Short answer is electric motors have torque from 0rpm whereas a diesel engine alone can't operate from 0rpm so needs some sort of clutch or slip system. All weighed up, the diesel-electric approach comes out ahead of other mechanisms.

Ferrari are developing a hybrid with conventional mid-mounted engine driving the rear wheels, and in-wheel electric motors up front. The two big challenges are the unsprung mass contributing to poor ride and probably handling, and also that being unsprung the motors are subject to a lot of vibration and shock from the road surface so they take a beating.

I'd be picking the motors might be technically in-wheel (or near enough) but aren't actually unsprung. They'd still likely require a gear reduction anyway, so wouldn't be a direct coupling from motor axle to wheel axle. They'll be "in-wheel" only so much as that is intuitive in a marketing sense i.e. one independent motor per wheel mounted at/near - but not "on" - the wheel axle.

It could do a reasonable scan across the plane in which the speakers are located. A properly-phased stereo signal played across the two speakers would effectively 'scan' horizontally, behaving as a basic phased array. Some proper deconvolution and you could probably get x-resolution to within a few wavelengths - perhaps an inch or so with ultrasonic frequencies.

That's probably sufficient to combine with the webcam to do 'proper' facial recognition, while using the ultrasonic scan to do a quick check on whether it's a flat surface (i.e. photograph) or vaguely head-shaped.

Actually efficiency is dimensionless, it's the proportion of input energy converted into useful output energy. That's not necessarily useful since humans don't perceive energy across the spectrum equally. Efficacy, OTOH, is not dimensionless and is the more useful term as it's the *apparent* amount of light output per energy input (i.e. *lumens* per watt)

A bullet has that description, but that doesn't mean that everything with that description is a bullet.

The actual news here is that they co-existed with the Maori - it was previously thought they had died out before the Maori arrived. The existence of the Haast's Eagle was well known and there exist Moa bones with massive gouges from being attacked by these Eagles.

It's fairly common for complicated extractions. My top wisdom teeth were removed using local anesthetic in a matter of minutes. I recovered with minor pain for the next day or so, but no real need for any painkillers. My lower wisdom teeth OTOH were removed under IV-administered sedation - not full anesthesia, but I only recall a few minutes of the 75 minute operation - because they were impacted and required being drilled and broken up in my gums before they could be removed. For the next four days, prescription painkillers were my best friends!

Incidentally I've never heard of laughing gas being administered for any procedure, dental or otherwise, here in New Zealand.

Acceleration off-the-line is predominantly determined by power-to-weight (given traction). This is how the low-powered Caterhams and Lotus Elises can hang with the "big boys" using that metric.

Top speed, OTOH is dominated by outright power and drag. Mass features little, hence top speed is typically dominated by heavier cars with massive amounts of power.

Incidentally 60-0, and also cornering, should be dominated by mass & traction, but traction itself is influenced strongly by mass, making traction alone the dominant factor (ignoring aero which is increasingly significant at speed) - which is why almost any car with four good tires can pretty much pull the same braking and cornering (skid-pan) figures of around 1G. if you can find published 60mph-0 distances, you'll find they are usually around the 40 metre mark, almost regardless of the car model.

UTC isn't a time zone. GMT is a timezone.

Not explicitly perhaps, but certain passages read along the lines of "pray for the souls of the dead" - what benefit could that possibly have unless they were in purgatory/limbo? Hell is a one-way trip, and those in Heaven need no such prayer.

Chemical batteries still have much higher energy density (Wh per kg) than capacitors - about ten times higher. That's not to say that supercaps combined with traditional batteries wouldn't solve such problems - they probably could in cases where you have a low average discharge, but high burst discharge. These new cells would be capable of sustaining high average discharge.

It's only like capacitors in that the discharge is fast. This is still a chemical cell, unlike capacitors which store energy in electric fields. Chemical batteries still have faaaar higher energy density (Wh per kg) than capacitors.

Most Bible translations are copyrighted. I think the King James version is about the only [English] translation no longer in copyright.

Then by that argument, strictly it should be called reactance, not impedance. Impedance is the "sum" of AC reactance and DC resistance. Besides, DC current can still flow through a capacitor (during charge and discharge) so resistance is a perfectly acceptable - and accurate - term, especially regarding the waste heat generated by charge and discharge.

Secondly I support GP's assertion that output impedance and internal resistance are not at all the same - Look up Norton's equivalence theorem (remembering that an ideal current source has infinite impedance). Then there's the concept of negative feedback in an amplifier, which affects output impedance but not the internal resistance of any device.

HP is a power rating, and power isn't what kills gears - torque is. RC cars & buggies frequently get by with 4-5mm thick nylon gears, with nitro engines that approach 2hp or more. The nylon gears are adequate because they spin at upwards of 10000rpm so have correspondingly low torque requirements.