new scientific discoveries

[Wrath of Dagon]

Apparently the sound the wind mills makes freaks out people who live nearby, or at least that's what they were reporting on the radio. I also saw one of the blades on a huge truck the other day, I knew they were big, but until you see it up close you can't fully appreciate how humongous they truly are.

[Zoraptor]

Ironically, one of the most conservative people I remember, militantly opposing wind power were the Kiwis. Despite the fact that they the entire western coast of the South Island, from Greymouth and downwards being for all intent and purpose uninhabitated and somewhere between windy and stormy most days of the year. The attitude may have changed the last 5-6 years, but back then it was unthinkable to put up noisy, ugly windmills in the middle of nowhere.

The South Island already produces a surplus of power from hydroelectric projects, but a large proprtion of this is lost in transmission to the north island, and since the SI gets absolutely no benefit* yet all the problems the idea of sticking wind farms there for the benefit of foreign companies or Auckland is deeply unpopular, especially as one of the main tourist attractions in the south is precisely that you don't turn a corner and run into a forest of turbines. It is more efficient to produce the energy near where it is to be used, so more geothermal plants in the central NI would be far more sensible and efficient than turbines in the south, but politicians know they'll have far more problems sticking turbines or other generation in 'sensible places' (Hunuas, Waitakeres, One Tree Hill and other places around Auckland) due to the NIMBY effect from the higher population density that makes generation there sensible in the first place.

 

*There did use to be. Basically, the power companies love running the cheap hydroelectric power into the ground and if there isn't much rain or snow the dams run dry- they then say that they need to stick more power generation in the SI when someone attaching 2lbs of C4 to the Cook Strait Cable would solve the SI's power problems on a permanent basis. During one of the two times in which the NI was sending power south (for about six weeks) the government decided to abolish the price differential as it was a 'reciprocal arrangement'.

[Walsingham]

And then when I provide you evidence of "craptonnes of industry gearing up for it", you go and tell me that craptonnes of industry gearing up for it is not evidence of anything and in fact evidence that solar energy doesn't work. And that just because so many advances in the solar manufacturing process and conversion efficiency are taking place doesn't mean that solar is getting better or being is going to work.

 

Tried listening to yourself, Wals?

 

I'm actually quite annoyed now, because giving you the benefit of the doubt I went back and REread the links you posted. All they are is evidence that governments and some publicity-conscious organisations are buying or legally mandating solar. This is EXACTLY what I said.

 

If the potential was really there than there would be buy-in from companies who currently are extremely vulnerable to price fluctuations in oil. Agribusiness and (weirdly) oil refining are both examples.

 

Governments buying into solar is just an example of governments being ****ing retarded. Industry is a far better barometer of technical readiness than government will ever be. At least in the three to eight year bracket, which is what we are talking about.

[Humodour]

Oh so you missed all those solar companies building various projects (with and without government funding)? Sigh. This is why we can't have nice things.

 

And business is a **** barometer when the action to take to prevent something bad needs to be taken early. Business is far more likely to go "ooooh, ****, oil is ****ing our bottom line, let's switch to a technology that is consistent and predictable! ooooh ****, if we wanted to do that we would've had to have built this **** 5 or 10 years ago man! we boned."

Edited June 28, 2011 by Krezack

[Walsingham]

Oh so you missed all those solar companies building various projects (with and without government funding)? Sigh. This is why we can't have nice things.

 

And business is a **** barometer when the action to take to prevent something bad needs to be taken early. Business is far more likely to go "ooooh, ****, oil is ****ing our bottom line, let's switch to a technology that is consistent and predictable! ooooh ****, if we wanted to do that we would've had to have built this **** 5 or 10 years ago man! we boned."

 

You're missing my point entirely, dear boy. Which means one of us is being a cretin.

 

The key indicator here isn't people building solar. It's industries requiring energy utilising solar. Yet, despite escalating and wildly fluctuating energy prices, none of the most vulnerable industries are switching to renewables. Oil and gas aren't going to get cheaper or more stable so the only reason to keep on suffering is that the figures don't make sense.

 

I'm not some companies are great activist. But one thing they do tend to do well is numbers. Energy, cost of energy, predicted energy use. That's numbers.

 

As to your last point, that's self-defeating. If tooling up for renewables takes five or ten years then according to climate change doomsayers that'll be too late.

