Actually, plants get carbon from the air, and they do it for "free" (solar energy by way of photosynthesis). It's nitrogen that's the issue. It takes energy (and quite a bit of it) to reduce atmospheric nitrogen to a form that plants can use for protein. Fertilizer supplies nitrogen. That's where the carbon "footprint" comes in, since industrial fertilizer production burns carbon (or some alternative energy, of course).
Wow, that's some of the wackiest stuff I've read in a long time. Depleted of it's life forces? Abnormal sugars? Depleted proteins? Oooook. But let's ignore the kook-sounding stuff and head right for the crazycore. Calling pyruvic acid a "toxic metabolite" is ridiculous. Here's how to make all the pyruvic acid you want:
1. Go outside
2. Start running
3. When you get to the point where you're panting, surprise, your body is trying to "poison" you with that toxic metabolite.
4. Don't worry, when you stop panting, it's because your liver just turned all that pyruvate back into glucose (and no ~rolls eyes, just because it's your liver doing it doesn't mean it's neutralizing a poison; your liver also plays a large role in blood sugar balance)
Oh, and PS one of those eeeeevil 5 carbon sugars is ribose, which is used in your body to make (surprise!) DNA.
I'm by no means an expert with hardware (and certainly well below the slashdot mean). When I bought my newest computer, it came with 2x2.8 Ghz processors. However, I was under the impression that for games, this was currently all but useless, since most games would only "see" a single processor. Now, it's all fine well and good that my OS can run an antivirus program or encode mp3's or whatnot as I play, but for me that's hardly an issue anyway. I seem to recall hearing that we're just on the brink of dual core support in games that are only now being developed. So if two cores are mostly useless for games (for most people, the most CPU intensive thing that they actually use a computer for), why would I want even *more* cores?
...nobody likes a tattletale or a snitch. Given that she can't be particularly popular with other students, I imagine her "accidentally" falling down the stairs at some point in the near future. I'm almost surprised she hasn't already.
If I'm understanding this right, this would be able to draw on the energy contained in warm water. But, as far as I can see, warm water, at least on the level of industrial use, simply doesn't contain that much energy.
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_ (volume) ) says that a medium sized pond contains ~1 million liters, or ~1 billion mL. Water's specific heat is ~4.19. This means that cooling a million liters of water by 10 degrees C would net about 42 billion joules (4.2 x 10^10). That sounds like a lot of energy, but, again, according to Wikipedia, that's less than a megawatt-day (the amount of energy produced by a megawatt plant in a day).
Do large-scale industrial processes heat so much waste heat that they can constantly heat pond or lake-sized bodies of water?
...Perhaps a company who tells viewers on their front page that they "provide the answers to help you understand your customers and your market" might not be completely impartial with respect to the best interests of those same customers.
Indeed, delving a little deeper into the NPD group website, we see that they claim to "provide global consumer and retail information that helps manufacturers and retailers make more informed, fact-based decisions in order to optimize their businesses." One of the ways they do this is by "Optimizing promotional support." Not to imply that this makes them evil or unethical, but it DOES imply that anything they say isn't exactly coming from consumer advocates.
Interestingly, a google search of their website reveals this site:
http://www.npd.com/dynamic/releases/press_041227.h tml
"USE THEM OR LOSE THEM: REBATES KEY TO DRIVING TECH SALES"
While they're not exactly sitting around cackling over the fact that not everyone redeems rebates, they do mention this gem:
"While rebates are very popular, the NPD study indicates the redemption process is still a source of frustration for many consumers. The most commonly cited reason for dissatisfaction with rebate programs was "prefer instant cash" (35 percent). Another 25 percent said rebates are "too much work for the money" and 17 percent said they forgot to mail in or go online to redeem their rebates before the expiration deadlines. Additionally, 15 percent said it was difficult to know what to do to redeem rebates and 13 percent said they didn't have enough time to complete and submit the forms necessary to redeem their rebates."
Depending on whether these are all answers to a single question or not, their research indicates 17-30 percent of rebates aren't redeemed. This isn't exactly lost on manufacturers offering them, I assume.
About those numbers...
