An ounce of gold surprisingly "weighs" more than an ounce of feathers because gold weights are in Troy units (1 oz=31g) whereas feathers are Avoirdupois (1oz=28g).

But a pound of feathers weighs more than pound of gold, because Troy pounds have only 12 ounces.

... never going to work.

One could argue that computer viruses are merely robots without a solid body. So the First Law has already been trashed by all the big powers on the planet.

And who's going to decide what is 'harmful'? Governments again are producing semi-automated robots (drones) which harm people. But that's OK because "it's to prevent an even greater harm" they say. But who decides if 'they' got it right?

MATLAB was one of the first languages to allow lists of comma-separated numbers between square brackets e.g. [1,2,3,10] to be interpreted as indexed numeric arrays or vectors. A lot of languages do that now, but MATLAB was perhaps the first to do this in 1984. A little-known quirk is that the commas are optional! [1 2 3 10] etc. This was probably introduced as a 'convenience' feature (though typing a space isn't that much faster than typing a comma). But there is a glitch ("feature") in the syntax that interprets space-separated negative numbers differently than you'd expect. So [ 1 2 -3] is interpreted as [1,2-3] (value = [1,-1]) because the precedence of arithmetic operators is higher than list operations.

MATLAB hasn't fixed this 'feature' yet, because it would undoubtedly break a jillion apps around the world. So you must be careful to type [1 2 (-3)] if you are allergic to commas.

BTW it's been fixed by default in OCTAVE, MATLABS free-software clone, but you turn 'quirks' on, if you want to preserve the quirky behavior.

... learning to operate a rivet gun or steam shovel? A bridge or building could be more cheaply built by skilled operators with little or no knowledge of stress and strain, but how long would these structures stand?

The same could be said for computer programmers, who may be skilled in coding, but have little or no knowledge of the best methodologies for constructing robust and reliable software systems and structures.

@tsa > I don't think it suggests that at all.

Did you read TFA? It says. "In this very simple process, the salt acted as a heat absorber while the magnesium removed oxygen from the quartz, resulting in pure silicon. "

So the article does indeed 'suggest' that Mg is removing O. My question was concerning how is this oxygen removal related to creating porosity. Or not.

In any case, it seems likely that some formerly filled space must be vacated to create porous openings.

Does anyone know how this happens?

The article suggests that making nano-scale silicon by using magnesium to remove oxygen solves the usual degrading issues. Why is this? Does the quartz lattice have optimal conduction geometry, which is somehow preserved after the oxygen is removed?

... lipid hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
So I get that the "Eskimo Diet" doesn't improve cardiovascular health. But then it doesn't degrade it either. Then why all the "heart smart" low-fat, no-fat, low-cholesterol propaganda we're constantly bombarded with?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
It seems Uffe Ravnskov may be right. Dietary cholesterol very likely has little or no bad effects on health. It is probably "good" for you. In fact, statin drugs used to treat CAD are far worse for your health.
Proof: If statins actually were effective against CAD, then the ads on TV could make that claim. If you listen carefully, they don't make any claim that they lower the incidence of CAD. Their sole claim for "effectiveness" is that they lower your blood cholesterol numbers. It would be more compelling if they could claim health benefits of course, but their is no compelling evidence for this.

... but the proposed gadget will likely make the problem worse

Objects "in orbit" around the Earth are actually falling freely to the Earth. But thanks to the very large horizontal component in their motion, orbiting objects always overshoot the horizon and thus stay in orbit.
Such objects have no "weight", because weight is defined as, F=mg, a force F exerted by an object with mass m in a gravity field g, resting on a surface preventing the object from falling freely.
The mass of an object is thus independent of gravity, but it's "weight" is just an artifact imposed by surface constraints, and can vary greatly.

... (aka www.wattsupwiththat.com) has some comments on the good parts of Obama plan, but has some comments about the bad and ugly parts too:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/06/25/the-presidents-climate-action-plan-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/

... not some paid actors: http://www.google.com/intl/en/jobs/students/

> ... sad part ...

No need to be sad. Increasing effective aperture size of the telescope increases its resolving power. The imaging element doesn't have to be a single mirror or lens, but can consist of an array of elements scattered over a large area. Tricky part is getting all of the elements in phase agreement. Also doesn't have to be visible light. We are already 'imaging' surfaces of planets with synthetic aperture radar, operating on the same principle.

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

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

So imagine a much larger optical array network, many miles in diameter, for imaging the surfaces of these exoplanets.

So ex-VicePresident Nixon communicated with a foreign leadership, telling them to wait after his "re-election" and that he would be more 'flexible' in his dealings with them. Hmm, where have we heard that treasonous trash talk before? :-|

> Wikipedia has the name wrong.

No, you are wrong. Bob Bruinga, WB4APR, the inventor of APRS has reverted in the naming convention, and now supports the "_packet_ reporting" moniker because he wants to emphasize that APRS is not just for position reporting. For example, it's extensively used for weather reporting from mostly non-mobile CWOP (Citizen Weather Observers Program) volunteers, who include a lot of non-amateur radio enthusiasts who augment NWS mesolevel forecasts with thousands of home-made stations reporting every ten minutes or so over the Internet. (The ham-radio CWOP volunteers can also report weather via amateur RF frequencies).

Also APRS has been used ("firenet") for reporting brush and forest fires.
http://wa8lmf.net/aprs/get_nws_shapefiles.htm

The first humanoid "words" were probably grunted utterances representing names of other humanoids, animals, places and (eventually) events.

Even so, automatically generating unique labels is no big deal for a computer. Every automatic "builder" program already do this. Except they're usually enumerated (i.e. box1,box2, box3, ..., box999), instead of randomly generated ciphers ("xyzzy" etc). But computers don't do anything randomly, it all has to be programmed by a human.