Posts by David Pollard 1321 publicly visible posts • joined 29 May 2007
As others have noted, though it might quell flames this device wouldn't cool burning timbers etc.. In such situations combustible gas will presumably continue to be released until some of other fortuitous circumstance leads to its ignition; a process which is likely to be, er, swift and sudden.
Perhaps what's needed as much as open source, if the aim is to inspire youngsters, is a range of inexpensive measuring devices that plug into a standard pc or laptop, together with appropriate interface software: to record, for example, temperature, pH, current, voltage, magnetic field, humidity, wind strength, illumination, ...
Even if, as Steve George suggests with home computers, it's only a small proportion of youngsters who spend time playing with a DIY laboratory, this could significantly stimulate interest in science.
As best I can see, radioiodine levels in Tokyo tap-water only exceed by a little the strict Japanese limits. The news showed mothers who were concerned that they couldn't buy bottled water to make up milk for their infants. Panic buying has denuded the shops. Although potassium iodide tablets may be available, these do have some side-effects and it's preferable not to give them to infants.
Does anyone know if it is possible to remove traces of iodine by adding something like lumps of hard bread to water in a jug and stirring/standing for a while so that the iodine combines with the starch and can be removed with a sieve?
By how much might this reduce contamination levels; how long would it take for the iodine to be maximally absorbed onto the bread pieces; and what would be the most effective and simple procedure to use?
The incidence of toxoplasmosis infection during pregnancy in the UK appears to be somewhere between one and two per thousand. Particularly during the first trimester this can be very damaging to the foetus with results including still-birth, deformities, blindness in later life, and possibly reduced IQ, schizophrenia and autism.
Given that cats are a critical vector in the life-cycle of this parasite, and that rates of death and damage seem rather higher than from tuberculosis, it's curious that there hasn't been a call to cull them; or at the least to introduce compulsory testing, vaccinations and chipping.
Antibody reaction tests suggest 2 billion people worldwide have been infected by toxoplasmosis. It presents a much greater risk than present levels of man-made nuclear radiation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis
This ghastly disease that makes rats lust after cat piss appears to cause stillbirths in humans as well as in sheep.
http://www.cabdirect.org/abstracts/19612900471.html
"Dr Joanne Webster, a lecturer in infectious disease at Oxford ... also says we are likely to find more evidence of the parasite's impact on children."
"There is some initial research that has found hyperactivity and low IQ in children with high Toxoplasma levels..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/850556.stm
http://www.schizophreniaforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=1468
Apparently toxoplasmois can re-surface when the immune system is weakened. Anyone for autism?
Philip and colleagues, who provided this translation and summary, deserve a pint at the least.
"I made these as quite a few people are getting confused with all the numbers floating around and to show in an easily viewable format the levels that are being stated."
http://fleep.com/earthquake/
This sounds much like echoes of the orchestrated scaremongering which was being promoted last year in relation to Fallujah, Iraq. The increase in illnesses and birth defects there was being blamed on depleted uranium from weapons. DU weapons were unlikely to have been used in the battle to recapture the city, horrendous though this was, and a major cause in all probability was and still is pollution from the nearby chemical factories.
Nevertheless, 'worse than Hiroshima' headlines and the uranium scare-story flooded a section of the western press. The result may well have been that attention has been diverted from the real problem that seems to be affecting residents and possibly a number of veterans.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/toxic-legacy-of-us-assault-on-fallujah-worse-than-hiroshima-2034065.html
Given that there have been only very minor leaks from the reactors in Fukushima, that evacuation proceeded swiftly, that potassium iodide tablets will be available for everyone if required ... the risk from radioactivity has been minimised. The Japanese authorities and people seem to have put into action, generally most creditably, emergency plans which could cater for much more severe outcomes.
As others have noted, the main risks in this disaster now arise from chemical pollution, disease, the cold weather, disruption and scaremongering.
With respect to leukaemia, it has been known for decades that a major cumulative causative factor is exposure to benzene and similar chemicals. Google scholar may provide an appropriate starting point.
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?start=10&q=leukaemia+benzene
With respect to birth defects I would venture that there could be a somewhat greater risk than radioactivity from dioxins produced in fires as damage is cleared away, if waste is simply burned. Again Google scholar provides plenty of references.
http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?hl=en&q=birth-defect+dioxin
It would be useful to know if anyone is able to evaluate the effects of volatile organic compounds released from new buildings and repairs to damaged ones. This would be more use than bleating and scare stories about a radiation risk that has fortunately turned out to be effectively negligible. Yes, we do need to examine risks. But we need to examine risks together with the concurrent benefits across the whole spectrum of life. And we need to keep them in perspective.
