The classical reason for why CERTAIN types of discrimination (e.g. gender and race) discrimination are not permissible is that they are based on properties that cannot (reasonably) be changed.
At least that is how the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled in the past. I am not necessarily saying that the same reasoning applies here, though I do maintain that it would be unreasonable to expect someone to change their genetic make-up even though such technology is beginning to exist in a very primitive form.
While that MAY be more cost-effective (and I say MAY because of the other posters' observations about differential cartridge filling), have you paused to consider the environmental impact of this approach?
Ink cartridges are easily recycled (HP includes postage-paid return envelopes with their new cartridges, not sure about other manufacturers) and thus create a minimum amount of waste and environmental damage. Unless you are going through the efforts of legitimately recycling the printers (and not indirectly sending them to various African nations to be "recycled" in toxic sludge dumps), think of the amount of general waste (plastic, etc.) and toxic metals (mercury, lead, etc.) you are discharging into the environment.
Direct cost isn't the only thing you should think about...
You do realize that land-line telephones operate essentially independently from the power grid (telecom companies generally must have backup power systems due to 911 in many or most locales) whereas cell phone towers have been known to go down with power failure, right?
we won't accept chemicals that build up in our bodies and our children.
Now I'm not saying that this ban is a bad thing, but I really wish people would:
Learn some chemistry.
Not say incredibly stupid things like the quote above.
I infer from the above quote that we will ban all food products since they build up in our body in the form of - wait for it - our cells. It makes me wonder if people are aware that we are all made of chemicals. What do they think amino acids, lipids, and carbohydrates are? (Or water for that matter?)
You make a lot of accusations against drug companies. Do you have first-hand evidence for these supposed board room conversations, or are you making this up based on hearsay?
I ask because I actually have been involved in such discussions, dealing with senior executives at some of the largest drug companies in the world, and I have seen no indication of what you allege. Yes, they want to make profit. Yes, money will be directed toward diseases that afflict the wealthy (hence the greater research that goes into erectile dysfunction rather than malaria). But all the drug companies do have active research ongoing into fields like AIDS, and I have never, ever seen any evidence of research, for example, being halted because it would cure the disease too well.
As for patents - how would you suggest the research be paid for? Remember that bringing a drug to market costs upward of $500M on average, and this does not (necessarily) include the costs of all the failed research that went nowhere.
Democratization of science - huh? The vast majority of science is NOT done in secret at all - it's done primarily in the university setting, which has ethics committees, grant review committees, etc. Additionally, all scientists ultimately publish in peer-reviewed journals. Yes, even industrial scientists; if you bother to read journals like the Journal of Organic Chemistry you will quickly find top-notch research coming from authors at such establishments as "Merck Process Research" and "Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development." I can only conclude from your statements that you are not a practicing scientist, or if you are that you do not read (or referee) any of the literature.
Finally, I don't know where your definition of science comes from, but in all my studies of the philosophy of science I have never the final definition include anything about improving the human physical condition. SCIENCE is about acquiring knowledge, period. You seem to conflate science with TECHNOLOGY.
In most locales there is commerce law in place that allows customers to pay the LOWEST price advertised/offered by a store. If there is no printed correction to an advertisement in error then the store generally MUST let you buy it for that price. This exists, AFAIK, to prevent stores from baiting you into coming in with one price and then switching the price on you at the store.
There is often a discrepancy between the price in the inventory database and the price posted on the shelf. Wherever I have shopped, when such a discrepancy is present I have paid the lower of the two prices. It may be store policy - but it's usually also the law.
As someone who uses NMR literally every single day and has taken graduate courses in the subject, let me correct a few major issues with your statement.
