Not too sure about that. My commute home is downhill on a slight grade, and with a tailwind I can ride at about 25mph - the road itself has a speed of 35mph, so a closing speed of 10 vs 25 mph. Yes, I'm screwed if I get hit by a car, but I'm also screwed if I hit a pedestrian. Plus in that case, the pedestrian is screwed too.
It described how turns in the road, and other features actually contributed to the inefficiency of traffic flow.
This is especially prevalent around 495 (DC Beltway), where the road curves back and forth due to eminent domain issues from when the freeway was built. Most noticeable place is around the Mormon Temple -- you can be driving at 60 (limit of 55) with the flow of traffic, but a mile or so before this curve traffic grinds down close to 30...then abruptly gets back up to speed after the curve.
You've been modded flamebait by someone, but it's a legitimate question that many people have when looking at instruments designed for pure science and discovery. There are quite a few really good arguments about why the Hubble should be around which are based on the science mission, but I'll give you an example of positive spinoffs that affect our daily lives. Google will give you many more.
----- "NASA's TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER PROGRAM FOR TEE EARLY DETECTION OF BREAST CANCER", available at ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/5216/14105/00646457.pdf?tp=&isnumber=&arnumber=646457
One NASA-driven development has already found its way into clinical use as part of the LORAD; stereotactic needle biopsy system. The charge-coupled device (CCD) camera used in this system was originally designed and built for use in the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, and provides a high-resolution, high-contrast image in real time to guide a physician in the accurate collection of a biopsy sample from suspicious imaged breast lesions. The Hubble CCD, coupled with a high-speed phosphor screen, gives greatly increased sensitivity, contrast and resolution over previous methods, The result is a less traumatic, lower cost ($800 vs. $2,500 typically for surgical biopsy), non-surgical biopsy procedure for the more than 500,000 American women who undergo breast biopsies each year. -------
Here, Hubble directly increased the ability for us to find cancers. When you look at a dollar amount, (2500-800)*500000 gives us $0.85 billion per year. Note that this article was published in 1996; today, mammograms and biopsies are much more common. To keep things simple, if we assume a constant number of patients, the Hubble CCD alone has directly resulted in cost savings of $9.35 billion (let alone lives saved). Also note that the cost of scalpel biopsies is mostly based on labor, and so would not have dropped much beyond the $2500 level; CCD's have become very inexpensive (relative to costs in 1996) and so the savings would actually be significantly larger than calculated here.
Anyone know the true cost of a non-surgical biopsy today?
I'm interested in knowing this -- if Comcast blocks all torrents by spoofing the RST packet, and I try to download a torrent from a US Government server (say, from NASA), is Comcast breaking the law by impersonating the a federal government computer?
Or you can buy missiles for $5000-$60000 (black market cost that Hezbollah has paid - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/20/world/main1821335.shtml etc). Those JPL-caliber (completely made-up term) rockets can run into the millions of dollars per unit...the type of groups that can't support indigenous development efforts probably don't care about reliability all too much.
Yes, it's rocket science, but not all rocket science is hard and poorly defined!
Almost -- it's proportional to the square of velocity (F=-bv^2). At low velocities, you can approximate it linearly...but we're quite clearly out of that range now =).
There's a high res camera -- this one is just meant to observe the antenna that's right in the middle of every shot (make sure it's oriented fine, etc, in the event of communications troubles). Just happens that the moon is in the FOV.
Mod parent funny. DC is locally known as "Hollywood for ugly people."
I kid, I kid. The trend towards graduate school really depends on the school which you attend. I presume that the pressure to do so at G-town is not so much since a number of students go into banking/finance/accounting, where an MBA might come in handy but only after a few years of work. Even at engineering programs at, say, Maryland and Hopkins, a good number of students do want to at least get masters degrees. Some of the more advanced R&D work does require advanced degrees, regardless of job experience (mostly heavily theoretical stuff which it's hard to get trained for while doing design work). Not everyone wants to go into R&D, though, just as not every finance major at G-town wants to become an IBanker (probably a terrible analogy since I'm sure the vast majority do), so there's a pressure keeping some people away from grad school.
