Nope...the Mars Exploration Rovers' microscopic imagers can't resolve finely enough to measure grain size or geometry, and they have no way of measuring electrical properties. The Mars Surface Laboratory, to launch in 2009, will have slightly better resolution, but still not grain sized. In fact, I think in order to get a good idea what they finest grains look like, nothing short of an electron microscope will do. The rovers focus on geology and chemical composition, but not as much on things like dust geometry and electrical properties.
Regardless of whether or not its feasible to equip a lander to determine these properties itself, NASA and other groups would really like to get their hands directly on some Martian surface material, so a robotic sample return mission will very likely happen in the next 10-20 years regardless of whether plans move forward for manned exploration.
As to the cost, people seem to forgot that NASA can't just run out to home depot and pick up any old toilet. Our toilet systems are dependent upon gravity to operate, which makes the basic mechanics of our toilets useless in space.
Our toilets are also very, very simple. For $100, you get a shiny, but relatively heavy ceramic bowl with a couple simple levers, one valve, and a siphon (note that conventional siphons don't work in space). It uses about 5 kg of water per flush, and all the waste flows downhill into part of a much larger system that cost $billions (if you live in a city). 5 kg/flush x 6 astronauts x 5 flushes per day x $1000/kg to orbit means you'd spend $19 million on water for a conventional toilet in about 4 months.
The Russian space toilet uses no (or close to no, I'm not sure) water for operation. It separates and dries solid waste into containers that are burnt up in the atmosphere with discarded cargo ships. The liquid waste is distilled. The NASA life support cycle chart shows this distilled water going into the potable supply, although another source said it's kept separate because the astronauts are reluctant to drink it. Either way, the result is a lot of saved water.
So the $19 million cost covers the mechanism that captures the waste products with not release into the station atmosphere, the mechanism that separates the wastes, the mechanism that packages the solid waste, and the mechanism that recycles the liquid waste. Actually, reading the articles, it sounds like this might be an entire modular bathroom including handwashing, toothbrushing, and other miscellaneous appliances in addition to the toilet. Add onto that the fact that this is two-off product (whereas Halsey Taylor defrays their development costs over 100,000's of units sold), and the need to design it to be lightweight, and I begin to suspect that $19 million is an outstanding deal for NASA.
I see three obvious issues here:
1.) It's going to cost money to regulate the temperature of the fuel. You'll get different amounts of fuel depending on the temperature, but it averages out on the long-term. If you force regulation of the temperature of the fuel, you've raised the cost of dispensing it regardless of the temperature.
2.) The price you pay is related to the price the stations pay plus their operating costs. As long as all stations in a local market experience similar temperature/volume changes, competition keeps the long-term profits roughly consistent.
3.) Temperature is one of many factors affecting the actual mass of fuel you get. How far does one want to take this? The meters on the pumps have accuracy limits too. There's some fuel left in the hose when you shut the pump off. Some fuel is spilled. Some evaporates (which is why it's best not to fill up in the heat of the day). Some fuel is probably annihilated by those pesky, rare collisions with neutrinos. Etc. It's the same for any product. A 5 pound bag of potatoes is not exactly 5 pounds.
I'd give this credence if they thought stations were deliberately heating their fuel to increase the volume, but otherwise this is a waste of resources with a net cost to consumers, and a drain on the legal system. I rather suspect the aforementioned stations in Canada monitor temperature to prevent the fuel from gelling in cold temperatures, not to improve the mass-accuracy of their volume-based meters.
Partially right about attitude control. There are no thrusters on the US-built parts of the space station. That was always intended to be handled by the Zvezda service module. However, there is an array of large gyros which vary their spin rate to perform most of the attitude control (using cheap electricity from the solar panels instead of expensive rocket fuel). So the state of the US computers does matter because they perform most of the work in this regards.
The concern is the gyros are only big enough to handle minor attitude rate changes, like tracking the sun as the station moves around the earth. For faster attitude changes, like keeping the station oriented properly as the shuttle docks or the Canadarm flings around a 35,000 pound solar array, the reaction control thrusters on the Zvezda are needed because the gyros become "saturated," meaning their momentum limits have been reached.
Hypothetically, this shouldn't happen under normal conditions, but if it did the station could end up in an orientation that either turns antennae away from earth, turns solar panels away from the sun, or turns radiators toward the sun. It also couldn't reboost its orbit. All are bad, but none are immediately life-threatening. In such a scenario, the Progress and Soyuz capsules normally docked at the station can theoretically be used, but in a limited capacity.
You or somebody else mentioned NASA diving into problem, but it's Russian hardware and software, and they're the ones who know the ins and outs of it. NASA will, of course, be offering whatever support they can, but the expertise and responsibility here falls to the Russian Space Agency for bringing the system back online.
The theory that its a bug exacerbated by the added mass of the solar panels sounds pretty likely. Listening on NASA TV I picked up a few comments about the Russian computers the other day when they were extending the new panels, and it sounds like they went into reboot while retracting the older P6 starboard panel. I also know the gyros were saturated while moving the array out of the shuttle cargo bay. I'm betting they'll have a work-around within a day or two and a test bug fix implemented by the end of the shuttle mission.
There's several different types of ion engies. The Dawn mission is using electrostatic ion thrusters of the same design from the Deep Space 1 mission. The Smart-1 mission, and I'm pretty sure the Hayabusa mission as well, used Hall effect ion thrusters. The differences are small and each has a few advantages and disadvantages. So the submitter would have technically been more correct if they said "electrostatic" instead of "electric." The parent's link also has links to descriptions of each type.
Additionally:
Deep Space 1 was primarily a technology demonstrator mission. It carried a few instruments, but these were also prototypes.
Smart-1 was a combined technology demonstrator / science mission.
Hayabusa has both an ion thruster and hypergolic chemical rockets.
It's fair to be jaded by false or over-hyped (this is a case of the latter) promises, but I want to point out three things about revolutionary tech in general:
1.) Revolutionary tech almost always takes more than 10 years to enter the mainstream and it happens incrementally as prices fall and ease-of-operation makes it attractive to the masses.
For example, Bell started working with "cell phones" for the Army in 1947. The very first commercial system was the brick phones introduced in 1981. Adoption is only just now reaching 50% in the US. The internet moved a bit faster. The first networked computers, as far as I can tell were connected in the late 1950's. ARPAnet went live in 1969. TCP/IP came in 1974. HTML was 1991. Likewise, the first self-powered carriage was built in 1769. The Model T hit the market in 1908, and they were still only owned by a minority of even the US population for decades. Fuel cells, by the way, were invented in 1843.
2.) Once a revolutionary tech becomes mainstream, it tends to be taken for granted. You may humorously bemoan the lack of jet-packs, space-elevators, and holodecks, but how much time do you actually spend thinking about how the internet, cars, lightbulbs, transistors, etc really change your life?
3.) There's a lot of people who tripping over themselves to announce the next revolutionary technology, whether it be to impress their friends, sell newspapers, or just plain scam people. As a result, anything and everything can be presented as the next big thing. It's also usually a minor improvement on something that already exists, often with minor or indistinct differences. "Web 2.0" has no clear definitions and it's all the same stuff, but with more emphasis on user-interface. Cell phones are a merger of telephone switching and radios.