1) "Doing it with a gradient field and a special pulse sequence lets you get the vibrational amplitudes of your protons based on their position within the gradient field." In NMR (NOT MRI), gradients most commonly come up the form of gradient shimming, which is a technique for homogenizing the magnetic field applied to a sample. In general, gradient fields themselves are undesirable (for chemical analysis; different needs arise in imaging). More importantly, you are confusing IR spectroscopy (which observes molecular vibrations) with NMR, which looks at quantum spin phenomena in nuclei. Briefly, dipolar nuclei (those with an odd number of protons and even number of neutrons; 1H is the best such nucleus for signal/noise ratio due to its high natural abundance and gyromagnetic ratio) distribute themselves into two quantum spin states (aligned/opposed to the incident field) roughly according to Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics due to the slight difference in energies of the states. The energy difference is on the order of RF energy, and the quantized absorption of RF radiation of the exact energy of the state differential can induce a spin state transition. The exact energy required depends primarily on the intrinsic properties of the nuclei, but also slightly on the electronic environment surrounding the nucleus, which permits (in NMR) chemically non-equivalent nuclei to be distinguished in a molecule. More complex experiments (an acronym soup that includes experiments such as DEPT, COSY, NOESY, HETCOR, etc.) can be used to elucidate the entire structure of a molecule, including distances between atoms. MRI is based, broadly speaking, on the fact that the amount of time it takes spin-excited nuclei to "relax" back to the ground state depends on factors including their solvent environment. Hence MRI can easily distinguish between, e.g., water and fat, by carefully observing how long an NMR signal is seen from excited nuclei.
2) "at varying radio-frequencies to see if there was any resulting resonance and output RF (radiofrequency) signal." When resonance is achieved the incident RF is absorbed, not emitted. Applying "varying" RF is classical "continuous wave" NMR. Modern spectrometers (FT-NMR) use a broad pulse to excite ALL resonances simultaneously. As they relax, RF is emitted as you suggest, and the probe coils detect the decaying resonances of all nuclei simultaneously. A computer then does a weighted Fourier transform on the time-resolved data to convert from time domain to frequency domain, thus extracting the spectrum. CW spectrometers have been completely replaced by FT instruments due to much shorter experiment times, better signal to noise, and ability to run multidimensional experiments.
3) "Protons resonate at 2.4 GHz approximately (which is the frequency used in microwaves to resonate the H's in the {H}_2{0} molecules in your food and heat it." I don't even know where to begin. First, the proton resonance frequency is ENTIRELY dependent on the strength of the applied field. Hence the strength of the superconducting magnets in NMR spectrometers is usually measured by the standard proton resonance frequency in the magnet. For example, I usually use 400 MHz instruments, which means that the field is of such a strength that protons resonate around 400 MHz. I also have 500 and 600 MHz instruments available when I need greater resolution or signal/noise ratio. The primary difference between the instruments is the strength (read: size) of the cryomagnet. Furthermore, the highest power NMR commercially available recently was 900 MHz. I have heard that the major manufacturers (Bruker and Varian) have a 950 on deck, and it may now be for sale (for a hefty sum). They are still working on trying to reach 1 GHz. There are NMR spectrometers that have been reported to achieve the much higher 2.4 GHz resonance, but these are highly ex
A similar approach has been used in Iraq to detonate roadside bombs in advance of convoy movement. A commander discovered that the detonators transmitted the same frequency as RC car controllers. He thus taped down the controls on such a controller and - voila - IEDs would detonate a safe distance in front of his convoy.
Never underestimate the utility of relatively low-tech solutions.
I'm not sure what you mean by "patent system" but I hope you realize that the patent and copyright system is both mandated and justified in none other than Article I of the Constitution of the United States, which stipulates that Congress shall have the right...
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
The patent system exists to benefit all people, not just inventors, nor just lawyers.
Producing viable liquid fuels from biomass is expensive primarily due to distillation that almost invariably creeps into the process and consumes large amounts of energy, limiting the potential return.
