Well, you could try leeners.com make-your-own hotsauce kits. The glorius capascin molecule is certainly a geek icon, and really, who doesn't like hotsauce? It's my gift de-jour this holliday season
Correct, the theory of evolution deals with the origin of species, not the origen of life. However, anyone interested in some interesting modern scientific theories on how life did originate can google "RNA world hypothesis" for some interesting reading. I would also recomend most of the papers by Jack Szostak for anyone looking for scientific evidence that this is possible.
Well, I'm a graduate student in life sciences and occasionally there are (generally non-mandatory) seminars and lectures in what is and is not good scientific practice. Things like what constitutes a conflict of interest in science, what constitutes informed consent in medical research, and what are proper procedures for aquiring and handling and data. The national acadamy of sciences and NSF have guidelines for this sort of thing and they're generally accepted by the scientific community. I think that there are actual degree programs and certificate training in scientific ethics, but I havn't gone that far. Nonetheless, most scientists get training as to what is considered ethical practice in science at some point in their training, just like most docters get training as to what is ethical practice in medicine. It would be nice if it were better emphasized and enforced, as many scientists I know are on the decidedly shacky side of ethical practice, but there you are. I'm not sure what "read the wind" means, but it is certainly a consensus code of behavior rather than an individual one. It's more complicated than simply going with what's popular at the time, but less scientific than, well, science. I've never been on a policy setting board for any of the institutions that decide ethical standards, but my impression is that they use a combination of common sense and learning from the past. Does that answer your question?
As someone who has been trained in scientific ethics I can answer your questions. Research funded by industry into the effects of that company will be viewed as valid if the following conditions are met.
1) The scientist performing the research is independent of the company. He can be funded by grant from the company, but must be independent of it's internal organizational structure and to hiring/firing pressures.
2) Said scientist must have free reign in his choice of methods and staff.
3) Results must be published in peer reviewed independent journals regardless of what those results show and without editing/review of the company funding the research.
4) The results must be repeatable by independent labs.
and finally, 5) Said scientist must not receive any personal mony or "bonus" from the company at any point before or after the research.
If these conditions are met then the research is generally considered to be unbiased. Many companies follow these guidelines as a matter of course, especially drug companies.
But we're not really talking about companies funding research, are we? We're talking about companies being able to buy the beliefs in which your children are forcefully indoctrinated by the state. And that's wrong.
I don't get it. This is fairly standard christian docterine. If you don't accept Jesus then you go to Hell. Sorry. Unless the catholics are right, in which case you might end up in purgatory. But heaven is pretty much a christians only club. The only thing radical about this is that it was said in a school. If it had been said in a church it would be perfectly normal. I am not christian and think he should be fired, but his statements were dogmatically correct for almost every branch of christianity (excepting unitarianism).
Alright, so I'm a molecular biologist and I work with a bunch of chemists and biochemists on alternative fules. So, I have some expertise on this, but not enough that I couldn't be understood (think it though). So, here's my understanding. First off, fule cells don't make CO2, that's their big advantage. They convert H2 and O2 into H2O. If they did (and it's possible to design one that does, if you make the hydrogen on the spot from coal, which is one way to avoid running around in a car with a pressurized H2 tank) then it would take energy to pressurize the CO2 for later reclamation. This energy would be taken off of the energy efficency of the car and likely render it less than efficiant. If it used a catylitic process to turn ethanol into ethyl aldahyde and liberated hydrogen (as is possible with enzyme aid, I'm kind of working on that problem), then it would be possible to use the spent ethylaldahyde later to regenerate ethanol for further use. There are two problems:
First, this is all equilibrium chemistry. That means that you need a greater concentration of ethanol than ethyl aldahyde to make the reaction proceed forword (for the technical folks, I'm symplifying here, don't complain). That means that if you want the car to use more than half a tank of fuel and you want to seperate the byproduct for reclamition, you need some way to seperate ethyl aldehyde (or whatever) from the ethanol. How the hell do you do that? Current ways of doing this are large, expensive, and energy intensive. It could happen in the future (in theory), but we have no current means.
Second, converting the byproduct (ethyl aldehyde) back into ethanol is an energy intensive process. We have no current easy and environmentally friendly means of doing this. One possible future hope (which I would like to develop and exploit in about ten years) would be to bioengineer photosynthetic bacteria to harness sunlight to convert these byproducts back into their fuel product, and then use some purification process (as yet undefined, see above) to reprocess them into stock fuel. Such bacteria does not yet exist, nor (to my knowledge) do the enzymes necessary to make it function.
So, in short, yes what you propose is possible. No, it can't be done yet, nor in the next five years. I hope to see such a scheme comming along to market in possibly twenty years, at best. Even then, such a system would only be a very complex and efficient battery for storing the energy of the sun (as all renewable life and fuel is). This would limit the total energy expenditure possible to a maximum of the amount of energy poured on the earth by the sun. We are already dangerously close to using that amount of energy, in twenty years we will likely be using more and all of our various renewable energy schemes will be insufficant. We have only two options, conservation or fusion power (or malthusian disaster, but no one likes that one). I leave it to the rest of you to choose which.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you could try leeners.com make-your-own hotsauce kits. The glorius capascin molecule is certainly a geek icon, and really, who doesn't like hotsauce? It's my gift de-jour this holliday season
parent is astroturf
Correct, the theory of evolution deals with the origin of species, not the origen of life. However, anyone interested in some interesting modern scientific theories on how life did originate can google "RNA world hypothesis" for some interesting reading. I would also recomend most of the papers by Jack Szostak for anyone looking for scientific evidence that this is possible.