... and I can't speak for Lewis, but if all those angry Reg readers who support Fred Goldstein's suggestion will club together to sponsor a couple of tickets I'd be delighted to go to Japan.
For a few decades now I have been on record as saying that I'd be happy to have a suitable quantity of vitrified nuclear waste in my garden; or even under the house, come to that. (Somewhere in the region of 2 to 5 kW with a suitable heat-pump seems appropriate.) Distributed storage could make it too difficult to use for nefarious purposes and domestic central heating from the decay heat would be close to carbon neutral.
Short-term spikes in radiation levels are likely to continue to be observed, as excess pressure vents for example. Although high levels of radiation have been noted several times, the sources seem to have involved limited quantities of material comprising mainly very short-lived products (such as N16). Radiation levels have fallen quite quickly after the release.
In 2007, public donations funded similar research. The University of Washington had set up a special account, "Non-Local Quantum Communication Experiment".
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/319367_timeguy12.html
http://www.sott.net/articles/show/134497-Public-donates-to-UW-scientist-to-fund-backward-in-time-research
Has someone at Conservative Central Office perhaps stumbled upon this?
BBC News 24 itself is not without blame in spreading panic. So-called 'Professor' Chris Busby appeared at around 6 pm on Monday, 14th. March.
He claimed that if plutonium should escape from one of the Japanese reactors which uses MOX fuel then this would not be detectable. Although, as he said, is is not easy to detect short-range alpha particles because they are stopped by even a few centimetres of air, it is utterly implausible that a significant release of plutonium would go unnoticed.
A quick internet search for [detection plutonium air-filter] brings up a good few references to standard methods. It would also be possible to infer the presence of Pu from the easily recognisable signature of its decay products. And finally, any release of Pu from a reactor would be accompanied by various other radioactive elements which would be swiftly detected.
His second claim, equally bogus, was that if there were to be a meltdown such that the containment were to be breached then this might result in a nuclear explosion.
Meanwhile, the list of sites on the internet quoting this 'top radiation expert' is growing. My search for [Chris-Busby radiation] for the past 24 hours at 12:30 GMT on Google currently shows about 70 hits.
Some of the people spreading scare stories are likely to be the same ones who last year promoted the claim that the increase in illness and birth deformity in Fallujah was caused by depleted uranium from weapons. The end result there has presumably been that the rather severe problem of chemical pollution remains largely unaddressed.
Universities in the UK are much involved in areas such as this; for example Chandra Wickramasinghe's department at Cardiff and Milton Wainwright's at Sheffield.
http://www.astrobiology.cf.ac.uk/chandra1.html
http://journalofcosmology.com/Contents11.html
http://journalofcosmology.com/Panspermia2.html
In the present times of financial stringency and cutbacks in the budget for further education it is to be hoped that these endeavours and the contribution they make to the UK's reputation for high-grade academic research have not been neglected.</irony>
"Fever is a frequent systemic adverse event following immunization, especially in infants and young children."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16026253
and from Albert Einstein College:
"The new theory stems from decades of anecdotal observations that some autistic children seem to improve when they have a fever, only to regress when the fever ebbs."
http://www.einstein.yu.edu/home/news.asp?id=331
Vaccination and immunization may induce fever, which is usually fairly mild. There is much anecdotal evidence, confirmed by recent research, that fever can temporarily reduce autistic spectrum symptoms. Hence a parent who noticed autistic symptoms worsening as a vaccination-induced fever abated might not unreasonably blame this worsening on the vaccination/immunization. In such a situation there is indeed a correlation, though epidemiological studies of the MMR jab have shown that it does not cause autism.
Given big pharma's track record, it's hardly surprising that some will dig their heels in and call 'liar' when told that there is absolutely no connection at all. Some parents will have seen their child develop a fever following the jab; and seen the sutistic symptoms worsen as the fever diminished.
The myth that MMR causes autism will disapear only when it is widely realised that jabs sometimes cause a fever and that fever can modulate autistic spectrum symptoms.
The myth has remained strong for good reason. There really is a connection between vaccination and symptoms of autism. But it's correlation not causation.
