Another effect that might play a small role here: the school year in the US typically ends in May, and school teachers might have tried to 'time' their pregnancy in order to have a baby after school let out for the summer, and so have at least three months with their baby before the next school year started.
This was the case in my family: my mother was a teacher, and both my sister and I were born in May, just as school let out (I'm speculating about cause and effect, however).
Off on a tangent...
You mentioned Mathematica, I've found at my University that many students got their first introduction to programming there, and continue to use it in research, in tasks it is arguably not well suited for. Mathematica is a good way to visualize math, and perhaps a decent intro to programming, but I'm very surprised to frequently find it used for extensive Monte Carlo simulations where floating-point calculations would be much faster and sufficiently precise.
Lots of these weather stations have recently gone offline (since the 1970s), according to graph #2 on your link. I'm assuming this is due to the availability of satellite weather monitors, and I'm a bit surprised that data from those don't get included...
I don't think we should be ignoring data from US meteorological stations: it does give us a very detailed look at climate over one large region of the globe for much of the past century, and we certainly need all the data available to understand global warming. Ice core samples can give us an idea of the atmospheric carbon levels going back many hundreds of thousands of years, and archaeology can give us some idea of corresponding temperature... but according to the theory of global warming, the planet has *recently* started to dramatically change, so we need as much data as possible for this time period.
The folks at CERN maintain a set of libraries for analyzing nuclear and high-energy physics data sets, known as 'root'. These also include the Parallel ROOT Processing Facility, or PROOF. I'm guessing that PROOF will play an important role in the analysis of this experiment once it comes online.
I'm going to suggest that this is a familiar pattern, that we've seen several times since Steve Jobs took the helm at apple. A new* technology becomes an integral part of some apple product, requiring third-party developers to change their skill sets if they wish to stay current. Complain, complain, but learn the new skill set and stay relevant!
*new to apple if not to the world of technology in general.
I agree, (type II) supernovae actually destroy their iron core in order to create heavier nuclei from the new, neutron-rich environment. Here's a link: http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/R/r-proc ess.html Here, they are simulating a type I supernova: a white dwarf that 'steals' mass from its neighbor until it reaches some critical mass, and we see a supernova.
We do have one good way to look inside the sun: neutrinos penetrate all the way from the sun's core despite the dense atmosphere, and make it to the earth. So, if we wanted to look for variations in reaction rates in the core, we could look at solar neutrino flux and be very patient.
(Extra emphasis on the very: we only see a few solar neutrinos/day, and of course his theory is talking about changes occurring over long time spans anyways)
I like their description of the RapidWeaver editor: "Before RapidWeaver, creating a slick, original website was about as easy for the average Joe as booting up Photoshop and handcoding pages of HTML in a text editor." Perhaps starting Photoshop really is a tough task? Or should I try to make a website encoded in a photograph... I'm sure that will be a challenge!
is the Stardance trilogy: Spider collaborated with his wife Jeanne to write about taking the art of dancing into space (free-fall), with all the associated challenges.
Your model (a heat engine) doesn't really work for solar cells, although you are certainly correct that 100% efficiencies are unobtainable. In solar cells, the point is that photons excite valence electrons across a barrier, giving them enough energy to create a current. There isn't really a classical analogy for this effect. There's a limited discussion of solar cell efficiencies here, although it doesn't talk much about the underlying physics: http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/MSD-fu ll-spectrum-solar-cell.html The upshot is, cells of a single type of material can only get up to about 30% efficiency, but we can stick several materials together to get past that barrier.
"But in the declaration he says he wants the HD to be able to view the email in the environment that the plantiff viewed it." The original viewing environment most likely = yahoo or hotmail, in other words a platform-independent webmail application. I think Mr. Johnson is partly arguing that the 'spam experience' is not platform-independent, though: that browser settings and so forth are somehow important in determining what makes up spam. If so, congratulations to the lawyer who has once again defeated common sense!
I suspect the political callers are getting numbers from voter registration databases. In my case, I have only a cell phone, so I don't think these groups would have any other way of getting the number.
Thus there are probably easier solutions (easier than taking every automated caller to court, anyway): I could choose not to give my # when registering to vote, although this means opting out of some nice services such as phone reminders of when/where my polling place is. Another nice option would be to have a 'do not share number' option on the registration form, so that only the county elections office can use it (showing american bias).
