What have you guys heard about this new browser?
And while we are at it more warm, sweet, gooey Google goodness– the long awaited blog search is up and running.
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology
What have you guys heard about this new browser?
And while we are at it more warm, sweet, gooey Google goodness– the long awaited blog search is up and running.
by John Cole| 66 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Science & Technology
Big puff piece in the NY Times on the benefits of ethanol based fuels, which, if you didn’t know any better, you would think was written by a Senator from the midwest. Finally, on page two of the piece, they get to the problems with ethanol:
A recent study published in the journal BioScience forecast that for all cars and trucks to run on ethanol by 2048, “virtually the entire country, with the exception of cities, would be covered with corn plantations.” Using more farmland to produce ethanol would also drive up food prices. And E85 cannot be transported through gasoline pipelines, because it sucks up grime and water.
E85 is also less energy-dense than gasoline, so a driver goes a bit less far on a gallon. Its current cost advantage is dependent on a 43-cents-a-gallon subsidy, versus a roughly 40-cent tax on a gallon of gasoline. Environmentalists have generally viewed the rise of flex-fuel vehicles as a boondoggle for automakers, because they are afforded fuel economy credits for making them. The credits have had the effect of driving up oil consumption. Many consumers who buy flex-fuel vehicles are not even made aware of the capability.
I am all for a balanced approach to future fuel sources, but the folks who think ethanol is the answer overstate the case. I don’t know if it is still the case, but I was under the impression that it takes more energy to create ethanol than you get from burning it.
by John Cole| 18 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology
Interesting piece in Wired on the possibility of future cures for a range of diseases.
by John Cole| 18 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology
Don’t skip breakfast:
Girls who regularly ate breakfast, particularly one that includes cereal, were slimmer than those who skipped the morning meal, according to a study that tracked nearly 2,400 girls for 10 years.
Girls who ate breakfast of any type had a lower average body mass index, a common obesity gauge, than those who said they didn’t. The index was even lower for girls who said they ate cereal for breakfast, according to findings of the study conducted by the Maryland Medical Research Institute. The study received funding from the National Institutes of Health and cereal-maker General Mills.
“Not eating breakfast is the worst thing you can do, that’s really the take-home message for teenage girls,” said study author Bruce Barton, the Maryland institute’s president and CEO.
The fiber in cereal and healthier foods that normally accompany cereal, such as milk and orange juice, may account for the lower body mass index among cereal eaters, Barton said.
I guess this proves conclusively what dieticians and parents have been telling us for years.
by John Cole| 22 Comments
This post is in: Science & Technology, General Stupidity
Interesting piece on Intelligent Design titled Intelligent design – damaging good science and good theology:
The idea of intelligent design is that the universe, particularly the life contained therein, is too complex to have happened by chance as the theory of evolution would have it.
Therefore its sole basis lies in a negative: the failure to imagine how natural selection could arrive at the complexity of life we see all around us. We can perhaps sympathise with this notion since the fossil record has not preserved enough to demonstrate the continuity of the process and we must rely on our imagination to fill in the gaps. Nonetheless, modern biology continues to grow from strength to strength in fields as disparate as palaeobiology, neurophysiology, evolutionary psychology, molecular biology and genetics to name but a few.
It seems that biology is doing very well with only one underlying theory, Darwin’s theory of evolution. There is therefore no pressure from science to incorporate another theory, especially one for which there is no positive evidence.
But there is pressure from some sections of the church who look at the theory of evolution with dismay because it lacks any kind of teleology, any goal towards which it seeks to progress. This means that not only are human beings on this earth entirely by chance but also there is no meaning to their existence. The push to teach intelligent design theory, the idea that there was a guiding hand involved in evolution, is an effort to insert God into the teaching of science and to correct nihilistic conclusions that flow from it.
Intelligent design has displaced, at least in the public sphere, the push to teach creationism. Creationism is derived from a literal reading of the first two creation narratives and would have it that the universe was created in seven days a few thousands years ago – and that God placed dinosaur bones is the fossil record to amuse palaeobiologists. In the face of the discoveries of modern science this is just too silly for words.
Se also this piece by Rep. Rush Holt.
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Science & Technology
Previously unreported speculation:
A loose barge may have caused a large breach in the east side of the Industrial Canal floodwall that accelerated Hurricane Katrina’s rising floodwaters in the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish, Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi said Monday.
Naomi said the barge was found on the land side of the floodwall, leading corps officials to believe it could have crashed through the wall and sent a huge amount of water – which was already pouring over the top of the wall – into the neighborhoods immediately downriver.
“We have some pictures that show this very large barge inside the protected area. It had to go through the breach,” Naomi said. “The opening is a little bit wider than the barge itself. One would think it’s the barge that did it.”
If it did strike the floodwall, Naomi said, the barge would have “precipitated a tremendous collapse” that would have quickly flooded the Lower Ninth Ward and then St. Bernard Parish. The breach is “ultimately in my opinion what got (St. Bernard) Parish flooded,” Naomi said.
There are two large breaks in the floodwall, said Ivor Van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, who did an aerial survey of flood damage Sunday. The larger of the two, possibly caused by the barge, is about 800 feet long. The second is 500 feet.
A possibility, I guess. That was one of the first reported possibilities:
Corps of Engineers officials said their analysis indicated that a limited amount of water washed over the top of the levee in waves, scouring and weakening the foundation on the levee’s dry side.
Suhayda said that’s possible. But another possibility is that, during the half-day floodwaters built up in Lake Pontchartrain and the canal, water may have percolated through the earthen part of the berm, undermining it.
That effect, combined with the cumulative pressure over time, may have caused a breakthrough.
“There’s no question that those kind of conditions might have just reached the limit of what that particular levee could handle,” said James “Bob” Bailey, a flood and wind hazard risk expert with ABS consulting in Houston.
It’s also possible the levee was older and had degraded as all earthen and concrete structures do, he said.
A final possibility is that an unknown, massive chunk of debris struck the levee at some point during the night, causing a breach.
I still find it difficult to believe that there was no plan in place to immediately deal with a breach/failure, other than ‘giant sandbags.’
Sandbags, btw, that were not even filled.
by John Cole| 16 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Science & Technology
This report took me by surprise:
Fewer than 60 deaths have been directly attributed to radiation released by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident, and the final toll could be thousands less than originally believed, the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency said Monday.
However, anxiety caused by fear of death and illness from radiation poisoning is causing serious mental health problems, and such worries “show no signs of diminishing and may even be spreading,” the International Atomic Energy Agency said, citing a report compiled by 100 scientists.
The death toll attributed to radiation could reach 4,000, said the report, compiled on behalf of the Chernobyl Forum, a group that includes the Vienna-based IAEA, seven other U.N. agencies and the governments of Ukraine — where Chernobyl is located — Belarus and Russia.
Ukraine said previously it had registered 4,400 deaths related to the accident, and early speculation following the radiation release predicted that tens of thousands would die.
But forum chairman Dr. Burton Bennett said Monday that previous death tolls were inflated, perhaps “to attract attention to the accident, to attract sympathy.” He said the majority of workers and residents around the plant received low doses of radiation, and that poverty and “lifestyle diseases” posed a “far greater threat” to local communities.
I am sure there will be a follow up on this.