Recently, a group of researchers (with which I have no affiliation, btw) have demonstrated how to convert sugar derivatives into actual short- and medium-chain alkanes, i.e. gasoline. Check out the paper:
I had a political science prof in college who made an interesting point about the war in Iraq. He argued that the war is NOT about oil and never was, reasoning that we could access the oil by corrupt dealings and underhanded collaboration with Hussein.
Instead, he believed that Bush genuinely believed that God told him to bring democracy to the country, and that he was obligated to obey.
I don't know whether I agree with the professor, but if this is true then that mindset is far, far scarier than an invasion for oil.
I notice that some other posters are asserting that quantum mechanics has no bearing in high mass or energy systems. This is partly true, and reflective of the correspondence principle, which states that the predictions of quantum mechanics should merge seamlessly with classical mechanics as the systems of interest become progressively more classical.
However...
It is already well established that quantum mechanical effects can manifest themselves at the MOLECULAR level, and consequently can even be observed at higher levels. A common example is the Jahn-Teller Effect, which has a profound impact on the chemical and physical properties of certain transition metal compounds.
Another example, perhaps less known but directly relevant to the article at hand, is quantum tunneling giving rise to kinetic isotope effects as large as 50. (Briefly: a kinetic isotope effect is a change in rate of a chemical reaction due to changing the isotopes present in the reaction's transition state. If you want to know what "50" means in this context, go read, e.g., Modern Physical Organic Chemistry by Anslyn and Dougherty.)
Seeing as physical chemists already have roles for quantum tunneling in "ordinary" reactions, it does not seem unreasonable that it could play a role in more complex biochemical processes.
P.S.- There was a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a couple months ago about a chemical reaction with NO transition state - it tunnels through it!
A lot of this discussion seems to presume that the companies involved are SOFTWARE companies, by which I mean they make money from their software.
While certainly these companies are going to be the ones most likely to have software to give back, there are plenty of non-software companies that nonetheless use and enhance open source software. For example, I know of biotech firms that have hired professional developers to modify various open source packages (from scientific tools to ecommerce) and, in at least one case, gave the modifications back to the community because they never would sell the software and, at least in the one case, the changes afforded no material strategic advantage.
Management merely said, "well, why not?" when approached about releasing the source code.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Pauli exclusion principle a special case of the general exclusion principle, i.e. any proper wavefunction is antisymmetric wrt exchange of identical fermions and symmetric wrt exchange of identical bosons?
And isn't this a fundamental postulate of quantum mechanics?
This is how the "desire" of atoms to not pack too closely was explained to me in fundamental terms in p-chem back in college. But I'm an organic, not a physical, chemist, so I could be way off base here.
Imaginary numbers (specifically, complex numbers, which consist of a sum of a real and an imaginary number, and which comprise the "complex plane") are INCREDIBLY important in the "real world."
I'm just a chemist, not a mathematician, but I am well aware that imaginary numbers are critical in the Fourier transforms used every time I take an IR or NMR spectrum.
Ever do electrical engineering? Circuit analysis is made a great deal easier when you can treat circuit elements in terms of complex numbers. All that "impedance" stuff you hear about capacitors and the like that makes it possible to apply Ohm's Law to LRC circuits.
These also are not merely made up properties, they are fundamental to mathematics and thus (if one believes that math is the language of the universe) physics. For example, certain integrals necessarily yield imaginary results. These integrals are not of some ethereal interest, but appear throughout quantum mechanics. This is why the amplitude of a wavefunction (used, for example, in molecular modeling that allows for practical achievements like better medicines) is not the square of the wave function (or, for that matter, its absolute value) but the product of the wavefunction and ITS COMPLEX CONJUGATE.
If you'd like more examples of the utility of complex numbers and other "random rules," check out Boas' "Mathematical Methods In The Physical Sciences."
While this MAY (and I do mean may) be true of many subjects, it is certainly not true in the sciences (my area), nor would I expect it to be true for engineering.
