re: LFTR's - was regular nuclear power sold to the masses back in the 50's and 60's as anything other than completely wonderful, fantastic and safe?
The more things change the more they stay the same.
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by justdrew » Sat Nov 08, 2014 9:51 pm
by coffin_dodger » Sun Nov 09, 2014 7:55 am
by smoking since 1879 » Sun Nov 09, 2014 11:36 am
by alloneword » Sun Nov 09, 2014 2:31 pm
The U.K.’s nuclear reactors as generators of military fissile material
The first electricity-generating reactors, at Calder Hall and Chapelcross, which became operational in the 1950s, were specifically designed to produce plutonium for military purposes, to augment the plutonium piles at Windscale (which were later destroyed in the Windscale fire of 1957). Electricity was a sideline. The first commercial generators, the nine Magnox stations, which became operational during the 1960s, were similar in design to Calder Hall and were also intended partly as a source of military plutonium, after reprocessing at Sellafield.
by justdrew » Sat Nov 22, 2014 7:22 am
Imagination, reality flow in opposite directions in the brain -- ScienceDaily - "There seems to be a lot in our brains and animal brains that is directional, that neural signals move in a particular direction, then stop, and start somewhere else," says. "I think this is really a new theme that had not been explored."
Scientists have finally found the neurological difference between fantasy and reality - it turns out that information flows through our brains in opposite directions when we’re imagining something compared to really doing it. : science
by coffin_dodger » Sat Nov 22, 2014 9:39 am
justdrew wrote:Imagination, reality flow in opposite directions in the brain -- ScienceDaily - "There seems to be a lot in our brains and animal brains that is directional, that neural signals move in a particular direction, then stop, and start somewhere else," says. "I think this is really a new theme that had not been explored."
Scientists have finally found the neurological difference between fantasy and reality - it turns out that information flows through our brains in opposite directions when we’re imagining something compared to really doing it. : science
by smoking since 1879 » Sun Nov 30, 2014 8:44 am
Spaceflight Surprise! DNA Survives Short Trip on Outside of Rocket
The substance that holds the code for life may be able to survive a short ride in space, a new study suggests.
Samples of DNA squirted onto the exterior of a TEXUS-49 sounding rocket remained functional following a 13-minute low-orbit flight to space, the study's scientists report.
"We were totally surprised…We never expected to recover so many intact and functional active DNA," said Cora Thiel, a molecular biologist at the University of Zurich and a lead author on the study, in a statement. "Our findings made us a little bit worried about the probability of contaminating space crafts, landers and landing sites with DNA from Earth." [How to Protect Other Planets from Earth Microbes]
Thiel conducted the experiment along with Oliver Ullrich, a biochemist at the University of Zurich and the University of Magdeburg, Germany.
Thiel and Ullrich were not intending to test the survival of DNA during spaceflight. Inside the payload bay of the rocket, the pair had placed an experiment that would examine the effect of gravity on DNA and its ability to function. The flight of the TEXUS-49 rocket, which launched from Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, northern Sweden, included at least 3 minutes in low orbit, where the contents of the rocket experience weightlessness.
But during flight preparations, Thiel and Ullrich decided to put some DNA on the exterior of the rocket as well: around the outside of the payload, in the grooves of the screw heads, and underneath the payload. Their intention was to test the robustness of a biomarker in the DNA – a specific portion of the DNA strand that contains instructions for a specific function.
When the rocket returned, the researchers found at least a small amount of DNA in all three locations — up to 53 percent in the grooves of the screw heads. And as much as a third of the DNA was still functional, according to the researchers.
The DNA used in the experiment was not chromosomal DNA — the kind found in humans and most living organisms, which passes on the organisms' genetic information to new cells and to offspring — but rather plasmid DNA, which is found in some bacteria and operates slightly differently than chromosomal DNA. Plasmid DNA is around 10 times smaller than bacterial chromosomal DNA, according to Ullrich.
"We cannot say how these big chromosomal DNA molecules would react under the same conditions and this should be investigated in a separate experiment," Ullrich told Space.com in an email. "However, we speculate that small plasmid DNA molecules might be more resistant to re-entry conditions than chromosomal DNA, which is also packed with proteins."
The interior of the payload bay reached a peak temperature of 266 degrees Fahrenheit (130 degrees Celsius) and external gas temperatures reached 1,832 degrees F (1,000 C). However, Ullrich notes that the scientists do not know how hot the DNA samples became. In addition, Ullrich says they can only speculate about what factors influenced the survival of the samples.
