You can't put fail and sabotage together and say the reactor is unsafe. *ANYTHING* is unsafe if it's sabotaged correctly.
Risk is harm*probability. Now consider the maximum harm caused by sabotaging, say, a 1 GW nuclear plant, a 1 GW coal/NG plant, or a few thousand wind turbines. Except for the first option, you won't come up with a mode of sabotage that will take a few decades to clean up the resulting mess.
I'm surprised any business risks having US presence with such a hostile government.
Businesses are in fact taking the second option: If they don't do business with US persons, they can mostly ignore FATCA. Try opening a stock market account as a US person in a foreign country - most financial institutions will probably refuse you.
We might already be the result of one, or even several, such oopses.
Unfortunately, our data base (one planet with a civilization capable of rudimentary space flight capabilities) is too small to make statisticially relevant statements beyond "Civilizations capable of space flight can exist.".
Life forms (actually: ecosystems) that are capable of interplanetary and interstellar colonization most likely won't be produced by the traditional evolutionary path. Instead, they will be designed (and tailored to the specific planet).
Since we're just dabbling with genetic engineering right now, we haven't passed the bottleneck yet. As long as we don't wipe out humanity by GMO-induced starvation or the occasional killer disease, we should be fine.
Also, let's focus on interplanetary colonization first. The solar system has plenty of space - once it's mostly settled, there will be enough economic power to try the interstellar thing.
Oxygen getting absorbed in your lungs depends on that pressure, less pressure, less oxygen gets to your blood.
This is why you want to increases the ratio of oxygen in the gas mixture you breathe when ambient pressure drops. If ambient pressure is only 25% of what it is at sea level, you'll need to adjust the gas mixture to 80% O2, 20%N2 to have roughly the same partial pressure of oxygen.
The acclimatization is more a matter of coping with the lower CO2 level (CO2 partial pressure also drops, causing the body to exhale more CO2, which causes hypocapnia and affects the acid-base-balance of the body and various other functions.).
... you might as well make the reason alcohol intoxication instead of hypoxia.
Also, bring hard liquor. The hardest stuff you can find. Anything else might freeze.
1. Dress warmly. Even if the plane takes off in a tropical location. Make sure to cover exposed body parts - you don't want to pay with eary, fingers, toes or your nose for the trip.
2. Bring oxygen (that's going to be the hard part. Several hours worth of oxygen).
3. Familiarize yourself with various plane types so you don't get crushed by an unsuitable wheel well design.
4. Secure yourself to the plane so you don't get thrown out during landing.
No annoying seat neighbors. No screaming kids within earshot. Not getting groped and molested while going through security. You can bring any amount of liquids. You can even bring and consume your own alcohol. Etc..
... because you have a physical, mental or behavioral disability. ... because you have better grades than the bullies. ... because you don't like what everyone else likes. ... because your parents are richer or poorer than the bullies'
Have fun changinge any of those, even with all the intelligence in the world (well, you might change #2 by playing dumb). Your blaming the victim borders on the absurd.
My personal bet is on a chemical that began being used heavily in industry in the 70/80's.
My personal bet is that the reproduction rate in industrialized countries dropped, but it did not drop uniformly. It dropped more sharply for people with fewer genetic risk factors for autism (which means they're less likely to be affected themselves) and less sharply for people with those risk factors.
The "increasing rate of autism" is actually an illusion caused by mostly two things:
1) Much finer detection methods (people diagnosed with autism today wouldn't have gotten the same diagnosis 30 years ago - "Autism? Huh, he can talk just fine.")
2) The nonuniform fertility rate drop mentioned above. Neurotypical people are just too busy to have kids, or don't want to burden themselves with kids, or whatever. Even a slight shift in the ratio will send the ratio of autistic kids to neurotypical kids through the roof, completely without any mystery chemical or completely new causes of autism.
I regularly scan pubmed for publications on the topic, and the case for genetic risk factor being a major, if not the major cause of autism is just overwhelmingly solid.