Internationals are a minority at G-town since many international students go to grad school in the US to be hired and then get sponsored for a Green Card. Many of the positions requiring very specific skills (the ones where it's easy to show that just any American citizen wouldn't do) are recruited from schools like Cal, MIT, CMU, etc, so the small department makes it less attractive to foreign students.
Don't patronize me. I know how the Greeks taught, and how they communicated knowledge and scholastic studies. They didn't. There were no schools in Athens. Except Plato's academy which was closed in 529CE. Oh, and the peripatetic school of Aristotle (not formal schools as with Plato, but more of an informal paid lecture). The Greeks very much did teach and communicate knowledge and perform scholastic studies.
Just catching up on old Slashdot articles and I thought I might throw in a word here. Your numbers actually DO back up the "higher density leads to greater broadband penetration argument. Iceland has a low population density nationwide, yes, but the majority of people live in the Reykjavik area (190k of a total 311k). Similar conditions exist for Finland, Norway, and Sweden, with most people living in cities to the south (Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki) with more or less open area to the north. I doubt that internet connectivity in rural Sweden is any better than similar connectivity in the rural US.
What your statistics obscure is the population distribution through the country and the relative availability of bandwidth. The population density of Reykjavik is 420/km^2, Oslo is 1299/km^2, and Helsinki is 339/km^2. Likewise, much of Canada is uninhabited so densities around Toronto, Vancouver, etc are quite high and probably account for the majority of broadband penetration. Now this isn't to say we're doing a great job in the US, but we do have a much greater number of population centers (at least 50!), the vast majority of which do have broadband access. Comcrapstic access, maybe...but it's a start. Though it would be nice for the telecoms to actually do what they are paid to do.
Since you worked for Wipro, I presume that you worked in India? I think part of the problem is that the Indian educational system really rewards regurgitation and not critical thought (at least until universities, and even then, usually only at IIT/IIS/BITS, etc). The managers come in from such a system and they truly believe that mugging up is a good way to learn.
Thing is, you don't really drive the Space Shuttle...it's pre programmed. And if you mention someone hijacking the computer and loading their own code, you've never seen a shuttle code review. You don't really land it until the end either, when it has no fuel left.
Yes they have access to explosives at their jobs -- but so do the people who manufacture said chemicals and transport them, and last I checked, those employees didn't have to go through government background checks. There's a big difference between requiring a background check for a top secret job designing spy satellites and requiring one for a visiting professor doing research on solar physics -- research that is bound to be published.
Most of the 'freedoms' that are so important to Americans are considered totally trivial over here. 'Freedom of speech', for example, is not as important - there are other rights that come first. That would horrify an American.
And I would say the horror we would feel is well placed. After all, if freedom of speech isn't protected above all else, how would you be able to make it known that your other rights are being trampled upon? Freedom of speech really is intended to protect the citizen's ability to question his or her government, especially when it tries to take other rights away. If you don't protect this right, you lose the ability to project the others.
Not entirely sure what you mean by fast versus slow re-entry. When your spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere, it has to somehow slow down from orbital velocity to v=0 on the ground. If a spacecraft used jets to slow itself down, it would lose altitude as the centripetal force balancing gravity dropped. You more or less end up hitting the top of the atmosphere at Mach 15+ either way.
SS1 had a "slow re-entry" because it went vertically upwards at around 2100mph and *never reached orbital velocities*. It was basically a glorified Vomit Comet (admittedly, very glorified and quite cool) designed for an entirely different flight regime.
There's a reason why all contemporary space capsules -- the Soyouz, Chinese designs, Orion, and even the Shuttle -- have large surface areas on the downwards facing side. You have to slow down somehow while also being accelerated down by gravity and also maintain flight controllability.
Another big advantage for the SS1 team is that a lot of the basic research into flight dynamics, launch, controls, and aerodynamics, has already been conducted....by NASA and universities over 50 years. When combined with the hundreds of millions of dollars that Scaled has received from the government and private companies to perform composite materials work (composite structures), it becomes easier to see why they were able to perform their mission much more cheaply: they have a foundation to build from.
Slashdot Mirror
Not too sure about that. My commute home is downhill on a slight grade, and with a tailwind I can ride at about 25mph - the road itself has a speed of 35mph, so a closing speed of 10 vs 25 mph. Yes, I'm screwed if I get hit by a car, but I'm also screwed if I hit a pedestrian. Plus in that case, the pedestrian is screwed too.
