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Comment Re:reflection (Score 1) 97

AND they do the same looking at various places on the door, so they see the "distance map" image from various perspectives. This makes it more analogous to the door as a mirror, just as you'd look at various points on a mirror and see a reflected scene from the point of view of that spot on the mirror.

Comment Great, but hydrogen "lost in space?" (Score 1) 2

If you imagine an economy based on hydrogen from splitting water, a lot of hydrogen would be lost as H2 is very small and fits through cracks that O2 or N2 or CO2 wouldn't. H2 in the atmosphere easily reaches escape velocity at ordinary temperatures and so is lost to space. While it could take years to get to the scale where this is relevant (much as dumping in the ocean took years to become relevant), this isn't simply a recycling issue, as it is truly lost from Earth. The incentives are there to conserve all H2 generated of course as it's wasted fuel. There is also incentive not to spill oil, but the Exxon Valdez shows us that's not always enough. In the meantime, cheap solar-generated H2 would be great, as long as we remember the Hindenburg disaster from 1937.
Science

Submission + - MIT Researchers Harness Viruses to Split Water (inhabitat.com) 2

ByronScott writes: A team of researchers at MIT has just announced that they have successfully modified a virus to split apart molecules of water, paving the way for an efficient and non-energy intensive method of producing hydrogen fuel. The team engineered a common, harmless bacterial virus to assemble the components needed to crack apart a molecule of water, yielding a fourfold boost in efficiency over similar processes.

Submission + - "Brain-like" computers are born (discovermagazine.com) 1

dontmakemethink writes: Discover Magazine has published an astounding article about new "Neurogrid" computer chips which offer brain-like computing with extremely low power consumption. In a simulation of 55 million neurons on a traditional supercomputer, 320,000 watts of power was required, while a 1-million neuron Neurogrid chip array is expected to consume less than one watt. The type of processing is different, like the brain vs a computer, but the potential for extremely complex computations is amazing, and power savings like that are definitely welcome these days!
Medicine

Submission + - Beyond DNA: understanding histone code (futurity.org)

futurity.org writes: A Princeton University team has engineered a faster, more accurate method for analyzing histones, enigmatic proteins that influence almost every aspect of how cells and tissues function. The approach offers a long-sought tool for studying stem cells, cancer, and other critical areas of biology and medicine.
Despite rapid progress in understanding the information encoded in DNA and genes, scientists have achieved much less insight into the so-called “histone code,” which determines why a gene in one cell functions differently than the same gene in another cell. The new technique reduces by a factor of 100 the time it takes to analyze histones, while requiring far less sample material and achieving much more nuanced results than existing methods. Understanding histones could revolutionize modern medicine as we know it.
From futurity.org

Earth

Submission + - Hydrogen to Hydrino -- huge energy source? (greentechmedia.com)

kipb writes: Convert hydrogen to an even lower energy form called the Hydrino, thus releasing 200 times as much energy as it takes to generate the hydrogen by splitting water. So claims Blacklight Power (1999 on Slashdot), which also appears in an August 12 Greentech Media article. Blacklight claims that the energy is released as ultraviolet light, which can be readily converted to heat. The resulting product can be converted back to normal hydrogen (or hydrogen-containing substance) by simply heating it. They claim that scientists at Rowan University (Glassboro, NJ) have reproduced the reaction, generating 6.5 times as much energy as could be obtained through known chemical reactions and also agreed that there appeared to be a transition of hydrogen to an energy state lower than the previously known ground state, with emission lines below 80 nm. There was no analysis on whether the universe would implode upon seeding of a star with hydrinos, as in Vonnegut's Ice 9.

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