Solid oxide fuel cells are not new. They've been on the market since at least the 1990's, and SOFC research goes back to the 1930's. They're less expensive than PEM fuel cells, but also heavier. They have higher operating temperatures and must be warmed up to achieve peak output. The high temperature has both advantages and disadvantages.
If I understand right, the flexible fuel use is one of the advantages of the high temperatures (along with non-catalytic electrodes that aren't adversely affected by carbon exposure), which allow the fuel to be broken down into hydrogen and other elements within the fuel cell, instead of in a separate reformer.
Most types of fuel cells being actively researched have comparable electrical efficiencies, some better, some worse. They're also all very big.
The news is this company released a new model, an alternative energy blogger thought it was cool and wrote a few non-technical notes on it, and now half of Slashdot seems to think it is something revolutionary. It looks like a good product, but it's far from as significant as the summary implies.
By the way, I looked up the company's page on this product, which is much more informative. Also on the page are links to a spec sheet, suggested applications, and a couple pictures so you can get a sense of scale. These things are clearly a lot bigger than a typical 5 kW internal combustion generator.
The DOE has a decent overview of solid oxide fuel cell technology.
Holy climatologist knee-jerk, Batman! Suddenly it's arrogance to have an opinion? Even if it's in line with most of America?
Griffin's statement is basically that he doesn't think "battling climate change" (whatever the hell that means...don't even pretend Al Gore has any idea) is a do-or-die committment, the same as the 95% of the rest of America whom continue life more-or-less as normal. Some journalist asked his personal opinion on it and he gave it. It was not a policy statement. In fact, even as an opinion it was very non-committal. He fully accepts the last century's temperature trends and even generally seems to accept the theory that it's human-caused. He never said no one should take action on it.
If you want a policy statement, you should read the rest of the interview, where he noted that NASA not only has no mandate to "battle climate change," but not even any authorization. However, they do quite actively study the climate, which is in their authorization and the reason Hansen has a job.
Frankly, I'm not surprised at Hansen's response. He tends to be a little inflamatory and he's definitely gotten some inappropriate responses from higher up on some of his research that he's probably very defensive about. I find his response excessively critical, but perhaps it was taken out of context as poorly as Griffin's was. Mahlman is clearly presumptious, however, calling him a "deep antiglobal warming ideologue" when he pretty much just ascribed to the theory.
Furthermore, Griffin is only a minority force in driving the cuts in earth observation science. His office presents a recommended budget, but it's based on the total dollars budgeted by Congress and the President and has to be accepted by both. It also has to reflect the priorities established by both, and the top one is currently building a replacement for the shuttle. Even this, the highest priority, has faced its own budget cuts, so it's hardly like there's a war on earth-studies. Additionally, NASA is only one of many public entities funding climate research, including NOAA, the Navy, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Agriculture. Some of the earth-oriented satellites actually come from their budgets.
And it may re-assure some of you to know that NASA currently still has 16 space-based earth-science missions with eight more slated to launch over the next five years, including the Orbital Carbon Observatory. To the best of my knowledge, this is significantly more activity than at almost any time in the past.
There's a lot more to it than that. If you're one of the people who followed the Columbia accident investigation, than you heard the term normalization of deviancy: things not going according to plan must be ok because it was ok last time. Foam loss had happened frequently before, and even a couple impacts, with the worst consequence being some dings in the tiles.
If the engineers who raised the concerns had been truly been convinced this was a problem they would have stuck to their guns (or they were fatally worthless). As it was, they accepted the arguments that this had happened in the past and all the options for addressing it were needlessly expensive. I hate to risk being misinterpreted on a point where this criteria was proven faulty, but if NASA balked at every tough call we'd still be launching unmanned boilerplate Mercury capsules right now trying to iron out all the kinks. What I'm saying here is not that they made the right call on Columbia, but that it was a hard call to make, and they interpreted history in their favor.
It was a hard call to make because they didn't have any good indicators of a problem. With Apollo 13, they had a big bang, an out-of-control spacecraft, and rapidly dropping pressure in their oxygen tanks. Within an hour the oxygen was gone and they had no power on Odyssey. These were absolutely concrete indicators that the crew was in immediate danger. With Columbia all they had was a low-speed video of a piece of foam glancing off and disintegrating, and the shuttle operated almost flawlessly for a week afterwards.
Also, while the "old" NASA took a lot bigger steps, they easily cut more corners. Seemingly worse things happened and they continued ahead anyway. A hatch blew open early on Mercury 6 on splashdown, nearly drowning Gus Grissom. No changes were made to the hatch on future missions. Gemini 8 had a thruster malfunction that sent it into such a violent spin the crew nearly blacked out. The Lunar Landing Research Vehicles had a total of three crashes where the astronauts were saved by ejecting. The tank that blew up on Apollo 13 was known to have problems on the pad. Apollo 13 also had a second stage engine shutdown during launch due to a long-known "pogo" problem that had potential to vibrate the ship apart. Apollo 12 was hit by lightning during ascent. Apollo 11 had to manuever until it only had a few seconds of fuel left before touchdown. Skylab litterly had large, important pieces fall off during launch. A lot of engineers and the astronauts fussed about the wiring and the crew hatch on the command modules, but nothing was done with either until they combined to kill the three astronauts of Apollo 1.
Perhaps Challenger wouldn't have happened under the old NASA, but some of the circumstances were similar to the Apollo 1 fire, and I daresay they would've laughed at the foam loss on Columbia when they first saw it. Even if they hadn't, their best efforts might still have come up painfully short, although I admit then they would at least have had the grace of trying.
Melanin is the class of pigments that makes skin dark. It's long been known that it blocks UV radiation, hence the lower incidence of skin cancer in darker-skinned populations.
The interesting thing here is that fungal cells with melanin in them apparently show increased enzyme activity when exposed to ionizing radiation. If I read the paper right, the melanin absorbs the radiation, giving it energy to transfer an electron to NADH, a biological catalyst important in metabolism, which in turn boosts the metabolic rate so the fungus can grow faster.
Incidentally, the fungus is not actually feeding on radioactive particles, but being exposed to the radiation helps it grow faster. The introduction to the paper states that fungi can withstand far higher radiation exposure than they get in places like Chernobyl or the upper atmosphere. The implication is that those fungi that have melanin developed the ability to grow it, not because they need the protection, but because it helps them metabolize.
In this way the melanin seems to serve a surprisingly similar role for metabolism as chlorophyl does for photosynthesis, although perhaps with less reliance on the part of the organism.
By the way, thanks to the submitter for linking to the paper. It's so much more useful than a typical news article.
Today's slashdot word of the day: Cladosporium sphaerospermum - an intrinsically melanized fungus found in abundance at the site of nuclear accident in Chernobyl which produces melanin in the variety of growth conditions - from nutrient rich medium to almost complete starvation. (courtesy of the paper).
Is all this fuss over the body armor really going to accomplish anything? As far as I can tell, both offer far more protection than nothing. Neither is perfect, but both have their advantages and disadvantages.
As far as I've heard, the availability issues in theater have been resolved. The Army already issues vests to pretty much everyone in the field, and based on the contradictory links the two of you have provided, there is no basis for private individuals to be spending $2000+ to send their family or friends replacements for the standard issue gear that only might be a litte bit better than what they have (and might be a little bit worse).
Not to mention if they're testing them against 9mm and seeing penetrations, you can bet that 7.62x39 (AK-47) will go straight through it. War is hell. All the body armor in the world won't change that.
