What it probably means is they're scammers. Capital costs for coal and nuke run from $1.50 to $3.00 per watt installed. They're claiming $1 per watt. The problem is no matter how unconventional the heat source, no matter how magically free, the employee lunchroom costs $ per plant, the parking lot paving costs $ per plant, the pipes from the magic heat source to the turbines costs $ per watt, the turbine itself costs $ per watt, the water pumps and filters cost $ per watt...
PERHAPS they mean the capital cost of their magic heat source alone costs about $1 per watt. The problem is some recent historical nukes (not in the backwards USA, but civilized countries like France, etc) have come in at $1.50 per watt total plant cost delivered. So, on one side, their costs probably will decline as they are new vs the very mature nuke industry. On the other hand, can you build an entire thermal electric plant for well under 50 cents per watt? Then again, can a new tech be nearly as reliable as ancient technology nuke plant?
My impression (and damn these mindless 'articles') is that this is an ultimate goal. That figure isn't unreasonable even if it's cheaper than a coal fired plant. Small scale repetitive parts may well bring down capital costs compared to large purpose build structures - the employee break room is not the big ticket item in a nuc plant. Even if they don't get to the $1/watt figure, you have to remember that typical costs for nuc plants especially have enormous subsidies from the government in terms of waste disposal and insurance costs. Likely the same if you figure out the true environmental costs from a coal plant.
So, I'm not sure that they're a scam but equally unsure that it will lead to any significant commercial application.
I like the glowing ball, though. A whole field of those would be neat.
My issue with this tax is that it is probably not going to result in an end to the recording industry lawsuits. That is the real problem here: they want taxpayer support, while retaining the ability to attack taxpayers who dare to download music.
No, the bigger issue is that you take a group of people who now feel entitled to a perpetual payout because their business model changed. It may be 'reasonable' in this case (I think it's not) but it opens the door for everyone who feels that the Internet has hurt them financially to seek redress by tacking on fees. So we'll see:
$5.00 for still photographers
$25.00 for movie producers (hey movies cost a lot of money to produce)
$10.00 for the poor forlorn advertising agencies
$15.00 for the porn factories
$4.89 for the ISP to cover administration of the funds.
Yeah this is a pretty unscientific study. Disappointing from Cornell.
Come now, you're dissing this 'must read' journal:
The journal is a "must read" for psychologists; sociologists; designers and developers of internet technology, mobile devices, and online and virtual games; business executives; educators, and opinion leaders interested in the effects of interactive technologies. The journal’s expanded coverage explores the impact of Social networks, Internet, multi-media, and virtual reality on behavior and society.
I mean, it was peer reviewed! Scientific Goodness! Truth, justice and the American Way! This will change everything! While not bothering to read TFA, I would wager there is a p value or two thrown about in an intellectual manner.
/snark attack OFF
Sounds like another publication to feed the ever expanding appetite for junk 'science'. Grr. I'm just going to crawl back in bed until it's time for my noonday meds.
I am a bit paranoid and don't like the idea of being trackable. For this reason I typically have my phone in airplane mode and turn off this mode when I expect phone calls or want to browse / check mails. I still do not fully trust the proprietary firmware not to transmit any signals. I would really like to check whether it still transmits anything in airplane mode. Does anybody know an easy and inexpensive way of how to do that?
1) Remove battery if possible (iPhone users skip to 2)
2) Cover unit in high quality tin foil, using at least three separate layers and orienting each layer 60 degrees clockwise from the previous layer.
3) Follow your normal daily activities. Remember to stop occasionally to look in picture windows for agents tailing you. Carefully note the license plates of all vehicles you see. Avoid any vehicle with a camera mast and / or antennas. Now.
4) Put the battery back in phone and remove the tin foil. Repeat step 3.
5) If you notice any difference you can either assume you're being followed by some nefarious, likely quasi-governmental agency or
6) Your life is so totally worthless and boring that you have the time and inclination to keep tab of all the license plates in your vicinity and you're a total loser.
