Geomon is correct; in the early 1980's I worked in chemical sampling and characterization of a pilot geothermal power plant in Brawley, CA. The geothermal water is very briny - highly saturated in salts. Not only sodium chloride, but a host of other metals and minerals.
Another not commonly known issue is that geothermal energy should be considered *non-renewable*. Apparently once you've sent water down to be heated, it cools the warm areas enough that they will take centuries to reheat. It needs to be looked at like oil, a lot of it there, but not gonna come back once you use it.
In the pharma industry, prices in the US are much higher than overseas. In other countries governments regulate prices to some degree to keep them low. Socialized medicine won't tolerate the US prices. In the US we basically subsidise the large costs of Research and Development, clinical trials, etc.
I wonder if the software market could handle this - pricing variation by country for the same items? The problem for MS and others is that unless they do this, they're driving other countries to either steal or to open-source software.
Of course, that may not be a bad thing!
Re:Sensationalist Journalism?
on
A Flu Pandemic?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Go try to find the book: "A Dancing Matrix: How Science Confronts Emerging Viruses". I read this book in the mid 90's, and it described the already overdue flu pandemic. I guarantee that if you read this you won't take influenza so lightly again.
The upshot is that flu undergoes cyclic major mutations about every 40 years. There are six mutations in the cycle. The last two major mutations were relatively benign (remember Hong Kong flu in the 70's?). The 1918 pandemic was quite lethal, and being a virus rather than a bacteria, influenza is not going to be quickly cured with antibiotics.
The bird flu virus we see today is about 50% lethal, and has even killed a high percentage of otherwise healthy individuals. I for one find this a pretty frightening scenario, let's hope that when it mutates to an easily-propagatable-between-humans form that its lethality has declined substantially. Imaging the economic effects of a spreading flu that was lethal - people would quit going to work, you could see much commerce grinding to a halt. The CDC has said we should be preparing ourselves for seeing children die, etc., at a numbers that are pretty frightening.
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Geomon is correct; in the early 1980's I worked in chemical sampling and characterization of a pilot geothermal power plant in Brawley, CA. The geothermal water is very briny - highly saturated in salts. Not only sodium chloride, but a host of other metals and minerals. Another not commonly known issue is that geothermal energy should be considered *non-renewable*. Apparently once you've sent water down to be heated, it cools the warm areas enough that they will take centuries to reheat. It needs to be looked at like oil, a lot of it there, but not gonna come back once you use it.
In the pharma industry, prices in the US are much higher than overseas. In other countries governments regulate prices to some degree to keep them low. Socialized medicine won't tolerate the US prices. In the US we basically subsidise the large costs of Research and Development, clinical trials, etc. I wonder if the software market could handle this - pricing variation by country for the same items? The problem for MS and others is that unless they do this, they're driving other countries to either steal or to open-source software. Of course, that may not be a bad thing!
Go try to find the book: "A Dancing Matrix: How Science Confronts Emerging Viruses". I read this book in the mid 90's, and it described the already overdue flu pandemic. I guarantee that if you read this you won't take influenza so lightly again.
The upshot is that flu undergoes cyclic major mutations about every 40 years. There are six mutations in the cycle. The last two major mutations were relatively benign (remember Hong Kong flu in the 70's?). The 1918 pandemic was quite lethal, and being a virus rather than a bacteria, influenza is not going to be quickly cured with antibiotics.
The bird flu virus we see today is about 50% lethal, and has even killed a high percentage of otherwise healthy individuals. I for one find this a pretty frightening scenario, let's hope that when it mutates to an easily-propagatable-between-humans form that its lethality has declined substantially. Imaging the economic effects of a spreading flu that was lethal - people would quit going to work, you could see much commerce grinding to a halt. The CDC has said we should be preparing ourselves for seeing children die, etc., at a numbers that are pretty frightening.