Did you check out the photographs of the Compact Muon Solenoid? It would fit in perfectly at Black Mesa.
I swear, if I don't see a level in Episode 2 or 3 involving the LHC and the CMS, I'm going to go gravity-gun-equipped-particle-phsyical on somebody's ass! HL2 and Episode 1 didn't have quite enough gigantic, super-expensive and complex equipment malfunctioning catastrophically to satiate my inner geek.
It can't be too much of a plot stretch to have Dr. Kleiner modifying the Compact Muon Solenoid to trigger lepton-catalyzed resonance cascades as a controlled means of opening portals. He'll just have to be careful to maintain steady electrical and helium supplies or a quench of the superconducting magnets could occur. The resulting spallation from relativistic particle collisions on the beam pipe wall would almost certainly cause gluino-poisoning of the portal's singularity...
The techno-babble from Half Life 1 was fun and well-delivered, even if utterly meaningless.
Here is a map showing the layout of the LHC. It actually consists of two rings and a couple of linear accelerator stages so they aren't injecting cold particles into the high energy beam. Keep in mind, the main ring is 17 miles around and about 100 meters underground. A lot of the people living inside its circumference probably don't actually realize what's going on underneath their feet, other than the various CERN campuses spread around the ring and all the nerdy looking people going in and out. In fact, there will be millions of particles whizzing around the track at ~99.9999% the speed of light...circling the entire distance 10,000 times a second.
What you see in the NY Times slide show is basically the most impressive parts of the LHC, the incredibly complex and massive detectors assembled in huge underground vaults. The remainder, while still fairly complicated and interesting, is orders of magnitude simpler.
The rest of the collider is mostly a 3 meter diameter tunnel (pic), which has a track for getting people and equipment around it as needed, and the beam conduit. The physical tunnel is being reused from an older collider that was retired in 2000 to make way for this one, and I presume was dug with a tunnel boring machine.
The conduit (CAD rendering) itself is more than just a pipe. The most important part is the two vacuum pipes inside that the beam runs through, and the 9,000+ magnets around the pipes that electromagnetically constrain and accellerate the particles so they follow the 17 mile loop instead of smashing uselessly into the walls. It also contains the electrical lines that power the magnets, and helium lines that keep them cool. Some stray collisions are expected, so it also contains a little bit of radiation shielding, although I don't believe people are supposed to be in the tunnel when it is operating.
Take a step back from the knee-jerk, luddite reaction to technology and think for a second about what the article is talking about here: an emergency supply of blood that is easier to store, transport, and perhaps even acquire (cheaper than drawing blood?). Complications from a foreign substance in your body are pretty minor compared to dying from blood loss, and the kinds of places where transfusions are needed are not always well-suited to the storage of spare blood (like in a medic's fieldpack in 100+ degree heat in Falluja).
</rant>
It's likely they've thought of this and chosen their materials accordingly. Even if the body isn't able to dispose of the artificial hemoglobules itself, it's likely that they could be transfused out (or possibly simply bled out, since you noted that these probably don't denature and clot like platelets). Furthermore, adding stuff to the blood stream does not necessarily stop the body's natural blood production, and it's not like they're claiming their artificial blood is ready for use yet, anyway.
There's a string of overhyped submissions here in the science section founded on a misreading of the source article.
Contrary to what the submission seems imply, the Hubble did not directly detect dark matter, and you can pretty safely bet that it won't ever.
What it did was find further evidence that dark matter exists. I don't think these media teleconferences are very rare, but they don't hold them every time somebody publishes a paper, either.
My reading of the press conference announcement is that the shape and motion of the galactic cluster in question is not possible based soley on visible mass. Furthermore, I suspect they will contend that assymmetry in their observations rules out with some degree of certainty an explanation of the observations using Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), because such a finding would lead to the suspiscion that the dark matter is distributed differently from the galaxies and hot dust in the cluster (mentioned in the release). Currently MOND is the leading alternative theory to dark matter for explaining the galactic rotation curves, but it generally implies the dark matter effect should be distributed in the same fashion as normal matter.
It is the nature of the scientific method that contradicting one theory is further support for any unaffected competing theories. I think that's what is happening here. I don't think the legs are being kicked completely out from under MOND, but I'd bet it will be walking a little wobbly after this.
The article really oversells it, and I suspect the estimated economy improvement is a contrived number, but the focal technology is variable valve timing. Actually, the real focus of the article, even thought the author didn't realize it, is that the Purdue researchers developed a computer model of the engines thermodynamic cycle...at least I think that's what he was trying to say. It might have been a computer algorithm to determine valve timings.
You're right. Variable valve timing has been around for a while. The best-known example is probably Honda's VTEC technology, which uses a camshaft with two different profiles selected depending on the engine load and RPM. Obviously though, it is still linked to the piston position and only allows two options for valve timings, although the new i-VTEC lets the computer change the open time, but not the duration of the valve by advancing the cam gears a little bit.
Presumably, the article refers to approaches using electronically controlled solenoids to actuate the valves instead of a cam-shaft. This isn't really new either. I believe some race engines have used this for years, and if you google "solenoid engine valves" you will find some other information.
I really wish the article talked about the computer work better, because I'm curious to know exactly what it is they're doing here.
The HCCI cycle is also interesting. Thermodynamically and emissions-wise, it's basically an Otto (gasoline) cycle, but operationally and efficiency-wise, it is more similar to a diesel engine. I'm guesssing the computer work they did is a detailed computer model of the combustion process including variable valve timing, because HCCI is more difficult to control across a wide range of power settings.
Truly variable valve timing is also kind of neat because it allows a portion of the engine gasses to be retained, similar to the way big truck diesel engines are now re-inducting some of their exhaust to gain a more complete combustion and more precisely control cylinder temps.
"A..star.. detectable via annihilation products (gamma-rays, neutrinos, anti-matter) possibly in combination with hydrogen lines." The brilliant thing about this article is that these theorists are cooking up something that is actually detectable!
Brilliant except for the fact that, in lieu of any details about what dark matter is and with only a few details about what it isn't, what they are looking for is an almost entirely arbitrary expectation.
It's good to think outside the box and look for unusual ways to answer tricky questions, but I have a hard time getting excited about this because I'm not understanding how they speculate on the formation, evolution, and anihilation signature of these dark stars without falling back on known properties of classical matter.
I should follow my own advice, but I feel somehow compelled to reply and fill in a few details. If you really want to get deep into this tangent though, there's a few thousand posts over at airliners.net you can read through, especially comparing the differences in foundational structure between Boeing and Airbus.
"Compared to Boeing" is pretty vague dig that I think misses its mark. Boeing and Airbus are sitting pretty comparable on market share (measured by plane deliveries per year). I would say they're more evenly matched than Intel and AMD. Airbus and Boeing have their ups and downs, but neither is on the verge of breakdown by any means.
Boeing is in the middle of a very strong upswing right now, a turn around from a couple years ago when Airbus overtook them for number of planes delivered. The 737 and 777 programs thriving, and they've got orders for over 1500 commercial airliners of the models currently in service to be delivered in the next 5 years or so. That's a lot of accounts payable. In addition to those, the 787 appears poised to become the most successful new aircraft launch in history. Boeing has over 500 orders for it already and it hasn't even flown yet. It remains remarkably on schedule and on target for its design performance and cost goals. Boeing is also doing preliminary work for similarly advanced replacements for the 737 and 777 that are expected to be major sellers, too.
