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Comment Wavelength matters too? (Score 1) 327

by PaulBu (#48511463) Attached to: You're Doing It All Wrong: Solar Panels Should Face West, Not South

My first though without even reading the summary:

Of course pointing it to the South would "catch" more integrated spectrum, but not all of that can be converted to electricity efficiently (they are more efficient for longer wavelength), so it should not *hurt* much to till them westwards (or eastwards), where/when blue light ("useless for") is filtered by the atmosphere...

By the way, blue light is still absorbed/heats/damages the cells, but not gets converted to voltage. Or some such... ;-)

Aligning with peak demand might make more sense though.

Paul B.

Submission + - Woman of 24 found to have no cerebellum in her brain (gizmocrazed.com)

Submitted by Diggester
Diggester writes: DON'T mind the gap. A woman has reached the age of 24 without anyone realising she was missing a large part of her brain. The case highlights just how adaptable the organ is.

The discovery was made when the woman was admitted to the Chinese PLA General Hospital of Jinan Military Area Command in Shandong Province complaining of dizziness and nausea. She told doctors she'd had problems walking steadily for most of her life, and her mother reported that she hadn't walked until she was 7 and that her speech only became intelligible at the age of 6.
Medicine

Animal Drug Investigation Reveals Pet Medication Often Doesn't Work 279

Posted by Soulskill from the works-at-making-money-for-the-medication-providers dept.
KentuckyFC writes: "Americans spent an estimated $14.2 billion on veterinary care for their pets in 2013 — and that doesn't even include proprietary health diets and food supplements. Put another way, pet owners pay about $850 annually in veterinary expenses per dog, and about $575 per cat. Factor in the emotional energy we invest in keeping our companion animals healthy, and you'd hope for high confidence in the end results. But when one journalist investigated the science behind the meds being used to treat his aging dog's osteoarthritis, he was in for a nasty surprise. Glucosamine and chondroitin food supplements? Next to useless. Tramadol to kill pain? It's probably just getting dogs high. The one treatment that's been proven to help, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug called carprofen, is often left on the shelf because of fears — likely overblown — that it might damage dogs' kidneys. In part, you can blame this sorry state of affairs on a lack of financial incentives for drug companies to run clinical trials on animals. But often, vets aren't paying attention to the studies that have been done. If we want our dogs and cats to receive the best possible medical care, we need to ask our vets some tougher questions about why they think the drugs will work."

Submission + - Google buys eighth robotics company in six months (orlandosentinel.com)

Submitted by spineas
spineas writes: Google recently acquired Boston Dynamics, a robotics company that has had a hand in many advanced defense robotics for the U.S. military, making it the eighth such purchase for the search engine giant in the last six months.

Boston Dynamics is well known for having developed the robot named "Cheetah," capable of running at speeds of 28MPH.

Comment Re:Yes, but... (Score 3, Informative) 102

by PaulBu (#44996601) Attached to: New Headphones Generate Sound With Carbon Nanotubes

Could be nice way of sidestepping the Chinese and their "rare earth" near-monopoly.

Judging from the author's names and affiliation, I quite doubt that it was their main motivation... :)

Yang Wei *, Xiaoyang Lin , Kaili Jiang *, Peng Liu , Qunqing Li , and Shoushan Fan
Department of Physics and Tsinghua-Foxconn Nanotechnology Research Center, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China

But, it's still VERY COOL!

Paul B.

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