dissipation path in RF power amplifiers? I don't know whether common wifi routers have discrete RF power amp devices to feed their antennas, but if they do, they are probably connected by thermal grease to a heat spreader of some kind. Over years of thermal cycling, thermomechanical expansion can create voids in the thermal grease, which will increase the device-to-ambient thermal resistance. The device will run hotter (= lower efficiency, less RF power to the antenna) or fold its power back to stay within thermal limits (same result). This could also happen if there's lots of accumulated dust on the heat sink, which would increase device to ambient thermal resistance. My 2 cents.

are these:

1. Governor, you understand that an action may be legal but not ethical. Why, then, given the difficult financial condition of Americans and America, did you take a tax deduction for your wife's horse? With nearly a quarter of a billion dollars net worth, why are you forcing me and my fellow Americans to pay for your wife's horse?

2. In your first debate with President Obama, you said in response to President Obama: "...the place you put your money makes a pretty clear indication of where your heart is...". I couldn't agree more. Why then are most of your funds invested overseas? Why don't you invest your money in America?

Yeah, I've questions I'd like to ask Obama, too. But I'll start with the MittBot.

Ignition is a fabulous read. I thought nobody else knew about it. Thanks.

These projectiles will certainly be guided (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-08/its-experimental-rail-gun-navy-wants-gps-guided-hypersonic-projectiles) with accuracies at least as good as current ICBM systems, and probably as good as existing precision bombing systems like JDAM (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Direct_Attack_Munition) and others. There are plenty of ways to guide a very fast munition that do not require sticking control surfaces out in a hypersonic air stream.

I saw Endeavour today as it headed south to overfly Moffett Field. End of an era, yes, and I do miss our nation's having a spacecraft, even one with the Shuttle's long list of flaws and shortcomings.

But we *are* doing quite a lot of stuff out there:

- We just landed a nuclear powered, laser-zapping mobile lab on Mars, and it's headed off to climb a mountain;
- Dawn recently lit up its ion drive and left orbit around the asteroid Vesta to visit another asteroid, Ceres;
- Cassini continues touring Saturn and its moons;
- Messenger is exploring Mercury from orbit;
- Opportunity is still wandering around on Mars, continuing eight years of exploration;
- We're still getting good data from Voyagers 1 and 2, over a third of a century after they were launched.

I've left stuff out, but you get my point. The space age has arrived, but in a different way and at a slower pace than most of us might have wanted. But it's here, and it's not going away.

Agree with your point. I've been spending more time at Ars lately, less here. Overall quality @ /. (stories and posts) is on a downtrend, IMHO.

than the combined total of the seventeen nations next in defense spending. I can recommend David Wessel's book Red Ink as an excellent, informative read on US budgetary matters. The stat I led this post with comes from his book. Also, I suggest listening to Teri Gross's interview with Wessel today. You can find it here: http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=07-31-2012

From the summary: "The airlines couldn't sell enough tickets on the small plane to even make up for the amount of fuel it needed to guzzle on its journeys, let alone cover maintenance for the technological marvel."

With the increasing concentration of wealth, the number of people who could and would pay >5x the former Concorde ticket price (adjusted for inflation) is probably large enough to carry the aircraft operations and maintenance and then some. To such a target market, a small number of passengers per flight is not a negative at all - it's exclusivity writ large. I think that if the Concorde were flying today, its operators could charge $75K/passenger and fill the aircraft. There isn't any transportation system at present that provides its passengers what the Concorde did: an irresistable combination of speed, luxury, and a conspicuous imprimatur of being the richest of the rich. The market for extreme luxury goods is growing very rapidly, and the Concorde would have fit in perfectly today.

A quick WikiP search indicated the latest evidence for effectiveness against cataracts of N-acc drops was not real solid (see 2008 Royal College of Opthalmologists statement), the the Wiki article also indicates subsequent evidence is available, but doesn't give a cite. As someone who's developing corneal opacities, I'm interested, can you give a cite or two? Tnx.

Sapphire is Al2O3, aluminum oxide (aka alumina). Alumina dissolves in alkaline pH conditions see, for example, http://www.seachem.com/support/AluminumSolubilityToxicity.pdf). It seems likely that over hundreds of milennia, these discs would be exposed to alkaline conditions as a result of varying geochemistry/hydrology.