Well, I'm a graduate student in life sciences and occasionally there are (generally non-mandatory) seminars and lectures in what is and is not good scientific practice. Things like what constitutes a conflict of interest in science, what constitutes informed consent in medical research, and what are proper procedures for aquiring and handling and data. The national acadamy of sciences and NSF have guidelines for this sort of thing and they're generally accepted by the scientific community. I think that there are actual degree programs and certificate training in scientific ethics, but I havn't gone that far. Nonetheless, most scientists get training as to what is considered ethical practice in science at some point in their training, just like most docters get training as to what is ethical practice in medicine. It would be nice if it were better emphasized and enforced, as many scientists I know are on the decidedly shacky side of ethical practice, but there you are. I'm not sure what "read the wind" means, but it is certainly a consensus code of behavior rather than an individual one. It's more complicated than simply going with what's popular at the time, but less scientific than, well, science. I've never been on a policy setting board for any of the institutions that decide ethical standards, but my impression is that they use a combination of common sense and learning from the past. Does that answer your question?
As someone who has been trained in scientific ethics I can answer your questions. Research funded by industry into the effects of that company will be viewed as valid if the following conditions are met. 1) The scientist performing the research is independent of the company. He can be funded by grant from the company, but must be independent of it's internal organizational structure and to hiring/firing pressures. 2) Said scientist must have free reign in his choice of methods and staff. 3) Results must be published in peer reviewed independent journals regardless of what those results show and without editing/review of the company funding the research. 4) The results must be repeatable by independent labs. and finally, 5) Said scientist must not receive any personal mony or "bonus" from the company at any point before or after the research. If these conditions are met then the research is generally considered to be unbiased. Many companies follow these guidelines as a matter of course, especially drug companies. But we're not really talking about companies funding research, are we? We're talking about companies being able to buy the beliefs in which your children are forcefully indoctrinated by the state. And that's wrong.
I don't get it. This is fairly standard christian docterine. If you don't accept Jesus then you go to Hell. Sorry. Unless the catholics are right, in which case you might end up in purgatory. But heaven is pretty much a christians only club. The only thing radical about this is that it was said in a school. If it had been said in a church it would be perfectly normal. I am not christian and think he should be fired, but his statements were dogmatically correct for almost every branch of christianity (excepting unitarianism).
Errr...Isn't Sonic owned by Sega? I think Sega is planning on making all of it's old console titles available on the VC.
Why won't they they release fucking Flash 9 for Linux? Grrrrrr
Alright, so I'm a molecular biologist and I work with a bunch of chemists and biochemists on alternative fules. So, I have some expertise on this, but not enough that I couldn't be understood (think it though). So, here's my understanding. First off, fule cells don't make CO2, that's their big advantage. They convert H2 and O2 into H2O. If they did (and it's possible to design one that does, if you make the hydrogen on the spot from coal, which is one way to avoid running around in a car with a pressurized H2 tank) then it would take energy to pressurize the CO2 for later reclamation. This energy would be taken off of the energy efficency of the car and likely render it less than efficiant. If it used a catylitic process to turn ethanol into ethyl aldahyde and liberated hydrogen (as is possible with enzyme aid, I'm kind of working on that problem), then it would be possible to use the spent ethylaldahyde later to regenerate ethanol for further use. There are two problems: First, this is all equilibrium chemistry. That means that you need a greater concentration of ethanol than ethyl aldahyde to make the reaction proceed forword (for the technical folks, I'm symplifying here, don't complain). That means that if you want the car to use more than half a tank of fuel and you want to seperate the byproduct for reclamition, you need some way to seperate ethyl aldehyde (or whatever) from the ethanol. How the hell do you do that? Current ways of doing this are large, expensive, and energy intensive. It could happen in the future (in theory), but we have no current means. Second, converting the byproduct (ethyl aldehyde) back into ethanol is an energy intensive process. We have no current easy and environmentally friendly means of doing this. One possible future hope (which I would like to develop and exploit in about ten years) would be to bioengineer photosynthetic bacteria to harness sunlight to convert these byproducts back into their fuel product, and then use some purification process (as yet undefined, see above) to reprocess them into stock fuel. Such bacteria does not yet exist, nor (to my knowledge) do the enzymes necessary to make it function. So, in short, yes what you propose is possible. No, it can't be done yet, nor in the next five years. I hope to see such a scheme comming along to market in possibly twenty years, at best. Even then, such a system would only be a very complex and efficient battery for storing the energy of the sun (as all renewable life and fuel is). This would limit the total energy expenditure possible to a maximum of the amount of energy poured on the earth by the sun. We are already dangerously close to using that amount of energy, in twenty years we will likely be using more and all of our various renewable energy schemes will be insufficant. We have only two options, conservation or fusion power (or malthusian disaster, but no one likes that one). I leave it to the rest of you to choose which.