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I keep seeing these 50+% mortality figures being thrown around, which seems slightly misleading to me. Imagine if 100 people get a disease. 30 might get it asymptomatically. 60 might get the disease to such an extent that they're "sick" (feeling flu-ish, missing work, etc). 10 might get it to the extent that they wind up in the hospital. If 5 of those 10 die, what's the mortality of the disease? It might seem like 50% to a doctor treating these patients, but the actual number would be 5 percent.
Because we can only report mortality of cases which we actually see, health officials are already biased towards observing the most severe forms of the disease. With something like, say, HIV, or ebola, it might be safe to say that all reported cases = ALL cases. But with something like a strain of the flu, which people suffer to varying degrees, I'd guess there's some much larger number of cases that are simply never seen in hospitals.
Strictly speaking, refering to the Ashkenazi Jews as an "insular, inbred community" is pretty far from the mark. "Ashkenazi" simply refers to the origin of some Jews as being from eastern Europe, This is in contrast to Jews from, say, Spain, Morocco, or Middle Eastern countries (who are called Sephardic). My point is only that rather than refering to some small sect, *most* Jews in the US today are Ashkenazic, regardless of whether or not they're observant, religious, orthodox, etc. While Jews tend to marry other Jews, nobody would call that any more "inbred" than, say, Mormons who tend to marry other Mormons.
If I'm understanding right, the reason genetisists study Ashkenazi Jews is that in the *past* they were insular (not neccessarily by choice, given prevailing attitudes in the middle ages) and inbred (due to the relatively small Jewish population in any one place in medieval Europe). While Europe probably has plenty of similar non-Jewish populations, (*any* small village in the middle ages was probably insular and relatively inbred) Ashkenazi Jews are more findable and accessable than, say, the descendants of people-who-lived-in-a-generic-small-village, and have remained more genetically homogenous through the years.
If you follow the link that was posted by the CalCars founder (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144755&cid=12 122888) and view the factsheet pdf, it implies that powering a car via electricity is far cheaper than powering it with gasoline:
"All-electric miles: power cost approx. 1.25 cents/mile (assumption of 250 Wh/mi and 5 cents/kWh on California off-peak EV "E-9" (PG&E) rate, and not amortizing battery cost), vs. approx. 4.5 cents/gasoline mile ($2/gallon, 45 mpg)."
Otoh, if I'm understanding this correctly, to save the 3000 dollar cost of souping up the car in the first place, you'd need to drive ~92,000 miles (3000/(difference per mile)), and worse, they'd have to ALL be electric miles (that is, on a 100 mile trip, only ~10 would count). Not to mention that in all-electric mode, top speed is 35 mph. Even assuming an optimistic 40 electric miles a day (which, remember, must be in 4+ separate trips with charging in between), that seems to be about 6 years to make up the cost (and that's not counting the possible cost of replacing batteries).
On the third hand, if you look at a list of countries we (or anyone else) buy oil from, you'll see quite a few who we don't neccessarily want to be flooding with hard currency. Perhaps it's worth some sacrifice (though not neccessarily $3000) to try reign in that cashflow.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, plants get carbon from the air, and they do it for "free" (solar energy by way of photosynthesis). It's nitrogen that's the issue. It takes energy (and quite a bit of it) to reduce atmospheric nitrogen to a form that plants can use for protein. Fertilizer supplies nitrogen. That's where the carbon "footprint" comes in, since industrial fertilizer production burns carbon (or some alternative energy, of course).
Wow, that's some of the wackiest stuff I've read in a long time. Depleted of it's life forces? Abnormal sugars? Depleted proteins? Oooook. But let's ignore the kook-sounding stuff and head right for the crazycore. Calling pyruvic acid a "toxic metabolite" is ridiculous. Here's how to make all the pyruvic acid you want:
1. Go outside
2. Start running
3. When you get to the point where you're panting, surprise, your body is trying to "poison" you with that toxic metabolite.
4. Don't worry, when you stop panting, it's because your liver just turned all that pyruvate back into glucose (and no ~rolls eyes, just because it's your liver doing it doesn't mean it's neutralizing a poison; your liver also plays a large role in blood sugar balance)
Oh, and PS one of those eeeeevil 5 carbon sugars is ribose, which is used in your body to make (surprise!) DNA.