You cannot learn chemistry without spending a lot of time in a lab. Labs cost money - much money. Most individuals can't just pick up a $500,000 NMR spectrometer for their basement in order to learn organic chemistry for its own sake. Nor, sadly, can most people deal with the onerous restrictions and requirements on purchasing chemicals and lab equipment these days.
The point here is not to alert the public (i.e. save individual lives), but to mainly take automated actions that could save thousands of lives and prevent millions in damages.
Several other posters have already noted some of these actions. Close gas valves. Power up emergency generators. Engage emergency stops at chemical plants.
I'm going to presume this is a joke. Very, very little science is done purely, "because they can." Typically, if you don't see a reason for research then you probably don't understand it.
Note that I am including "gaining insight into the nature of the universe" as a perfectly valid "reason." What I exclude is research done without any intent to gain insight.
Aside from the fact that most scientists (myself included) like to work on science that actually moves the scientific establishment forward, there is a purely practical issue of funding. It is generally very hard to get research funds for worthless research.
With all due respect, I got my bachelor's degree from a small, private college that is VERY MUCH dedicated to higher learning (and I am not making some reference to a "higher power" here). And it did not block websites - though its upstream connection was fairly meager by modern standards.
I am currently in a graduate program at ANOTHER private university that is also dedicated to higher learning. Of course this one is much larger/richer, and I now get all the perks like Internet2 uplinks.
Don't assume that all private universities are bad. In fact, most of the nation's top research universities have always been private.
My rsnapshot scheme fulfills all those requirements... hourly backups (24 archived), daily (seven archived), weekly (four archived), monthly (six archived). Since the backups are on a remote machine in a different facility it deals with hardware failures very well.
And grandparent wasn't quite right... the backup uses HARDlinks, not SYMlinks, so restoration is truly effortless (and yes, time/date/gid/uid/mode are all preserved).
As I have repeatedly said before, the whole "nanotech" craze is a bunch of marketing baloney.
Know how long a typical C-C bond in an organic molecule is? Hint: try wikipedia. It doesn't take very many atoms to make a single molecule a "nanoparticle!"
My fellow chemists and I have been doing nanotech for years - that is what the FDA has spent all its existence reviewing! I have the utmost respect for those working on new engineered materials, etc., and am perfectly willing to let them call themselves "nanoengineers" instead of the older "material scientists" if it helps them get elusive grant money, but we can't start regulating gold nanoparticles or quantum dots any differently than we would, say, cisplatin.
There simply isn't any fundamentally different science going on in nanotechnology that isn't already present (albeit perhaps in a previously esoteric realm) in chemistry, materials science, or solid-state physics.
Yes, IAAOC (I am an organic chemist - or at least a graduate student in organic chemistry at a major research university).
Charge is not determined merely by the number of bonds/bonded atoms but by the number of lone electrons.
Sure, carbon typically makes four bonds (e.g. methane [CH4] and carbon dioxide [O=C=O]), but uncharged carbon species exist with fewer bonds. For example, carbon radicals, such as the STABLE triphenylmethyl radical (see, e.g., http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/556 1/1846 - registration may be required) exist with three bonds and no charge.
Synthetic chemists ROUTINELY make use of carbenes, species with only two bonds and no charge. See, for example, the Simmons-Smith cyclopropanation (http://www.organic-chemistry.org/namedreactions/s immons-smith-reaction.shtm). (Okay, strictly this reaction probably proceeds by way of a zinc carbenoid intermediate, but you get the idea.)
I can't comment on the article itself as I haven't read it (too busy to go get the original reference), but I will agree that the summary leaves some to be desired.
I hate to burst your bubble, but changing voting schemes does not magically solve all problems. It has been proven (in the mathematical meaning of the word) that NO voting system can ever exist that simultaneously satisfies all of the following conditions for a reasonable voting system:
Social transitivity
Universal applicability
Pareto optimal outcome
Irrelevance of independent choices
No dictatorship
(A political science professor of mine referred to these as the STUPID conditions.)