1.5 billion years is a bit too early for the sun to use up all its core hydrogen: Here is a quick calculation of the time needed to deplete the hydrogen below the threshold to support the mass of the star (after which it should collapse and then rebound, forming a red giant):
If you don't want to follow the link, the figure is about 5 billion years away. I think that temperatures here on earth are expected to vary greatly between now and then, however, making this a less hospitable place for life.
Of course it's very possible that the judge doesn't mix into the World as Seen From Slashdot (new technology, etc).
That leaves the real possibility that the fate of electronic communications could potentially be decided by a judge with limited knowledge or experience of how they work.
It looks like some groups are already working on accelerating protons using this wakefield process: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999APS..DPP.KP122I We can expect acceleration of protons to be tougher (the rest mass mp = about 1836*me), but from the abstract it seems that they were working on combining laser acceleration with traditional (big external E- and B- fields) acceleration techniques.
Brin points out that BASIC code shows up in textbook examples, as a simple 'do it yourself' math tutorial. I do agree with him that the very simple syntax of BASIC is great for this kind of thing, since kids who know nothing about programming can type just a few lines and see a loop (or whatever) in action.
However, I wonder if he could have searched around a bit before lamenting the death of the language. For example, a nice emulator is found here.
I think very lightweight languages like this can continue to be useful, for the same reasons he states in his article: they allow someone to easily grasp important concepts (I'm thinking math and science, not so much computer science). Kids who only want to complete their assignments will type their code, view the results and be done, others may explore further and discover the limitations of the language quickly.
The Katrin experiment also may or may not clear up the issue. From the Katrin link:
"The projected sensitivity of the experiment is $m(\nu_{e}) 0.2$ eV (90\% C.L.) improving upon previous experiments by an order of magnitude."
That is, we should be able to tell the mass of the electron neutrino to within 0.2 eV, while the current upper limit is 2.2 eV. We can hope therefore to actually measure the mass (I think we're getting close to where theory suggests the mass should be), but it's also possible that we'll just push the upper limit down by roughly an order of magnitude.
Slashdot Mirror
In a fair world, refrigerators would make electricity.
Totally off-topic, but in your fair world wouldn't we also be able to have a perpetual motion machine?
This was the case in my family: my mother was a teacher, and both my sister and I were born in May, just as school let out (I'm speculating about cause and effect, however).
Off on a tangent... You mentioned Mathematica, I've found at my University that many students got their first introduction to programming there, and continue to use it in research, in tasks it is arguably not well suited for. Mathematica is a good way to visualize math, and perhaps a decent intro to programming, but I'm very surprised to frequently find it used for extensive Monte Carlo simulations where floating-point calculations would be much faster and sufficiently precise.
Lots of these weather stations have recently gone offline (since the 1970s), according to graph #2 on your link. I'm assuming this is due to the availability of satellite weather monitors, and I'm a bit surprised that data from those don't get included...
I don't think we should be ignoring data from US meteorological stations: it does give us a very detailed look at climate over one large region of the globe for much of the past century, and we certainly need all the data available to understand global warming. Ice core samples can give us an idea of the atmospheric carbon levels going back many hundreds of thousands of years, and archaeology can give us some idea of corresponding temperature... but according to the theory of global warming, the planet has *recently* started to dramatically change, so we need as much data as possible for this time period.
The folks at CERN maintain a set of libraries for analyzing nuclear and high-energy physics data sets, known as 'root'. These also include the Parallel ROOT Processing Facility, or PROOF. I'm guessing that PROOF will play an important role in the analysis of this experiment once it comes online.
I recall apple having complaints about batteries in another idevice after it came out:h tml
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news03/apple_ipod.
So, can someone else observe you in your perpetual lethargy and then write up the results?
I just ask, because there might be some fundamental uncertainty relationship limiting the research: (size of couch)*(laziness) >= ??
Totally off topic, but if YANA*, does that make you a nihilist?
I'm going to suggest that this is a familiar pattern, that we've seen several times since Steve Jobs took the helm at apple. A new* technology becomes an integral part of some apple product, requiring third-party developers to change their skill sets if they wish to stay current. Complain, complain, but learn the new skill set and stay relevant!
*new to apple if not to the world of technology in general.
Perhaps they need an accountabillibuddy to check things for them!
