my impression is that one of the factors that strongly affects birthrate is the prospective parents' faith in their future, their confidence and optimism. This phenomenon may be mediated through the effects of chronic elevated stress hormone levels. I don't have access to my reference database at the moment, so I apologize in advance for not being able to provide cites to support my thoughts. But given the dismal economic prospects for those in the lower and middle classes in America, and the fact that they comprise the vast majority of prospective parents in the US, is it at all surprising that birth rates have fallen so low?
Isn't every car manufacturer already liable for product defects that cause accidents for the life of the car, anyway?
Liability is an artificial barrier that can be eliminated by legislation. If the accident rate and accident severity of driverless cars were significantly and proveably lower than human-driven cars, there would be an economic incentive to transition to driverless cars. The incentives would include legislation to limit product liability for manufacturers of driverless cars and their subsystem vendors (vehicle behavioral code vendors, for example). Insurance companies will be major forces in getting that legislation passed, because with lower accident rates and severity, their payouts will be reduced.
and removing sulfur from diesel reduced the amount of SO2 in the atmosphere, which reduced the amount of SO3 -> H2SO4 production, which reduced the acidity of rainfall, which has a number of beneficial effects which you can explore if you're interested.
The price rises for consumers simply indicate the fact that the full costs weren't being accounted for in the first place. As we learn more about the various complex processes that sustain our lives, we're better able to determine what it actually costs us to live. Don't expect those data to be especially comforting.
In the Sources section, it states that humans release about 29,000 megatonnes (= 29 gigatonnes), compared to natural processes that release about 439 GT annually. That would make the human contribution about 6.6% of the "natural" contribution.
You wrote: "They know that without the sciences, their comfortable lives could not be what it is today."
I suspect a large fraction doesn't know that. I doubt these are people who, when they flip a light switch or run hot water in their kitchen or flush a toilet, even occasionally think of the infrastructure that lets them do those things. They not only don't know what they don't know, they aren't curious about it. Much less capable of changing their minds in light of scientific evidence that conflicts with their faith/beliefs.
Interesting idea. Don't know enough about labor law to know if your idea is currently legal, but with legislation it could quite likely be implemented. I concur, the only thing I want my pilot to be concerned with is safe completion of the flight.
Interesting, thank you. Wish I had mod points for you. I have no problem with the concept of paying a decent living wage to the skilled professionals to whom I entrust my life when the cabin door closes. I hope those who are hiring those professionals feel likewise.
Reading TFA, I see it says that 1500 hours is *six* times the previously required minimum, which would be 250 hours. You say the previous minimum was 800 hours. Would you please clarify? Did the WSJ reporters get it wrong? Thanks.
dissipation path in RF power amplifiers? I don't know whether common wifi routers have discrete RF power amp devices to feed their antennas, but if they do, they are probably connected by thermal grease to a heat spreader of some kind. Over years of thermal cycling, thermomechanical expansion can create voids in the thermal grease, which will increase the device-to-ambient thermal resistance. The device will run hotter (= lower efficiency, less RF power to the antenna) or fold its power back to stay within thermal limits (same result). This could also happen if there's lots of accumulated dust on the heat sink, which would increase device to ambient thermal resistance. My 2 cents.
1. Governor, you understand that an action may be legal but not ethical. Why, then, given the difficult financial condition of Americans and America, did you take a tax deduction for your wife's horse? With nearly a quarter of a billion dollars net worth, why are you forcing me and my fellow Americans to pay for your wife's horse?
2. In your first debate with President Obama, you said in response to President Obama: "...the place you put your money makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is...". I couldn't agree more. Why then are most of your funds invested overseas? Why don't you invest your money in America?
Yeah, I've questions I'd like to ask Obama, too. But I'll start with the MittBot.
Doing it from a ship or land based gun will give you problems because the Earth has this curvature, and your hypersonic dart is pretty much going to travel in a straight line. So things that are over the horizon are pretty much out of reach since drilling straight through the Earth is not really practical.
These projectiles will certainly be guided (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/its-experimental-rail-gun-navy-wants-gps-guided-hypersonic-projectiles) with accuracies at least as good as current ICBM systems, and probably as good as existing precision bombing systems like JDAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition) and others. There are plenty of ways to guide a very fast munition that do not require sticking control surfaces out in a hypersonic air stream.
I saw Endeavour today as it headed south to overfly Moffett Field. End of an era, yes, and I do miss our nation's having a spacecraft, even one with the Shuttle's long list of flaws and shortcomings.