Meningitis and encephalitis are known complications of measles, and either can lead to permanent brain damage. Depending on the location and severity of this damage, the symptoms can be indistinguishable from "true" autism (which is mostly genetic).
Specifically the methane has to be cooled to -161.49C at 1atm,
In that case, you'd end up with a gaseous fraction that's mostly hydrogen, and a liquid fraction that's methane plus everything else.
I would assume you'd have to cool the mixture to a temperature between -161.49ÂC and -42ÂC (boiling point of the next heavier alkane, propane), so you get hydrogen and methane in the gaseous fraction, and propane and heavier alkanes in the liquid fraction.
It depends upon what sort of fuel you're trying to produce.
And on how difficult (read: expensive) it is to avoid unwanted byproducts. And on the possible market value of the byproducts.
If you can sell the liquid hydrocarbons that you want to produce and the methane that appears as a by-product for almost the same price, it would be economically counterproductive to spend money on reducing the fraction of unwanted methane. Just produce both and sell both.
In a civilian application, it wouldn't be necessary to spend effort in the process to reduce methane production. Just feed the methane into the natural gas network.
If something goes wrong on Mars, you're dead. There's no rescue.
Sudden evacuation might be problematic. But with less serious problems, the lower transit time to Mars vs. Europa might be advantageous.
You're dead anyway within about 24 months from the lower gravity and radiation (or suicide, if sickness doesn't get you first).
There's no experience with humans living in low gravity conditions for more than a few days. We have plenty of zero-g experience, but none that would tell us what a few months of 1/3 g would do to the human body.
Radiation is a problem, though. Shielded habitats would be a high priority. Either underground, or possibly by using water (produced on-site) as shielding.
... create genetic variety in an artificial way. Hey, if you can get _two_ people (and tons of robots) to another star system, then doing a little bit of DNA-related organic chemistry shouldn't be too hard.
In effect, for a few generations, you could introduce intentional mutations that are known to be somewhere between "marginally harmful" and "beneficial", until the gene pool is large enough that things can be left to random chance again, if the colonists desire.
Slashdot Mirror
Risk is harm*probability. Now consider the maximum harm caused by sabotaging, say, a 1 GW nuclear plant, a 1 GW coal/NG plant, or a few thousand wind turbines. Except for the first option, you won't come up with a mode of sabotage that will take a few decades to clean up the resulting mess.
Businesses are in fact taking the second option: If they don't do business with US persons, they can mostly ignore FATCA. Try opening a stock market account as a US person in a foreign country - most financial institutions will probably refuse you.
Regards,
A.
Seriously, is this even news? FATCA, anyone?
What about "Not having the thing clobbered by space junk"?
We might already be the result of one, or even several, such oopses.
Unfortunately, our data base (one planet with a civilization capable of rudimentary space flight capabilities) is too small to make statisticially relevant statements beyond "Civilizations capable of space flight can exist.".
Since we're just dabbling with genetic engineering right now, we haven't passed the bottleneck yet. As long as we don't wipe out humanity by GMO-induced starvation or the occasional killer disease, we should be fine.
Also, let's focus on interplanetary colonization first. The solar system has plenty of space - once it's mostly settled, there will be enough economic power to try the interstellar thing.
Waiting in the queue for the toilet is prohibited. It's what terrorists do before they strike.
This is why you want to increases the ratio of oxygen in the gas mixture you breathe when ambient pressure drops. If ambient pressure is only 25% of what it is at sea level, you'll need to adjust the gas mixture to 80% O2, 20%N2 to have roughly the same partial pressure of oxygen.
The acclimatization is more a matter of coping with the lower CO2 level (CO2 partial pressure also drops, causing the body to exhale more CO2, which causes hypocapnia and affects the acid-base-balance of the body and various other functions.).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
... you might as well make the reason alcohol intoxication instead of hypoxia.
Also, bring hard liquor. The hardest stuff you can find. Anything else might freeze.
1. Dress warmly. Even if the plane takes off in a tropical location. Make sure to cover exposed body parts - you don't want to pay with eary, fingers, toes or your nose for the trip.