This is especially prevalent around 495 (DC Beltway), where the road curves back and forth due to eminent domain issues from when the freeway was built. Most noticeable place is around the Mormon Temple -- you can be driving at 60 (limit of 55) with the flow of traffic, but a mile or so before this curve traffic grinds down close to 30...then abruptly gets back up to speed after the curve.
Or a whole legion of schoolchildren who are really really good at linear algebra. Pre-game talk: "prepare to get row reduced!"
You've been modded flamebait by someone, but it's a legitimate question that many people have when looking at instruments designed for pure science and discovery. There are quite a few really good arguments about why the Hubble should be around which are based on the science mission, but I'll give you an example of positive spinoffs that affect our daily lives. Google will give you many more.
-----
"NASA's TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER PROGRAM FOR TEE EARLY DETECTION OF BREAST CANCER", available at ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel4/5216/14105/00646457.pdf?tp=&isnumber=&arnumber=646457
One NASA-driven development has already found its way into clinical use as part of the LORAD; stereotactic needle
biopsy system. The charge-coupled device (CCD) camera used in this system was originally designed and built for use
in the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, and provides a high-resolution, high-contrast image in real time
to guide a physician in the accurate collection of a biopsy sample from suspicious imaged breast lesions. The Hubble
CCD, coupled with a high-speed phosphor screen, gives greatly increased sensitivity, contrast and resolution over
previous methods, The result is a less traumatic, lower cost ($800 vs. $2,500 typically for surgical biopsy), non-surgical biopsy procedure for the more than 500,000 American women who undergo breast biopsies each year.
-------
Here, Hubble directly increased the ability for us to find cancers. When you look at a dollar amount, (2500-800)*500000 gives us $0.85 billion per year. Note that this article was published in 1996; today, mammograms and biopsies are much more common. To keep things simple, if we assume a constant number of patients, the Hubble CCD alone has directly resulted in cost savings of $9.35 billion (let alone lives saved). Also note that the cost of scalpel biopsies is mostly based on labor, and so would not have dropped much beyond the $2500 level; CCD's have become very inexpensive (relative to costs in 1996) and so the savings would actually be significantly larger than calculated here.
Anyone know the true cost of a non-surgical biopsy today?
I'm interested in knowing this -- if Comcast blocks all torrents by spoofing the RST packet, and I try to download a torrent from a US Government server (say, from NASA), is Comcast breaking the law by impersonating the a federal government computer?
Or you can buy missiles for $5000-$60000 (black market cost that Hezbollah has paid - http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/20/world/main1821335.shtml etc). Those JPL-caliber (completely made-up term) rockets can run into the millions of dollars per unit...the type of groups that can't support indigenous development efforts probably don't care about reliability all too much. Yes, it's rocket science, but not all rocket science is hard and poorly defined!
Probably low millions -- a team of PhD's over a few years.
Almost -- it's proportional to the square of velocity (F=-bv^2). At low velocities, you can approximate it linearly...but we're quite clearly out of that range now =).
Spanish-American War and yellow journalism.
There's a high res camera -- this one is just meant to observe the antenna that's right in the middle of every shot (make sure it's oriented fine, etc, in the event of communications troubles). Just happens that the moon is in the FOV.
What about "+1 Whoosh"?
Mod parent funny. DC is locally known as "Hollywood for ugly people."
I kid, I kid. The trend towards graduate school really depends on the school which you attend. I presume that the pressure to do so at G-town is not so much since a number of students go into banking/finance/accounting, where an MBA might come in handy but only after a few years of work. Even at engineering programs at, say, Maryland and Hopkins, a good number of students do want to at least get masters degrees. Some of the more advanced R&D work does require advanced degrees, regardless of job experience (mostly heavily theoretical stuff which it's hard to get trained for while doing design work). Not everyone wants to go into R&D, though, just as not every finance major at G-town wants to become an IBanker (probably a terrible analogy since I'm sure the vast majority do), so there's a pressure keeping some people away from grad school.
Internationals are a minority at G-town since many international students go to grad school in the US to be hired and then get sponsored for a Green Card. Many of the positions requiring very specific skills (the ones where it's easy to show that just any American citizen wouldn't do) are recruited from schools like Cal, MIT, CMU, etc, so the small department makes it less attractive to foreign students.
