"What I want to know is how inorganic matter transubstantiates into living stuff. "
With such an ambitious goal you will need to study hard. Given that this year is his centenary, you might want to start with Alan Turing's 1951 paper, 'The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis'.
It would indeed be great to be able to use wind power for desalination. This could reduce the adverse effects of having to accommodate fluctuations in power input by the grid and by mainstream generating plant. Reducing the impact of wind energy's variability would save on costs and improve the reliability and longevity of the rest of the system.
The problem is that wind only generates power for 30% of the time, so three times as many desalination plants would be required for a given output. Off-peak nuclear would have a greater duty cycle and is likely to be both less expensive and more dependable.
Top marks to the authors of the spoof paper 'Computer application in mathematics' for poking fun at Elsevier, who published it in one of their learned journals. So much for the claims about peer review!
"Computer magnification is a Universal computer phenomenon. This technique is applied in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine, architecture, particle physics, genetics, microbiology and in chemistry. Without magnification, deep studies and research are impossible. For the first time in the history of mathematics, the authors applied magnification technology and obtained a solution for a nearly 4300 year old parallel postulate problem. In brief an impossible proposition was proved as possible. This is a problematic problem. Further studies will give birth to a new branch of mathematical science."
"... the sea ice around the Antarctic coasts is above average by 452,000 km2, so overall the planet's sea ice is at the moment slightly above average in extent "
News from Envisat on its 10th birthday, on the 5th April, just before it gave up the ghost, painted a very different picture.
Re: How To Save 2000 Liters of Heating Oil Per Year
Rather more useful would be a smaller version. Two or three tons of water could easily be stored under many houses without the need for massive excavation and new foundations. Together with an intelligent distribution system this heat store could be used for load shedding, thus increasing the overall efficiency of electricity generation. Equally it might mop up some of the wasteful variability that wind energy is going to introduce.
Heat pumps are quite effective when the temperature difference is modest. A COP of 3 or 4 is easily possible and they are not that expensive. So combining a heat pump for heating and nuclear plant to make electricity can provide an efficient and inexpensive way to heat homes.
It would be interesting to know what level of risk nuclear electricity generation is assessed to present and how much the insurance industry charges for covering it. One might imagine that there are large profits being made here which result in a commensurate increase in the cost of electricity.
It's a shame that there isn't an opportunity for individuals to stake a portion of their savings against the risks in return for a reduction in the cost of electricity. So, for example, I might put £500 into a fund, split as cover of £100 each against the power stations from which I draw most of my electricity, in return for a £50 rebate on my annual bill. The stake could be invested in new-build generating plant, unless there were to be an accident when part of it would be used to pay for remediation.
Something on these lines would be more effective in helping to cut carbon than the Feed-In-Tariff of 43p per kW-hr index-linked for the next 25 years. It would allow similar profit to the FIT to individuals who invest but with the distinction that it would reduce the overall cost of electricity rather than increasing it.
Presumably, however, human psychology is such that people are more likely to pour money week after week into the lottery, which is an odds-on loss, rather than funding and insuring the nuclear industry which is an odds-on winner.
At one stage the chief of ACPO had said that to take the DNA of policemen would be an infringement of their human rights.
As I understand it now, however, the police keep a DNA database of their own members which is voluntary and completely separate, specifically to cover the possibility of contamination of the crime scene.
When I'd asked about this a few years ago they said it was difficult not to contaminate a crime scene and so having a separate database meant that it is straightforward to eliminate such false leads without wasted effort. I still don't see why a separate database is needed.
There definitely seem to be two camps. One of them is apparently funded by agrochemical companies such as Bayer.
Indeed "some [are] claiming that the actual doses used in the wild aren't enough to do any bee-related damage." But research in recent years shows clearly enough that non-lethal doses of a number of widely distributed agrochemicals can a) disorientate the bees' navigation; b) generally weaken the hive; and c) act synergistically.
Pressure systems are quite complicated when precipitation is taken into account.
Condensation reduces pressure; and it warms the air with latent heat. Also the density of the air increases as raindrops form because of the reduction in the proportion of water (molecular weight 18 vs an average of about 29 for air). So warmer and drier air at lower pressure can be more dense than cooler, wetter air.
In 2010 research was published by Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk et al. on Colony Collapse Disorder. This suggested that fungal and viral infections together were responsible. It also claimed, contrary to the views of other researchers and many beekeepers, that insecticides and pesticides did not significantly harm bees.
Bayer Crop Science had apparently funded the research. There seems to have been a certain amount of discussion as to whether there was a conflict of interest.
These new gas fired power stations are needed not so much "to cope with peaks and troughs in demand" but in order to cope with the increasing variability on the supply side which the introduction of PV and wind-power is causing.
