Yes, it's related to the cold, but it also appears to be related to the specific issues of Norway's grid.

Some speculation is that the problem involves too-extreme fluctuations in the electricity provided by that grid and a charger-side software-mediated shutoff of charging. If that's the case, then this might be another charger issue that can be solved with an over-the-air "patch" like some of the previous problems.

While this is definitely a concern for Tesla and their Norwegian customers, it doesn't seem to be relevant to cars in North America.

Absolutely true. Many libraries use programs like Overdrive to "lend" digital media to anyone with a valid library card (sign in with card number on library's website).

Ebooks or audiobooks can be downloaded onto various internet-connected devices. As long as you are connected, you can check out a book from thousands of miles away, 24/7 (excepting maintenance).

I personally use the audiobooks as entertainment while driving (iPhone) and crank through plenty of ebooks on my tablet (Android).

Libraries are free to use as a public service. Might as well make the most of them!

The current library setup I have access to is far too convenient for me to pay a subscription for the recommendation service.

Depends on what you're feeding your beef, but a respectable feed conversion from grain is generally around 5:1. Higher conversion ratios are usually found when animals are grazing, owing to the lower nutrient density of forage versus concentrated energy foods like grain.

But insects are remarkably efficient, particularly with regards to water!

I'm pretty curious about that cricket flour now. :)

The appendix may not be as useless as we once thought.
Recent investigations have suggested that the appendix acts as a kind of "wildlife preserve" for our gut microbes. Throughout much of our evolutionary history (and much of the modern world) massive diarrhea has been a disease with two distinct issues: the likelihood of death from dehydration, and the disruption of intestinal flora in the survivors. A rapid recolonization with "good bugs" would have helped keep survivors from the kinds of recurring and chronic conditions that can result from microbial imbalance.

Testing of this hypothesis has shown that individuals with an appendix are four times less likely to have recurrences of C. diff infections compared to those without: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21699818

However, the way the recurrent laryngeal nerve runs around major thoracic vessels before ending up in the larynx is preposterous. That totally needs a redesign. Also, can I request a functional nictitating membrane? Those things are sweet!

Several of these themes and structures are found in Shakespeare, and a few echo Greek tragedies. It's not just this one book, though it's convenient, I guess, that he broke it down for screenwriters rather than leaving it in the realm of Theater and Literature Liberal Arts classrooms.

The author of the article would probably get lost if he ever stumbled into TVtropes.org.

Thematic elements recur. Surprising absolutely no one. The originality is in where things buck trends or subvert expectations, or in how they execute classic themes in fresh and exciting ways.

Harry Potter and Star Wars weren't thrilling because the themes were original, they were fun because they brought a fresh and intriguing context to classic themes.

Cooked and not all meat, for several reasons.
1) Dogs are not wolves. Dogs are domestic animals and have significantly smaller teeth than their forebears. Throughout their time in domesticity they have predominantly eaten what we have - cooked food, and a mix of meat and vegetable matter. We have bred them to be easy to keep on food that is similar to ours. You are encouraged to explore some of the peer-reviewed publications on the matter.

2) Many canids - such as coyotes, jackals, and foxes - are omnivores, and various populations of Canis lupus have current or historical evidence of dietary diversity. See previous link. The dentition of modern dogs is closer to that of omnivorous coyotes than modern wolves.

3) Yes, they have molars. And premolars. They are shown quite nicely in the link you gave. They don't have grinding molars (like most herbivores do), but most non-primate omnivores don't have those. Feel free to examine the dentition of raccoons and brown or black bears for molars of omnivores who don't grind.

4) Wild animals are rarely as healthy as you'd like your domestic dog to be. They die of starvation, illness, exposure, and parasites. So even though wolves ate raw meat, they also didn't live as long as the average dog. In other news, please deworm your dog and have it vaccinated, even though it's "natural" to let it be infested with parasites or die of distemper.

5) Raw meat from a grocery store has a high likelihood of having surface contamination with Salmonella, E. coli, Campylobacter, and other fun pathogens responsible for food-borne illnesses. Dogs are not immune to these, and they can range from merely unpleasant to fatal. Freshly killed raw meat doesn't have the same level of surface contamination that grocery store meat does (industrial farming and meat packaging are different from fresh-killed whatever), but wild game is at higher risk for parasites. Feel free to disregard the cooked-meat warning if you hunt your own meat, feed it fresh, and have your dog on a monthly dewormer. They may still get Toxoplasmosis, flukes, tapeworms, or Salmon poisoning (if you are feeding raw salmon)... monthly dewormers rarely address flatworms, and they don't prevent protozoal infections.