Just catching up on old Slashdot articles and I thought I might throw in a word here. Your numbers actually DO back up the "higher density leads to greater broadband penetration argument. Iceland has a low population density nationwide, yes, but the majority of people live in the Reykjavik area (190k of a total 311k). Similar conditions exist for Finland, Norway, and Sweden, with most people living in cities to the south (Oslo, Stockholm, Helsinki) with more or less open area to the north. I doubt that internet connectivity in rural Sweden is any better than similar connectivity in the rural US.
What your statistics obscure is the population distribution through the country and the relative availability of bandwidth. The population density of Reykjavik is 420/km^2, Oslo is 1299/km^2, and Helsinki is 339/km^2. Likewise, much of Canada is uninhabited so densities around Toronto, Vancouver, etc are quite high and probably account for the majority of broadband penetration. Now this isn't to say we're doing a great job in the US, but we do have a much greater number of population centers (at least 50!), the vast majority of which do have broadband access. Comcrapstic access, maybe...but it's a start. Though it would be nice for the telecoms to actually do what they are paid to do.
Since you worked for Wipro, I presume that you worked in India? I think part of the problem is that the Indian educational system really rewards regurgitation and not critical thought (at least until universities, and even then, usually only at IIT/IIS/BITS, etc). The managers come in from such a system and they truly believe that mugging up is a good way to learn.
Well, maybe inspired by the childhood of the designers. That said, the names were chosen by a schoolchild: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Exploration_Rove r#Naming_of_Spirit_and_Opportunity
Thing is, you don't really drive the Space Shuttle...it's pre programmed. And if you mention someone hijacking the computer and loading their own code, you've never seen a shuttle code review. You don't really land it until the end either, when it has no fuel left.
Yes they have access to explosives at their jobs -- but so do the people who manufacture said chemicals and transport them, and last I checked, those employees didn't have to go through government background checks. There's a big difference between requiring a background check for a top secret job designing spy satellites and requiring one for a visiting professor doing research on solar physics -- research that is bound to be published.
And I would say the horror we would feel is well placed. After all, if freedom of speech isn't protected above all else, how would you be able to make it known that your other rights are being trampled upon? Freedom of speech really is intended to protect the citizen's ability to question his or her government, especially when it tries to take other rights away. If you don't protect this right, you lose the ability to project the others.
Also why the Soviet space program sucked up so much money and [helped] lead to economic collapse.
Not entirely sure what you mean by fast versus slow re-entry. When your spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere, it has to somehow slow down from orbital velocity to v=0 on the ground. If a spacecraft used jets to slow itself down, it would lose altitude as the centripetal force balancing gravity dropped. You more or less end up hitting the top of the atmosphere at Mach 15+ either way. SS1 had a "slow re-entry" because it went vertically upwards at around 2100mph and *never reached orbital velocities*. It was basically a glorified Vomit Comet (admittedly, very glorified and quite cool) designed for an entirely different flight regime. There's a reason why all contemporary space capsules -- the Soyouz, Chinese designs, Orion, and even the Shuttle -- have large surface areas on the downwards facing side. You have to slow down somehow while also being accelerated down by gravity and also maintain flight controllability. Another big advantage for the SS1 team is that a lot of the basic research into flight dynamics, launch, controls, and aerodynamics, has already been conducted....by NASA and universities over 50 years. When combined with the hundreds of millions of dollars that Scaled has received from the government and private companies to perform composite materials work (composite structures), it becomes easier to see why they were able to perform their mission much more cheaply: they have a foundation to build from.
I feel sorry for the second and third shift pilots on 17+ hour flights trying to get into the cockpit on *that* plane.
I posted this earlier in the thread, but there's quite a bit of work in this field already; it just needs to be implemented on a wid scale.
http://healthmonitoring.ucsd.edu/index.jsp
http://healthmonitoring.ucsd.edu/info.jsp
Yes: http://healthmonitoring.ucsd.edu/index.jsp
Yep -- 3 to 20 minutes one way, meaning you don't see the results of your command until 6 to 40 minutes later.
Well, they were supposed to fail because of dust...covering the solar panels. However, the Martian winds keep the solar panels relatively clear, so...