Not a terribly likely scenario - if you block off urine drainage from the kidney, either by tying a suture around it or having a kidney stone block off the ureter (the tube that runs from the kidney to the bladder) you set off a cascade of neurochemical events that quickly lead to elevated blood pressure - much faster than could be explained by just 'filling up' the blood vessels. The main response is from the renin-angiotensin system which is the basis for several classes of blood pressure measurement.
In the short term, however, it's BP elevation is probably due to just to discomfort. If you're bladder is so full that it's backing up the ureters (which have one way valves) and putting back pressure on the kidney, it's really full and it's really uncomfortable. The pain will increase catecholamine levels which tend to elevate BP.
/Rant
What a dipshit article. They didn't even bother to see if the bladder was full, just estimated the time it 'should' take to fill the bladder. No controls, no alternative hypothesis, no biology, just an epiphany that happened when the author talked too long. This is the sort of thing that gives science a bad name, wastes paper, increases air pollution and likely causes cancer. /Rant
Well, lets try to up the quality of the discussion and at least provide the abstract:
Abundant ammonia in primitive asteroids and the case for a possible exobiology
1. Sandra Pizzarelloa,1,
2. Lynda B. Williamsb,
3. Jennifer Lehmanc,
4. Gregory P. Hollanda, and
5. Jeffery L. Yargera
Abstract
Carbonaceous chondrites are asteroidal meteorites that contain abundant organic materials. Given that meteorites and comets have reached the Earth since it formed, it has been proposed that the exogenous influx from these bodies provided the organic inventories necessary for the emergence of life. The carbonaceous meteorites of the Renazzo-type family (CR) have recently revealed a composition that is particularly enriched in small soluble organic molecules, such as the amino acids glycine and alanine, which could support this possibility. We have now analyzed the insoluble and the largest organic component of the CR2 Grave Nunataks (GRA) 95229 meteorite and found it to be of more primitive composition than in other meteorites and to release abundant free ammonia upon hydrothermal treatment. The findings appear to trace CR2 meteorites’ origin to cosmochemical regimes where ammonia was pervasive, and we speculate that their delivery to the early Earth could have fostered prebiotic molecular evolution.
Without the full article it's hard to really follow why they think the earth needed excess organic chemicals, even specific amino acids, to be provided from meteorites. There is a large body of data that shows that amino acids, nucleic acids, lipids and a host of other moderately complex organic molecules could have been formed on earth at various times in it's development. As far as I can tell, there is nothing magical about the meteorite derived molecules and hence invoking panspermia (or more accurately, panorganicmoleculermia) is really unnecessary.
Anyone else out there with either access to PNAS or some better insight? So far it's a big meh.
With reports of the Leap-A program infecting some Macs, it’s important to keep the news in perspective. While Leap-A has the potential for mischief, it’s not anything like a crippling Windows virus that periodically brings the rest of the computing world to its knees. More important, as explained below, this incident doesn’t expose a security hole in the Mac operating system. Rather, it’s a piece of malware that can be easily rebuffed by vigilant Mac user.
Apple is making serious inroads in healthcare largely on the strength of its appeal to tech-savvy doctors and researchers and the clout they have in affecting purchasing decisions.
Not really. What you are seeing is people bringing in MacPros to run legacy hospital software under Parallels or some other similar system. Nobody is buying large volumes of Macs nor are they using Macs for servers. The iPad might change that - the healthcare industry has been trying to find a decent tablet since Moses dropped his and the battery life / size / simple UI are really appealing. But Apple doesn't really seem to want to go play with the big boys, nor are there big system integrators nuzzling up to Apple (at least that I'm aware of).
Anyone who thinks that limiting the ability to publish buttons is a "serious impediment to living, working writers" needs to get out more often.
What the offended buttoneer should have done is to contact a lawyer of appropriate skill and jurisdiction and obtained a reasoned judgment as to their options. Babbling on the Internet, while cathartic, isn't terribly useful.