Furthermore, sapphire is brittle. Very hard, but brittle. One could break a sapphire disc by dropping it a few feet onto concrete. Over hundreds of milennia, stuff falls, squashes, cracks, etc.

Solar insolation changes, resulting from long-term oscillations of orbital configurations1, are an important driver of Holocene climate2,3. The forcing is substantial over the past 2,000 years, up to four times as large as the 1.6 W m2 net anthropogenic forcing since 1750 (ref. 4), but the trend varies considerably over time, space and with season5. Using numerous high-latitude proxy records, slow orbital changes have recently been shown6 to gradually force boreal summer temperature cooling over the common era. Here, we present new evidence based on maximum latewood density data from northern Scandinavia, indicating that this cooling trend was stronger (0.31 C per 1,000 years, ±0.03 C) than previously reported, and demonstrate that this signature is missing in published tree-ring proxy records. The long-term trend now revealed in maximum latewood density data is in line with coupled general circulation models7,8 indicating albedo-driven feedback mechanisms and substantial summer cooling over the past two millennia in northern boreal and Arctic latitudes. These findings, together with the missing orbital signature in published dendrochronological records, suggest that large-scale near- surface air-temperature reconstructions9–13 relying on tree- ring data may underestimate pre-instrumental temperatures including warmth during Medieval and Roman times.

Stories like this contribute to my growing generalized cynicism and pessimism. I have no connection to SETI, but it seems to me like an honest, modest effort at discovery which could change humanity's perspective forever - one way or the other. And it's starving for funds that represent less than the annual property tax bills of Larry Ellison, Steve Ballmer, and Bill Gates on their homes. To me, this is a bright red flashing light on the societal annunciator panel that something's wrong with our priorities. If I had a $10 million net worth, I'd include $10K to SETI in my annual donation program. As it is, it will be much less. I hope that those of you who can do more, will. Thanks.

Wish I had mod points for you, this is both interesting and informative.

IIRC, there have been experiments at JPL in which bacteria were subjected to ever more Martian-like conditions, and that if the environmental change was slow enough, some bacterial successfully adapted. My brief search didn't turn up those experiments. However...

During the assembly of the Phoenix spacecraft (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_(spacecraft)) cultures taken from the clean room in which the spacecraft was assembled and tested noted a shift in the organisms cultured towards those capable of surviving UVC radiation and hydrogen peroxide exposure. The shift towards these extremophiles is notable because Mars has UVC radiation at its surface, and plenty of peroxide species in its soil. The authors of this study speculate that the shift to extremophiles in the clean room was brought about by spacecraft cleaning procedures. Study: "Recurrent Isolation of Extremotolerant Bacteria from the Clean Room Where Phoenix Spacecraft Components Were Assembled", ASTROBIOLOGY
Volume 10, Number 3, 2010, DOI: 10.1089/ast.2009.0396

Abstract: The microbial burden of the Phoenix spacecraft assembly environment was assessed in a systematic manner via several cultivation-based techniques and a suite of NASA-certified, cultivation-independent biomolecule-based detection assays. Extremotolerant bacteria that could potentially survive conditions experienced en route to Mars or on the planet’s surface were isolated with a series of cultivation-based assays that promoted the growth of a variety of organisms, including spore formers, mesophilic heterotrophs, anaerobes, thermophiles, psy- chrophiles, alkaliphiles, and bacteria resistant to UVC radiation and hydrogen peroxide exposure. Samples were collected from the clean room where Phoenix was housed at three different time points, before (1P), during (2P), and after (3P) Phoenix’s presence at the facility. There was a reduction in microbial burden of most bacterial groups, including spore formers, in samples 2P and 3P. Analysis of 262 isolates from the facility demonstrated that there was also a shift in predominant cultivable bacterial populations accompanied by a reduction in diversity during 2P and 3P. It is suggested that this shift was a result of increased cleaning when Phoenix was present in the assembly facility and that certain species, such as Acinetobacter johnsonii and Brevundimonas diminuta, may be better adapted to environmental conditions found during 2P and 3P. In addition, problematic bacteria resistant to multiple extreme conditions, such as Bacillus pumilus, were able to survive these periods of increased cleaning. Key Words: Phoenix—Extremotolerant—Clean room—Spacecraft assembly facility. Astro- biology 10, 325–335.