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Comment Most people would benefit? (Score 2) 20

People might benefit from Lithium. Lithium is used to treat bipolar disorder, depression and it acts by increasing serotonin synthesis. The effect would be somewhat similiar to that one of Prozac, which is fluoride based medication.

The Problem is that In US there are already significant amounts of flourides added to the drinking water and effect similar to that of the Lithium is achieved, thus it is not quite clear how two medications can improve health.

Fluorides can also improve hardness of the population teeth, too.

Comment Taxi cab companies are fighting the wrong oponent (Score 1) 20

Da*g! Taxicab companies are fighting wrong enemy. Uber is not their enemy.

Their enemy the airports of the world who will start providing service of picking up a passanger from home with automatic electric recheargeable vehicle as well as delivering the passenger from their home to the airport.

Automated electric autonomous airport shuttle service!

Predictable routes, access charging stations in the airports, availability of precious parking, Uber-like on demand and capacity planning of logistics, absence of unions, can become a very profitable business for the airports. Add on top of that transparent pricing, not exactly favoured by human airport taxi drivers and many people will prefer automatic taxicab.

As such Taxicabs WILL be competing with automated cars.

Difficult to tell who will be operating: airports themselves or they will out-license to companies such as Avis or Herz, but car rental companies, such as Foxconn, armed with new technologies, will change the landscape in the most innovative ways. After the most lucrative (widely known secret) airport transportation business is skimmed, the business model will be expanded to the rest of the taxi business.

Comment There will be advertisments, for some (Score 1) 318

You can bet that there is an audience, certain type of clients, who would be very interesting to certain advertisers. Many sales departments are after the top strata of the society and their disposable income.

You can bet that if someone in a household with the income of $500K or more is watching a lot of netflix movies, then the revenues from advertisers would probably be more than enough to pay subscription fee and Netflix would probably even make a tidy profit.

Quite frankly, I am surprised that they have not rolled these type of memberships earlier.

There are... buyers of $4,000 tooth brush Reinast http://www.reinast.com/ , $1,200 shoes http://www.manoloblahnik.com/, and $1,500,000 cars http://www.bugatti.com/en/veyr... down there....

For the manufacturers of these goods targeted advertising on Netflix would open new avenues to increase their sales, a change from the traditional advertising done at Kentucky Derby, and old fashioned mail spamming, without actually wasting tons of advertising dollars for 95% of the non-targeted audience.

Clearly, Netflix is capable and probably will compete with Facebook after the advertising dollars, because many people spend a lot of time on Netflix only.

For these kind of clients Netflix not only will offer free membership, but will probably pay to watch it or would probably make available exclusive content.

And me??? I am waiting a job offer, or at least a spot award from Netflix for this idea...

Comment Wait for further developements (Score 4, Interesting) 220

There were decades of twisted testing. Within graduate education world, I have personally met a large number of chinese nationals who barely could speak or write English, yet had perfect scores. Every graduate school knows this phenomena and this is the reason why certain asian related biases were formed. No doubt many of them are very smart people, but some just could not learn the language even in 3 or 4 years.

Many graduate schools no longer pay significant attention to certain test and yes, unofficial quotes have been created to counter numerous candidates with perfect scores.

I am waiting for further developments: perhaps a listing of thousands of people who benefited from imposter exam takers will be announced.

Comment AC and DC complement each other (Score 1) 597

None of the methods have general and ubiquitous superiority. AC is key for centralized energy manufacturing. DC is instrumental for decentralized electric grids.

I think that prediction that home appliances will drift to DC is correct in a way that there will be more appliances that will start taking either AC or DC.

Next question is, however, on what will be the DC home grid voltage? Historic 12V? Electric car 48V? Anything in between?

If you look around, following voltages are common for DC using appliances:
  - laptop 18V.
  - Telephones, smartphones - 5V Usb
  - I have two radios: one is 6*1.5V= 9V, other is 3 Volts
  - Electric toothbrush: 3Volts
  - Home security adapter - 24V
  - other small appliances 1.5V battery
  - Electric rechargeable drill 18V

Comment I think that the lawmakers got it wrong (Score 0) 247

Microbead manufacturers will reform and will start manufacturing non-toxic naturally dis-integrable microbead. The article should have clarified that 417 million microbeads are, assuming the diameter of microbead is 0.2 millimeter, less than 400 liters, or approximately 100 gallons.

Mindless pollution is wrong, no question about it.

However don't be surprised that in 2068 your grandchild will be arrested and will receive 12 month cryonic-freeze (an equivalent of 12 month jail time) because he/she violated 2018 law, by simply throwing away some garbage (which happened to have micro-particles, which were considered equivalent to micro beads)

Comment Do not get fooled by Keynesian arguments (Score 1) 294

I have an issue with your item #2: inflation stimulates spending and that is how economy survives. This is a Keynesian theory, which, however, inaccurately switches cause and the outcome.

