expensive and bulky and they don't do well on a diet of JP8. Want to drop a dozen mules out of a C17? Go ahead. We'll watch.
So there are reasons for Alpha dog, aside from the techno cool factor. Horses for courses, I suppose.....
Put horns on it, produce 2000 of it and have them charge the enemies. I assure you it will discourage warfare like nothing else.
Not a problem. I've developed the Robotic Dog equivalent of a milk bone. Here Fido!
Are the docking ports compatible?
I read many years ago on Chinese media (can't find the source anymore) when they first launched Shenzhou that the docking port is imported from Russia for the explicit goal of compatibility with other vehicles as the Russian design is now the de factor standard.
Yes. Same one as on the Shuttle and ISS.
If mankind had been as prissyfooted as Homo Americanus, we'd still be sucking our thumbs in a South African cave peering out at the scary ungulates. Somewhere we lost our cojones big time.
Actually, the Vikings predated the English by quite a bit (6 centuries), but yes, economic colonization often takes decades to centuries.
By "hospitable zone requirement" do they mean hospitable for life in general, or hospitable for humans? If life in general then that's ridiculous, of course life can form without water. If hospitable for humans, then I'd think water would be a pretty important thing to have.
No, they mean 'hospitable' for carbon based life-as-we-know-it. It doesn't have to have air conditioning or WIFI and thus may not be habitable for humans.
TFA doesn't give real numbers, but it stated that the newer (more powerful) MRIs tended to cause more problems than "old" ones.
Look, I'm all for pole dancing just not the type that has me dancing.
I think we're all in agreement on this one.
I also fall over, have difficulty flying and run into things when drunk.
How about when you're sober. Can you fly then?
I'm hesitant to read TFA.
It's OK. This is Slashdot. Not 4Chan.
There are lot of things that can be done on the phone, but visiting a doctor is not one of them. Diagnosis requires physical presence, a doctor can't examine a patient that is not there.
I'm gonna call BS on that. At least to some degree. About 85% of diagnoses come from the history (listening to what the patient says, correlating that with their age, sex, comorbid conditions, etc.). Maybe 10% is physical exam and maybe 50% of that at the level of looking generally at the patient (as opposed to doing a pelvic exam or something equally annoying). Sometimes you really need to do that and of course sometimes a doc in the box (or a doc in the tube, as in TFA) should work just fine.
Sometimes you need expensive tests but as Dunbal points out a bit above, much of 'routine' medicine is just that. I can justify not handing out antibiotics in the pharmacy (like, for example in Mexico) because the decision whether or not to use one and which one to use does take some training and there are good societal reasons to avoid overuse of the drug. But it's hard to justify $200 or so just to see somebody for a prolonged cold.
Unfortunately, in the US, overdiagnosis is Standard of Care. If Dr. Dunbal were to offer someone with say, sarcoma, some antibiotics for the cough they developed and they worsened and had some sort of bad outcome because they didn't show back up in a doctor's office for six weeks in which time the (rare, very rare) thing spread all over the place AND the patient (or family) was annoyed at you and decided to sue you, it would be difficult to defend. Although, in all fairness to the system, the plaintiff would probably NOT get any money (unless they were cute or had some other emotional tap to the jury), however the good doctor would go through an time consuming and largely pointless exercise in legal jurisprudence.
Now, various (poorly done) studies estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of US healthcare costs are due to a combination of malpractice insurance and defensive medicine, but I think it's a much higher number. In the US, we've removed the patient as being a stakeholder in their own care. Legally, we don't expect patients to be interested or able to make decisions or be responsible for them. Therefore, you are taught that trying something simple (waiting it out, maybe an antibiotic) isn't such a good idea. Instead of having, for example, an 80% confidence in your diagnosis, you want something "better". Hence, doing "a few more things". And really, as an American physician, it's pretty easy to order 'a couple of tests' right off the bat 'to be sure'.
Partly it's human nature, partly it's peculiarly American. It is expensive.
But it's only one small part of why health care is expensive. While I firmly believe that US medicine is totally and completely Batshit insane, it's interesting to note that the Western Social Democracies, who are currently being touted as having the most cost and medically effective systems in the world, are all struggling to contain costs. People get sick, machines that go 'ping' get expensive. We can (and should, and need to) work on those costs and (at least in the US, work on effectiveness) but it will always be a fairly expensive endevour.
I detect a breeze around here. I wonder why?
telecommunications and the internet, are these things really all that relevant to international business? I cant imagine they serve any other purpose than airborne cattle-cars for the unwashed in economy class, and exotic chariots of booze and decadence for wealthy elite.
Funny that humans seem to really want to interact with other humans rather than some simulacrum. If you think this desire for person to person contact just results in an 'unwashed economy class' or 'booze and decadence' I think you need to get out more often.
Basements aren't a very healthy place to spend your entire life.
Here, go read all 1036 comments.. You'll have a headache and some eyestrain but you will be much smarter.
See my reply to theArtificial. I know what race is, I know what regional / ethnic accents are.
I called it 'racism plain and simple' because it was 1) directed at only one race 2) overbroad and vague in implementation and 3) in an political environment that has been caught attempting to harass Mexican-Americans or plain ol Mexicans on more than one occasion. A pattern of behavior.
If the state had genuine and consistent metrics for verbal clarity and diction, I would have no issue with it. In fact, given my experience, I would welcome it. But Arizona's attempt had no such requirements.
No, it's a stupid idea, no matter who thought of it. Look, I grew up in Texas and Florida. One of my English teachers had such a thick Southern drawl that even for 'native' speakers it was sometimes a bit hard to figure out what she was saying. I survived. So, I imagine, did everyone else. I even survived learning Russian from a teacher with a pronounced Mexican accent.
It's just racism, plain and simple.
The obvious question that wasn't in TFA was - did they go back and look at other 'spikes' to see if they meant anything? From the article, the whole process seemed pretty weak intellectually - in the weeks leading up to Mubarak's fall it was clear to anyone with an IQ higher than a typical US politician^Hsnail that something was going to happen - either Mubarak was going to get canned or a lot of Egyptians were going to get in a shitload of trouble.
I don't see anything here that isn't in Google Trends.
??
No one has yet succeeded in the marketplace with a collapsible container
Sure they have. Their invention is called 'cardboard boxes'.
There is a reason you don't see cardboard boxes on the back of a flatbed truck or sitting on the deck of a container ship. I'll leave it to you to figure out the actual details.
Clearly captures
I don't think those words mean what you think they mean.
If I look at it in full screen I see something that could be a satellite disintegration but could also be a plane running into some clouds or some confused fireflies.
I can see why NASA didn't pay, avoiding to create a precedent for possibly higher claims, but it looks really badly if a reputable organization has to rely on donations to pay its litter bills...
Yes indeed, littering can be a problem.