Rather than replacing aging coal-burning plant with nuclear we will have gas plus a bit of wind when it blows (70%/30% at best); underwritten by government for decades like the feed-in-tarrif. Rather than clean power we will have a supply which is half as dirty but will last for twice as long. Even those unconvinced about AGW will agree that gas is better saved for the chemical industry and transport; and that dependency on Russia is not such a good idea.
As for "gas-fired power stations" being "relatively quick to build", why can't we build nuclear plant in 42 months like the Chinese, at £1,000 per kW output capacity?
It will be fascinating to know to what extent magnetohydrodynamic processes are involved. For example, is the apparent lack of turbulence seen when shuttle exhaust is observed due to eddy current damping by the Earth's magnetic field? And does the pinch effect play a part in keeping the jet streams concentrated?
... the crumbling of dogma that the paper exposes seems to have gone unnoticed. The sacred doctrine that gravity is the only significant force at galactic scales has been completely ignored.
"... combinations of gravity and magnetic fields can cause galaxies to leak long strands of gas."
Who knows, within a few years it may even be possible to question the existence of dark matter without unleashing a hail of opprobrium from the disciples of orthodoxy.
Weapons development during cold war and the cavalier attitudes towards radiation of the '50s and '60s have left a legacy of waste that needs to be dealt with properly whether or not new nuclear power plant is built.
It seems to me to be criminal not to use nuclear power for a larger proportion of our energy needs. Recent reactor designs provide the possibility to transmute waste so that it is much less dangerous, reducing radioactive half-lives from many millenia to a few centuries. They don't add much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and oceans. Existing stocks of 'waste' can power them for a few hundred years. And, perhaps most importantly for future generations, they don't deplete precious reserves of oil and gas.
Take a look at http://www.energy.eu/ for price comparisons.
Consumers in France, Finland and Sweden pay about half as much for electricity as those in Denmark and Germany. Clearly this isn't only because nuclear is used in preference to wind and PV, but it's a large part of the reason.
The shutdown of French generators during the 2003 and 2006 heat waves was not because they were nuclear but because they used river water to cool steam. Standard coal-burning and CCGT powered turbines would have been similarly affected.
As Sweden and France demonstrate, clear benefits accrue from using nuclear energy to generate a large proportion of electricity. The UK's subsidies for wind and PV energy will in effect create a cost penalty on the construction of new nuclear power plant.
Even using optimistic storage technologies, such as pumped hydro and grid coupling of vehicle batteries, wind still requires nearly 100% backup; calm spells of up to three weeks are by no means unknown. The least expensive solution is to build gas generation plant. And gas plant that has in effect been paid for through wind energy subsidies will remain cheaper than new nuclear plant until its running costs become significantly higher.
The anti-nuke camp labels the cleanup of leftovers from research in the cold war and waste from early nuclear power plant a subsidy; despite the necessity of dealing with this problem in any case. Rather than being subsidised as they claim, the nuclear industry is being penalised through the promotion of an alternative which is far from being low-carbon and is more expensive in the medium term.
Pyrolysis of wood and waste to produce biofuels plus biochar which can be buried and which can improve soil quality and yields seems to be a good way to go.
http://www.aston-berg.co.uk/Resources/user/Biomass%20pyrolysis%20-%20a%20guide%20to%20UK%20capabilities%20May%202011v2.pdf
If it's a cheap and cheerful Bourdon tube gauge then it might not be all that accurate; and the measurement will depend on atmospheric pressure at the time. To be certain that the required 15mm Hg has been achieved (measuring -745 mm or thereabouts) it would help to calibrate the gauge, if this is possible.
An internal insulated lining would work ... but what about the joists? In most of these properties, built before joist hangers were invented, they were supported on one brick's worth of the wall with only a single brick on the outside to keep them dry.
The insulation manufacturers suggest leaving the gap between the downstairs ceiling and the floor above uninsulated. Although this allows circulation, it leaves a severe heat bridge; and there may still be enhanced tracking of condensation towards the cold wall.
It might equally well be part of a campaign to warn of the dangers of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, as recently suggested (again) by US/Israeli hawks in electioneering rallies,
The fallout from demolition using the bunker-busters that the US supplied to Israel could be considerable and would not be confined to Iran.
Some of the early work on the effects of toxoplasmosis on humans was done in the Czech Republic. This came up with the astounding discovery that infection correlates with an increased incidence of motor vehicle crashes.
Here in a recent overview, although the author carefully notes that possible confounding factors are not ruled out, the data suggest that men infected with toxoplasmosis have a 2.65 times higher risk of traffic accidents.