"In general, we think that survival of microorganisms or of 'molecules of life' during re-entry requires a combination of different favorable and 'protective' factors (e.g., protection by minerals, dryness, certain temperatures) and may be therefore not the 'rule', but more a probable, but seldom case," Ullrich said in an email. "But – nevertheless – DNA survival is possible, as demonstrated in our experiment."
Other experiments have investigated the robustness of life in space. Scientists have subjected dozens of bacteria and other small organisms to simulated or real exposure to the harsh conditions of the cosmos (outside the protection of a space capsule). Scientists have identified a handful of organisms, called "extremophiles," which can survive conditions that would kill most living things: bitter cold, scorching heat and pounding radiation. Tardigrades, also known as water bears, have surprised scientists with their ability to survive, naked, in outer space.
This area of research brings up questions about whether or not life can naturally spread from planet to planet via comets and other space rocks, or rockets. But the new study alone does not suggest that life or even DNA could survive a long trip through space, and Ullrich cautions against overstating its implications.
"It is only a very, very small step for a very big question."
The study's results appear in today's (Nov. 26) issue of PLOS ONE.
by DrEvil » Sun Nov 30, 2014 9:06 pm
by justdrew » Mon Jan 05, 2015 5:12 am
...
If correct, their findings have major implications. First, the new model doesn't require the Solow residual at all; this residual disappears from the graphs that show the empirical and the theoretical growth curves. Energy, along with the addition of a smaller "human creativity" factor, accounts for all of the growth that neoclassical models attribute to technological progress.
Second, and somewhat unsettling, is the impact that the findings may have in the real world. In 2012, the International Monetary Fund stated in its World Economic Outlook that "…if the contribution of oil to output proved to be much larger than its cost share, the effects could be dramatic, suggesting a need for urgent policy action."
...
by justdrew » Mon Jan 12, 2015 1:15 pm
A study released today by researchers at Lund University in Sweden indicates that inherited viruses may be responsible for creating the complex neural networks that make up the human brain.
For many years, the endogenous retroviruses that comprise about 5 percent of human DNA were thought to be “junk” — that is, sequences of DNA that do not encode protein sequences and therefore cannot self-replicate.
However, Johan Jakobsson and his colleagues at Lund University claim that these retroviruses became integrated into the transcriptional machinery of brain cells that can replicate. In fact, the researchers argue, these retroviruses play a crucial role in the basic functioning of the brain, regulating which genes are expressed and when they are allowed to do so.
“We have been able to observe that these viruses are activated specifically in the brain cells and have an important regulatory role,” Jakobsson said.
“We believe that the role of retroviruses can contribute to explaining why brain cells in particular are so dynamic and multifaceted in their function. It may also be the case that the viruses’ more or less complex functions in various species can help us to understand why we are so different.”
Jakobsson and his team found that neural stem cells control which retroviruses are activated, meaning that even though these retroviruses are incapable of self-replication, they can still play a vital role in the brain’s development.
In addition to providing insight into the basic working of brain cells, Jakobsson and his team’s discovery offers new avenues of investigation into brain diseases that have a genetic component.
“Currently, when we look for genetic factors linked to various diseases, we usually look for the genes we are familiar with, which make up a mere 2 percent of the genome. Now we are opening up the possibility of looking at a much larger part of the genetic material which was previously considered unimportant,” Jakobsson said.
“The image of the brain becomes more complex, but the area in which to search for errors linked to diseases with a genetic component, such as neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric illness and brain tumors, also increases.”
by justdrew » Tue Jan 13, 2015 2:46 am
by justdrew » Tue Jan 13, 2015 2:49 am
Computers using digital footprints are better judge of personality than friends and family
A new study, published today in the journal PNAS, compares the ability of computers and people to make accurate judgments about our personalities. People's judgments were based on their familiarity with the judged individual, while computer models used a specific digital signal: Facebook Likes.
The results show that by mining Facebook Likes, the computer model was able to predict a person's personality more accurately than most of their friends and family. Given enough Likes to analyse, only a person's spouse rivalled the computer for accuracy of broad psychological traits.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge and Stanford University describe the finding as an "emphatic demonstration" of the capacity of computers to discover an individual's psychological traits through pure data analysis, showing machines can know us better than we'd previously thought: an "important milestone" on the path towards more social human-computer interactions.
"In the future, computers could be able to infer our psychological traits and react accordingly, leading to the emergence of emotionally-intelligent and socially skilled machines," said lead author Wu Youyou, from Cambridge's Psychometrics Centre.
"In this context, the human-computer interactions depicted in science fiction films such as Her seem to be within our reach."
The researchers say these results might raise concerns over privacy as such technology develops; the research team support policies giving users full control of their digital footprint.
