climate | jeff_duntemann

jeff_duntemann Oct 29, 2021 12:45

Sandia Labs has invented a way to extract metals from coal ash, including rare-earth metals used in batteries and electronics. Furthermore, they do this using food-grade citric acid, which is relatively benign from an environmental standpoint. The treatment makes the coal ash residue much less toxic, and thus easier to dispose of.
It took a few ( Read more... )

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jeff_duntemann Oct 21, 2013 09:42

Blasting away on a book project that I'll tell you about when the publisher announces it. One thing fersure, it's certainly reminding me what I'd forgotten.
Your brain takes out the toxic trash while you sleep. Short your brain on sleep, and the trash piles up. Let it pile up enough (particularly beta amyloids) and you could put yourself on the fast ( Read more... )

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jeff_duntemann Jun 20, 2012 18:01

The mysterious X-37B has returned to Earth after 468 days in space, evidently without a scratch. One of the comenters on the many space hobby sites I read suggested something interesting: The spacecraft might be considered a "retrievable satellite" that can stay in orbit for years at a time, then shimmy down the gravity well for a refurb when ( Read more... )

jeff_duntemann Jan 09, 2012 18:39

Of all the essential elements of science, proving causation is by far the hardest. Correlation only points in a direction that further research should take; it has no value in and of itself. (The title of the article is very hokey, by the way: Science is not failing us. Human ignorance--and corruption--are interfering with the scientific process.)
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jeff_duntemann Aug 24, 2011 19:03

Fairness requires that I point this out: An article in the Guardian that I cited in my last Odd Lots was in error. NASA had nothing to do with the paper in question, which was written in his spare time by a postdoc who happens to work for NASA. That makes the paper no less ridiculous, but at least NASA isn't doing stuff down that far along the dumb ( Read more... )

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jeff_duntemann Aug 05, 2011 10:56

I guess I didn't look hard enough last week: Pete Albrecht sent me a link to a site devoted to balloon molecules, using the same balloons that balloon artists twist into weiner dogs. The gallery contains lots of examples, from simple tetrahedra through Fullerenes and DNA, so don't miss it!
A neuroscientist calls BS on the Singularity. (Ok, the ( Read more... )

jeff_duntemann Apr 13, 2011 11:13

Here's a nice graph of the smoothed sunspot number for the last four solar cycles (21-24.) Our current Cycle 24 is still young, but it stands fair to be the weakest solar cycle in 200 years. It may mean nothing, but 200 years ago we saw cycles like that frequently and were in the worst part of the Little Ice Age.
Darrin Chandler pointed out Maqetta ( Read more... )

jeff_duntemann Jan 20, 2011 18:00

At our most recent nerd gathering here, four of my friends and I managed to carry our 1997-vintage, 198-pound Sony CRT TV set up our precipitous stairway out to the 4Runner, and a few days later I paid Blue Star recycling $37 to see it to its final rest. Many thanks to the guys--we had been pondering how to get rid of it for the past several years ( Read more... )

jeff_duntemann Sep 02, 2010 12:06

Several people have written to say that green neon sign crosses are common in Europe (where I've been all of twice, sigh) and indicate conventional pharmacies having no necessary connection with marijuana. That would explain a lot; Europe has certainly led the world in marijuana tolerance. Here, however, green crosses have clearly become culural ( Read more... )

jeff_duntemann Aug 17, 2010 17:08

The hat size/shape measuring gadget that I mentioned in my entry for August 11, 2010 is called a conformateur, and here's a whole bunch of pictures. It's evidently a lot commoner than I thought, still in use, and works spectacularly well.
And another kind of Fedora anxiety: I accidentally installed OpenSuse 11.3 over my Fedora 13 instance yesterday ( Read more... )

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