Airbus, as mentioned, was sitting pretty a couple years ago due to the success of it's A320 and A330 lines competing with the 737 and 767. However, interest in those is lagging lately as the 787 is a generational improvement over A330 and long term economics are tending to slightly favor the 737 in most applications. The A380 looked bright at first, but its performance has fallen a little short of targets, and the delays have seriously upset airlines that were already shifting inventories to accomodate their orders now, not in 2009. Worse, they had to indefinitely postpone the freighter version to focus resources on solving wiring issues, so now Fed Ex and UPS have cancelled their orders for that plane and shifted them to 747's. The amount of money tied up in A380 development is huge, and there's questions as to whether it will recoup its development costs. Their saving grace is the fledgling A350 program, which intends to apply 787-level technology to a plane closer in size to the 777. Coupled with continued production of the 1900 A320's they have on back-order, Airbus is hardly up the creek without a paddle.
I think Airbus is going to falter for a while, but stay afloat. Boeing is likely to be star of the show for the next decade, but if Airbus delivers on it's plans at that point, it's anybody's game again.
This is probably an odd question, but your praise of Peabody Energy at a time when criticism of coal producers runs high interests me. It's very encouraging and counters arguments that corporations are inherently evil, etc., yet at the same time, I wonder at their reasons for being so generous with their resources. Do you know if their operations managers share some interest in the unique finds that can be made in a coal mine or like the distraction from the daily grind? Perhaps upper management sees this as an opportunity to build positive public image? Or maybe these resources, despite how hard they are to come by for a state-funded researcher, are glossed over as trivial in a major coal mine?
Whatever the reason, good luck to you and your colleagues. Don't spend too much taxpayer time replying with your thoughts.;)
When google maps first added the aerial imagery (and Keyhole had not yet been bought out and changed to Google Earth), I remember someone sharing it with me an being excited about seeing their house from space.
At this point I had already seen and played around a bunch with Microsoft Terraserver and the USGS imagery, so I realized pretty quickly most of the places I was looking at were identical to the USGS aerial photos. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out these pictures weren't all taken from a rocket.
By the way, the thing that boggles me about all the mapping services out there is how they do routes: how do they determine where the roads are (DOT?), how do they store the roads, and how do they calculate driving routes (that often appear to take into account traffic speeds). Stitching together imagery in real time is cool, too, but the general process seems more intuitive to me than creating and using a database of squiggly lines.
1.2% versus 50% is a pretty big difference (41.7x), but not compared to the rate at which a person may safely eat tuna versus the rate at which people actually eat compact fluorescent light bulbs.
What you're telling us is that eating one CFL is roughly as dangerous as eating one can of albacore tuna per week for a year.
His numbers may be wrong, but his basic point still stands, especially with regards to internal vs. external exposure (even most crazy people don't eat lightbulbs).
Which also suggests the family discussed in the article got taken by the mercury specialist.
I can't really understand why, perhaps a knee-jerk reaction against the self-righteous tone environmentalists usually assume, but the article seems to be written more as an argument against using CFL rather than a simple report on the compromise. It takes an easy and fitting swipe at the idea of banning incandescents as a start, but after flirting with the idea that it might be an economic conspiracy perpetrated by Walmart and Home Depot, the second half of the article is basically a rant about the fact that CFL's are highly recommended, despite their mercury, by the same people who fret about mercury contamination from other sources.
Now as many slashdotters know, because this has been discussed multiple times before, this journalist doesn't know what he's talking about with respect to the latter two points (I agree with him on the foolishness of legally banning incandescents). Although CFL's cost on around 3-5 times as much as incandescents, they're also rated to last 5 times as long (although noisy power or heat can reduce that), meaning Walmart sells the same gross value and the user invests the same amount over long time periods...not counting the reduced power bill.
And flat out contrary to his contention that environmentalists ignore the mercury content in CFL's, the EPA did a study examining the amount of mercury contained in CFL's versus that contained in fossil fuels. They found that the adoption of CFL's reduced the net mercury released into the environment because of the power saved, which means less coal burned, taking into account the fraction of power that comes from coal. Furthermore, this study did not take into controlled bulb disposal, which is mandated in some US states for large volume users of fluorescents and further reduces the release of mercury.
The two valid subpoints he has are first that the bulbs are a point-source of mercury. I mentioned proper disposal above, but contamination in the case of breakage is a compromise that's been with us as long as fluorescents have, even longer actually with mercury thermometers. The second is that they are manufactured mostly in India and China, which are beyond our environmental controls. Of course, that assumes the plants over there are releasing harmful amounts of mercury into the environment, is irrelevant to his financial argument of cleanup costs to the US economy, and is largely irrelevant to the general case for using CFL's, assuming the mercury can be acceptably controlled at both manufacture and disposal.
With the author apparently either ignorant or picking and choosing facts to present at will, it seems his position as publisher of junkscience.com is quite ironic. He's certainly not helping readers make an informed decision in this case.
Density and viscosity are the primary factors when choosing a lubricant. Water happens to have a pretty low viscosity. The point of article is that the effective viscosity increases by several orders of magnitude in truely thin sheets and takes an ordered form like a solid in one direction but not the others, not that thicker films of water can be used as a lubricant. In fact, they found that as the gap gets down to a nanometer, it becomes a less effective lubricant.
I started typing this and thought to myself, "Something about the way that submission is written and how it misses the point of the article smells of Roland Piquepaille."
I wasn't at all surprised when I went back and checked the author to see his name and standard question-link-quote writing format.
Now I'm curious because the pressure they apply seems to be of interest here. I'm curious if 3 dimensional order appears under high isotropic pressures. If so, I'd expect this to be possible in larger volumes with sufficient pressure, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the viscosity increased, too.
It's hard to read off the chart, and I didn't see mention in the article, but this submission immediately brought a few things to mind:
About 55 million years ago the earth apparently underwent a significant warming event called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum that resulted in the extinction of 30-40% of deep sea life, and may have been equally instrumental in the emergence of mammals as the asteroid 10 million years before that killed off the dinosaurs.
The trigger is unknown, but it is believed that warming oceans due to a natural cycle caused the sublimation of large quantities of methanes from clathrate deposits on the sea-floor. Methane, of course, is a potent greenhouse gas. The result was average ocean surface temperatures as much as 10 deg C warmer than before. The cause of the natural cycle is unknown. However, I just did some digging around, and it appears the major long term thermal cycles (based mostly on O-18/O-16 ratios in sediments, is my understanding) run 140 million years on average, but higher frequency signals definitely exist.
Now, there has been some recent research finding that cosmic ray activity may be an influencing factor on global warming (Note: No need to revive the global warming debate...I'm just sharing my thoughts, and am not claiming anything). Basically cosmic rays appear to affect the formation of clouds in the upper atmosphere, which in turn effects solar insolation.
It would be very interesting if this 62 million year cycle happened to coincide with the PETM extinction 55 million years ago. My thought being perhaps a cosmic ray cycle caused a typical warming cycle that happened to induce the "big burp" of methane-clathrates, which significantly magnified the warming effect.