In the study, a computer could more accurately predict the subject's personality than a work colleague by analysing just ten Likes; more than a friend or a cohabitant (roommate) with 70, a family member (parent, sibling) with 150, and a spouse with 300 Likes.
Given that an average Facebook user has about 227 Likes (and this number is growing steadily), the researchers say that this kind of AI has the potential to know us better than our closest companions.
The latest results build on previous work from the University of Cambridge, published in March 2013, which showed that a variety of psychological and demographic characteristics could be predicted with startling accuracy through Facebook Likes.
In the new study, researchers used a sample of 86,220 volunteers on Facebook who completed a 100-item personality questionnaire through the 'myPersonality' app, as well as providing access to their Likes.
These results provided self-reported personality scores for what are known in psychological practice as the 'big five' traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism—the OCEAN model. Through this, researchers could establish which Likes equated with higher levels of particular traits e.g. liking 'Salvador Dali' or 'meditation' showed a high degree of openness.
Users of the 'myPersonality' app were then given the option of inviting friends and family to judge the psychological traits of the user through a shorter version of the personality test. These were the human judges in the study—those listed on Facebook as friends or family expressing their judgement of a subject's personality using a 10-item questionnaire
Researchers were able to get a sample of 17,622 participants judged by one friend or family member, and a sample of 14,410 judged by two.
To gauge the accuracy of these measurements, the online personality judgements were corroborated with a meta-analysis of previous psychological studies over decades which looked at how people's colleagues, family and so on judge their personality. Researchers found their online values similar to the averages from years of person-to-person research.
In this way, the researchers were able to come up with accuracy comparisons between computer algorithms and the personality judgements made by humans. Given enough Likes, the computers came closer to a person's self-reported personality than their brothers, mothers or partners.
Dr Michal Kosinski, co-author and researcher at Stanford, says machines have a couple of key advantages that make these results possible: the ability to retain and access vast quantities of information, and the ability to analyse it with algorithms—the techniques of 'Big Data'.
"Big Data and machine-learning provide accuracy that the human mind has a hard time achieving, as humans tend to give too much weight to one or two examples, or lapse into non-rational ways of thinking," he said. Nevertheless, the authors concede that detection of some traits might be best left to human abilities, those without digital footprints or dependant on subtle cognition.
The authors of the study write that automated, accurate, and cheap personality assessments could improve societal and personal decision-making in many ways—from recruitment to romance.
"The ability to judge personality is an essential component of social living—from day-to-day decisions to long-term plans such as whom to marry, trust, hire, or elect as president," said Cambridge co-author Dr David Stillwell. "The results of such data analysis can be very useful in aiding people when making decisions."
Youyou explains: "Recruiters could better match candidates with jobs based on their personality; products and services could adjust their behaviour to best match their users' characters and changing moods.
"People may choose to augment their own intuitions and judgments with this kind of data analysis when making important life decisions such as choosing activities, career paths, or even romantic partners. Such data-driven decisions may well improve people's lives," she said.
The researchers say that this kind of data mining and its inferences has hallmarks of techniques currently used by some digital service providers, and that—for many people—a future in which machines read our habits as an open book on a massive scale may seem dystopian to those concerned with privacy.
It's a concern shared by the researchers. "We hope that consumers, technology developers, and policy-makers will tackle those challenges by supporting privacy-protecting laws and technologies, and giving the users full control over their digital footprints," said Kosinski.
by justdrew » Tue Jan 13, 2015 2:55 am
World’s Largest Indoor Farm is 100 Times More Productive
The statistics for this incredibly successful indoor farming endeavor in Japan are staggering: 25,000 square feet producing 10,000 heads of lettuce per day (100 times more per square foot than traditional methods) with 40% less power, 80% less food waste and 99% less water usage than outdoor fields. But the freshest news from the farm: a new facility using the same technologies has been announced and is now under construction in Hong Kong, with Mongolia, Russia and mainland China on the agenda for subsequent near-future builds.
In the currently-completed setup, customized LED lighting developed with GE helps plants grow up to two and half times faster, one of the many innovations co-developed in this enterprise by Shigeharu Shimamura, the man who helped turn a former semiconductor factory into the planet’s biggest interior factory farm.
by Joe Hillshoist » Tue Jan 13, 2015 3:10 am
by justdrew » Tue Jan 13, 2015 3:48 am
Joe Hillshoist » 12 Jan 2015 23:10 wrote:JD - until someone breaks quarantine and the whole crop gets eaten by cabbage moth grubs in 15 minutes.
Tuned LED lights sound cool tho. Certainly cheaper, less energy intensive and cooler than sodium halides.
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