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Spray on Skin

February 3, 2011 14:10:40.000

This is just really, really cool.

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posted by James Robertson

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A Transplant You Don't Want to Talk About

January 22, 2011 17:48:39.000

I think the word "craptastic" comes to mind....

posted by James Robertson

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Biologist Vs. Kurzweil

August 17, 2010 21:40:33.879

PZ Myers doesn't buy Kurzweil's latest flights into singularity-ness; I've thought for a long time that Kurzweil was smoking something. This guy sounds like he has the scientific background to make that case.

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posted by James Robertson

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Something to Worry About

July 7, 2010 0:09:05.660

Wheat Rust:

stem rust has spread from a corner of Africa’s Great Lakes to countries as distant as Iran and, recently, South Africa. Scientists now fear that the fungus cannot be kept out of Punjab, one of the world’s great bread baskets.

This is the sort of thing that could get very bad while most people are looking elsewhere. Fortunately, the article makes it sound like there are solutions available - so long as irrational fears of GM food don't stop them.

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posted by James Robertson

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Cell Phones, RF, and Health

June 17, 2010 13:50:28.403

It sounds to me like the mobile phone field is still moving to quickly to get definitive data - the studies on cell phones and brain tumors were all done in a largely (gone now) analog spectrum phone world:

Unfortunately, there were flaws and vagueness in the Interphone study, starting with the fact that it was based on cell phone use six years ago and out of date compared to today's 3G-class phones. This enabled the CTIA to cite it as evidence that cell phones were not a definitive factor in cases of brain cancer.

Then we had 2G digital for a bit (still do), and 3G, while mature, is still rolling out. 4G (LTE) is right around the corner. Nothing has been in the field long enough for a longitudinal study to yield useful numbers. Even if 3G and LTE settle down and stick for awhile, you'll still have to wait for years before there's enough data. As I was saying on a different topic yesterday, we just don't know what we don't know...

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posted by James Robertson

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We Don't Know What We Don't Know

June 16, 2010 15:16:08.437

This story out of New Scientist about the sun is one of the reasons I get skeptical about anything premised with "the scientific consensus is...". It appears that we don't know what we don't know, at least about the sun:

But for the past two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged for nearly a hundred years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise. "This is solar behaviour we haven't seen in living memory," says David Hathaway, a physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The thinking had been that after the (somewhat prolonged) solar minimum, sunspots (and solar storms, which could cause grief for power systems on earth) would be back with a vengeance. However, they aren't, and no one seems to understand why. This part is what should give people pause:

Even with the solar cycle finally under way again, the number of sunspots has so far been well below expectations. Something appears to have changed inside the sun, something the models did not predict. But what?

Models are useful, but they depend on data - the more data, the better the model tends to be. What if you only have partial data? Or worse, what if you aren't even sure what data you still need? In fields like this - solar weather - the models obviously need more data before they can be fully accurate. That's not anyone's fault; it's not as if we know how to send a probe into the sun and have it transmit data. It should give us pause about any scientific field that relies too heavily on models that are derived from partial data though...

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posted by James Robertson

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Electric Cars?

May 25, 2010 21:15:26.960

With how little I drive, an electric car might actually be worthwhile for me - assuming that it could be recharged in a reasonable time period. That's where this article about "faster" charging made me wonder. Consider:

Most Level 3 stations are considered “fast chargers,” but they don’t have to be. The conventional wisdom is that if an average EV battery can be charged to full in about a half hour, then it is a fast charge.

Which tells me that electric cars, at least with the technology available now, are useful for... maybe people like me. Now, how many drivers fit that profile? I don't know, but even for light commuters (my wife drives around 15 miles one way), it's simply useless. Why? Right now, a car trip doesn't have to be plotted out. If you notice you need gas, you pop into a station, and you leave 5 minutes later. With electric cars? Well, you better plan on staying wherever you are for awhile when you charge (the "fast" chargers are still awaiting standards, and the next level is an 8 hour wait).

I just don't see that working out very well for most use cases. Sure, you could use it for short trips - but heck, for less money, a hybrid or regular car will do the same short trips and also let you go as far as you want.

So... what's the market segment for this? I'm not seeing it.

Update: Popular Mechanics sketches out a scenario for 2020, when EVs have become somewhat widespread. The thing that popped out at me is how much more power generatio capability we'll need for that, never mind the time issues I outlined above...

Update 2: In the comments, it was proposed that instead of recharging stations, we simply have battery exchange stations. Well. There are two problems with that:

  • At least at present, there are no standards in this area - a Tesla battery won't work in a Leaf, or vice versa
  • The Leaf battery is 600 pounds. That's not a simple drop in/replace operation. Never mind the storage requirements for the supposed exchange station - any station about the size of a current gas station will run out of space quickly.

I pulled the weight from this article

Bottom line - electric cars are not practical for most real world uses...

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posted by James Robertson

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No Cambrian Mass Extinction?

May 21, 2010 11:07:31.525

This is an interesting story - a new fossil find in Morocco has turned up specimens descended from what science calls the "Cambrian Explosion". It's entirely possible that the lack of life found after that era is a gap in the fossil record, not an extinction event:

The international team of scientists who discovered the 1,500 fossils said their find shows that the dark stretch in the fossil record more probably reflects an absence of preservation of fossils over the previous 25 million years.

It's not that big a surprise that there are data gaps in stuff this old - nothing on the planet stays static.

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posted by James Robertson

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Video Conferences and Ships?

April 18, 2010 14:58:37.304

If this speculation holds up, travel to and from northern Europe could be disrupted regularly for awhile:

"Volcanic activity on Iceland appears to follow a periodicity of around 50 to 80 years. The increase in activity over the past 10 years suggests we might be entering a more active phase with more eruptions," says Thorvaldur Thordarson, an expert on Icelandic volcanoes at the University of Edinburgh, UK. By contrast, the latter half of the 20th century was unusually quiet.

Video conferencing will pick up some of that slack, but face to face meetings will still be required for some things, never mind tourism. "May you live in interesting times", indeed...

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posted by James Robertson

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Real Threats

March 19, 2010 13:59:07.302

For those of us who grew up in a world where famines were political events, this story about wheat rust is truly frightening:

Indeed, 90 percent of the world's wheat has little or no protection against the Ug99 race of P. graminis. If nothing is done to slow the pathogen, famines could soon become the norm — from the Red Sea to the Mongolian steppe — as Ug99 annihilates a crop that provides a third of our calories. China and India, the world's biggest wheat consumers, will once again face the threat of mass starvation, especially among their rural poor. The situation will be particularly grim in Pakistan and Afghanistan, two nations that rely heavily on wheat for sustenance and are in no position to bear added woe.

posted by James Robertson

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