Even more interesting, problems become MORE pronounced as the number of alternative choices increases. So moving to a more diverse party system would actually make it more difficult to elect those the people truly want.
Slashdot Mirror
How about just carrying a good knife? I always have a Gerber folding blade on me and have never encountered a package it won't open in a snap.
The classical reason for why CERTAIN types of discrimination (e.g. gender and race) discrimination are not permissible is that they are based on properties that cannot (reasonably) be changed.
At least that is how the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled in the past. I am not necessarily saying that the same reasoning applies here, though I do maintain that it would be unreasonable to expect someone to change their genetic make-up even though such technology is beginning to exist in a very primitive form.
While that MAY be more cost-effective (and I say MAY because of the other posters' observations about differential cartridge filling), have you paused to consider the environmental impact of this approach?
Ink cartridges are easily recycled (HP includes postage-paid return envelopes with their new cartridges, not sure about other manufacturers) and thus create a minimum amount of waste and environmental damage. Unless you are going through the efforts of legitimately recycling the printers (and not indirectly sending them to various African nations to be "recycled" in toxic sludge dumps), think of the amount of general waste (plastic, etc.) and toxic metals (mercury, lead, etc.) you are discharging into the environment.
Direct cost isn't the only thing you should think about...
You do realize that land-line telephones operate essentially independently from the power grid (telecom companies generally must have backup power systems due to 911 in many or most locales) whereas cell phone towers have been known to go down with power failure, right?
- Learn some chemistry.
- Not say incredibly stupid things like the quote above.
I infer from the above quote that we will ban all food products since they build up in our body in the form of - wait for it - our cells. It makes me wonder if people are aware that we are all made of chemicals. What do they think amino acids, lipids, and carbohydrates are? (Or water for that matter?)You make a lot of accusations against drug companies. Do you have first-hand evidence for these supposed board room conversations, or are you making this up based on hearsay?
I ask because I actually have been involved in such discussions, dealing with senior executives at some of the largest drug companies in the world, and I have seen no indication of what you allege. Yes, they want to make profit. Yes, money will be directed toward diseases that afflict the wealthy (hence the greater research that goes into erectile dysfunction rather than malaria). But all the drug companies do have active research ongoing into fields like AIDS, and I have never, ever seen any evidence of research, for example, being halted because it would cure the disease too well.
As for patents - how would you suggest the research be paid for? Remember that bringing a drug to market costs upward of $500M on average, and this does not (necessarily) include the costs of all the failed research that went nowhere.
Democratization of science - huh? The vast majority of science is NOT done in secret at all - it's done primarily in the university setting, which has ethics committees, grant review committees, etc. Additionally, all scientists ultimately publish in peer-reviewed journals. Yes, even industrial scientists; if you bother to read journals like the Journal of Organic Chemistry you will quickly find top-notch research coming from authors at such establishments as "Merck Process Research" and "Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development." I can only conclude from your statements that you are not a practicing scientist, or if you are that you do not read (or referee) any of the literature.
Finally, I don't know where your definition of science comes from, but in all my studies of the philosophy of science I have never the final definition include anything about improving the human physical condition. SCIENCE is about acquiring knowledge, period. You seem to conflate science with TECHNOLOGY.
Could this eventually bring new meaning to "wet t-shirt contest?"
In most locales there is commerce law in place that allows customers to pay the LOWEST price advertised/offered by a store. If there is no printed correction to an advertisement in error then the store generally MUST let you buy it for that price. This exists, AFAIK, to prevent stores from baiting you into coming in with one price and then switching the price on you at the store.
There is often a discrepancy between the price in the inventory database and the price posted on the shelf. Wherever I have shopped, when such a discrepancy is present I have paid the lower of the two prices. It may be store policy - but it's usually also the law.
As someone who uses NMR literally every single day and has taken graduate courses in the subject, let me correct a few major issues with your statement.