Unfortunately, TESS doesn't allow for persistent searches. Searching on the site for "Tolkien" is interesting, however. The mark "JRR Tolkien" as his signature is trademarked and for some reason the USPTO thinks he's 'alive' (perhaps that word doesn't mean what I think it means). However, the word "Tolkien" as text appears to have been abandoned in 2004. I have no idea what that really means since this is a government / legal issue which tends to define words however they feel like it.
Could they have dropped just the text term and kept the trademark for his signature?
You might tell your wife's friend that, at least for US hospitals, they are federally mandated to have translation services available at all times. Most places use the AT&T medical translation system where you punch in an 800 number, key in a PIN and then tell the operator which two languages you want. You can use a cell phone, you can use it anywhere you have telephone connectivity.
I know a lot of places that don't want to advertise the service since it costs money, but they're really supposed to tell people about it.
That being said, given how much a doctor's time is worth, I'd imagine a $16K subscription service to a translation hotline for an entire hospital is far cheaper than paying for Spanish classes for nearly every new doctor/resident to come through the doors.
Not really. If you are in a significantly bilingual area (and in the US it's typically Spanish), having much of the staff able to talk directly to a patient (as opposed to the single machine stuck down in the ER) is a huge advantage. When I was in training in Colorado, there were dozens of 'Spanish for Medical personnel' courses available. At one point I was reasonably fluent. There is really no substitute for being able to actually talk to somebody. Translators are a necessity when you can't but it is very much non optimal.
It's probably AT&T. Interestingly, in a quick Google search I could not find any front end number. But your hospital's local AT&T rep should be able to get you started. It does work pretty well and has the advantage of picking from an enormous pool of interpreters. A while back, I was using it to try and figure out what was going on with a woman who spoke Tagalog. After a few minutes, the interpreter told me that she didn't speak the right dialect of Tagalog and she called the operator back, chattered a few minutes and found somebody else that could interpret better.
I rather doubt the machine could do that. Further, it's available from any phone on the planet that can access a 800 number. Not especially cheap but it beats trying to keep an Afrikans interpreter on board in rural Alaska.
The problem with nukes is that you don't want anybody else to have them. They should be limited to the 'right thinking folk'. While I am perfectly happy to agree with you that power mad theocracy's are not good candidates for nuclear weapons, lets look around:
Russia - which a decade ago imploded and nearly lost control (or perhaps has lost control) of nuclear weapons which cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to get under some degree of temporary security.
Pakistan - a nominally secular country in the midst of imploding into something that might make Afghanistan look sane.
India - a nominally democratic country that has nucs so it can ward off Pakistan.
Israel - again, a nominally democratic, secular country in the middle of a bunch of batshit insane theocracies. While they would be unlikely to first strike with nuclear weapons, they have been involved in three or four major military conflicts with their neighbors. Any resumption of major hostilities carries the real risk of nuclear weapon use, irrespective if Iran has them. Whether they're used for defensive or offensive purposes, starting a nuclear war in the Middle East doesn't strike most people as a good idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I pay about $0.10/kWh. (1000 W per Hour)
What it probably means is they're scammers. Capital costs for coal and nuke run from $1.50 to $3.00 per watt installed. They're claiming $1 per watt. The problem is no matter how unconventional the heat source, no matter how magically free, the employee lunchroom costs $ per plant, the parking lot paving costs $ per plant, the pipes from the magic heat source to the turbines costs $ per watt, the turbine itself costs $ per watt, the water pumps and filters cost $ per watt...
PERHAPS they mean the capital cost of their magic heat source alone costs about $1 per watt. The problem is some recent historical nukes (not in the backwards USA, but civilized countries like France, etc) have come in at $1.50 per watt total plant cost delivered. So, on one side, their costs probably will decline as they are new vs the very mature nuke industry. On the other hand, can you build an entire thermal electric plant for well under 50 cents per watt? Then again, can a new tech be nearly as reliable as ancient technology nuke plant?