Never mind the 5 million tweets that the AP article says they may read in a busy day, how many are they writing? How many fake personas do they have posted on the interwebs, and how many factoids do they launch in a typical day?
This is just a marketing ploy, designed with the aim of burying the historically poor reputation associated with the BSoD. Look out for a name being given to this laser device such as White Screen of Safety.
"... which makes the UK VAT rate of 20 per cent ... look reasonable."
As well as VAT on sales, the British government raised over £22 billion from the auction of the 3G spectrum. This additional component of revenue is far from negligible.
"Smart meters could also mean lower electricity bills, because they will help energy companies to run more efficiently. If energy companies have a more accurate picture of how much energy the country uses and when they use it, they will be able to make sure they have the right amount of energy at the right time."
The use of 'authorised' telephone taps continues to grow, getting on for 2,000 each year.
Some of these official interceptions will be just as invasive as those set up by newspapers, and a proportion will be misplaced or malicious. There is, however, no remedy for the harm that official taps cause.
"Distinguishing two closely related species might be significantly harder than detecting completely unrelated species..."
If you read the article about the high school testing, it looks as though they were close enough to the sharp edge of technology.
' the young scientists helped discover that the tea plant includes a genetic difference between broad-leaf assamica variety tea exported from India and small-leaf sinensis variety tea exported from China, the two largest tea-producing countries by far.'
'"We were excited to make a genetic discovery, particularly in an important crop plant like tea that scientists have scrutinized in detail," says Young...'
'OLAF realised that these labs were among only three in the whole of Europe "able to undertake the DNA testing necessary to determine the species of the garlic"'
In America, by contrast, this is the sort of task that high school students can undertake. In the commendable study linked here, adulterants were discovered in a range of herbal teas.
It's also worth noting that the equipment the students used cost about $5,000 plus $15 per sample and took about 24 hours in total. How much did EU taxpayers pay?
Professor Bruce Draine, at Princeton, pointed out some while ago that as well as lensing by distant galaxies a similar process could occur with relatively nearby gas clouds.
It would be interesting to know how many examples of lensing have been examined using spectroscopy to check for the absorption lines that would signify gas cloud rather than galactic.lensing.
There are suppliers who specialise in providing tree-huggers with electricity generated from wind and PV, so co-called green electricity. But nowhere is there a supplier who buys nuclear energy for their customers as much as possible.
Perhaps more to the point, people who presently commit a few thousand quids to the installation of PV panels on their roof will be in receipt of inflated feed-in tariffs guaranteed for the next twenty-five years, increasing the price for everyone else in order to cover the subsidy. This scheme is a nice little earner for those involved.
What we need is a similar opportunity to buy a slice of equally 'green' nuclear generating capacity, a stake in new power stations. This energy wouldn't need to be subsidised, simply supplied free from the absurd loading that the wind and PV programme is and will for decades be adding to electricity prices.
It seems a shame that the developers could not instead have been working towards providing a similar system for use in general health diagnosis.
To the extent that the physiological measures are useful indicators, there appears to be a much greater opportunity for saving life and limb from the use of this sort of technology in the health industry rather than homeland security.
Even in airports, there appears to be more scope in detecting potential victims of stroke and embolism than terrorists. Although the overall in-flight (natural) death risk is low at 125 deaths per billion km, or 25 deaths per million flights, there are more than 10 million passenger flights each year in the USA.
Many cases besides high-profile miscarriages of justice point to the need to improve the accuracy and comprehension of evidence wherever possible and to avoid false reasoning. However, Prof. Fenton's approach has the potential to make matters worse than they already are. There is no guarantee that computer assisted Bayesian evaluation and presentation tools will provide a panacea for the warts and wrinkles of the criminal justice system.
In the paper he cites, outlining a proposal to use simple visual representations of Bayesian trees to convey the impact of forensic evidence, he claims that,
"... there should be no more need to explain [to the court] the Bayesian calculations in a complex argument than there should be any need to explain the thousands of circuit level calculations used by a calculator to compute a long division. Lay people do not need to understand how the calculator works in order to accept the results of the calculations as being correct to a sufficient level of accuracy. The same must eventually apply to the results of calculations from a [Binary Network] tool."
It would be uncharitable to suggest that he is set to undermine the principle of trial by one's peers and replace this with a computerised evidence evaluation machine, but it would be equally wrong to ignore the common law principles that should be at the basis of what goes on in court.
The case of Sally Clark and the 'prosecutor's fallacy'
Sally Clark's wrongful conviction was not because Bayesian statistics had been used. To the contrary, it was because they hadn't; and because the use of the so-called prosecutor's fallacy which in part led to her conviction went unchallenged.
