Using curse words does not prove any competence.

I do actually have radiochemistry training, and your arguments show that you do not have any significant domain expertise at all. But this has never stopped anybody from posting, or insulting people, has it?

Hand-held Geiger counters, as shown on the picture in the article, and this is what I presume will be distributed, are only useful for very limited scenarios, such as
a) It's ticking, I should not go any deeper into this reactor housing/nuclear explosion ground
b) It's ticking. I spilled something on the lab bench/I stepped into something and should decontaminate.
c) Measure something really well mixed, like Radon gas in basements, or clean analytical solutions (*not* anything from ponds or puddles, the radioactive isotopes are generally adsorbed to colloidal matter in these samples, and that brings all kinds of problems). For the latter, use a well-defined sample volume and measurement geometry for reproducible readings.

As for the diluted fallout from a reactor, that is very, very different from those scenarios. We are mostly talking about solid aerosol particles, in deposited form or drifting with the wind, which are very unevenly distributed, tend to accumulate in unexpected places, and generally stick to matter.

So this is NOT
- atmospheric monitoring. Radon or other well-distributed radioactive gases are a very minor factor
- fixed and standardized geometry. The picture in the article shows somebody pointing a counter to the ground. This may or may not a location where the average concentration has been enhanced or diluted. And with gamma rays, the normal square distance law applies, so minimal distance variations have a large effect. For alpha and beta, the distance law has an even higher power, because the particles collide with air molecules, or water droplets in the air.
- Cleanliness is a very major factor, and not just for the case of somebody sticking a counter into a puddle. If you just put a counter onto a mast, a radioactive aerosol particle may or may not deposit on the surface of the counter - and then stick. If it sticks, it will overpower any other radiation background, just because it is so much closer to the counter, and give much exaggerated readings. If nothing happens to fall on the counter, it will underestimate the dangers- if a radioactive alpha or beta particle is drifting by within just a few centimeters, hardly anything will register because of the very limited range of this type of radiation. Air-borne aerosol contamination can only be measured reliably by sucking large, measured amounts of air through a well-defined filter, and then measuring the radiation of the filter. Simple hand-held devices are completely useless for this purpose, even if they are dusted of weekly.
- In any case, the most important task will likely be to identify hot spots *on the ground, or in water*, where major aerosol deposits have accumulated, probably aided by solution/evaporation processes, and then treat these, before they get airborne again.

Measuring radiation is not as simple as measuring a temperature (and even that is something nobody wants to entrust an amateur with for the purpose of weather forecasts, etc.).

Depending on sample geometry, distance to sample, even atmospheric conditions for alpha/beta radiation, not to forget cleanliness of the counter, measurements can easily be different by a factor of 1000 or more (!) if you just hand a counter to a lay person and ask him/her to determine some radiation level out in the nature.

Without calibration, test sample verification, standard equipment, and very precise instructions on sample preparation and measurement conditions, the collected data is absolutely worthless.

"3.Ban patents on any genetic sequence or chemical compound found in nature. (so a pharma company that finds a new medicine in a plant in the amazon jungle does not get to claim a patent over that medicine or any genes in the plant responsible for producing that chemical). Chemicals and gene sequences created in a lab would still be eligible for patent protection though. Should it be discovered (and verified) that the complete chemical or genetic sequence does exist in nature and that the occurrence could not have come from the lab-produced version, that evidence would count as prior art and could be used as such under point 1 above."

That means that immediately no pharma company will any longer invest in the extraction, identification, characterization and modification of pharmacologically active compounds from any biological source. This will stop progress, from historical aspirin (originally isolated from tree bark) to recent important innovations in malaria and cancer treatment (artemisinin, taxoles) or pain management (cone snail toxins). A large part of drug research is inspired by what has been found in nature, and if you fear that even if you work with a modified substance somebody might find later that modified compound in some other species, or in minimal previously overlooked concentration, and then you'ld lose you USD 500 Mil development investment nobody is going to take at risk any longer.

Of course anything published, in any reasonably accessible medium, before the filing date of a patent (and Open Source is here actually the prime example, because it is so simple to show that it was in the wild before the filing date) is prior art and invalidates any patents filed on its algorithms later.