6) Hyenas are not closely related to dogs, they are in Feliformia (the group is pretty much all carnivores or insectivores). Bears are closer to dogs (in Caniformia), however, and most are omnivores. Some of the Caniformes (like red pandas and giant pandas) are herbivorous.

The splintering of cooked bones is definitely a good point, and worth keeping in mind. Raw bones can splinter too, but cooked are more brittle. There's still a lively debate as to whether raw bones are as safe as once thought (for splintering as well as pathogen concerns and GI obstructions), but there is virtually no debate that cooked bones are a worse choice.

Steak is not complete nutrition for a dog. Muscle meat is important but lacks many of the vitamins and minerals found in organ meats and vegetable matter. Additionally, while dogs are taxonomically in Carnivora, they are functionally omnivores. Straight meat isn't ideal for them. (This is in contrast to cats and ferrets, which are obligate carnivores and have trouble digesting vegetable matter.)

As an aside, if you are feeding your pet meat, please cook the meat as thoroughly as you would for human food safety. Domestic animals are not immune to the food-borne pathogens that cause nasty illnesses, and no one wants their pet (or their carpet) to go through that drama.

Not empty, just not carrying passengers.

Initial speculation included the possibility that it was a cargo run, as many trans-pacific airlines have cargo flights. Asiana has a cargo center in SFO. There was hope - particularly among the emergency response community - that the flight was cargo, with fewer people at risk, all in the relative safety of the front of the plane. The last crash Asiana had was a cargo flight.
However, I can't find any indication that Asiana flies the 777 into SFO as a freighter; all I see are 747s.

Do we also have a way to count the foreign policy costs of oil-based energy? I mean, we've been fighting or enforcing no-fly zones in Iraq for most of the last 25 years (8-9 years of straight up war, 12 years of zone enforcement), and there's pretty good reason to think that oil was a contributing factor in our interest.

This may have contributed to the "bad rap" that oil-based ICE gets.

You want to talk about environmental damage, keep this in mind. Whenever they talk about the BP spill, they qualify it as the largest accidental oil spill.

The Kuwait oil fires burned a million more gallons than the entire BP spill each day, and burned for ten months.

I didn't follow the coding analogy, but I'm much more biogeek than computer nerd.

I'm in the camp that thinks cDNA, the production of which is prior art, is not patentable just because someone was the first person to identify the gene the the cDNA is encoding.

If you can't patent the sequence, and copying genetic material in that fashion is already well known and widely used, copying your identified sequence is an obvious (in the legal, patent-relevant sense) step.

My analogy is: If you discover a crystal that exists in nature, that isn't patentable. If you use your Crystal Maker 5000 3-D printer to make copies of your crystal, just as everyone else uses their CM 5000 to make theirs, you can't patent the copy either. Not innovative.

Thank you for clarifying, it's even less generally useful than I'd thought. Niche research indeed!

1. There is nothing specifically unethical in having multiple partners, as long as one discloses disease risks and there is not a presumption of monogamy.
2. Either biological parent may be interested in the results of a paternity test:
                  a) A man and woman may both know that there was more than one man with the woman, and all three (woman and at least 2 men) would have an interest in the outcome.
                  b) The female may wish to prove a man is involved when he denies a sexual relationship or claims contraceptive methods were adequate ("Can't be me, I wore a condom."). Also, a woman who bears a child from rape is still entitled to support even if the man is not convicted. This requires a paternity test.
                  c) A man may accuse a woman of having multiple partners and thus request a paternity test to attempt to show that he is not the father, proving her involvement with another man. Alternatively, a man may wish to prove that he is the father in a case when another man was involved with the woman near the time of conception, so as to prevent his child being raised by someone else.

This doesn't sequence the genome or expand it. It just collects the DNA from the sample.
Real-time sequencing is what you are talking about, and that's still a long way off.

The gizmo is very cool, it takes a step that is the better part of an hour in the lab (depending on how many samples at a time you are running, and what the samples are) to something that is minutes, but it doesn't make the sequencing faster.

The most useful thing about it is that it is automated and potentially point-of-care. This means that instead of shipping bio-hazardous fluids or tissues all over the place, you can ship the extracted DNA (probably frozen or freeze dried).

I imagine that they started with a Brassica because it's one of the most common experimental plants, and there's more genetic information available on it vs. most houseplants. Proof of concept work is best done in a thoroughly understood system, and if you're adding a gene from another phylum, knowing a lot about the organism you are working with helps to control for some variables.

However, I love the idea of a hardier plant with high leaf area!
(I admit to fanciful imaginings of a calm voice announcing, "In the event of a blackout, low level emergency lighting will be noticeable in street-side shrubbery.")