I'm by no means an expert with hardware (and certainly well below the slashdot mean). When I bought my newest computer, it came with 2x2.8 Ghz processors. However, I was under the impression that for games, this was currently all but useless, since most games would only "see" a single processor. Now, it's all fine well and good that my OS can run an antivirus program or encode mp3's or whatnot as I play, but for me that's hardly an issue anyway. I seem to recall hearing that we're just on the brink of dual core support in games that are only now being developed. So if two cores are mostly useless for games (for most people, the most CPU intensive thing that they actually use a computer for), why would I want even *more* cores?
...nobody likes a tattletale or a snitch. Given that she can't be particularly popular with other students, I imagine her "accidentally" falling down the stairs at some point in the near future. I'm almost surprised she hasn't already.
If I'm understanding this right, this would be able to draw on the energy contained in warm water. But, as far as I can see, warm water, at least on the level of industrial use, simply doesn't contain that much energy.
_ (volume) ) says that a medium sized pond contains ~1 million liters, or ~1 billion mL. Water's specific heat is ~4.19. This means that cooling a million liters of water by 10 degrees C would net about 42 billion joules (4.2 x 10^10). That sounds like a lot of energy, but, again, according to Wikipedia, that's less than a megawatt-day (the amount of energy produced by a megawatt plant in a day).
Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude
Do large-scale industrial processes heat so much waste heat that they can constantly heat pond or lake-sized bodies of water?
...Perhaps a company who tells viewers on their front page that they "provide the answers to help you understand your customers and your market" might not be completely impartial with respect to the best interests of those same customers.
h tml
"USE THEM OR LOSE THEM: REBATES KEY TO DRIVING TECH SALES"
Indeed, delving a little deeper into the NPD group website, we see that they claim to "provide global consumer and retail information that helps manufacturers and retailers make more informed, fact-based decisions in order to optimize their businesses." One of the ways they do this is by "Optimizing promotional support." Not to imply that this makes them evil or unethical, but it DOES imply that anything they say isn't exactly coming from consumer advocates.
Interestingly, a google search of their website reveals this site: http://www.npd.com/dynamic/releases/press_041227.
While they're not exactly sitting around cackling over the fact that not everyone redeems rebates, they do mention this gem:
"While rebates are very popular, the NPD study indicates the redemption process is still a source of frustration for many consumers. The most commonly cited reason for dissatisfaction with rebate programs was "prefer instant cash" (35 percent). Another 25 percent said rebates are "too much work for the money" and 17 percent said they forgot to mail in or go online to redeem their rebates before the expiration deadlines. Additionally, 15 percent said it was difficult to know what to do to redeem rebates and 13 percent said they didn't have enough time to complete and submit the forms necessary to redeem their rebates."
Depending on whether these are all answers to a single question or not, their research indicates 17-30 percent of rebates aren't redeemed. This isn't exactly lost on manufacturers offering them, I assume.
I keep seeing these 50+% mortality figures being thrown around, which seems slightly misleading to me. Imagine if 100 people get a disease. 30 might get it asymptomatically. 60 might get the disease to such an extent that they're "sick" (feeling flu-ish, missing work, etc). 10 might get it to the extent that they wind up in the hospital. If 5 of those 10 die, what's the mortality of the disease? It might seem like 50% to a doctor treating these patients, but the actual number would be 5 percent.
Because we can only report mortality of cases which we actually see, health officials are already biased towards observing the most severe forms of the disease. With something like, say, HIV, or ebola, it might be safe to say that all reported cases = ALL cases. But with something like a strain of the flu, which people suffer to varying degrees, I'd guess there's some much larger number of cases that are simply never seen in hospitals.
If I'm understanding right, the reason genetisists study Ashkenazi Jews is that in the *past* they were insular (not neccessarily by choice, given prevailing attitudes in the middle ages) and inbred (due to the relatively small Jewish population in any one place in medieval Europe). While Europe probably has plenty of similar non-Jewish populations, (*any* small village in the middle ages was probably insular and relatively inbred) Ashkenazi Jews are more findable and accessable than, say, the descendants of people-who-lived-in-a-generic-small-village, and have remained more genetically homogenous through the years.
On the third hand, if you look at a list of countries we (or anyone else) buy oil from, you'll see quite a few who we don't neccessarily want to be flooding with hard currency. Perhaps it's worth some sacrifice (though not neccessarily $3000) to try reign in that cashflow.