Actually, with some further poking around, I see this basic theory has been proposed for explaining the 140 MY cycle, minus the methane-clathrate bonus.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope...the Mars Exploration Rovers' microscopic imagers can't resolve finely enough to measure grain size or geometry, and they have no way of measuring electrical properties. The Mars Surface Laboratory, to launch in 2009, will have slightly better resolution, but still not grain sized. In fact, I think in order to get a good idea what they finest grains look like, nothing short of an electron microscope will do. The rovers focus on geology and chemical composition, but not as much on things like dust geometry and electrical properties.
Regardless of whether or not its feasible to equip a lander to determine these properties itself, NASA and other groups would really like to get their hands directly on some Martian surface material, so a robotic sample return mission will very likely happen in the next 10-20 years regardless of whether plans move forward for manned exploration.
Our toilets are also very, very simple. For $100, you get a shiny, but relatively heavy ceramic bowl with a couple simple levers, one valve, and a siphon (note that conventional siphons don't work in space). It uses about 5 kg of water per flush, and all the waste flows downhill into part of a much larger system that cost $billions (if you live in a city). 5 kg/flush x 6 astronauts x 5 flushes per day x $1000/kg to orbit means you'd spend $19 million on water for a conventional toilet in about 4 months.
The Russian space toilet uses no (or close to no, I'm not sure) water for operation. It separates and dries solid waste into containers that are burnt up in the atmosphere with discarded cargo ships. The liquid waste is distilled. The NASA life support cycle chart shows this distilled water going into the potable supply, although another source said it's kept separate because the astronauts are reluctant to drink it. Either way, the result is a lot of saved water.
So the $19 million cost covers the mechanism that captures the waste products with not release into the station atmosphere, the mechanism that separates the wastes, the mechanism that packages the solid waste, and the mechanism that recycles the liquid waste. Actually, reading the articles, it sounds like this might be an entire modular bathroom including handwashing, toothbrushing, and other miscellaneous appliances in addition to the toilet. Add onto that the fact that this is two-off product (whereas Halsey Taylor defrays their development costs over 100,000's of units sold), and the need to design it to be lightweight, and I begin to suspect that $19 million is an outstanding deal for NASA.
I see three obvious issues here: 1.) It's going to cost money to regulate the temperature of the fuel. You'll get different amounts of fuel depending on the temperature, but it averages out on the long-term. If you force regulation of the temperature of the fuel, you've raised the cost of dispensing it regardless of the temperature. 2.) The price you pay is related to the price the stations pay plus their operating costs. As long as all stations in a local market experience similar temperature/volume changes, competition keeps the long-term profits roughly consistent. 3.) Temperature is one of many factors affecting the actual mass of fuel you get. How far does one want to take this? The meters on the pumps have accuracy limits too. There's some fuel left in the hose when you shut the pump off. Some fuel is spilled. Some evaporates (which is why it's best not to fill up in the heat of the day). Some fuel is probably annihilated by those pesky, rare collisions with neutrinos. Etc. It's the same for any product. A 5 pound bag of potatoes is not exactly 5 pounds. I'd give this credence if they thought stations were deliberately heating their fuel to increase the volume, but otherwise this is a waste of resources with a net cost to consumers, and a drain on the legal system. I rather suspect the aforementioned stations in Canada monitor temperature to prevent the fuel from gelling in cold temperatures, not to improve the mass-accuracy of their volume-based meters.
Partially right about attitude control. There are no thrusters on the US-built parts of the space station. That was always intended to be handled by the Zvezda service module. However, there is an array of large gyros which vary their spin rate to perform most of the attitude control (using cheap electricity from the solar panels instead of expensive rocket fuel). So the state of the US computers does matter because they perform most of the work in this regards.
The concern is the gyros are only big enough to handle minor attitude rate changes, like tracking the sun as the station moves around the earth. For faster attitude changes, like keeping the station oriented properly as the shuttle docks or the Canadarm flings around a 35,000 pound solar array, the reaction control thrusters on the Zvezda are needed because the gyros become "saturated," meaning their momentum limits have been reached.
Hypothetically, this shouldn't happen under normal conditions, but if it did the station could end up in an orientation that either turns antennae away from earth, turns solar panels away from the sun, or turns radiators toward the sun. It also couldn't reboost its orbit. All are bad, but none are immediately life-threatening. In such a scenario, the Progress and Soyuz capsules normally docked at the station can theoretically be used, but in a limited capacity.
You or somebody else mentioned NASA diving into problem, but it's Russian hardware and software, and they're the ones who know the ins and outs of it. NASA will, of course, be offering whatever support they can, but the expertise and responsibility here falls to the Russian Space Agency for bringing the system back online.
The theory that its a bug exacerbated by the added mass of the solar panels sounds pretty likely. Listening on NASA TV I picked up a few comments about the Russian computers the other day when they were extending the new panels, and it sounds like they went into reboot while retracting the older P6 starboard panel. I also know the gyros were saturated while moving the array out of the shuttle cargo bay. I'm betting they'll have a work-around within a day or two and a test bug fix implemented by the end of the shuttle mission.
There's several different types of ion engies. The Dawn mission is using electrostatic ion thrusters of the same design from the Deep Space 1 mission. The Smart-1 mission, and I'm pretty sure the Hayabusa mission as well, used Hall effect ion thrusters. The differences are small and each has a few advantages and disadvantages. So the submitter would have technically been more correct if they said "electrostatic" instead of "electric." The parent's link also has links to descriptions of each type.
Additionally:
Deep Space 1 was primarily a technology demonstrator mission. It carried a few instruments, but these were also prototypes.
Smart-1 was a combined technology demonstrator / science mission.
Hayabusa has both an ion thruster and hypergolic chemical rockets.
It's fair to be jaded by false or over-hyped (this is a case of the latter) promises, but I want to point out three things about revolutionary tech in general:
1.) Revolutionary tech almost always takes more than 10 years to enter the mainstream and it happens incrementally as prices fall and ease-of-operation makes it attractive to the masses.
For example, Bell started working with "cell phones" for the Army in 1947. The very first commercial system was the brick phones introduced in 1981. Adoption is only just now reaching 50% in the US. The internet moved a bit faster. The first networked computers, as far as I can tell were connected in the late 1950's. ARPAnet went live in 1969. TCP/IP came in 1974. HTML was 1991. Likewise, the first self-powered carriage was built in 1769. The Model T hit the market in 1908, and they were still only owned by a minority of even the US population for decades. Fuel cells, by the way, were invented in 1843.
2.) Once a revolutionary tech becomes mainstream, it tends to be taken for granted. You may humorously bemoan the lack of jet-packs, space-elevators, and holodecks, but how much time do you actually spend thinking about how the internet, cars, lightbulbs, transistors, etc really change your life?
3.) There's a lot of people who tripping over themselves to announce the next revolutionary technology, whether it be to impress their friends, sell newspapers, or just plain scam people. As a result, anything and everything can be presented as the next big thing. It's also usually a minor improvement on something that already exists, often with minor or indistinct differences. "Web 2.0" has no clear definitions and it's all the same stuff, but with more emphasis on user-interface. Cell phones are a merger of telephone switching and radios.
Solid oxide fuel cells are not new. They've been on the market since at least the 1990's, and SOFC research goes back to the 1930's. They're less expensive than PEM fuel cells, but also heavier. They have higher operating temperatures and must be warmed up to achieve peak output. The high temperature has both advantages and disadvantages.
