Greetings fellow CR4'ers.
So, I find myself dealing with an issue for the first time; tree sap on my car. Today marks the conclusion of two weekends of trying various entry-level remedies… (e.g. washing with very hot water and elbow grease, different kinds of soaps, etc) all to no avail.
Why current transformers are rated in BURDEN instead of VA?
The Cray-1 was the fastest supercomputer in 1976. Today, even the iPad dwarfs its humble 133 megaflops and a fast PC can easily surpass 100 gigaflops. This Cray-1 replica houses two PCs, but it looks as good as the original: More »
The Sun is getting active. Click for larger. Credit: SDO/NASA
The Sun is getting more and more active as time goes by. Currently we have a Coronal Mass Ejection heading at us. The CME is part of a series of events on the sun being called a global magnetic disturbance because it involves the whole Earth facing hemisphere. Discovery has a nice article/video(s) and the SDO site has video’s you should check out.
Is something bad going to come of this? Probably not and it’s not like it hasn’t happened before. Our detection and observations are vastly improved over what they were just a few years ago. Communications satellites can be configured to lessen any damage. The power grid could be affected, but I’m not sure that this is a big problem with this particular event. We could be treated to some nice auroral activity though – YAY!
It is not without any consequence though; you may have heard there was a problem when s spike in electrical current tripped a circuit breaker shutting down half of the cooling system on the ISS. Efforts to reset the breaker and get the coolant pump going again were unsuccessful. The station stable the affected areas are either running on redundant systems or being powered via jumper cables for now (insert you might be a redneck joke here). It’s going to take a spacewalk to two to see if they can fix the problem. Sounds like the spacewalk is scheduled for Thursday and the problems from the CME should be over by then. Being caught outside during a CME probably would not be a very good thing. Read more about the cooling failure at NASA.
As we all know it won’t be too much longer and the shuttle will be no more. How are they going to get a new 780 lb pump up there if they need it? They won’t.
So keep an eye to the sky tonight for possible northern or southern lights and don’t forget the good vibes for Marian. I think she needs them.
A report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance details international government energy spending on biofuels and renewable energy.
By Kevin Bullis
The full article in Technology Review
Fossil fuels are the backbone of economies worldwide, so governments spend a lot to support them. A new report
Well this is something pretty incredible. SLAP widgets—peripherals that bring physical controls to multitouch surfaces—have evolved to the point where they can move themselves. What's that? Oh, just watch the madgets in action. It's something special. More »
I have a 2003 Chevy Cavalier LS 4D 2.2L Ecotech. I live in Las Vegas, NV.
Now, this morning when I went to go to work it started up just fine. When I went to stop at the store for lunch food, I came back and tried to start my car but it would not start. I have a brand new battery, oil is fine,
Yes, you saw a similar headline in 80beats in January of 2009, but this time we mean it. We think.
Back in 2009 the FDA approved an application from Geron Corporation to begin the first human safety trials of a therapy derived from embryonic stem cells, a move that was heralded as a strong vote of confidence in this controversial but exciting area of medicine. But before the treatment of patients with spinal cord injuries could begin, the FDA reversed course and put a hold on the trial, noting that Geron had discovered cysts in some rats injected with the cells.
Since then, Geron has been scrambling to prove that its treatment is safe via new animal studies, and has agreed to change some procedures to minimize the likelihood of cyst formation. Now that the FDA has signed off, Geron expects to begin the small safety trial (involving only 7 to 10 patients) before the year’s end.
“I think it’s a very important milestone for the whole industry,” Alan Trounson, the president of California’s stem cell agency, said Friday, adding that the hold on the trial had been a cloud over the field. “It’s very important that they get on and treat the patients and demonstrate the safety” of the therapy. [The New York Times]
Geron’s treatment is intended to help patients with mid-back spinal cord injuries who are paralyzed below the site of the damage. The cells will be injected within the first two weeks after the injury.