[Humodour]

climate change doomsayers

 

Oh, you mean the scientists?

[Walsingham]

climate change doomsayers

 

Oh, you mean the scientists?

 

No. The doomsayers. Some of whom are scientists. The people who say that we are going to see mass extinctions, and public deaths in the tens of milions.

[Humodour]

climate change doomsayers

 

Oh, you mean the scientists?

 

No. The doomsayers. Some of whom are scientists. The people who say that we are going to see mass extinctions, and public deaths in the tens of milions.

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/ci...ange-scepticism

 

One of the strongest things yet to convince me that climate change is as bad as we all fear: when the insurance industry starts lobbying FOR action on climate change to protect their bottom line. Somebody has obviously done the maths on how much they're going to lose from claims due to climate change and they didn't like what they found.

Edited June 29, 2011 by Krezack

[Walsingham]

On the surface that's a good counter. However, the central paper he references is pretty weak.

 

Of the other reports he mentions, only the Ernst and Young one looks genuinely compelling, although that's not a link to the actual document. The Lloyds example he cites, for example, is not an internal brief. It's a kind of press release, and written by a chap who has made his writing career on the basis of climate change being dangerous.

 

I have several friends who work in underwriting if there has been any genuine shift in behaviour, although it will have to wait until I next see them.

Edited June 29, 2011 by Walsingham

[Gorth]

Say hello to our new Tau overlords... Death ti Pi

 

I normally don't care about math at all, but this one just struck me as amusing, if nothing else, because somebody is shaking ye olde foundations of geometry (one of the few areas of math that ever held an interest for me).

 

Dr Hartl is passionate about the effort, but even he is surprised by the fervent nature of some tau adherents.

 

"What's amazing is the 'conversion experience': people find themselves almost violently angry at pi. They feel like they've been lied to their whole lives, so it's amazing how many people express their displeasure with pi in the strongest possible terms - often involving profanity.

 

"I don't condone any actual violence - that would be really bizarre, wouldn't it?"

[Humodour]

I love maths. It's beautiful, easy, and useful.

[Walsingham]

I love maths. It's beautiful, easy, and useful.

 

High as a giant gorilla atop the Empire State.

[Raithe]

Since we've been having the whole nuclear / solar discussion.. I thought I'd throw this news report in for the amusement value...

 

Jellyfish shutdown Nuclear Plant

[Humodour]

I love maths. It's beautiful, easy, and useful.

 

High as a giant gorilla atop the Empire State.

 

It's just something that has always interested me. A lot of people dislike it because they don't understand it, but then I notice they either had horrible maths teachers or never bothered to even try at it.

 

But hey, what do I know, I only tutored kids in it for 2 years and study it as my second science major.

[Humodour]

Google and Citigroup are investing hundreds of millions more in wind farms as a stable source of investment growth:

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-06-22/c...dded-phase.html

 

The wind farm will have a capacity of 1,550 megawatts. Which is equivalent to a large nuclear power station.

Edited July 1, 2011 by Krezack

[Walsingham]

I love maths. It's beautiful, easy, and useful.

 

High as a giant gorilla atop the Empire State.

 

It's just something that has always interested me. A lot of people dislike it because they don't understand it, but then I notice they either had horrible maths teachers or never bothered to even try at it.

 

But hey, what do I know, I only tutored kids in it for 2 years and study it as my second science major.

 

None of which disproves my 'high as an exploded suicide bomber' theory. You have obviously just been high quite a long time.

[Humodour]

I love maths. It's beautiful, easy, and useful.

 

High as a giant gorilla atop the Empire State.

 

It's just something that has always interested me. A lot of people dislike it because they don't understand it, but then I notice they either had horrible maths teachers or never bothered to even try at it.

 

But hey, what do I know, I only tutored kids in it for 2 years and study it as my second science major.

 

None of which disproves my 'high as an exploded suicide bomber' theory. You have obviously just been high quite a long time.

 

I am confused. I think once people start describing maths majors as permanently high, the word starts to lose its negative connotations. Which is fine by me. Rock on, I'm high!

Edited July 1, 2011 by Krezack

[Gfted1]

Lab-made organ implanted for first time.

 

(CNN) -- For the first time, a patient has received a synthetic windpipe that was created in a lab with the patient's own stem cells and without using human donor tissue, researchers said Thursday.