If I understand right, the flexible fuel use is one of the advantages of the high temperatures (along with non-catalytic electrodes that aren't adversely affected by carbon exposure), which allow the fuel to be broken down into hydrogen and other elements within the fuel cell, instead of in a separate reformer.
Most types of fuel cells being actively researched have comparable electrical efficiencies, some better, some worse. They're also all very big. The news is this company released a new model, an alternative energy blogger thought it was cool and wrote a few non-technical notes on it, and now half of Slashdot seems to think it is something revolutionary. It looks like a good product, but it's far from as significant as the summary implies.
By the way, I looked up the company's page on this product, which is much more informative. Also on the page are links to a spec sheet, suggested applications, and a couple pictures so you can get a sense of scale. These things are clearly a lot bigger than a typical 5 kW internal combustion generator.
The DOE has a decent overview of solid oxide fuel cell technology.
Holy climatologist knee-jerk, Batman! Suddenly it's arrogance to have an opinion? Even if it's in line with most of America?
Griffin's statement is basically that he doesn't think "battling climate change" (whatever the hell that means...don't even pretend Al Gore has any idea) is a do-or-die committment, the same as the 95% of the rest of America whom continue life more-or-less as normal. Some journalist asked his personal opinion on it and he gave it. It was not a policy statement. In fact, even as an opinion it was very non-committal. He fully accepts the last century's temperature trends and even generally seems to accept the theory that it's human-caused. He never said no one should take action on it.
If you want a policy statement, you should read the rest of the interview, where he noted that NASA not only has no mandate to "battle climate change," but not even any authorization. However, they do quite actively study the climate, which is in their authorization and the reason Hansen has a job.
Frankly, I'm not surprised at Hansen's response. He tends to be a little inflamatory and he's definitely gotten some inappropriate responses from higher up on some of his research that he's probably very defensive about. I find his response excessively critical, but perhaps it was taken out of context as poorly as Griffin's was. Mahlman is clearly presumptious, however, calling him a "deep antiglobal warming ideologue" when he pretty much just ascribed to the theory.
Furthermore, Griffin is only a minority force in driving the cuts in earth observation science. His office presents a recommended budget, but it's based on the total dollars budgeted by Congress and the President and has to be accepted by both. It also has to reflect the priorities established by both, and the top one is currently building a replacement for the shuttle. Even this, the highest priority, has faced its own budget cuts, so it's hardly like there's a war on earth-studies. Additionally, NASA is only one of many public entities funding climate research, including NOAA, the Navy, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Agriculture. Some of the earth-oriented satellites actually come from their budgets.
And it may re-assure some of you to know that NASA currently still has 16 space-based earth-science missions with eight more slated to launch over the next five years, including the Orbital Carbon Observatory. To the best of my knowledge, this is significantly more activity than at almost any time in the past.
There's a lot more to it than that. If you're one of the people who followed the Columbia accident investigation, than you heard the term normalization of deviancy: things not going according to plan must be ok because it was ok last time. Foam loss had happened frequently before, and even a couple impacts, with the worst consequence being some dings in the tiles.
If the engineers who raised the concerns had been truly been convinced this was a problem they would have stuck to their guns (or they were fatally worthless). As it was, they accepted the arguments that this had happened in the past and all the options for addressing it were needlessly expensive. I hate to risk being misinterpreted on a point where this criteria was proven faulty, but if NASA balked at every tough call we'd still be launching unmanned boilerplate Mercury capsules right now trying to iron out all the kinks. What I'm saying here is not that they made the right call on Columbia, but that it was a hard call to make, and they interpreted history in their favor.
It was a hard call to make because they didn't have any good indicators of a problem. With Apollo 13, they had a big bang, an out-of-control spacecraft, and rapidly dropping pressure in their oxygen tanks. Within an hour the oxygen was gone and they had no power on Odyssey. These were absolutely concrete indicators that the crew was in immediate danger. With Columbia all they had was a low-speed video of a piece of foam glancing off and disintegrating, and the shuttle operated almost flawlessly for a week afterwards.
Also, while the "old" NASA took a lot bigger steps, they easily cut more corners. Seemingly worse things happened and they continued ahead anyway. A hatch blew open early on Mercury 6 on splashdown, nearly drowning Gus Grissom. No changes were made to the hatch on future missions. Gemini 8 had a thruster malfunction that sent it into such a violent spin the crew nearly blacked out. The Lunar Landing Research Vehicles had a total of three crashes where the astronauts were saved by ejecting. The tank that blew up on Apollo 13 was known to have problems on the pad. Apollo 13 also had a second stage engine shutdown during launch due to a long-known "pogo" problem that had potential to vibrate the ship apart. Apollo 12 was hit by lightning during ascent. Apollo 11 had to manuever until it only had a few seconds of fuel left before touchdown. Skylab litterly had large, important pieces fall off during launch. A lot of engineers and the astronauts fussed about the wiring and the crew hatch on the command modules, but nothing was done with either until they combined to kill the three astronauts of Apollo 1.
Perhaps Challenger wouldn't have happened under the old NASA, but some of the circumstances were similar to the Apollo 1 fire, and I daresay they would've laughed at the foam loss on Columbia when they first saw it. Even if they hadn't, their best efforts might still have come up painfully short, although I admit then they would at least have had the grace of trying.
Melanin is the class of pigments that makes skin dark. It's long been known that it blocks UV radiation, hence the lower incidence of skin cancer in darker-skinned populations.
The interesting thing here is that fungal cells with melanin in them apparently show increased enzyme activity when exposed to ionizing radiation. If I read the paper right, the melanin absorbs the radiation, giving it energy to transfer an electron to NADH, a biological catalyst important in metabolism, which in turn boosts the metabolic rate so the fungus can grow faster.
Incidentally, the fungus is not actually feeding on radioactive particles, but being exposed to the radiation helps it grow faster. The introduction to the paper states that fungi can withstand far higher radiation exposure than they get in places like Chernobyl or the upper atmosphere. The implication is that those fungi that have melanin developed the ability to grow it, not because they need the protection, but because it helps them metabolize.
In this way the melanin seems to serve a surprisingly similar role for metabolism as chlorophyl does for photosynthesis, although perhaps with less reliance on the part of the organism.
By the way, thanks to the submitter for linking to the paper. It's so much more useful than a typical news article.
Today's slashdot word of the day: Cladosporium sphaerospermum - an intrinsically melanized fungus found in abundance at the site of nuclear accident in Chernobyl which produces melanin in the variety of growth conditions - from nutrient rich medium to almost complete starvation. (courtesy of the paper).
Is all this fuss over the body armor really going to accomplish anything? As far as I can tell, both offer far more protection than nothing. Neither is perfect, but both have their advantages and disadvantages.
As far as I've heard, the availability issues in theater have been resolved. The Army already issues vests to pretty much everyone in the field, and based on the contradictory links the two of you have provided, there is no basis for private individuals to be spending $2000+ to send their family or friends replacements for the standard issue gear that only might be a litte bit better than what they have (and might be a little bit worse).
Not to mention if they're testing them against 9mm and seeing penetrations, you can bet that 7.62x39 (AK-47) will go straight through it. War is hell. All the body armor in the world won't change that.
Did you check out the photographs of the Compact Muon Solenoid? It would fit in perfectly at Black Mesa.