But we *are* doing quite a lot of stuff out there:
- We just landed a nuclear powered, laser-zapping mobile lab on Mars, and it's headed off to climb a mountain; - Dawn recently lit up its ion drive and left orbit around the asteroid Vesta to visit another asteroid, Ceres; - Cassini continues touring Saturn and its moons; - Messenger is exploring Mercury from orbit; - Opportunity is still wandering around on Mars, continuing eight years of exploration; - We're still getting good data from Voyagers 1 and 2, over a third of a century after they were launched.
I've left stuff out, but you get my point. The space age has arrived, but in a different way and at a slower pace than most of us might have wanted. But it's here, and it's not going away.
than the combined total of the seventeen nations next in defense spending. I can recommend David Wessel's book Red Ink as an excellent, informative read on US budgetary matters. The stat I led this post with comes from his book. Also, I suggest listening to Teri Gross's interview with Wessel today. You can find it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=07-31-2012
From the summary: "The airlines couldn't sell enough tickets on the small plane to even make up for the amount of fuel it needed to guzzle on its journeys, let alone cover maintenance for the technological marvel."
With the increasing concentration of wealth, the number of people who could and would pay >5x the former Concorde ticket price (adjusted for inflation) is probably large enough to carry the aircraft operations and maintenance and then some. To such a target market, a small number of passengers per flight is not a negative at all - it's exclusivity writ large. I think that if the Concorde were flying today, its operators could charge $75K/passenger and fill the aircraft. There isn't any transportation system at present that provides its passengers what the Concorde did: an irresistable combination of speed, luxury, and a conspicuous imprimatur of being the richest of the rich. The market for extreme luxury goods is growing very rapidly, and the Concorde would have fit in perfectly today.
A quick WikiP search indicated the latest evidence for effectiveness against cataracts of N-acc drops was not real solid (see 2008 Royal College of Opthalmologists statement), the the Wiki article also indicates subsequent evidence is available, but doesn't give a cite. As someone who's developing corneal opacities, I'm interested, can you give a cite or two? Tnx.
Sapphire is Al2O3, aluminum oxide (aka alumina). Alumina dissolves in alkaline pH conditions see, for example, http://www.seachem.com/support/AluminumSolubilityToxicity.pdf). It seems likely that over hundreds of milennia, these discs would be exposed to alkaline conditions as a result of varying geochemistry/hydrology.
Furthermore, sapphire is brittle. Very hard, but brittle. One could break a sapphire disc by dropping it a few feet onto concrete. Over hundreds of milennia, stuff falls, squashes, cracks, etc.
Solar insolation changes, resulting from long-term oscillations of orbital configurations1, are an important driver of Holocene climate2,3. The forcing is substantial over the past 2,000 years, up to four times as large as the 1.6 W m2 net anthropogenic forcing since 1750 (ref. 4), but the trend varies considerably over time, space and with season5. Using numerous high-latitude proxy records, slow orbital changes have recently been shown6 to gradually force boreal summer temperature cooling over the common era. Here, we present new evidence based on maximum latewood density data from northern Scandinavia, indicating that this cooling trend was stronger (0.31 C per 1,000 years, ±0.03 C) than previously reported, and demonstrate that this signature is missing in published tree-ring proxy records. The long-term trend now revealed in maximum latewood density data is in line with coupled general circulation models7,8 indicating albedo-driven feedback mechanisms and substantial summer cooling over the past two millennia in northern boreal and Arctic latitudes. These findings, together with the missing orbital signature in published dendrochronological records, suggest that large-scale near- surface air-temperature reconstructions9–13 relying on tree- ring data may underestimate pre-instrumental temperatures including warmth during Medieval and Roman times.
Stories like this contribute to my growing generalized cynicism and pessimism. I have no connection to SETI, but it seems to me like an honest, modest effort at discovery which could change humanity's perspective forever - one way or the other. And it's starving for funds that represent less than the annual property tax bills of Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates on their homes. To me, this is a bright red flashing light on the societal annunciator panel that something's wrong with our priorities. If I had a $10 million net worth, I'd include $10K to SETI in my annual donation program. As it is, it will be much less. I hope that those of you who can do more, will. Thanks.
Slashdot Mirror
"No it is testing new ion engines that actually allow for decent orbital delta V."
Citation requested, please.
Yes, and you can read about the carbon filament bulb that has been burning for over a century at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Light
my impression is that one of the factors that strongly affects birthrate is the prospective parents' faith in their future, their confidence and optimism. This phenomenon may be mediated through the effects of chronic elevated stress hormone levels. I don't have access to my reference database at the moment, so I apologize in advance for not being able to provide cites to support my thoughts. But given the dismal economic prospects for those in the lower and middle classes in America, and the fact that they comprise the vast majority of prospective parents in the US, is it at all surprising that birth rates have fallen so low?
