Re: I seem to remember that the Kiwis...

'We need to keep an eye on our antipodean cousins - and not only on the rugger field...'

Don't worry they'll go after the Aussies first.

Re: I'd vote for NAOMI

Well there you have it. The Reg is wondering what it should add to its review sections; publishing the effect of a well-aimed mobe (ranging from 'ouch!' through to 'quick trip to casualty and police caution') would set you apart from the competition.

'Whilst some would criticise the Lumia 920 for its large size and weight, our ballistics test (video below) shows that the handset is a new benchmark when settling disputes with the domestic help. Recommended.'

You have hit the nail on the head

'Drop starving celebs on the island. Including hairy cornflakes.'

Who wouldn't want to see Nadine Dorries chasing rats around the Galagapos?

Polygamy

'On a somewhat related matter -- I never understood why polygamy isn't allowed. Surely, if it's consenting adults...'

It's also permitted in the Bible.

Re: I'd vote for NAOMI

NAOMI should be reserved for a future project - such as determining the terminal velocity of a mobile phone.

Oh that is awesome

But I think it was Playtex that used that slogan. In which case:

PLAYmonaut

Transport

EXtractor

Re: Too obvious?

And another important question.

d) Is it coming our way?

Re: Very strange stuff

It's very young so its going to be generating a lot of internal heat as it compacts under gravity and then differentiates according to density. And we're talking about an enormous amount of energy - the Earth obtained something like 2.5 * 10^32J from compression and another 1 * 10^31J during the formation of the Core.

Re: Or...

Anorak primed.

I think you meant Mondas from 'The Tenth Planet' in which William Hartnell had a lie down and woke up as Patrick Troughton.

Re: Cambridge Z88

Any chance of a detailed history of the Z88 in a future episode? That was a terrific little machine with so much potential.

Re: That's a lot of horn for veggies to support

'Given the expenditure of energy needed to haul around all that plate armor, Xeno C must have found the Canada of its days full of some seriously rough predatorial neighbours.'

They had to deal with the Canadian members of the Tyrannosauridae family, which like modern Canadians are less terrifying than their American neighbours, but still included the delightfully betoothed Gorgosaurus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgosaurus_libratus

It's purely historic. Earth elements got their name from chemists who found it extremely hard to extract the metals from their oxides. The rare earths had similar chemistry but were thought to be rare at a time when chemists were largely confined to looking at what came out of European mines. The majority of the then-known rare earths were extracted from gadolinite which was known only in a single mine in Ytterby not far from Stockholm.

Gadolinite was originally thought to be a tungsten ore but the great Swedish chemist Johan Gadolin discovered it was something else. He was a bit worried he was going to turn chemistry upside down 'It is not without great trepidation I dare speak of a new earth because they are right now becoming far too numerous for it seem to me rather fatal if each of the new earths should only be found in one site or one mineral.' Gadolin discovered four new elements in gadolinite (named after him) - erbium, terbium, ytterbium and yttrium, all named after the town itself. Later, the same ore also revealed holmium (named after Stockholm) and thulium (from Thule), whilst euxenite again from the same mine, was the original source of tantalum/

Remember me if you win on 'Pointless'.

Re: Cornish sand

'Isn't the sand on some Cornish beaches sufficiently naturally radioactive to be classified as intermediate level waste?'

Cornish granite is enriched in K40, uranium and thorium plus all their delightfully unstable decay products so much of the county does have relatively high background radioactivity. I can't think of anywhere where the sand is especially radioactive, but I could imagine some alluvial deposits of heavy uranium and thorium minerals might exist where the waves have washed away less dense materials.

The average annual exposure to background radiation in West Cornwall is something like 8mSv most of which comes from radon bubbling up from the granite. The average additional annual exposure for nuclear workers is 0.2mSv. A full body CT scan is 10mSv and the annual limit for people working in the nuclear industry is just 20mSv.