Lets assume, for the sake of the argument, that there is no inflation, there is a predictable interest rate and the people can save it.

If people can save it, there will be a market for deposits countered for the market to borrow the capital. People could expect predictable interest rate, and those who wanted to borrow could expect a place where to go and get a business loan.

Those who could get the business loan would actually have to spend it, using their best abilities, weighing all the risks, so that to minimize the risk of loss, maximize the net added value of the project and the benefit to the entrepreneur.

So here is the contrast:

- In an inflationary economy money is spent by the most inefficient player - government. Other than the government people would probably be less inclined to invest in long term projects.

- in a stable economy, with negligible (say zero) inflation rate, people actually save money (the capital). Only the best projects get investment and there is a low probability to mal-investment (such as bridge to nowhere in Alaska).

If someone will say that low inflation is not workable, I can say that prior to WW1 UK, Spain's, Russia's money were pegged to gold, and their economies were growing. 2% interest rate on deposits was considered a healthy return.

Comment Congratulate the efforts, but success to be proven (Score 4, Informative) 66

The study is an attempt to find correlation between the surface area and dissolution rate.... Every year there are are trillions of pills manufactured pharmaceutical companies and there are many parameters that are being tested, all branch of one of the pharmacology and it is called pharmaceutics, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... . You can bet that in pharmaceutical manufacturing is super efficient and yes, for the manufacturing of this kind of scale, there is always a demand for improvement and innovations. Happy to encourage scientific research in academia, but announcing 3D printed pills a breakthrough is a bit of exaggeration, but that is not to say that there is no practical application to it.

Custom 3D sculpturing is a blast from 17th and 18th century, when pharmacists ground and mixed medications and it was a manual process. Article is clear that 3D printing may allow to customize absorption rate... This needs to be approved by FDA, at least in USA, before the regular patient can acquire it.

That being said, this will be just one of many medication delivery methods competing with already established methods and curious reader can, again, get a glimpse to the methods here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Comment Dont fix what is not broken (Score 5, Insightful) 203

It can be guaranteed that New York will choose the most expensive option, will have a budget overrun and will be 20 years late.

When you see likening to the third world country is a mere beginning of the campaign so that people would be believe that the issue is so big, so unsolvable that only a multi-billion dollar project can solve the issue. There will be proposals for floating on water airports, airports to be build on artificial islands.

For all I care, the NYC with one of the largest subway systems in the world for the last 85 years could not extend a subway link to Laguardia. I do not know what was the issue: corrupt taxicab companies or some other sinister reasons.

The issue is not Laguardia airport here, the issue is poor public transportation to certain airports, or truth the be told - absence of if, and there are many other airports in NYC metro area: Islip, Westchester, teterboro, Trenton, and so on.

In my opinion, travelers do not care about the appearance of the airports, all they want is convenient way to arrive, park or rent a car, and leave shortly. Politicians want appearance, costs be damned.

Comment This is called Kansas city shuffle (Score 1) 438

This is called Kansas city shuffle. While you be having fun watching debates for 6 months during presidential debates, most of us will be robbed both from right pocket and the left pocket.

Adult in you should realize that the show organizers and those emptying the pockets are part of coordinated efforts.

Comment I wish there was an easy way to understand it (Score 1) 129

Scientists of Vienna University of Technology pointed out that holographic effects can be demonstrated from flat (two dimensional) surface, and surrounding reality is possibly following the same principles.

Now, if you think about it, that is a reasonable hypothesis, however, it should be noted that the opposite effect can also be realized when four (or five or more) dimensional reality is projected into three dimensional surrounding (let's call it 4D->3D), perceived by humans. Example understandable by humans is the theater of shadows (3D->2D), or three dimensional cathode ray projector, know as tube television (again 3D->2D).

It is always possible to project more dimensions to less. At the same time, 2D->3D Holographic effects allow explanation of some of the known quantum phenomena, such as probability of where the electron will be at anytime as opposed to the earlier teachings that electrons "orbit" around the nucleus of the atom.

Holographic effects also alleviate "understanding" of "spooky action at the distance (quantum entanglement)", but that is where the limits of the quantum teachings, understandable by the commoners end.

All in all, two thousands years ago, in Greece, people were arguing if the world rests on the backs of three elephants or three whales, and assumed that the world is flat.

Our incomplete understanding of surrounding world raises way more questions than we have answers:

1. If currently scientists say that the space is unlimited, perhaps the number of dimensions is also unlimited....
2. Quantum entanglement has been demonstrated and is a scientific fact, the problem is that nobody can prove that all of the particles are not UN-entangled.
3. Why the speed of light is finite, then why quantum entanglement does not care about the distance and is instant.

  I truly believe that in the next several decades there will be so many new inventions and experiments related to the quantum world, that our current discussions will resemble discussions will resemble ideas debated by Hellenistic scholars. I just hope that one day a smart individual will be able to explain everything so that we could understand, and find relationships between all the components the same way we understand the relationship between Ohms, Volts and Amperes.

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