My impression (and damn these mindless 'articles') is that this is an ultimate goal. That figure isn't unreasonable even if it's cheaper than a coal fired plant. Small scale repetitive parts may well bring down capital costs compared to large purpose build structures - the employee break room is not the big ticket item in a nuc plant. Even if they don't get to the $1/watt figure, you have to remember that typical costs for nuc plants especially have enormous subsidies from the government in terms of waste disposal and insurance costs. Likely the same if you figure out the true environmental costs from a coal plant.
So, I'm not sure that they're a scam but equally unsure that it will lead to any significant commercial application.
I like the glowing ball, though. A whole field of those would be neat.
My issue with this tax is that it is probably not going to result in an end to the recording industry lawsuits. That is the real problem here: they want taxpayer support, while retaining the ability to attack taxpayers who dare to download music.
No, the bigger issue is that you take a group of people who now feel entitled to a perpetual payout because their business model changed. It may be 'reasonable' in this case (I think it's not) but it opens the door for everyone who feels that the Internet has hurt them financially to seek redress by tacking on fees. So we'll see:
$5.00 for still photographers
$25.00 for movie producers (hey movies cost a lot of money to produce)
$10.00 for the poor forlorn advertising agencies
$15.00 for the porn factories
$4.89 for the ISP to cover administration of the funds.
Now it starts to look like my wireless bill.
moratorium on "manned" space flight for say 20 years, at the end of which we plan to have a functioning moon base
Right. A functioning moon base, inhabited by autonomous robots for two decades.
Whatcouldpossiblygowrong?
let's break out the tie-dye T-shirts and lava lamps and roll up a J and flash on ET riding a bicycle to Meatloaf rock operetta.
Sadly, the most insightful comment on the thread.
Opera on iOS is a serious disappointment, to the point where it's hard to take them seriously as a software development company.
We're talking about sex in this thread (well, lack of it anyway). Not software. Please try to stay on topic.
Yeah this is a pretty unscientific study. Disappointing from Cornell.
Come now, you're dissing this 'must read' journal:
The journal is a "must read" for psychologists; sociologists; designers and developers of internet technology, mobile devices, and online and virtual games; business executives; educators, and opinion leaders interested in the effects of interactive technologies. The journal’s expanded coverage explores the impact of Social networks, Internet, multi-media, and virtual reality on behavior and society.
I mean, it was peer reviewed! Scientific Goodness! Truth, justice and the American Way! This will change everything! While not bothering to read TFA, I would wager there is a p value or two thrown about in an intellectual manner.
/snark attack OFF
Sounds like another publication to feed the ever expanding appetite for junk 'science'. Grr. I'm just going to crawl back in bed until it's time for my noonday meds.
Anyone else misread that as rearside? Time to lay off the porn.
Well, that kind of porn, anyway.
I am a bit paranoid and don't like the idea of being trackable. For this reason I typically have my phone in airplane mode and turn off this mode when I expect phone calls or want to browse / check mails. I still do not fully trust the proprietary firmware not to transmit any signals. I would really like to check whether it still transmits anything in airplane mode. Does anybody know an easy and inexpensive way of how to do that?
1) Remove battery if possible (iPhone users skip to 2)
2) Cover unit in high quality tin foil, using at least three separate layers and orienting each layer 60 degrees clockwise from the previous layer.
3) Follow your normal daily activities. Remember to stop occasionally to look in picture windows for agents tailing you. Carefully note the license plates of all vehicles you see. Avoid any vehicle with a camera mast and / or antennas. Now.
4) Put the battery back in phone and remove the tin foil. Repeat step 3.
5) If you notice any difference you can either assume you're being followed by some nefarious, likely quasi-governmental agency or
6) Your life is so totally worthless and boring that you have the time and inclination to keep tab of all the license plates in your vicinity and you're a total loser.
Either way, you're hosed.