2. Bring oxygen (that's going to be the hard part. Several hours worth of oxygen).
3. Familiarize yourself with various plane types so you don't get crushed by an unsuitable wheel well design.
4. Secure yourself to the plane so you don't get thrown out during landing.
No annoying seat neighbors. No screaming kids within earshot. Not getting groped and molested while going through security. You can bring any amount of liquids. You can even bring and consume your own alcohol. Etc ..
That's what they tell kids. The truth is: It's not just fish ...
Have fun changinge any of those, even with all the intelligence in the world (well, you might change #2 by playing dumb). Your blaming the victim borders on the absurd.
You're lucky, since in your case the bullies were actually considered to be part of the party at fault.
And the teachers actions are easy to understand when you realize that they're not interested in justice - they want peace in the classroom.
Bullies either have advantage in numbers, or they're very, very good at playing victim once they encounter any kind of "defense".
Basically, the victim has three options:
1. Suck it up. Leads to all kinds of physical and mental scars.
2. Report it to the proper authorities. Victim gets punished. Bullying does not stop.
3. Defend themselves. Victim gets punished by authorities. Bullies resume bullying.
My personal bet is that the reproduction rate in industrialized countries dropped, but it did not drop uniformly. It dropped more sharply for people with fewer genetic risk factors for autism (which means they're less likely to be affected themselves) and less sharply for people with those risk factors.
The "increasing rate of autism" is actually an illusion caused by mostly two things:
1) Much finer detection methods (people diagnosed with autism today wouldn't have gotten the same diagnosis 30 years ago - "Autism? Huh, he can talk just fine.")
2) The nonuniform fertility rate drop mentioned above. Neurotypical people are just too busy to have kids, or don't want to burden themselves with kids, or whatever. Even a slight shift in the ratio will send the ratio of autistic kids to neurotypical kids through the roof, completely without any mystery chemical or completely new causes of autism.
I regularly scan pubmed for publications on the topic, and the case for genetic risk factor being a major, if not the major cause of autism is just overwhelmingly solid.
... that you actually need a study to come to this conclusion.
Meningitis and encephalitis are known complications of measles, and either can lead to permanent brain damage. Depending on the location and severity of this damage, the symptoms can be indistinguishable from "true" autism (which is mostly genetic).
In fact, the amount of money is inversely proportional to the probability of bugs. A perfect developer costs an infinite amount of money.
Didn't he heal all sorts of ailments? Deafness, paraplegia, etc.? Man, he must have been one bad sort of fellow ...
In that case, you'd end up with a gaseous fraction that's mostly hydrogen, and a liquid fraction that's methane plus everything else.
I would assume you'd have to cool the mixture to a temperature between -161.49ÂC and -42ÂC (boiling point of the next heavier alkane, propane), so you get hydrogen and methane in the gaseous fraction, and propane and heavier alkanes in the liquid fraction.
And on how difficult (read: expensive) it is to avoid unwanted byproducts. And on the possible market value of the byproducts.
If you can sell the liquid hydrocarbons that you want to produce and the methane that appears as a by-product for almost the same price, it would be economically counterproductive to spend money on reducing the fraction of unwanted methane. Just produce both and sell both.
In a civilian application, it wouldn't be necessary to spend effort in the process to reduce methane production. Just feed the methane into the natural gas network.
Sudden evacuation might be problematic. But with less serious problems, the lower transit time to Mars vs. Europa might be advantageous. You're dead anyway within about 24 months from the lower gravity and radiation (or suicide, if sickness doesn't get you first).
There's no experience with humans living in low gravity conditions for more than a few days. We have plenty of zero-g experience, but none that would tell us what a few months of 1/3 g would do to the human body.
Radiation is a problem, though. Shielded habitats would be a high priority. Either underground, or possibly by using water (produced on-site) as shielding.
In effect, for a few generations, you could introduce intentional mutations that are known to be somewhere between "marginally harmful" and "beneficial", until the gene pool is large enough that things can be left to random chance again, if the colonists desire.