Research by Laura Curran et al. in 2007 confirmed something that had been observed for many years: fever can temporarily reduce autistic spectrum symptoms. If a child's symptoms had been reduced as a result of vaccination induced fever, then symptoms of autism might well have appeared to worsen quite quickly as the fever abated. In some situations it may look very much as though the vaccination caused this worsening.
To tell a parent in such a situation that there is no connection whatsoever is tantamount to calling them liars, for it contradicts the evidence of their own eyes. It's hardly surprising that there are some strongly held views here.
The myth that vaccinations cause autism will not disappear until this aspect of the condition is better understood and more widely known.
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/120/6/e1386
In heat engines the implications of the Carnot theorem are unavoidable.
Maximum Efficiency = 1 - T(cold)/T(hot)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle
If a secondary heat engine uses the same cold sink as the primary engine had done, then the sink temperature of the primary one will be increased, thus reducing its efficiency. Overall the efficiency is reduced.
Alternatively, if the secondary heat engine uses additional cooling so that the primary heat engine's sink temperature is unaffected after it is coupled in, then it would generally be better to apply the improved cooling directly to the primary engine.
There may be inefficient engines in which some otherwise wasted heat can be turned into useful energy (e.g. internal combustion engine exhaust), but the Carnot limit is impossible to beat; and modern gas turbines already run very close to this limit. This is why Francis KIng was dubious.
Do I detect hints of Robert Norton's mischievous sense of humour calling us from his grave? He was head of Microsoft's type group for a while.
It would be a mark of the man's creativity and generosity to leave a legacy which reminds us not to allow technology to over-ride beauty.
http://www.creativepro.com/article/dot-font-the-mischievous-mind-behind-microsoft-s-truetype-fonts
Wind energy is only available for 25% or 30% of the time. So, there being presently no effective large-scale storage, backup capacity must be available for use when the wind isn't blowing.
Secondly, to cater for the fluctuating supply and increased distances of transmission the national grid will have to be beefed up.
Just over a decade ago the Derbyshire police re-investigated an unsolved murder with a huge DNA profiling operation. It took me a while to come to the sad realisation that while they would have liked to catch the perpetrator this was not their main objective.
They seemed to me to have two main aims: First they wanted to paint themselves in the best light in the press and on TV in connection with a crime they had been unable to solve and where they had been stupidly illogical. Secondly they wanted to use the murder as an excuse to conduct a 'DNA trawl' - 'trawling' the DNA database was at that time not legal - among the victim's friends and associates, some of whom were known to have an involvement with recreational drugs, in the hope that they might stumble across evidence applicable to other crimes.
And they wonder why people don't trust the police.
It only takes a quick search to find that, "in crops such as tomatoes, peppers, and blue berries, bumble bees' pollination results in higher production as well as larger and higher quality fruits."
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&as_q=bees+pollination+tomato+commercial&as_epq=financial+benefit&as_oq=&as_eq=&tbs=&num=30&lr=&as_filetype=&ft=i&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=images
A study which benefited greatly through access to US Army resources did indeed "implicate co-infection by [Iridovirus] and Nosema with honey bee colony decline"
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0013181
The authors also claim that "a survey of bee samples from across the USA revealed traces of pesticides in many bee samples, but none were shown to correlate with CCD."
The survey referenced did note that, "Attempts to correlate global bee declines or CCD with increased pesticide exposures alone have not been successful to date." However it continued, "It seems to us that it is far too early to attempt to link or to dismiss pesticide impacts with CCD."
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009754
There's what looks to be good research by C.A. Mullins et at in PLoS:
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009754
They note that, "One third of honey bee colonies in the US were lost during each of the last three winters between ’06-’09 ." The problem is quite serious.
Uranium is present in phosphate rock at levels typically between 50 and 200 ppm. Estimates of the amount that could be recovered during fertiliser production range between 3,700 and 11,000 tons/year, but until recently the price of uranium has been too low to make this generally worthwhile.
http://www.wise-uranium.org/ufert.html
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/phosphates_inf124.html
It's surprising that although large amounts of uranium have been being spread around onto crops there seems never to have been a campaign from the greenies calling for a ban on all fertilisers which have more than small traces of radioactivity.
Power to El Reg's elbow and all that, but as AC says above in relation to eCAF, there is a whole bunch of stuff beyond the ContactPoint database.