I agree, (type II) supernovae actually destroy their iron core in order to create heavier nuclei from the new, neutron-rich environment.c ess.html
Here's a link:
http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/R/r-pro
Here, they are simulating a type I supernova: a white dwarf that 'steals' mass from its neighbor until it reaches some critical mass, and we see a supernova.
Man, it's a ripoff: the new ones don't even come with drinkholders!
(Extra emphasis on the very: we only see a few solar neutrinos/day, and of course his theory is talking about changes occurring over long time spans anyways)
I like their description of the RapidWeaver editor:
"Before RapidWeaver, creating a slick, original website was about as easy for the average Joe as booting up Photoshop and handcoding pages of HTML in a text editor."
Perhaps starting Photoshop really is a tough task?
Or should I try to make a website encoded in a photograph... I'm sure that will be a challenge!
"Thank you for voting at Diebold's today! Would you like your receipt?"
is the Stardance trilogy: Spider collaborated with his wife Jeanne to write about taking the art of dancing into space (free-fall), with all the associated challenges.
o n/stardance.htm
The first title is here:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/r/spider-robins
Your model (a heat engine) doesn't really work for solar cells, although you are certainly correct that 100% efficiencies are unobtainable.u ll-spectrum-solar-cell.html
In solar cells, the point is that photons excite valence electrons across a barrier, giving them enough energy to create a current. There isn't really a classical analogy for this effect.
There's a limited discussion of solar cell efficiencies here, although it doesn't talk much about the underlying physics:
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/MSD-f
The upshot is, cells of a single type of material can only get up to about 30% efficiency, but we can stick several materials together to get past that barrier.
"But in the declaration he says he wants the HD to be able to view the email in the environment that the plantiff viewed it."
The original viewing environment most likely = yahoo or hotmail, in other words a platform-independent webmail application. I think Mr. Johnson is partly arguing that the 'spam experience' is not platform-independent, though: that browser settings and so forth are somehow important in determining what makes up spam.
If so, congratulations to the lawyer who has once again defeated common sense!
I suspect the political callers are getting numbers from voter registration databases. In my case, I have only a cell phone, so I don't think these groups would have any other way of getting the number. Thus there are probably easier solutions (easier than taking every automated caller to court, anyway): I could choose not to give my # when registering to vote, although this means opting out of some nice services such as phone reminders of when/where my polling place is. Another nice option would be to have a 'do not share number' option on the registration form, so that only the county elections office can use it (showing american bias).
1.5 billion years is a bit too early for the sun to use up all its core hydrogen:
b er=389
Here is a quick calculation of the time needed to deplete the hydrogen below the threshold to support the mass of the star (after which it should collapse and then rebound, forming a red giant):
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?num
If you don't want to follow the link, the figure is about 5 billion years away. I think that temperatures here on earth are expected to vary greatly between now and then, however, making this a less hospitable place for life.
Of course it's very possible that the judge doesn't mix into the World as Seen From Slashdot (new technology, etc).
That leaves the real possibility that the fate of electronic communications could potentially be decided by a judge with limited knowledge or experience of how they work.
It looks like some groups are already working on accelerating protons using this wakefield process:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1999APS..DPP.KP122I
We can expect acceleration of protons to be tougher (the rest mass mp = about 1836*me), but from the abstract it seems that they were working on combining laser acceleration with traditional (big external E- and B- fields) acceleration techniques.
Brin points out that BASIC code shows up in textbook examples, as a simple 'do it yourself' math tutorial. I do agree with him that the very simple syntax of BASIC is great for this kind of thing, since kids who know nothing about programming can type just a few lines and see a loop (or whatever) in action.
However, I wonder if he could have searched around a bit before lamenting the death of the language. For example, a nice emulator is found here.
I think very lightweight languages like this can continue to be useful, for the same reasons he states in his article: they allow someone to easily grasp important concepts (I'm thinking math and science, not so much computer science). Kids who only want to complete their assignments will type their code, view the results and be done, others may explore further and discover the limitations of the language quickly.
The Katrin experiment also may or may not clear up the issue. From the Katrin link: "The projected sensitivity of the experiment is $m(\nu_{e}) 0.2$ eV (90\% C.L.) improving upon previous experiments by an order of magnitude." That is, we should be able to tell the mass of the electron neutrino to within 0.2 eV, while the current upper limit is 2.2 eV. We can hope therefore to actually measure the mass (I think we're getting close to where theory suggests the mass should be), but it's also possible that we'll just push the upper limit down by roughly an order of magnitude.