Isn't every car manufacturer already liable for product defects that cause accidents for the life of the car, anyway?
Liability is an artificial barrier that can be eliminated by legislation. If the accident rate and accident severity of driverless cars were significantly and proveably lower than human-driven cars, there would be an economic incentive to transition to driverless cars. The incentives would include legislation to limit product liability for manufacturers of driverless cars and their subsystem vendors (vehicle behavioral code vendors, for example). Insurance companies will be major forces in getting that legislation passed, because with lower accident rates and severity, their payouts will be reduced.
and removing TSP (trisodium phosphate) removed an antropogenic source of phosphorus that was aggravating eutrophication of lakes; see, for example, http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/wq/nonpoint/phosphorus/HSphosphatepresent.pdf Lowered oxygen->fewer fish, etc.
and removing sulfur from diesel reduced the amount of SO2 in the atmosphere, which reduced the amount of SO3 -> H2SO4 production, which reduced the acidity of rainfall, which has a number of beneficial effects which you can explore if you're interested.
The price rises for consumers simply indicate the fact that the full costs weren't being accounted for in the first place. As we learn more about the various complex processes that sustain our lives, we're better able to determine what it actually costs us to live. Don't expect those data to be especially comforting.
I can recommend the Wikipedia article as a place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere
In the Sources section, it states that humans release about 29,000 megatonnes (= 29 gigatonnes), compared to natural processes that release about 439 GT annually. That would make the human contribution about 6.6% of the "natural" contribution.
You wrote: "They know that without the sciences, their comfortable lives could not be what it is today."
I suspect a large fraction doesn't know that. I doubt these are people who, when they flip a light switch or run hot water in their kitchen or flush a toilet, even occasionally think of the infrastructure that lets them do those things. They not only don't know what they don't know, they aren't curious about it. Much less capable of changing their minds in light of scientific evidence that conflicts with their faith/beliefs.
Thanks for the clarification.
Interesting idea. Don't know enough about labor law to know if your idea is currently legal, but with legislation it could quite likely be implemented. I concur, the only thing I want my pilot to be concerned with is safe completion of the flight.
Interesting, thank you. Wish I had mod points for you. I have no problem with the concept of paying a decent living wage to the skilled professionals to whom I entrust my life when the cabin door closes. I hope those who are hiring those professionals feel likewise.
Reading TFA, I see it says that 1500 hours is *six* times the previously required minimum, which would be 250 hours. You say the previous minimum was 800 hours. Would you please clarify? Did the WSJ reporters get it wrong? Thanks.
Thanks for your thoughts. Increases my optimism about our country a bit.
dissipation path in RF power amplifiers? I don't know whether common wifi routers have discrete RF power amp devices to feed their antennas, but if they do, they are probably connected by thermal grease to a heat spreader of some kind. Over years of thermal cycling, thermomechanical expansion can create voids in the thermal grease, which will increase the device-to-ambient thermal resistance. The device will run hotter (= lower efficiency, less RF power to the antenna) or fold its power back to stay within thermal limits (same result). This could also happen if there's lots of accumulated dust on the heat sink, which would increase device to ambient thermal resistance. My 2 cents.
are these:
1. Governor, you understand that an action may be legal but not ethical. Why, then, given the difficult financial condition of Americans and America, did you take a tax deduction for your wife's horse? With nearly a quarter of a billion dollars net worth, why are you forcing me and my fellow Americans to pay for your wife's horse?
2. In your first debate with President Obama, you said in response to President Obama: "...the place you put your money makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is...". I couldn't agree more. Why then are most of your funds invested overseas? Why don't you invest your money in America?
Yeah, I've questions I'd like to ask Obama, too. But I'll start with the MittBot.
Ignition is a fabulous read. I thought nobody else knew about it. Thanks.
Doing it from a ship or land based gun will give you problems because the Earth has this curvature, and your hypersonic dart is pretty much going to travel in a straight line. So things that are over the horizon are pretty much out of reach since drilling straight through the Earth is not really practical.
These projectiles will certainly be guided (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/its-experimental-rail-gun-navy-wants-gps-guided-hypersonic-projectiles) with accuracies at least as good as current ICBM systems, and probably as good as existing precision bombing systems like JDAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition) and others. There are plenty of ways to guide a very fast munition that do not require sticking control surfaces out in a hypersonic air stream.