A design flaw that shouldn't be overlooked when buying.
Comrade! You won't buy an iPhone because you can't remove the battery to thwart surveillance activities?
Please to come this way.
And for times when things have gone wrong, horribly wrong, there is always Photoshop Disasters.
Not a terribly likely scenario - if you block off urine drainage from the kidney, either by tying a suture around it or having a kidney stone block off the ureter (the tube that runs from the kidney to the bladder) you set off a cascade of neurochemical events that quickly lead to elevated blood pressure - much faster than could be explained by just 'filling up' the blood vessels. The main response is from the renin-angiotensin system which is the basis for several classes of blood pressure measurement.
/Rant
/Rant
In the short term, however, it's BP elevation is probably due to just to discomfort. If you're bladder is so full that it's backing up the ureters (which have one way valves) and putting back pressure on the kidney, it's really full and it's really uncomfortable. The pain will increase catecholamine levels which tend to elevate BP.
What a dipshit article. They didn't even bother to see if the bladder was full, just estimated the time it 'should' take to fill the bladder. No controls, no alternative hypothesis, no biology, just an epiphany that happened when the author talked too long. This is the sort of thing that gives science a bad name, wastes paper, increases air pollution and likely causes cancer.
This thread is nothing but a pissing contest.
Thanks for showing up.
God, I miss floppies.....
family trees with loops instead of forks
I'm trying to work this out with the Clinton's as a test case, but the math is really beyond me.
} Got a car analogy?
Abundant ammonia in primitive asteroids and the case for a possible exobiology
1. Sandra Pizzarelloa,1, 2. Lynda B. Williamsb, 3. Jennifer Lehmanc, 4. Gregory P. Hollanda, and 5. Jeffery L. Yargera
Abstract
Carbonaceous chondrites are asteroidal meteorites that contain abundant organic materials. Given that meteorites and comets have reached the Earth since it formed, it has been proposed that the exogenous influx from these bodies provided the organic inventories necessary for the emergence of life. The carbonaceous meteorites of the Renazzo-type family (CR) have recently revealed a composition that is particularly enriched in small soluble organic molecules, such as the amino acids glycine and alanine, which could support this possibility. We have now analyzed the insoluble and the largest organic component of the CR2 Grave Nunataks (GRA) 95229 meteorite and found it to be of more primitive composition than in other meteorites and to release abundant free ammonia upon hydrothermal treatment. The findings appear to trace CR2 meteorites’ origin to cosmochemical regimes where ammonia was pervasive, and we speculate that their delivery to the early Earth could have fostered prebiotic molecular evolution.
Without the full article it's hard to really follow why they think the earth needed excess organic chemicals, even specific amino acids, to be provided from meteorites. There is a large body of data that shows that amino acids, nucleic acids, lipids and a host of other moderately complex organic molecules could have been formed on earth at various times in it's development. As far as I can tell, there is nothing magical about the meteorite derived molecules and hence invoking panspermia (or more accurately, panorganicmoleculermia) is really unnecessary.
Anyone else out there with either access to PNAS or some better insight? So far it's a big meh.
With reports of the Leap-A program infecting some Macs, it’s important to keep the news in perspective. While Leap-A has the potential for mischief, it’s not anything like a crippling Windows virus that periodically brings the rest of the computing world to its knees. More important, as explained below, this incident doesn’t expose a security hole in the Mac operating system. Rather, it’s a piece of malware that can be easily rebuffed by vigilant Mac user.
Source
Apple is making serious inroads in healthcare largely on the strength of its appeal to tech-savvy doctors and researchers and the clout they have in affecting purchasing decisions.
Not really. What you are seeing is people bringing in MacPros to run legacy hospital software under Parallels or some other similar system. Nobody is buying large volumes of Macs nor are they using Macs for servers. The iPad might change that - the healthcare industry has been trying to find a decent tablet since Moses dropped his and the battery life / size / simple UI are really appealing. But Apple doesn't really seem to want to go play with the big boys, nor are there big system integrators nuzzling up to Apple (at least that I'm aware of).