 

Previous lab-generated transplants either used a segment of donor windpipe or involved tissue only, not an organ.

 

In a laboratory in London, scientists created a trachea, which is a tube-like airway that connects at the voice box and branches into both lungs.

 

On June 9, doctors implanted this synthetic windpipe into a 36-year-old man with late-stage tracheal cancer at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm. The patient is doing well and is expected to be released from the hospital Friday, said Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, professor of regenerative medicine there.

 

Tracheal cancers are extremely rare, accounting for less than 1% of all cancers.

 

After the patient's initial diagnosis in 2008, he had exhausted every treatment available, including chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, Macchiarini said. The patient, an Eritrean who had been studying in Iceland, is the subject of a BBC documentary airing Thursday in Sweden.

 

His tumor had almost blocked his windpipe, doctors said.

 

Rather than waiting for a transplant, his doctors suggested growing an organ. Scientists created a Y-shaped framework for the new trachea, modeling it after the specific shape of the patient's windpipe.

 

The form was made of polymers that had a spongy and flexible texture. Stiff rings around the tube mimicked the structure of a human trachea.

 

The form was then bathed in a solution containing the patient's stem cells "to get the cells to grow on the sponge material," said David Green, president of Harvard Bioscience. Stem cells can divide and turn into a range of cell types, including those in organs.

 

His company worked on the stem cell solution, which is seen as a pink liquid in the photo at left. The purpose was to "seed" the synthetic windpipe -- as you would seed a new lawn -- to grow on the structure.

 

"Stem cells from the own patient were growing inside and outside," Macchiarini said. "This structure was becoming a living structure."

 

The stem cells were given physical or chemical cues to create the desired type, Green said.

 

Once the cells were thriving on the form, the artificial trachea was implanted into the patient.

 

His body accepted the new trachea, and he even had a cough reflex two days after the surgery, Macchiarini said.

 

Three years ago, Macchiarini made headlines by implanting an artificial trachea created from donor tissue combined with stem cells from the recipient, Claudia Castillo, whose windpipe had been damaged by tuberculosis.

 

"The results were quite good, but unfortunately we were still dependent" on organ donation, which can take months, Macchiarini said.

 

Creating the synthetic structure for the trachea in the current case took 10 to 12 days, compared with waiting months for an organ donor, Macchiarini said.

 

Earlier this year, regenerative medicine scientists at Wake Forest University School of Medicine reported that they had engineered five urethras between March 2004 and July 2007.

 

They had used a small piece of each patient's own tissue from the bladder, then grew the cells in a lab onto a mesh scaffold shaped like a urethra.

 

This area of research remains somewhat controversial in medicine, because critics say this could lead to human cloning.

 

But Macchiarini said making these first artificial organs viable in patients opens doors for future transplants through the relatively new field of regenerative medicine.

 

"It's a beautiful international collaboration," he said about the recent effort that involved doctors and researches in Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. "If scientists and clinicians work together, we can help humanity."

[Walsingham]

Stem cells are the ****ing shizzle, man. Assuming that means what I think it means.

[Tale]

Beat me to it. The implant of a synthetic organ is a historic event. Well, biological synthetics not based on a donor. It'll be in medical textbooks for possibly centuries.

 

I want to find out how long it takes to produce one of these.

[Gfted1]

I want to find out how long it takes to produce one of these.

 

 

Creating the synthetic structure for the trachea in the current case took 10 to 12 days, compared with waiting months for an organ donor, Macchiarini said.

[pmp10]

I want to find out how long it takes to produce one of these.

 

 

Creating the synthetic structure for the trachea in the current case took 10 to 12 days, compared with waiting months for an organ donor, Macchiarini said.

That's just the framework.

The organ growing must have taken some time as well.

And I wouldn't get that excited over a trachea.

If we can move on to hearts or chemically active organs things will get interesting.

[Tale]

If we can move on to hearts or chemically active organs things will get interesting.

Well, this is kind of the step to that. If a similar technique can work for those. But maybe this method will only go about this far.

[Humodour]

I wouldn't get that excited over a trachea.

 

Oh come on, mate, that is such a short-sighted comment to make.

[Gorth]

I wouldn't get that excited over a trachea.

 

Oh come on, mate, that is such a short-sighted comment to make.

Just imagine the military implications of growing cannon fodder in vats... A dip and you grow kevlar like tissue and bony armour plates all over.