I swear, if I don't see a level in Episode 2 or 3 involving the LHC and the CMS, I'm going to go gravity-gun-equipped-particle-phsyical on somebody's ass! HL2 and Episode 1 didn't have quite enough gigantic, super-expensive and complex equipment malfunctioning catastrophically to satiate my inner geek.
It can't be too much of a plot stretch to have Dr. Kleiner modifying the Compact Muon Solenoid to trigger lepton-catalyzed resonance cascades as a controlled means of opening portals. He'll just have to be careful to maintain steady electrical and helium supplies or a quench of the superconducting magnets could occur. The resulting spallation from relativistic particle collisions on the beam pipe wall would almost certainly cause gluino-poisoning of the portal's singularity...
The techno-babble from Half Life 1 was fun and well-delivered, even if utterly meaningless.
Here is a map showing the layout of the LHC. It actually consists of two rings and a couple of linear accelerator stages so they aren't injecting cold particles into the high energy beam. Keep in mind, the main ring is 17 miles around and about 100 meters underground. A lot of the people living inside its circumference probably don't actually realize what's going on underneath their feet, other than the various CERN campuses spread around the ring and all the nerdy looking people going in and out. In fact, there will be millions of particles whizzing around the track at ~99.9999% the speed of light...circling the entire distance 10,000 times a second.
What you see in the NY Times slide show is basically the most impressive parts of the LHC, the incredibly complex and massive detectors assembled in huge underground vaults. The remainder, while still fairly complicated and interesting, is orders of magnitude simpler.
The rest of the collider is mostly a 3 meter diameter tunnel (pic), which has a track for getting people and equipment around it as needed, and the beam conduit. The physical tunnel is being reused from an older collider that was retired in 2000 to make way for this one, and I presume was dug with a tunnel boring machine.
The conduit (CAD rendering) itself is more than just a pipe. The most important part is the two vacuum pipes inside that the beam runs through, and the 9,000+ magnets around the pipes that electromagnetically constrain and accellerate the particles so they follow the 17 mile loop instead of smashing uselessly into the walls. It also contains the electrical lines that power the magnets, and helium lines that keep them cool. Some stray collisions are expected, so it also contains a little bit of radiation shielding, although I don't believe people are supposed to be in the tunnel when it is operating.
More Pictures
LHC Outreach Page
Map showing cities and Swiss/French border
Why does everyone assume that anything with the term plastic in it is non-degradable? Besides, it's not like doctors are allowed to just stick things in a person's body on a whim.
Take a step back from the knee-jerk, luddite reaction to technology and think for a second about what the article is talking about here: an emergency supply of blood that is easier to store, transport, and perhaps even acquire (cheaper than drawing blood?). Complications from a foreign substance in your body are pretty minor compared to dying from blood loss, and the kinds of places where transfusions are needed are not always well-suited to the storage of spare blood (like in a medic's fieldpack in 100+ degree heat in Falluja).
</rant>
It's likely they've thought of this and chosen their materials accordingly. Even if the body isn't able to dispose of the artificial hemoglobules itself, it's likely that they could be transfused out (or possibly simply bled out, since you noted that these probably don't denature and clot like platelets). Furthermore, adding stuff to the blood stream does not necessarily stop the body's natural blood production, and it's not like they're claiming their artificial blood is ready for use yet, anyway.
There's a string of overhyped submissions here in the science section founded on a misreading of the source article.
Contrary to what the submission seems imply, the Hubble did not directly detect dark matter, and you can pretty safely bet that it won't ever.
What it did was find further evidence that dark matter exists. I don't think these media teleconferences are very rare, but they don't hold them every time somebody publishes a paper, either.
My reading of the press conference announcement is that the shape and motion of the galactic cluster in question is not possible based soley on visible mass. Furthermore, I suspect they will contend that assymmetry in their observations rules out with some degree of certainty an explanation of the observations using Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), because such a finding would lead to the suspiscion that the dark matter is distributed differently from the galaxies and hot dust in the cluster (mentioned in the release). Currently MOND is the leading alternative theory to dark matter for explaining the galactic rotation curves, but it generally implies the dark matter effect should be distributed in the same fashion as normal matter.
It is the nature of the scientific method that contradicting one theory is further support for any unaffected competing theories. I think that's what is happening here. I don't think the legs are being kicked completely out from under MOND, but I'd bet it will be walking a little wobbly after this.
The article really oversells it, and I suspect the estimated economy improvement is a contrived number, but the focal technology is variable valve timing. Actually, the real focus of the article, even thought the author didn't realize it, is that the Purdue researchers developed a computer model of the engines thermodynamic cycle...at least I think that's what he was trying to say. It might have been a computer algorithm to determine valve timings.
You're right. Variable valve timing has been around for a while. The best-known example is probably Honda's VTEC technology, which uses a camshaft with two different profiles selected depending on the engine load and RPM. Obviously though, it is still linked to the piston position and only allows two options for valve timings, although the new i-VTEC lets the computer change the open time, but not the duration of the valve by advancing the cam gears a little bit.
Presumably, the article refers to approaches using electronically controlled solenoids to actuate the valves instead of a cam-shaft. This isn't really new either. I believe some race engines have used this for years, and if you google "solenoid engine valves" you will find some other information.
I really wish the article talked about the computer work better, because I'm curious to know exactly what it is they're doing here.
The HCCI cycle is also interesting. Thermodynamically and emissions-wise, it's basically an Otto (gasoline) cycle, but operationally and efficiency-wise, it is more similar to a diesel engine. I'm guesssing the computer work they did is a detailed computer model of the combustion process including variable valve timing, because HCCI is more difficult to control across a wide range of power settings.
Truly variable valve timing is also kind of neat because it allows a portion of the engine gasses to be retained, similar to the way big truck diesel engines are now re-inducting some of their exhaust to gain a more complete combustion and more precisely control cylinder temps.
Brilliant except for the fact that, in lieu of any details about what dark matter is and with only a few details about what it isn't, what they are looking for is an almost entirely arbitrary expectation.
It's good to think outside the box and look for unusual ways to answer tricky questions, but I have a hard time getting excited about this because I'm not understanding how they speculate on the formation, evolution, and anihilation signature of these dark stars without falling back on known properties of classical matter.
I should follow my own advice, but I feel somehow compelled to reply and fill in a few details. If you really want to get deep into this tangent though, there's a few thousand posts over at airliners.net you can read through, especially comparing the differences in foundational structure between Boeing and Airbus.
"Compared to Boeing" is pretty vague dig that I think misses its mark. Boeing and Airbus are sitting pretty comparable on market share (measured by plane deliveries per year). I would say they're more evenly matched than Intel and AMD. Airbus and Boeing have their ups and downs, but neither is on the verge of breakdown by any means.
Boeing is in the middle of a very strong upswing right now, a turn around from a couple years ago when Airbus overtook them for number of planes delivered. The 737 and 777 programs thriving, and they've got orders for over 1500 commercial airliners of the models currently in service to be delivered in the next 5 years or so. That's a lot of accounts payable. In addition to those, the 787 appears poised to become the most successful new aircraft launch in history. Boeing has over 500 orders for it already and it hasn't even flown yet. It remains remarkably on schedule and on target for its design performance and cost goals. Boeing is also doing preliminary work for similarly advanced replacements for the 737 and 777 that are expected to be major sellers, too.