1) "Doing it with a gradient field and a special pulse sequence lets you get the vibrational amplitudes of your protons based on their position within the gradient field." In NMR (NOT MRI), gradients most commonly come up the form of gradient shimming, which is a technique for homogenizing the magnetic field applied to a sample. In general, gradient fields themselves are undesirable (for chemical analysis; different needs arise in imaging). More importantly, you are confusing IR spectroscopy (which observes molecular vibrations) with NMR, which looks at quantum spin phenomena in nuclei. Briefly, dipolar nuclei (those with an odd number of protons and even number of neutrons; 1H is the best such nucleus for signal/noise ratio due to its high natural abundance and gyromagnetic ratio) distribute themselves into two quantum spin states (aligned/opposed to the incident field) roughly according to Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics due to the slight difference in energies of the states. The energy difference is on the order of RF energy, and the quantized absorption of RF radiation of the exact energy of the state differential can induce a spin state transition. The exact energy required depends primarily on the intrinsic properties of the nuclei, but also slightly on the electronic environment surrounding the nucleus, which permits (in NMR) chemically non-equivalent nuclei to be distinguished in a molecule. More complex experiments (an acronym soup that includes experiments such as DEPT, COSY, NOESY, HETCOR, etc.) can be used to elucidate the entire structure of a molecule, including distances between atoms. MRI is based, broadly speaking, on the fact that the amount of time it takes spin-excited nuclei to "relax" back to the ground state depends on factors including their solvent environment. Hence MRI can easily distinguish between, e.g., water and fat, by carefully observing how long an NMR signal is seen from excited nuclei.
2) "at varying radio-frequencies to see if there was any resulting resonance and output RF (radiofrequency) signal." When resonance is achieved the incident RF is absorbed, not emitted. Applying "varying" RF is classical "continuous wave" NMR. Modern spectrometers (FT-NMR) use a broad pulse to excite ALL resonances simultaneously. As they relax, RF is emitted as you suggest, and the probe coils detect the decaying resonances of all nuclei simultaneously. A computer then does a weighted Fourier transform on the time-resolved data to convert from time domain to frequency domain, thus extracting the spectrum. CW spectrometers have been completely replaced by FT instruments due to much shorter experiment times, better signal to noise, and ability to run multidimensional experiments.
3) "Protons resonate at 2.4 GHz approximately (which is the frequency used in microwaves to resonate the H's in the {H}_2{0} molecules in your food and heat it." I don't even know where to begin. First, the proton resonance frequency is ENTIRELY dependent on the strength of the applied field. Hence the strength of the superconducting magnets in NMR spectrometers is usually measured by the standard proton resonance frequency in the magnet. For example, I usually use 400 MHz instruments, which means that the field is of such a strength that protons resonate around 400 MHz. I also have 500 and 600 MHz instruments available when I need greater resolution or signal/noise ratio. The primary difference between the instruments is the strength (read: size) of the cryomagnet. Furthermore, the highest power NMR commercially available recently was 900 MHz. I have heard that the major manufacturers (Bruker and Varian) have a 950 on deck, and it may now be for sale (for a hefty sum). They are still working on trying to reach 1 GHz. There are NMR spectrometers that have been reported to achieve the much higher 2.4 GHz resonance, but these are highly ex
A similar approach has been used in Iraq to detonate roadside bombs in advance of convoy movement. A commander discovered that the detonators transmitted the same frequency as RC car controllers. He thus taped down the controls on such a controller and - voila - IEDs would detonate a safe distance in front of his convoy.
Never underestimate the utility of relatively low-tech solutions.
I'm not sure what you mean by "patent system" but I hope you realize that the patent and copyright system is both mandated and justified in none other than Article I of the Constitution of the United States, which stipulates that Congress shall have the right...
"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
The patent system exists to benefit all people, not just inventors, nor just lawyers.