To say that "the original vision" was just "wide-ranging information about all children, available to all" is to miss the point somewhat.
Here is how Warwickshire (Agenda No. 11, 16th June 2005) described what they were up to:
"RYOGENS is an electronic information sharing system, enabling any agency using the system to identify and log concerns about children and young people. Current information sharing protocols allow the sharing of information about children and young people who are thought to be showing early signs of anti-social behaviour or offending. It is anticipated that this definition of concern will be expanded with the development of broader information protocols."
'Thought to be showing early signs ...' eh?
"... for an outwardly cataclysmic rise in atmospheric concentrations of CO2 above the pre-industrial baseline of 1,000 parts per million ..."
This looks more like 750 ppm to me in the Executive Summary of the Stern Review. The chart on page v also sums up quite well the range of serious effects that are likely to cut in as the average temperature rise goes above 0.5 degrees.
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/Executive_Summary.pdf
I wonder how many more people will now be exposed to this outrage as a direct result of the police demands?
If ten people a day went by in the village, who didn't know better and didn't avert their eyes as they passed, this would be at most five thousand a year who were casually exposed. If this gets on telly or in one of the broadsheets the attentions of five million or more will be drawn to it..
Much of the expenditure is for the infrastructure to distribute wind energy and to accommodate the fluctuations in its supply..
When the requirement for gas turbine and other backup is taken into account, wind has a large, normally unseen and unstated, carbon cost. The load factor is only 25-30%; and it needs 100% backup for calm periods. A large proportion of the claimed carbon saving comes about not from wind itself but from the shift to gas generation of electricity. Large coal power stations can't handle the variable load that wind's erratic supply imposes on the rest of the network and gas takes this up.
Half of this £32++ billion would buy the baseline generating capacity the UK needs for long-term stable supply; nuclear power stations are available with three to five year build times from several manufacturers..Some of the remainder would buy a tidy slice of research into Gen IV, put us back in the world market and on track to dispose of plutonium stocks and a large proportion of accumulated waste.
"So sites that rely upon advertising to be free to the public (i.e., non-subscription) need targeting to STAY free to the public. The only other option is conversion to pay-for-play sites, which most users do NOT want."
The Reg demonstrates an alternative. Despite Adblock I can still see an ad for a broadband provider, which is embedded in the page (and from which a greater proportion of revenue presumably goes directly to the proprietors rather than to an intermediary).
It's true that some smaller or less focused sites might suffer if targeting were to be hampered, but the scrape/recycle/sensationalise sites that have proliferated, apparently with the single or main purpose of generating traffic and advertising revenue, would suffer more. Both advertisers and the browsing public would be better off if some of these were less profitable.
'Economic activity' which does little other than to draw money form one group of people to another smaller group disbenefits the majority and doesn't actually generate real wealth.
The people at ARCH have consistently tried to prevent the implementation of ghastly technological fixes such as RYOGENS, the predictive database system that would supposedly identify likely criminals. And they have consistently opposed the control-freak mindset that has developed in recent years.
When the closure of the Contactpoint collation of children's data was announced, various Reg commentators expressed misgivings; concerns that the data would not actually be discarded, and that aspects of the system would continue to be developed behind the scenes.
The gentleman's agreement reported here seems to confirm that these fears and concerns, that systems in children's education and health care will be extended to allow their use for intrusive social control, were not misplaced.
"Francis Maude has said that when costs are similar, the government will buy open source rather than proprietary software."
http://www.kable.co.uk/open-source-government-prefers-francis-maude-15sep10
This is going in the right direction, but it still omits to take into account the effect on local economies. Although rarely evidenced, the argument usually goes that (closed source) proprietary software ends up being less expensive because the costs of support are lower.
In fact, even if the overall costs were the same there could be a significant benefit from using open source. A greater proportion of expenditure would be local and would thus provide a local stimulus to the economy. In addition, though planners don't usually pay much heed, long-term costs could be reduced through the use of standard and accessible data formats.
But at least Mr Maude seems to have listened to advisers. Maybe the efforts of David Villanueva Nuñez were not in vain.
David Villanueva Nuñez.tried for a while to make the use of Open Source software mandatory in all government departments in Peru. The arguments he advanced in a letter to Microsott are quite compelling.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/05/19/ms_in_peruvian_opensource_nightmare/
http://www.diaplous.org/response.htm
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