Contrary to what scare mongers imply here, Open Source clearly gains from this.

These mirrors are pretty thick, and when glued on the surface of the dish, he actually ended up with the mirror surface being out of alignment, so the focus point is far more smeared than that of the original, precisely designed and aligned dish.

The proper thing to do would have been to chemically deposit a very thin silver layer on the dish surface. This is actually not difficult to achieve. The mentioned spray paint or aluminum foil solutions are also better than his really, really crude approach.

A very similar approach was already pursued in 1998 by Volkswagen in their "Convoy-Pilot" project.

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-7907540.html (German)

Maybe practical feasibility has improved in the meantime with advances in computer and sensor technologies, but SARTRE is certainly nowhere as innovative as people seem to think here.

Remember Cargo Lifter?

One of the most spectacular failures during the wild technology startup stampede a decade ago in Germany. They burned several hundred millions before folding.

The only remaining legacy is a huge indoor pool in their former airship hangar...

This is the standard required by US immigration for foreign biometric passports.

And only with these you can take advantage of visa-waiver (minus ESTA, minus new tourism support fee) entry into the US.

So either your passport supports this, or you can make an appointment weeks in advance at a select US consulate in a city only a few hundred kilometers away if you want to travel.

It seems you have never heard of LIMS (Laboratory Information Systems), which is unfortunate.

This is a thriving software sector, and you are actually expected to be at least vaguely familiar with these kind of systems should you ever transfer to industry and work in data-generating or data-processing positions.

Nobody in industry keeps experimental data as individual, handcrafted datasets. The risk of losing important data, not not being able to make cross-references (patents!) is much too high if you let people run their own set-ups. Do yourself, and your research group, a favor: Get some grant money and purchase a robust commercial set-up at least for your group, or better your department. Entry level systems, with academic discounts, are affordable. There are no competitive open-source solutions.

Start your research here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIMS

(though the systems listed there are instrument-centric, if you are more into generic chemistry there are other standard package by companies such as Accelrys and CambridgeSoft).

a sunscreen with enough chemicals added to allow any photolyase molecules from the lotion to permeate into my damaged skin cells.

Any large proteins just slapped onto the skin just stay there, and have no perceivable effect (assuming absence of active transport mechanisms, attack to the cell membrane, etc., which I can confidently exclude in this case).

If you add permeation helpers to destabilize the skin cell membranes sufficiently to allow uptake into the cells, the stuff gets so nasty that any positive effects will certainly far be outweighed by negative side effects.

The interior of a buckyball (even the larger variants with C70+) is too small to hold any molecule of pharmacological interest. One or two metal ions, yes, even ammonia, methane and similar small molecules (all known), but nothing beyond that. The only payload with some potential usefulness are radioactive metal atoms for radiation therapy, but certainly not normal drugs.

The substance is not stable when the pressure is released - it immediately decomposes. Carrying around the whole set-up where the typical payload (i.e. the compressed substance) is maybe 0.1% of the total weight of the apparatus is of course impractical. Also, this kind of high-pressure research is not exactly new. There are many published similar experiments where compounds undergo interesting crystal structure changes at ultra-high pressures. Nevertheless, bond strenghts limit what extra energy you can store in crystal structure variants. Xe-F bonds are definitely not among the strongest.

Currently, the only remotely realistic method for radical improvements in stored energy per weight are metastable isotopes, but even that is a far shot.

Suitable paper and ink are hard to come by. You'd probably pay more than $5 for the materials on the black market.

http://www.jurablogs.com/de/wenn-ein-eichenblatt-den-moerder-ueberfuehrt (sorry, no English version, use Google Translation)

In 2004, a killer was convicted in Germany. The corpse of his wife had been found in a forest, buried beneath an oak tree. He claimed he was innocent and that had never even been in that area.

Unfortunately for him, a dried leaf of an oak tree was found in the trunk of his car - and DNA analysis proved it was from the very oak tree the corpse was buried under. Plants have DNA, too.

Oops.