Recently, a group of researchers (with which I have no affiliation, btw) have demonstrated how to convert sugar derivatives into actual short- and medium-chain alkanes, i.e. gasoline. Check out the paper:
Huber, G.W., et al. Science, 308, pp. 1446-1449.
I had a political science prof in college who made an interesting point about the war in Iraq. He argued that the war is NOT about oil and never was, reasoning that we could access the oil by corrupt dealings and underhanded collaboration with Hussein.
Instead, he believed that Bush genuinely believed that God told him to bring democracy to the country, and that he was obligated to obey.
I don't know whether I agree with the professor, but if this is true then that mindset is far, far scarier than an invasion for oil.
Yes.
I notice that some other posters are asserting that quantum mechanics has no bearing in high mass or energy systems. This is partly true, and reflective of the correspondence principle, which states that the predictions of quantum mechanics should merge seamlessly with classical mechanics as the systems of interest become progressively more classical.
However...
It is already well established that quantum mechanical effects can manifest themselves at the MOLECULAR level, and consequently can even be observed at higher levels. A common example is the Jahn-Teller Effect, which has a profound impact on the chemical and physical properties of certain transition metal compounds.
Another example, perhaps less known but directly relevant to the article at hand, is quantum tunneling giving rise to kinetic isotope effects as large as 50. (Briefly: a kinetic isotope effect is a change in rate of a chemical reaction due to changing the isotopes present in the reaction's transition state. If you want to know what "50" means in this context, go read, e.g., Modern Physical Organic Chemistry by Anslyn and Dougherty.)
Seeing as physical chemists already have roles for quantum tunneling in "ordinary" reactions, it does not seem unreasonable that it could play a role in more complex biochemical processes.
P.S.- There was a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences a couple months ago about a chemical reaction with NO transition state - it tunnels through it!
A lot of this discussion seems to presume that the companies involved are SOFTWARE companies, by which I mean they make money from their software.
While certainly these companies are going to be the ones most likely to have software to give back, there are plenty of non-software companies that nonetheless use and enhance open source software. For example, I know of biotech firms that have hired professional developers to modify various open source packages (from scientific tools to ecommerce) and, in at least one case, gave the modifications back to the community because they never would sell the software and, at least in the one case, the changes afforded no material strategic advantage.
Management merely said, "well, why not?" when approached about releasing the source code.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Pauli exclusion principle a special case of the general exclusion principle, i.e. any proper wavefunction is antisymmetric wrt exchange of identical fermions and symmetric wrt exchange of identical bosons?
And isn't this a fundamental postulate of quantum mechanics?
This is how the "desire" of atoms to not pack too closely was explained to me in fundamental terms in p-chem back in college. But I'm an organic, not a physical, chemist, so I could be way off base here.
Uh... are you joking?
Imaginary numbers (specifically, complex numbers, which consist of a sum of a real and an imaginary number, and which comprise the "complex plane") are INCREDIBLY important in the "real world."
I'm just a chemist, not a mathematician, but I am well aware that imaginary numbers are critical in the Fourier transforms used every time I take an IR or NMR spectrum.
Ever do electrical engineering? Circuit analysis is made a great deal easier when you can treat circuit elements in terms of complex numbers. All that "impedance" stuff you hear about capacitors and the like that makes it possible to apply Ohm's Law to LRC circuits.
These also are not merely made up properties, they are fundamental to mathematics and thus (if one believes that math is the language of the universe) physics. For example, certain integrals necessarily yield imaginary results. These integrals are not of some ethereal interest, but appear throughout quantum mechanics. This is why the amplitude of a wavefunction (used, for example, in molecular modeling that allows for practical achievements like better medicines) is not the square of the wave function (or, for that matter, its absolute value) but the product of the wavefunction and ITS COMPLEX CONJUGATE.
If you'd like more examples of the utility of complex numbers and other "random rules," check out Boas' "Mathematical Methods In The Physical Sciences."
While this MAY (and I do mean may) be true of many subjects, it is certainly not true in the sciences (my area), nor would I expect it to be true for engineering.