Geron … turns embryonic stem cells into precursors of neural support cells called oligodendrocytes. The precursor cells would be injected into the spinal cord at the site of the injury. The hope is that the cells will repair the insulation, known as myelin, around nerve cells, restoring the ability of some nerves to carry signals. While this is not expected to allow people to rise from their wheelchairs, it may conceivably restore some movement or sensation. [The New York Times]
Related Content:
80beats: Stem Cell Society to Get Tough on “Charlatans” & Unproven Treatments
80beats: The Trouble With Lab-Created Stem Cells—and Why They Won’t Displace Embryonic Ones
80beats: Biotech Co: First Human Embryonic Stem Cell Trial Hit Small Speed Bump
80beats: FDA Approves the First Clinical Trials Using Embryonic Stem Cells
80beats: GE Plans to Use Human Embryonic Stem Cells as Lab Rats
Image: flickr / planetc1
Hi Guys
I need some perspective regarding this issue. We have 4 gas turbine which require gas at a pressure of about 19 bar. Unfortunately, gas is being supplied at a pressure of 34 bar (we have no control over this). To achieve the desired pressure of 19 bar, a pilot operated pressure r
Check out Clay Farris Naff's latest article, Sims, Suffering and God: Matrix Theology and the Problem of Evil:
And that brings us back to the Sims. How can know whether we're simulations in some superduper computer built by posthumans? Some pretty amusing objections have been raised, such as quantum tests that a simulation would fail. It seems safe to say that any sim-scientists examining the sim-universe they occupy would find that the laws of that universe are self-consistent. To assert that a future computer could simulate us, complete with consciousness, but crash when it came to testing Bell's Inequality strikes me as ludicrous. Unless, of course, the program were released by Microsoft. Oooh, sorry, Bill, cheap shot. Let's take it for granted that we could not expose a simulation from within -- unless the Creators wanted us to.
But the problem of pointless suffering leads me to very different conclusion. Recall Bostrom's first conjecture: that few or none of our civilizations reach a posthuman stage capable of building computers that can run the kind of simulation in which we might exist. There are many ways civilization could end (just ask the dinosaurs!), but the one absolutely necessary condition for survival in an environment of continually increasing technological prowess is peace. Not a mushy, bumper sticker kind of peace, but the robust containment of conflict and competition within cooperative frameworks. (Robert Wright, in his brilliant if uneven book NonZero: The Logic of Human Destiny, unfolds this idea beautifully.)
What is civilization if not a mutual agreement to sacrifice some individual desires (to not pay taxes, for example, or to run through red lights) for the greater common good? Communication, trust, and cooperation make such agreements possible, but the one ingredient in the human psyche that propels civilization forward even as we gain technological power is empathy.
Link.
These are the stairs of the new Salvador Dalí museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Encased in 18-inch thick concrete walls, it can resist a 165mph Category 5 hurricane without blinking. More »
Last week was Comic Con, and for the third year in a row, the Hive Overmind Discover Magazine sent me along to be on a panel. Every year we do a variation on discussing the science of science fiction, and this year we focused on its abuse. We asked our panelists (Jaime Paglia [Eureka], Kevin Grazier [science advisor for Eureka and Battlestar Galactica], Zack Stentz [Fringe, Thor], and Sean Carroll [cosmologist and DM blogger]) to pick examples of good and bad science in the movies.
The results? Well, watch for yourself:
A couple of notes:
To more meaty matters: Zack brought up the point that science is important, and important to get right, but not at the cost of the story. This may surprise you, but I agree. As I said in my opening comments, I was inspired as a kid by some shows that abused science in a pretty awful way. But the science itself wasn’t the key thing, it was just that science and scientists were there. And in many cases, they were the key characters, figuring out what was going on. Spock, Victor Bergman, and many others were my heroes.
Of course, I hate it when science is flogged to death in movies, like in "Armageddon", "The Core", and a gazillion others, but even then it can still inspire someone. I’d rather it were treated with respect, as it was in "Deep Impact", or even "Iron Man". That’s when it really can come alive for kids, and even adults.
But the important thing to remember is that these are stories. Keeping the science accurate but screwing up the story makes for a bad movie or TV show. It’s OK to mess up the science sometimes if it’s necessary.
But only if it’s necessary. Many times, accurate science can vastly improve a story, and that’s the part of the aim of the Science and Entertainment exchange, which in part sponsored the panel. Writers can be very good at their craft, but they may be limited simply by not knowing all the possibilities the science of their story provides them. Nature is more clever than any of us, so I think that looking to the real science can inspire the writers. The more information they have about reality, the more likely they will see avenues and twists in the plot that would’ve been hidden otherwise.