Neither is the article quite accurate in saying that the fallacy stemmed from the "[il]logic used by one eminent expert witness." Professor Sir Roy Meadows's presentation of the invalid multiplication of probabilities actually came from a government publication which he read out in court. After his earlier involvement in real cases of infanticide, Meadows may well have become somewhat biased, and quite likely he should have known better. But he seems to have been made into a scapegoat for a practice that is actually quite widespread.
http://www.bmj.com/content/324/7328/41.1.full.pdf
In 2005, the HoC Select Committee on Science and Technology looked into the use in court of expert witnesses, statistical probabilities, and the prosecutor's fallacy. I wrote to them to say that the publication used in Sally Clark's prosecution, which endorsed the invalid multiplication of probabilities, was still available from the Stationary Office and suggested they might see fit to have it removed it from circulation or at least ensure that it was properly amended. A curt reply informed me that this was not within their remit.
It can be a wee bit tricky to balance Chicken Little tactics during a recession.
Were the asteroid threat to be played too hard then there might be calls for cutbacks in all other non-essential space exploration. The 'is there life on Mars' crowd would then get somewhat miffed that their exhortations were no longer bringing in the funds.
Initial estimates of galactic mass are based on the Virial Theorem.
Assuming that the only force in play is gravity and assuming that stellar velocities have more or less evened out ('virialised') from the galaxy's initial formation, then the Virial Theorem shows that the total kinetic energy is equal to half the potential energy. Total kinetic energy is proportional to total mass. Total potential energy (in a given configuration) varies as square of mass. So if the relative motion of the stars about the galaxy centre of mass is known - and information about their velocities is available from spectroscopic observations - by making reasonable assumptions about their distribution within the galaxy it is possible to estimate the total mass.
Unfortunately, observations of the variation of stellar velocities with distance from the centre are not in accord with this simple model. The prediction is that outside the main concentration of stars, velocities should fall off with the inverse square of distance. In fact, velocities deduced from spectographic observations appear pretty much constant to a considerable distance from the centre. Equally puzzling is the observations that stellar (linear) velocities are in the range of 150 to 350 km/S irrespective of large differences in the size of the galaxy they inhabit.
It is the discrepancy between the 'Keplerian model' (stars in a galaxy behaving in a similar way to planets around a star under the influence of inverse square law gravity only) and the observation of more or less constant velocity which gave rise to the idea of dark matter. This dark matter is assumed, by some miracle or other, to sit in the shape of a halo which is in precisely ihe right place to cause the observed pattern of stellar velocities.
A current rationalisation of the dilemma which some cosmologists favour comes from MOND - Modified Newtonian Dynamics. Here it is assumed that the inverse square law does not hold at very large distances.
For reasons which largely escape me, the alternative explanation proposed half a century ago by Hannes Alfvèn that electromagnetic processes are in play is generally treated as heresy.
Register
461 posts • joined Tuesday 29th May 2007 21:16 GMT
Page:
In memoriam?
Is this a tribute to Honeywell's H316, the first ever 'kitchen computer', offered to the public in 1969 for $10,000?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316
Flame for obvious reasons.
Re: so and so begat so and so
"What I want to know is how inorganic matter transubstantiates into living stuff. "
With such an ambitious goal you will need to study hard. Given that this year is his centenary, you might want to start with Alan Turing's 1951 paper, 'The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis'.
http://www.dna.caltech.edu/courses/cs191/paperscs191/turing.pdf
Re: Rising cost of ale
Maybe you can persuade the landlord to refrain from watering the beer until the drought has ended.
Re: Wind
It would indeed be great to be able to use wind power for desalination. This could reduce the adverse effects of having to accommodate fluctuations in power input by the grid and by mainstream generating plant. Reducing the impact of wind energy's variability would save on costs and improve the reliability and longevity of the rest of the system.
The problem is that wind only generates power for 30% of the time, so three times as many desalination plants would be required for a given output. Off-peak nuclear would have a greater duty cycle and is likely to be both less expensive and more dependable.
A touch of humour
Top marks to the authors of the spoof paper 'Computer application in mathematics' for poking fun at Elsevier, who published it in one of their learned journals. So much for the claims about peer review!
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/math-paper-retracted-because-it-contains-no-scientific-content/#more-7311
"Computer magnification is a Universal computer phenomenon. This technique is applied in physics, astronomy, biology, medicine, architecture, particle physics, genetics, microbiology and in chemistry. Without magnification, deep studies and research are impossible. For the first time in the history of mathematics, the authors applied magnification technology and obtained a solution for a nearly 4300 year old parallel postulate problem. In brief an impossible proposition was proved as possible. This is a problematic problem. Further studies will give birth to a new branch of mathematical science."
Re: Obviously it was telling the truth about climate change....