Anyone who thinks that limiting the ability to publish buttons is a "serious impediment to living, working writers" needs to get out more often.
What the offended buttoneer should have done is to contact a lawyer of appropriate skill and jurisdiction and obtained a reasoned judgment as to their options. Babbling on the Internet, while cathartic, isn't terribly useful.
Unfortunately, TESS doesn't allow for persistent searches. Searching on the site for "Tolkien" is interesting, however. The mark "JRR Tolkien" as his signature is trademarked and for some reason the USPTO thinks he's 'alive' (perhaps that word doesn't mean what I think it means). However, the word "Tolkien" as text appears to have been abandoned in 2004. I have no idea what that really means since this is a government / legal issue which tends to define words however they feel like it.
Could they have dropped just the text term and kept the trademark for his signature?
You might tell your wife's friend that, at least for US hospitals, they are federally mandated to have translation services available at all times. Most places use the AT&T medical translation system where you punch in an 800 number, key in a PIN and then tell the operator which two languages you want. You can use a cell phone, you can use it anywhere you have telephone connectivity.
I know a lot of places that don't want to advertise the service since it costs money, but they're really supposed to tell people about it.
That being said, given how much a doctor's time is worth, I'd imagine a $16K subscription service to a translation hotline for an entire hospital is far cheaper than paying for Spanish classes for nearly every new doctor/resident to come through the doors.
Not really. If you are in a significantly bilingual area (and in the US it's typically Spanish), having much of the staff able to talk directly to a patient (as opposed to the single machine stuck down in the ER) is a huge advantage. When I was in training in Colorado, there were dozens of 'Spanish for Medical personnel' courses available. At one point I was reasonably fluent. There is really no substitute for being able to actually talk to somebody. Translators are a necessity when you can't but it is very much non optimal.
It's probably AT&T. Interestingly, in a quick Google search I could not find any front end number. But your hospital's local AT&T rep should be able to get you started. It does work pretty well and has the advantage of picking from an enormous pool of interpreters. A while back, I was using it to try and figure out what was going on with a woman who spoke Tagalog. After a few minutes, the interpreter told me that she didn't speak the right dialect of Tagalog and she called the operator back, chattered a few minutes and found somebody else that could interpret better.
I rather doubt the machine could do that. Further, it's available from any phone on the planet that can access a 800 number. Not especially cheap but it beats trying to keep an Afrikans interpreter on board in rural Alaska.
The United States does not have a national language, so what language is "your language" in your example?
We most certainly do. It's called Greed. And we're good at it. Thankyouverymuch.
Drill Baby, Drill! (just thought I'd get a little Palinism in while I'm at it).
The problem with nukes is that you don't want anybody else to have them. They should be limited to the 'right thinking folk'. While I am perfectly happy to agree with you that power mad theocracy's are not good candidates for nuclear weapons, lets look around:
Russia - which a decade ago imploded and nearly lost control (or perhaps has lost control) of nuclear weapons which cost us hundreds of millions of dollars to get under some degree of temporary security.
Pakistan - a nominally secular country in the midst of imploding into something that might make Afghanistan look sane.
India - a nominally democratic country that has nucs so it can ward off Pakistan.
Israel - again, a nominally democratic, secular country in the middle of a bunch of batshit insane theocracies. While they would be unlikely to first strike with nuclear weapons, they have been involved in three or four major military conflicts with their neighbors. Any resumption of major hostilities carries the real risk of nuclear weapon use, irrespective if Iran has them. Whether they're used for defensive or offensive purposes, starting a nuclear war in the Middle East doesn't strike most people as a good idea.
I think we should give them all to Canada.
Awful, rambling summary. Why is removing fuel from Bushehr "seen as a big blow to its controversial nuclear program"?
SPOILER ALERT! Read TFA SPOILER ALERT!