I do know that the radioactive sources we had in our physics lectures back at Humphry Davy Grammar School were considerably less powerful than the chunks of uraninite in the walls. We probably had the only cloud chamber that was permanently closed through fog.

Re: High Level Waste

'I'm not sure how one converts the semi-detached family home into the Olympic sized swimming pool unfortunately...'

You use the standard IOC conversion and multiply through by nine billion quid.

Re: To put it in perspective

'$8m would get burnt through by a big automotive manufacturers R&D department in 4 to 6 weeks.'

It would possibly stretch to a couple of liquid lunches for Silicon Valley patent lawyers.

Re: in July and insists this merely brings its pricing in line with competitors....

They've seen all the shiny new Mercs being bought by bosses of the energy companies and want the same.

'Personally I'd keep the names in large text, and maybe have a subtitle beneath it that says what is actually in each drink, rather than replace the names of each drink entirely.'

Might as well go the whole McDonalds route and just give the drinks numbers.

Re: Except that a "Tall" coffee often means small coffee

I thought Starbucks applied homeopathy to coffee whilst Costa just set light to the beans rather than roast them?

Re: Tinned Spaghetti

'Tinned spaghetti is an insult in any culture, I imagine it's like a declaration of war to an Italian.'

Yeah, but we usually win those.

Re: Titan. Fuel dump of the solar system.

Didn't Tom Baker's Doctor once visit a refuelling plant on Titan only to be menaced by a giant prawn with scary eyebrows?

Re: Class

Oh look on the bright side - it's not Richard Hammond.

Re: But but...

Awww crap I'm gonna bite (wish me luck folks).

Since I've done radiodating of geological samples I might be speaking with a small amount of (slightly hung over) authority, or I could be part of the evil cabal of earth scientists who are hoping to become infinitely rich by telling people the world is really, really, really old (and very cool - apart from the hot bits obviously).

The age of the Earth isn't solely derived from U->Pb dating (although that was the first method tried). The relative volatility of lead is a real problem with older samples which are likely to have been metamorphosed since original crystallisation. Instead the range of dates for the formation of the Earth is based on various dating methods including Pb -> Pb, Sm -> Nd, Rb -> Sr and Re -> Os, all of which come in around 4.51 - 4.68 Gya with a typical range of +/- 0.15Gy.

Pb -> Pb dates are referenced against a geochron which was taken from meteoritic dates of IIRC three stony meteorites of different compositions and two iron meteorites. If you want detail look up the Holmes-Houtermans method for Pb -> Pb dating. Basic chemistry tells us that the iron-nickel troilite alloy of iron meteorites is depleted in uranium so it will not contain radiogenic lead derived from uranium decay. So the ratios of lead isotopes in iron meteorites are those of the primeval solar system.

C-14 in diamonds? If you're talking about the Baumgardner and RATE work, it has been heavily criticised for not following proper procedures in handling carbon isotopes. Anomalous radiocarbon readings are occasionally found in studies of carbonates, but the fact the vast majority of geological samples do not show radiocarbon forces us to conclude that the problem is either with instrumentation or with the way samples are prepared for analysis.

Ocean salinity? Really? Seriously? You're still using that one. Look Edmond Halley didn't know how evaporite deposits form or how widespread they are. T. Mellard Reade, John Joly and George Becker didn't know about plate tectonics - they didn't know that ocean waters (containing salt) are in intimate contact with magma at mid-ocean ridges; that a volume of water equivalent to the entire ocean passes through the oceanic crust every 10 million years; or that salt water is subducted into the Mantle in ocean plates and sediments.

In short, a lot of science has happened.

'That jellyfish is a terrible design. Not complex enough. Back to the drawing board! ;)'

But it might be immortal...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/03/jellyfish_gone_wilder/

Re: Evolved from jellyfish?