That’s why I like that producers are using more science advisors. They can always ignore the advice if they want, and that’s OK. But sometimes it also provides a more entertaining story, too, and that’s the most important thing of all.
Panelist Sean Carrol provides his own thoughts on this at Cosmic Variance.
Related posts:
- Comic Con 1: Abusing the Sci of SciFi panel
- Comic Con 2: SMBC and me
- Comic Con 3: w00tstock
Abou Farman has penned a must-read essay about Singularitarianism and modern futurism--even if you don't agree with him and his oft sleight-of-hand dismissives. Dude has clearly done his homework, resulting in provocative and insightful commentary.
Thinkers mentioned in this article include Ray Kurzweil, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Giulio Prisco, Jamais Cascio, Tyler Emerson, Michael Anissimov, Michael Vasser, Bill Joy, Ben Goertzel, Stephen Wolfram and many, many more.
Excerpt:
Images of transhuman and posthuman figures, hybrids and chimeras, robots and nanobots became uncannily real, blurring further the distinction between science and science fiction. Now, no one says a given innovation can’t happen; the naysayers simply argue that it shouldn’t. But if the proliferating future scenarios no longer seem like science fiction, they are not exactly fact either—not yet. They are still stories about the future and they are stories about science, though they can no longer be banished to the bantustans of unlikely sci-fi. In a promise-oriented world of fast-paced technological change, prediction is the new basis of authority.
That is why futurist groups, operating thus far on the margins of cultural conversation, were thrust into the most significant discussions of the twenty-first century: What is biological, what artificial? Who owns life when it’s bred in the lab? Should there be cut off-lines to technological interventions into life itself, into our DNA, our neurological structures, or those of our foodstuffs? What will happen to human rights when the contours of what is human become blurred through technology?
The futurist movement, in a sense, went viral. Bill McKibben’s Enough (2004) faced off against biophysicist Gregory Stock’s Redesigning Humans (2002) on television and around the web. New groups and think tanks formed every day, among them the Foresight Institute and the Extropy Institute. Their general membership started to overlap, as did their boards of directors, with figures like Ray Kurzweil ubiquitous. Heavyweight participants include Eric Drexler—the father of nanotechnology—and MIT giant Marvin Minsky. One organization, the World Transhumanist Association, which broke off from the Extropy in 1998, counts six thousand members, with chapters across the globe.
If the emergence of NBIC and the new culture of prediction galvanized futurists, the members were also united by an obligatory and almost imperial sense of optimism, eschewing the dystopian visions of the eighties and nineties. They also learned the dangers of too much enthusiasm. For example, the Singularity Institute, wary of sounding too religious or rapturous, presents its official version of the future in a deliberately understated tone: “The transformation of civilisation into a genuinely nice place to live could occur, not in a distant million-year future, but within our own lifetimes.”
Link.
Whether it's nervous jitters or a bumpy road, it's easy to inadvertently ruin a snapshot with blur. But a team at Microsoft Research is using the same motion detecting tech found in your iPhone to lend an artificially steady hand. More »
I’ve just returned from my second trip to Cambridge, England, as part of the now completed Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship in Science and Religion. (Evidence at right: Yours truly at Trinity College [photo credit: Julia Vitullo-Martin].)
Because this fellowship has been much criticized and also much misunderstood, I think another report on the experience and what it entails will be helpful (for my prior reports, see here and here).
Critics depict the fellowship as a kind of Kumbaya love-fest in which journalists are taught that science and religion have always been and always will be best friends. However, I’ve grown increasingly convinced that this critique really isn’t aimed at the target.
The problem is that the field of “Science and Religion” is much broader than critics seem to think. It isn’t just about examining, on a philosophical level, whether the two are in some way “compatible.” Neither is it simply about exploring, from a history of science perspective, how they relate. That may be the clichéd understanding of what we’re about when we talk about “science and religion,” but in truth, it barely scratches the surface.
On our last official day in Cambridge, program director Fraser Watts made some remarks about what really is covered under the field of “Science and Religion.” Regurgitating my notes on what Watts said (and adding some extensions of my own), one might study:
1. The religious views of scientists—aka, Elaine Ecklund’s work. And conversely, the scientific perspectives of religious believers.
2. The history of the relationship between science and religion.
3. The philosophy of the relationship between science and religion.
4. Particular case studies of conflict or cooperation between science and religion, or of how advances in a particular aspect of science challenge (or have some other implication for) religion.