There's a cover-up without any shadow of doubt. On the 11th April the Reg was telling the world that Antarctic ice is above average.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/11/bering_sea_ice_cover/
"... the sea ice around the Antarctic coasts is above average by 452,000 km2, so overall the planet's sea ice is at the moment slightly above average in extent "
News from Envisat on its 10th birthday, on the 5th April, just before it gave up the ghost, painted a very different picture.
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Envisat/SEMDWMEWF0H_0.html
"Satellite observes rapid ice shelf disintegration in Antarctic."
Re: How To Save 2000 Liters of Heating Oil Per Year
Rather more useful would be a smaller version. Two or three tons of water could easily be stored under many houses without the need for massive excavation and new foundations. Together with an intelligent distribution system this heat store could be used for load shedding, thus increasing the overall efficiency of electricity generation. Equally it might mop up some of the wasteful variability that wind energy is going to introduce.
Heat pumps are quite effective when the temperature difference is modest. A COP of 3 or 4 is easily possible and they are not that expensive. So combining a heat pump for heating and nuclear plant to make electricity can provide an efficient and inexpensive way to heat homes.
Feed-In-Insurance
It would be interesting to know what level of risk nuclear electricity generation is assessed to present and how much the insurance industry charges for covering it. One might imagine that there are large profits being made here which result in a commensurate increase in the cost of electricity.
It's a shame that there isn't an opportunity for individuals to stake a portion of their savings against the risks in return for a reduction in the cost of electricity. So, for example, I might put £500 into a fund, split as cover of £100 each against the power stations from which I draw most of my electricity, in return for a £50 rebate on my annual bill. The stake could be invested in new-build generating plant, unless there were to be an accident when part of it would be used to pay for remediation.
Something on these lines would be more effective in helping to cut carbon than the Feed-In-Tariff of 43p per kW-hr index-linked for the next 25 years. It would allow similar profit to the FIT to individuals who invest but with the distinction that it would reduce the overall cost of electricity rather than increasing it.
Presumably, however, human psychology is such that people are more likely to pour money week after week into the lottery, which is an odds-on loss, rather than funding and insuring the nuclear industry which is an odds-on winner.
Re: Operation Incredulious
At one stage the chief of ACPO had said that to take the DNA of policemen would be an infringement of their human rights.
As I understand it now, however, the police keep a DNA database of their own members which is voluntary and completely separate, specifically to cover the possibility of contamination of the crime scene.
When I'd asked about this a few years ago they said it was difficult not to contaminate a crime scene and so having a separate database meant that it is straightforward to eliminate such false leads without wasted effort. I still don't see why a separate database is needed.
"Scientists are in two minds"?
There definitely seem to be two camps. One of them is apparently funded by agrochemical companies such as Bayer.
Indeed "some [are] claiming that the actual doses used in the wild aren't enough to do any bee-related damage." But research in recent years shows clearly enough that non-lethal doses of a number of widely distributed agrochemicals can a) disorientate the bees' navigation; b) generally weaken the hive; and c) act synergistically.
See, for example,
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009754
"A detailed audit trail is generated ..."
Will patients have access to the audit trail?
If so, enough are likely to take the trouble to see who has been looking at their records to provide a basic check on misuse of the system.
If patients can't check the audit trail of access to their records then perhaps the rules need to be changed so that they can.
Warming and condensing
Pressure systems are quite complicated when precipitation is taken into account.
Condensation reduces pressure; and it warms the air with latent heat. Also the density of the air increases as raindrops form because of the reduction in the proportion of water (molecular weight 18 vs an average of about 29 for air). So warmer and drier air at lower pressure can be more dense than cooler, wetter air.
Bee colony collapses blamed on a fungus?
In 2010 research was published by Dr. Jerry Bromenshenk et al. on Colony Collapse Disorder. This suggested that fungal and viral infections together were responsible. It also claimed, contrary to the views of other researchers and many beekeepers, that insecticides and pesticides did not significantly harm bees.
Bayer Crop Science had apparently funded the research. There seems to have been a certain amount of discussion as to whether there was a conflict of interest.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/10/08/news/honey_bees_ny_times.fortune/index.htm
"Twice as clean" or only half as dirty
These new gas fired power stations are needed not so much "to cope with peaks and troughs in demand" but in order to cope with the increasing variability on the supply side which the introduction of PV and wind-power is causing.
Rather than replacing aging coal-burning plant with nuclear we will have gas plus a bit of wind when it blows (70%/30% at best); underwritten by government for decades like the feed-in-tarrif. Rather than clean power we will have a supply which is half as dirty but will last for twice as long. Even those unconvinced about AGW will agree that gas is better saved for the chemical industry and transport; and that dependency on Russia is not such a good idea.