It means the proteins used in vision evolved first in jellyfish so we probably have common genetics. Our system of vision evolved much later with the first vertebrates. Nautilus has a pin hole eye whilst other cephalopods have a completely different (and in some ways superior) vision system using the same basic chemistry and genetics, the trilobites had yet another and so on...

Re: " Four ABWRs have already been built on time and to budget "

The AGRs were horribly over-budget and had a pretty terrible reputation for reliability when they first came onstream, but they were incredibly ambitious pieces of engineering at a time when Britain was really losing the knack for big projects and industrial relations were in the crapper.

It's a real shame as some of the ideas were good ones, such as producing steam at the same temperature and pressure as a coal-fired plant allowed commonality of equipment between stations. By the time the AGRs were commissioned their price per unit far exceeded that of the PWR which had been churned out by the hundred. So when it came to ordering Britain's third generation stations there was no choice but to go with the PWR. Which was a real shame, because once the AGRs were debugged they turned out to be pretty reliable.

I'm still trying to work out why the Canadians have never tried to sell CANDU in the UK. It addresses all the cooling problems of the PWR and the contamination of coolant in the BWR and is ready to go.

But I won't believe this announcement amounts to anything until the ground is broken. I've lost count of how many times in the last 20 years the UK has announced the go-ahead for new nuclear only for it to be cancelled when the economics intervene. After all, the price per unit and the level of government subsidy that will be required if the cost of electricity falls below the floor required for new nuclear have yet to be agreed.

Re: Works for me

Very happy Kobo Glo user here.

If you're not already in the Kindle ecosystem the Glo is every bit as capable as the Kindle.

Re: They lie!

Hopefully this helpful cut-out-and-keep chart will resolve all the problems between creationism and science:

http://scienceandcreation.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-fossil-record-according-to.html

Did you know dinosaurs died out in 1927?

Re: A new vent?

'This would mean a new vent. Am I looking at it wrong?'

I can't tell either. But it's not impossible - almost all volcanoes have parasitic cones and fissures low on their flanks - the pressure of pushing a column of magma into the vent is often greater than that required to open a vent on the side.

Re: Don't tempt fate

Sorry to be the bringer of bad news - it's not going to go bang, it's the wrong sort of volcano.

You're looking for andesitic and rhyolitic volcanoes found in continental interiors and on island arcs. Basically you want lots of silica to make the magma sticky and lots of water and carbon dioxide to provide the 'umph!'

Unfortunately, Heard Island is fed by the Kerguelen hotspot which brings very low silica, volatile poor magma from deep inside the Mantle. The volcanoes in the hot spot are basaltic, producing lava flows, very little ash and even the occasional lava lake - something like Hawaii - but with penguins.

Re: Hmm

'No, it's a balance. An excellent French teacher probably can't teach Physics, a good Computer Scientist probably can't teach the subject, without being taught how to teach'

I agree, but isn't the point of Gove's free schools to allow anyone to set up, run and teach in a school no matter what their qualifications (or otherwise)?

Re: Bah!

'What about life around the deep-water thermal vents? Is there any evidence of when that started up?'

The last time I was trawling the literature the evidence from genetic studies of the various species found around hydrothermal vents is that none of them are older than 100 million years and all have links back to well-established species found in more 'normal' conditions.

There are about half a dozen known vent provinces around the world with very little commonality of species between them. Instead it appears that different species evolve to occupy the same niches in different places.

Whether life started there remains an open question.

Re: Nothing new there then

And we should never forget Operation Acoustic Kitty:

'Acoustic Kitty was a CIA project launched by the Directorate of Science & Technology in the 1960s attempting to use cats in spy missions, intended to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies, recording the links between the buildings in the area. A battery and a microphone were implanted into a cat and an antenna into its tail. This would allow the cats to innocuously record and transmit sound from its surroundings. Due to problems with distraction, the cat's sense of hunger had to be addressed in another operation. Surgical and training expenses are thought to have amounted to over $20 million.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_Kitty

Re: Gah!!

There will be a cassette version won't there?