I saw Endeavour today as it headed south to overfly Moffett Field. End of an era, yes, and I do miss our nation's having a spacecraft, even one with the Shuttle's long list of flaws and shortcomings.
But we *are* doing quite a lot of stuff out there:
- We just landed a nuclear powered, laser-zapping mobile lab on Mars, and it's headed off to climb a mountain;
- Dawn recently lit up its ion drive and left orbit around the asteroid Vesta to visit another asteroid, Ceres;
- Cassini continues touring Saturn and its moons;
- Messenger is exploring Mercury from orbit;
- Opportunity is still wandering around on Mars, continuing eight years of exploration;
- We're still getting good data from Voyagers 1 and 2, over a third of a century after they were launched.
I've left stuff out, but you get my point. The space age has arrived, but in a different way and at a slower pace than most of us might have wanted. But it's here, and it's not going away.
Agree with your point. I've been spending more time at Ars lately, less here. Overall quality @ /. (stories and posts) is on a downtrend, IMHO.
than the combined total of the seventeen nations next in defense spending. I can recommend David Wessel's book Red Ink as an excellent, informative read on US budgetary matters. The stat I led this post with comes from his book. Also, I suggest listening to Teri Gross's interview with Wessel today. You can find it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=07-31-2012
From the summary: "The airlines couldn't sell enough tickets on the small plane to even make up for the amount of fuel it needed to guzzle on its journeys, let alone cover maintenance for the technological marvel."
With the increasing concentration of wealth, the number of people who could and would pay >5x the former Concorde ticket price (adjusted for inflation) is probably large enough to carry the aircraft operations and maintenance and then some. To such a target market, a small number of passengers per flight is not a negative at all - it's exclusivity writ large. I think that if the Concorde were flying today, its operators could charge $75K/passenger and fill the aircraft. There isn't any transportation system at present that provides its passengers what the Concorde did: an irresistable combination of speed, luxury, and a conspicuous imprimatur of being the richest of the rich. The market for extreme luxury goods is growing very rapidly, and the Concorde would have fit in perfectly today.
A quick WikiP search indicated the latest evidence for effectiveness against cataracts of N-acc drops was not real solid (see 2008 Royal College of Opthalmologists statement), the the Wiki article also indicates subsequent evidence is available, but doesn't give a cite. As someone who's developing corneal opacities, I'm interested, can you give a cite or two? Tnx.
Sapphire is Al2O3, aluminum oxide (aka alumina). Alumina dissolves in alkaline pH conditions see, for example, http://www.seachem.com/support/AluminumSolubilityToxicity.pdf). It seems likely that over hundreds of milennia, these discs would be exposed to alkaline conditions as a result of varying geochemistry/hydrology.
Furthermore, sapphire is brittle. Very hard, but brittle. One could break a sapphire disc by dropping it a few feet onto concrete. Over hundreds of milennia, stuff falls, squashes, cracks, etc.
Solar insolation changes, resulting from long-term oscillations of orbital configurations1, are an important driver of Holocene climate2,3. The forcing is substantial over the past 2,000 years, up to four times as large as the 1.6 W m2 net anthropogenic forcing since 1750 (ref. 4), but the trend varies considerably over time, space and with season5. Using numerous high-latitude proxy records, slow orbital changes have recently been shown6 to gradually force boreal summer temperature cooling over the common era. Here, we present new evidence based on maximum latewood density data from northern Scandinavia, indicating that this cooling trend was stronger (0.31 C per 1,000 years, ±0.03 C) than previously reported, and demonstrate that this signature is missing in published tree-ring proxy records. The long-term trend now revealed in maximum latewood density data is in line with coupled general circulation models7,8 indicating albedo-driven feedback mechanisms and substantial summer cooling over the past two millennia in northern boreal and Arctic latitudes. These findings, together with the missing orbital signature in published dendrochronological records, suggest that large-scale near- surface air-temperature reconstructions9–13 relying on tree- ring data may underestimate pre-instrumental temperatures including warmth during Medieval and Roman times.
Stories like this contribute to my growing generalized cynicism and pessimism. I have no connection to SETI, but it seems to me like an honest, modest effort at discovery which could change humanity's perspective forever - one way or the other. And it's starving for funds that represent less than the annual property tax bills of Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates on their homes. To me, this is a bright red flashing light on the societal annunciator panel that something's wrong with our priorities. If I had a $10 million net worth, I'd include $10K to SETI in my annual donation program. As it is, it will be much less. I hope that those of you who can do more, will. Thanks.
Wish I had mod points for you, this is both interesting and informative.