5. The science of religion—e.g., what is it about the human brain, or the evolved beings that we are, that have made us so inclined towards religiosity? What is the neural or cognitive basis for religious belief or experience?
6. A comparative analysis of scientific and religious perspectives on a particular topic of great import—like, say, suffering. Or altruism. Or free will. Or morality. Or any number of others.
7. I seem to recall that Watts listed several other possibilities that aren’t in my notes. In any case, I think this list still barely scratches the surface.
It is only if you are working on # 3 or # 4 that, it seems to me, you are likely to fall into a spat over the validity of what is called “accommodationism.” None of the other areas really require strong stance-taking on the compatibility of science and religion, although they might perhaps imply a position (I think # 2 does, for instance).
But the point is that much work in this general area is simply not interested in that most hotly debated of questions–if only because the debate has a way of getting old, not everyone is a controversialist, and there are many other things to talk about. Indeed, that came out very clearly last week, when it came time for the ten Templeton-Cambridge fellows to present on the topics of their research.
In my assessment–and these are my likely imperfect categorization attempts–nobody really presented on # 3. There was one presentation that I would classify as being about # 2, and another one that was about # 4. There were two presentations that I have a bit of a hard time categorizing using the groupings above–in some ways, they might fit into # 3. As for everybody else: They were dealing with # 1, # 5, or # 6. In particular, there were at least four presentations that fell into the category of # 6.
I have decided not to say explicitly what people were presenting on, because I don’t want to scoop fellow journalists (or myself). But I can say that the experience of our group refutes the idea that the point of the fellowship is to teach journalists to make “accommodationist” arguments. Rather, it is to have journalists do work in the field of “science and religion,” and that’s a very different thing.
A team of MIT researchers has discovered a new silicon compound that—get this—melts as it gets cooler, some 500 degrees Celsius lower than silicon's natural melting point. The researchers think it could eventually yield less expensive electronics. More »
Interesting article in The Economist this week about Facebook and how it's starting to look and act like a sovereign state:
In some ways, it might seem absurd to call Facebook a state and Mr Zuckerberg its governor. It has no land to defend; no police to enforce law and order; it does not have subjects, bound by a clear cluster of rights, obligations and cultural signals. Compared with citizenship of a country, membership is easy to acquire and renounce. Nor do Facebook’s boss and his executives depend directly on the assent of an “electorate” that can unseat them. Technically, the only people they report to are the shareholders.
But many web-watchers do detect country-like features in Facebook. “[It] is a device that allows people to get together and control their own destiny, much like a nation-state,” says David Post, a law professor at Temple University. If that sounds like a flattering description of Facebook’s “groups” (often rallying people with whimsical fads and aversions), then it is worth recalling a classic definition of the modern nation-state. As Benedict Anderson, a political scientist, put it, such polities are “imagined communities” in which each person feels a bond with millions of anonymous fellow-citizens. In centuries past, people looked up to kings or bishops; but in an age of mass literacy and printing in vernacular languages, so Mr Anderson argued, horizontal ties matter more.
So if newspapers and tatty paperbacks can create new social and political units, for which people toil and die, perhaps the latest forms of communication can do likewise. In his 2006 book “Code: Version 2.0”, a legal scholar, Lawrence Lessig noted that online communities were transcending the limits of conventional states—and predicted that members of these communities would find it “difficult to stand neutral in this international space”.
To many, that forecast still smacks of cyber-fantasy. But the rise of Facebook at least gives pause for thought. If it were a physical nation, it would now be the third most populous on earth. Mr Zuckerberg is confident there will be a billion users in a few years. Facebook is unprecedented not only in its scale but also in its ability to blur boundaries between the real and virtual worlds. A few years ago, online communities evoked fantasy games played by small, geeky groups. But as technology made possible large virtual arenas like Second Life or World of Warcraft, an online game with millions of players, so the overlap between cyberspace and real human existence began to grow.
Link.
For anyone looking to dive into the world of 3D gaming head first, Digital Storm's 3D Vision Surround BlackOPS package is a fine place to start. For $2800, you get the BlackOPS Assassin and three 3D-ready, 1080p Asus displays. More »
The Power Pad is a contraption that you stand on while you shower, recycling hot water to lower the energy usage of your water heater. Clever! More »
How to reduce the size of transformer in ups?