You cannot learn chemistry without spending a lot of time in a lab. Labs cost money - much money. Most individuals can't just pick up a $500,000 NMR spectrometer for their basement in order to learn organic chemistry for its own sake. Nor, sadly, can most people deal with the onerous restrictions and requirements on purchasing chemicals and lab equipment these days.
The point here is not to alert the public (i.e. save individual lives), but to mainly take automated actions that could save thousands of lives and prevent millions in damages.
Several other posters have already noted some of these actions. Close gas valves. Power up emergency generators. Engage emergency stops at chemical plants.
I'm going to presume this is a joke. Very, very little science is done purely, "because they can." Typically, if you don't see a reason for research then you probably don't understand it.
Note that I am including "gaining insight into the nature of the universe" as a perfectly valid "reason." What I exclude is research done without any intent to gain insight.
Aside from the fact that most scientists (myself included) like to work on science that actually moves the scientific establishment forward, there is a purely practical issue of funding. It is generally very hard to get research funds for worthless research.
With all due respect, I got my bachelor's degree from a small, private college that is VERY MUCH dedicated to higher learning (and I am not making some reference to a "higher power" here). And it did not block websites - though its upstream connection was fairly meager by modern standards.
I am currently in a graduate program at ANOTHER private university that is also dedicated to higher learning. Of course this one is much larger/richer, and I now get all the perks like Internet2 uplinks.
Don't assume that all private universities are bad. In fact, most of the nation's top research universities have always been private.
My rsnapshot scheme fulfills all those requirements... hourly backups (24 archived), daily (seven archived), weekly (four archived), monthly (six archived). Since the backups are on a remote machine in a different facility it deals with hardware failures very well.
And grandparent wasn't quite right... the backup uses HARDlinks, not SYMlinks, so restoration is truly effortless (and yes, time/date/gid/uid/mode are all preserved).
As I have repeatedly said before, the whole "nanotech" craze is a bunch of marketing baloney.
Know how long a typical C-C bond in an organic molecule is? Hint: try wikipedia. It doesn't take very many atoms to make a single molecule a "nanoparticle!"
My fellow chemists and I have been doing nanotech for years - that is what the FDA has spent all its existence reviewing! I have the utmost respect for those working on new engineered materials, etc., and am perfectly willing to let them call themselves "nanoengineers" instead of the older "material scientists" if it helps them get elusive grant money, but we can't start regulating gold nanoparticles or quantum dots any differently than we would, say, cisplatin.
There simply isn't any fundamentally different science going on in nanotechnology that isn't already present (albeit perhaps in a previously esoteric realm) in chemistry, materials science, or solid-state physics.
Yes, IAAOC (I am an organic chemist - or at least a graduate student in organic chemistry at a major research university).
6 1/1846 - registration may be required) exist with three bonds and no charge.
s immons-smith-reaction.shtm). (Okay, strictly this reaction probably proceeds by way of a zinc carbenoid intermediate, but you get the idea.)
Charge is not determined merely by the number of bonds/bonded atoms but by the number of lone electrons.
Sure, carbon typically makes four bonds (e.g. methane [CH4] and carbon dioxide [O=C=O]), but uncharged carbon species exist with fewer bonds. For example, carbon radicals, such as the STABLE triphenylmethyl radical (see, e.g., http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/295/55
Synthetic chemists ROUTINELY make use of carbenes, species with only two bonds and no charge. See, for example, the Simmons-Smith cyclopropanation (http://www.organic-chemistry.org/namedreactions/
I can't comment on the article itself as I haven't read it (too busy to go get the original reference), but I will agree that the summary leaves some to be desired.
(A political science professor of mine referred to these as the STUPID conditions.)
For more information, see Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.
Even more interesting, problems become MORE pronounced as the number of alternative choices increases. So moving to a more diverse party system would actually make it more difficult to elect those the people truly want.