Airbus, as mentioned, was sitting pretty a couple years ago due to the success of it's A320 and A330 lines competing with the 737 and 767. However, interest in those is lagging lately as the 787 is a generational improvement over A330 and long term economics are tending to slightly favor the 737 in most applications. The A380 looked bright at first, but its performance has fallen a little short of targets, and the delays have seriously upset airlines that were already shifting inventories to accomodate their orders now, not in 2009. Worse, they had to indefinitely postpone the freighter version to focus resources on solving wiring issues, so now Fed Ex and UPS have cancelled their orders for that plane and shifted them to 747's. The amount of money tied up in A380 development is huge, and there's questions as to whether it will recoup its development costs. Their saving grace is the fledgling A350 program, which intends to apply 787-level technology to a plane closer in size to the 777. Coupled with continued production of the 1900 A320's they have on back-order, Airbus is hardly up the creek without a paddle.
I think Airbus is going to falter for a while, but stay afloat. Boeing is likely to be star of the show for the next decade, but if Airbus delivers on it's plans at that point, it's anybody's game again.
Hi Scott,
;)
This is probably an odd question, but your praise of Peabody Energy at a time when criticism of coal producers runs high interests me. It's very encouraging and counters arguments that corporations are inherently evil, etc., yet at the same time, I wonder at their reasons for being so generous with their resources. Do you know if their operations managers share some interest in the unique finds that can be made in a coal mine or like the distraction from the daily grind? Perhaps upper management sees this as an opportunity to build positive public image? Or maybe these resources, despite how hard they are to come by for a state-funded researcher, are glossed over as trivial in a major coal mine?
Whatever the reason, good luck to you and your colleagues. Don't spend too much taxpayer time replying with your thoughts.
When google maps first added the aerial imagery (and Keyhole had not yet been bought out and changed to Google Earth), I remember someone sharing it with me an being excited about seeing their house from space.
At this point I had already seen and played around a bunch with Microsoft Terraserver and the USGS imagery, so I realized pretty quickly most of the places I was looking at were identical to the USGS aerial photos. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out these pictures weren't all taken from a rocket.
By the way, the thing that boggles me about all the mapping services out there is how they do routes: how do they determine where the roads are (DOT?), how do they store the roads, and how do they calculate driving routes (that often appear to take into account traffic speeds). Stitching together imagery in real time is cool, too, but the general process seems more intuitive to me than creating and using a database of squiggly lines.
1.2% versus 50% is a pretty big difference (41.7x), but not compared to the rate at which a person may safely eat tuna versus the rate at which people actually eat compact fluorescent light bulbs.
What you're telling us is that eating one CFL is roughly as dangerous as eating one can of albacore tuna per week for a year.
His numbers may be wrong, but his basic point still stands, especially with regards to internal vs. external exposure (even most crazy people don't eat lightbulbs).
Which also suggests the family discussed in the article got taken by the mercury specialist.
I can't really understand why, perhaps a knee-jerk reaction against the self-righteous tone environmentalists usually assume, but the article seems to be written more as an argument against using CFL rather than a simple report on the compromise. It takes an easy and fitting swipe at the idea of banning incandescents as a start, but after flirting with the idea that it might be an economic conspiracy perpetrated by Walmart and Home Depot, the second half of the article is basically a rant about the fact that CFL's are highly recommended, despite their mercury, by the same people who fret about mercury contamination from other sources.
Now as many slashdotters know, because this has been discussed multiple times before, this journalist doesn't know what he's talking about with respect to the latter two points (I agree with him on the foolishness of legally banning incandescents). Although CFL's cost on around 3-5 times as much as incandescents, they're also rated to last 5 times as long (although noisy power or heat can reduce that), meaning Walmart sells the same gross value and the user invests the same amount over long time periods...not counting the reduced power bill.
And flat out contrary to his contention that environmentalists ignore the mercury content in CFL's, the EPA did a study examining the amount of mercury contained in CFL's versus that contained in fossil fuels. They found that the adoption of CFL's reduced the net mercury released into the environment because of the power saved, which means less coal burned, taking into account the fraction of power that comes from coal. Furthermore, this study did not take into controlled bulb disposal, which is mandated in some US states for large volume users of fluorescents and further reduces the release of mercury.
The two valid subpoints he has are first that the bulbs are a point-source of mercury. I mentioned proper disposal above, but contamination in the case of breakage is a compromise that's been with us as long as fluorescents have, even longer actually with mercury thermometers. The second is that they are manufactured mostly in India and China, which are beyond our environmental controls. Of course, that assumes the plants over there are releasing harmful amounts of mercury into the environment, is irrelevant to his financial argument of cleanup costs to the US economy, and is largely irrelevant to the general case for using CFL's, assuming the mercury can be acceptably controlled at both manufacture and disposal.
With the author apparently either ignorant or picking and choosing facts to present at will, it seems his position as publisher of junkscience.com is quite ironic. He's certainly not helping readers make an informed decision in this case.
Yes. They drive me up the wall. How about 3.5 times MTBF or 28% as likely or something like that.
Take a closer look at that statement: 3.5 times (x) less (-) likely
n - 3.5n = -2.5n
What the heck does it mean to say something occurs with a negative frequency?
Density and viscosity are the primary factors when choosing a lubricant. Water happens to have a pretty low viscosity. The point of article is that the effective viscosity increases by several orders of magnitude in truely thin sheets and takes an ordered form like a solid in one direction but not the others, not that thicker films of water can be used as a lubricant. In fact, they found that as the gap gets down to a nanometer, it becomes a less effective lubricant.
I started typing this and thought to myself, "Something about the way that submission is written and how it misses the point of the article smells of Roland Piquepaille."
I wasn't at all surprised when I went back and checked the author to see his name and standard question-link-quote writing format.
Now I'm curious because the pressure they apply seems to be of interest here. I'm curious if 3 dimensional order appears under high isotropic pressures. If so, I'd expect this to be possible in larger volumes with sufficient pressure, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the viscosity increased, too.
It's hard to read off the chart, and I didn't see mention in the article, but this submission immediately brought a few things to mind:
About 55 million years ago the earth apparently underwent a significant warming event called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum that resulted in the extinction of 30-40% of deep sea life, and may have been equally instrumental in the emergence of mammals as the asteroid 10 million years before that killed off the dinosaurs.
The trigger is unknown, but it is believed that warming oceans due to a natural cycle caused the sublimation of large quantities of methanes from clathrate deposits on the sea-floor. Methane, of course, is a potent greenhouse gas. The result was average ocean surface temperatures as much as 10 deg C warmer than before. The cause of the natural cycle is unknown. However, I just did some digging around, and it appears the major long term thermal cycles (based mostly on O-18/O-16 ratios in sediments, is my understanding) run 140 million years on average, but higher frequency signals definitely exist.
Now, there has been some recent research finding that cosmic ray activity may be an influencing factor on global warming (Note: No need to revive the global warming debate...I'm just sharing my thoughts, and am not claiming anything). Basically cosmic rays appear to affect the formation of clouds in the upper atmosphere, which in turn effects solar insolation.
It would be very interesting if this 62 million year cycle happened to coincide with the PETM extinction 55 million years ago. My thought being perhaps a cosmic ray cycle caused a typical warming cycle that happened to induce the "big burp" of methane-clathrates, which significantly magnified the warming effect.
Actually, with some further poking around, I see this basic theory has been proposed for explaining the 140 MY cycle, minus the methane-clathrate bonus.