As for "gas-fired power stations" being "relatively quick to build", why can't we build nuclear plant in 42 months like the Chinese, at £1,000 per kW output capacity?
MHD
It will be fascinating to know to what extent magnetohydrodynamic processes are involved. For example, is the apparent lack of turbulence seen when shuttle exhaust is observed due to eddy current damping by the Earth's magnetic field? And does the pinch effect play a part in keeping the jet streams concentrated?
Meanwhile ...
... the crumbling of dogma that the paper exposes seems to have gone unnoticed. The sacred doctrine that gravity is the only significant force at galactic scales has been completely ignored.
"... combinations of gravity and magnetic fields can cause galaxies to leak long strands of gas."
Who knows, within a few years it may even be possible to question the existence of dark matter without unleashing a hail of opprobrium from the disciples of orthodoxy.
Criminal?
Weapons development during cold war and the cavalier attitudes towards radiation of the '50s and '60s have left a legacy of waste that needs to be dealt with properly whether or not new nuclear power plant is built.
It seems to me to be criminal not to use nuclear power for a larger proportion of our energy needs. Recent reactor designs provide the possibility to transmute waste so that it is much less dangerous, reducing radioactive half-lives from many millenia to a few centuries. They don't add much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and oceans. Existing stocks of 'waste' can power them for a few hundred years. And, perhaps most importantly for future generations, they don't deplete precious reserves of oil and gas.
Nuclear is "not particularly cheap"
Take a look at http://www.energy.eu/ for price comparisons.
Consumers in France, Finland and Sweden pay about half as much for electricity as those in Denmark and Germany. Clearly this isn't only because nuclear is used in preference to wind and PV, but it's a large part of the reason.
The shutdown of French generators during the 2003 and 2006 heat waves was not because they were nuclear but because they used river water to cool steam. Standard coal-burning and CCGT powered turbines would have been similarly affected.
The anti-nuclear barrier
As Sweden and France demonstrate, clear benefits accrue from using nuclear energy to generate a large proportion of electricity. The UK's subsidies for wind and PV energy will in effect create a cost penalty on the construction of new nuclear power plant.
Even using optimistic storage technologies, such as pumped hydro and grid coupling of vehicle batteries, wind still requires nearly 100% backup; calm spells of up to three weeks are by no means unknown. The least expensive solution is to build gas generation plant. And gas plant that has in effect been paid for through wind energy subsidies will remain cheaper than new nuclear plant until its running costs become significantly higher.
The anti-nuke camp labels the cleanup of leftovers from research in the cold war and waste from early nuclear power plant a subsidy; despite the necessity of dealing with this problem in any case. Rather than being subsidised as they claim, the nuclear industry is being penalised through the promotion of an alternative which is far from being low-carbon and is more expensive in the medium term.
Nukes in space
Never mind the search for life on Mars, this asteroid business is deadly serious. We need to have nukes in space without delay.
... just store the wood ...
Pyrolysis of wood and waste to produce biofuels plus biochar which can be buried and which can improve soil quality and yields seems to be a good way to go. http://www.aston-berg.co.uk/Resources/user/Biomass%20pyrolysis%20-%20a%20guide%20to%20UK%20capabilities%20May%202011v2.pdfWhat sort of pressure gauge is it?
If it's a cheap and cheerful Bourdon tube gauge then it might not be all that accurate; and the measurement will depend on atmospheric pressure at the time. To be certain that the required 15mm Hg has been achieved (measuring -745 mm or thereabouts) it would help to calibrate the gauge, if this is possible.
Hurry up
Alan Turing's Centenary is next year.
Possibly
But will it fly?
Victorian terrace with solid walls
An internal insulated lining would work ... but what about the joists? In most of these properties, built before joist hangers were invented, they were supported on one brick's worth of the wall with only a single brick on the outside to keep them dry.
The insulation manufacturers suggest leaving the gap between the downstairs ceiling and the floor above uninsulated. Although this allows circulation, it leaves a severe heat bridge; and there may still be enhanced tracking of condensation towards the cold wall.
Check the expense claims
This sounds very Graham Greenish to me.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Man_in_Havana for those who don't know the story)
Brainwashing to attack Iran?
It might equally well be part of a campaign to warn of the dangers of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, as recently suggested (again) by US/Israeli hawks in electioneering rallies,
The fallout from demolition using the bunker-busters that the US supplied to Israel could be considerable and would not be confined to Iran.
Keep him away from the EU !
To the mindset of control-freak bureaucrats this would be perfection.
Don't overlook research in the Czech Republic
Some of the early work on the effects of toxoplasmosis on humans was done in the Czech Republic. This came up with the astounding discovery that infection correlates with an increased incidence of motor vehicle crashes.
Here in a recent overview, although the author carefully notes that possible confounding factors are not ruled out, the data suggest that men infected with toxoplasmosis have a 2.65 times higher risk of traffic accidents.
http://schizophreniabulletin.oxfordjournals.org/content/33/3/757.full
But how much do they write?
Never mind the 5 million tweets that the AP article says they may read in a busy day, how many are they writing? How many fake personas do they have posted on the interwebs, and how many factoids do they launch in a typical day?
Blue Screen of Death
This is just a marketing ploy, designed with the aim of burying the historically poor reputation associated with the BSoD. Look out for a name being given to this laser device such as White Screen of Safety.
Likely to draw visitors?
"... our own habit of broadcasting radio, TV etc was thought likely to draw visitors to us..."
A scan across some of the available channels seems to indicate that it already has.
Cautious optimism
Dare we hope that the government has done something right?
VAT is only part of the government take
"... which makes the UK VAT rate of 20 per cent ... look reasonable."
As well as VAT on sales, the British government raised over £22 billion from the auction of the 3G spectrum. This additional component of revenue is far from negligible.
U-switch nonsense
Oops, it looks as thought some readers may have taken seriously the paragraph I posted from the U-switch site.
Apologies to those who did. I thought it would be immediately obvious that it's complete rubbish.
U-switch explains
"Smart meters could also mean lower electricity bills, because they will help energy companies to run more efficiently. If energy companies have a more accurate picture of how much energy the country uses and when they use it, they will be able to make sure they have the right amount of energy at the right time."
http://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/smart-meters-explained/
And for the 'official' taps?
The use of 'authorised' telephone taps continues to grow, getting on for 2,000 each year.
Some of these official interceptions will be just as invasive as those set up by newspapers, and a proportion will be misplaced or malicious. There is, however, no remedy for the harm that official taps cause.
http://www.statewatch.org/news/2011/jul/uk-interception-of-communications-commissioner-report-2010.pdf
@ ratfox - closely related species
"Distinguishing two closely related species might be significantly harder than detecting completely unrelated species..."
If you read the article about the high school testing, it looks as though they were close enough to the sharp edge of technology.
' the young scientists helped discover that the tea plant includes a genetic difference between broad-leaf assamica variety tea exported from India and small-leaf sinensis variety tea exported from China, the two largest tea-producing countries by far.'
'"We were excited to make a genetic discovery, particularly in an important crop plant like tea that scientists have scrutinized in detail," says Young...'
Only three labs?
'OLAF realised that these labs were among only three in the whole of Europe "able to undertake the DNA testing necessary to determine the species of the garlic"'
In America, by contrast, this is the sort of task that high school students can undertake. In the commendable study linked here, adulterants were discovered in a range of herbal teas.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110721095855.htm
It's also worth noting that the equipment the students used cost about $5,000 plus $15 per sample and took about 24 hours in total. How much did EU taxpayers pay?
Gas Cloud Lensing?
Professor Bruce Draine, at Princeton, pointed out some while ago that as well as lensing by distant galaxies a similar process could occur with relatively nearby gas clouds.
ftp://ftp.astro.princeton.edu/draine/papers/pdf/ApJL_509_L41.pdf
It would be interesting to know how many examples of lensing have been examined using spectroscopy to check for the absorption lines that would signify gas cloud rather than galactic.lensing.
Green Electricity?
There are suppliers who specialise in providing tree-huggers with electricity generated from wind and PV, so co-called green electricity. But nowhere is there a supplier who buys nuclear energy for their customers as much as possible.
Perhaps more to the point, people who presently commit a few thousand quids to the installation of PV panels on their roof will be in receipt of inflated feed-in tariffs guaranteed for the next twenty-five years, increasing the price for everyone else in order to cover the subsidy. This scheme is a nice little earner for those involved.
What we need is a similar opportunity to buy a slice of equally 'green' nuclear generating capacity, a stake in new power stations. This energy wouldn't need to be subsidised, simply supplied free from the absurd loading that the wind and PV programme is and will for decades be adding to electricity prices.
Cost effectiveness?
It seems a shame that the developers could not instead have been working towards providing a similar system for use in general health diagnosis.
To the extent that the physiological measures are useful indicators, there appears to be a much greater opportunity for saving life and limb from the use of this sort of technology in the health industry rather than homeland security.
Even in airports, there appears to be more scope in detecting potential victims of stroke and embolism than terrorists. Although the overall in-flight (natural) death risk is low at 125 deaths per billion km, or 25 deaths per million flights, there are more than 10 million passenger flights each year in the USA.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2214486/pdf/14761107.pdf
http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2010/bts015_10/html/bts015_10.html#table_05
Festina lente, Judge Dredd
Many cases besides high-profile miscarriages of justice point to the need to improve the accuracy and comprehension of evidence wherever possible and to avoid false reasoning. However, Prof. Fenton's approach has the potential to make matters worse than they already are. There is no guarantee that computer assisted Bayesian evaluation and presentation tools will provide a panacea for the warts and wrinkles of the criminal justice system.
In the paper he cites, outlining a proposal to use simple visual representations of Bayesian trees to convey the impact of forensic evidence, he claims that,
"... there should be no more need to explain [to the court] the Bayesian calculations in a complex argument than there should be any need to explain the thousands of circuit level calculations used by a calculator to compute a long division. Lay people do not need to understand how the calculator works in order to accept the results of the calculations as being correct to a sufficient level of accuracy. The same must eventually apply to the results of calculations from a [Binary Network] tool."
It would be uncharitable to suggest that he is set to undermine the principle of trial by one's peers and replace this with a computerised evidence evaluation machine, but it would be equally wrong to ignore the common law principles that should be at the basis of what goes on in court.
This post has been deleted by its author
Just in time ...
... for next year's celebration of Alan Turing's centenary.
The case of Sally Clark and the 'prosecutor's fallacy'
Sally Clark's wrongful conviction was not because Bayesian statistics had been used. To the contrary, it was because they hadn't; and because the use of the so-called prosecutor's fallacy which in part led to her conviction went unchallenged.
Neither is the article quite accurate in saying that the fallacy stemmed from the "[il]logic used by one eminent expert witness." Professor Sir Roy Meadows's presentation of the invalid multiplication of probabilities actually came from a government publication which he read out in court. After his earlier involvement in real cases of infanticide, Meadows may well have become somewhat biased, and quite likely he should have known better. But he seems to have been made into a scapegoat for a practice that is actually quite widespread.
http://www.bmj.com/content/324/7328/41.1.full.pdf
In 2005, the HoC Select Committee on Science and Technology looked into the use in court of expert witnesses, statistical probabilities, and the prosecutor's fallacy. I wrote to them to say that the publication used in Sally Clark's prosecution, which endorsed the invalid multiplication of probabilities, was still available from the Stationary Office and suggested they might see fit to have it removed it from circulation or at least ensure that it was properly amended. A curt reply informed me that this was not within their remit.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmsctech/96/9610.htm
Chicken Little Cutbacks
It can be a wee bit tricky to balance Chicken Little tactics during a recession.
Were the asteroid threat to be played too hard then there might be calls for cutbacks in all other non-essential space exploration. The 'is there life on Mars' crowd would then get somewhat miffed that their exhortations were no longer bringing in the funds.
... some crazy pot smokers ...
... must be lighting up a cordless vaporizer.
They didn' t need hi-tech in the good old days.
Viral Theorem - Crekshun
"... outside the main concentration of stars, velocities should fall off with the inverse square of distance ..."
replace with
... velocities should fall off with the inverse square root of distance ...
The Virial Theorem
Initial estimates of galactic mass are based on the Virial Theorem.
Assuming that the only force in play is gravity and assuming that stellar velocities have more or less evened out ('virialised') from the galaxy's initial formation, then the Virial Theorem shows that the total kinetic energy is equal to half the potential energy. Total kinetic energy is proportional to total mass. Total potential energy (in a given configuration) varies as square of mass. So if the relative motion of the stars about the galaxy centre of mass is known - and information about their velocities is available from spectroscopic observations - by making reasonable assumptions about their distribution within the galaxy it is possible to estimate the total mass.
Unfortunately, observations of the variation of stellar velocities with distance from the centre are not in accord with this simple model. The prediction is that outside the main concentration of stars, velocities should fall off with the inverse square of distance. In fact, velocities deduced from spectographic observations appear pretty much constant to a considerable distance from the centre. Equally puzzling is the observations that stellar (linear) velocities are in the range of 150 to 350 km/S irrespective of large differences in the size of the galaxy they inhabit.
It is the discrepancy between the 'Keplerian model' (stars in a galaxy behaving in a similar way to planets around a star under the influence of inverse square law gravity only) and the observation of more or less constant velocity which gave rise to the idea of dark matter. This dark matter is assumed, by some miracle or other, to sit in the shape of a halo which is in precisely ihe right place to cause the observed pattern of stellar velocities.
A current rationalisation of the dilemma which some cosmologists favour comes from MOND - Modified Newtonian Dynamics. Here it is assumed that the inverse square law does not hold at very large distances.
For reasons which largely escape me, the alternative explanation proposed half a century ago by Hannes Alfvèn that electromagnetic processes are in play is generally treated as heresy.
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