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Submission + - Towards a silicon-like graphene

gomiam writes: Arxiv has an article on the effects of doping single-layer graphene with nitrogen atoms. Interestingly, several configurations show promise as either n-type metal (the basis for MOSFET), silicon analogue, or as a magnet.

Comment Re:Too little too late (Score 1) 628

Not to karma-whore, but actually almost nothing is mirrored: the gears usually handle the same way (which makes it easier for right-hand driving since the shorter gears are nearer to the driver), the dashboard is just moved around, and even the starter key hole is on the right of the driving wheel. Then again, I also know of English cars (a Land Rover to be specific) which had the starter key hole on the left, which is almost unheard of in the rest of Europe.

Comment Re:Engineering isn't a secret club (Score 1) 146

Many wrong ideas have entered popular culture. So what? That only means that popular culture doesn't care much about truth or correctness. The same way the spinach iron content myth has been busted (as early as 21 years after the initial wrong experiment) and has even begotten a new myth (the decimal point myth) to explain busting the old one. And yet popular culture doesn't care about it that much. So don't try to use popular culture as a fact checker.

Comment Re:Cue the "Keith's owned by big oil!!" accusation (Score 1) 209

I must insist that solar (dependent on the surface of the building, with a square growth law) doesn't scale with the volume of the building (cubic growth law). Above a certain surface/volume ratio it is not possible to fulfill the building's energy needs with solar systems alone. This, actually, is not a specific problem of buildings: trees have the same problem, animals have the same problem (though in this case it is related to the muscular strength/weight ratio) and so do birds. This problem can be partially solved by improving the building's efficiency, but it just moves the limiting ratio further away.

As I have already written before, I don't consider this a matter of exclusion: you can have solar and wind power generators, and using building's surfaces to get more energy is a good option.

Comment Re:Cue the "Keith's owned by big oil!!" accusation (Score 1) 209

Ecologists can go live in the Sahara desert and see how much wildlife is there and how much of it is harmed by an aerogenerator or a photovoltaic station. My guesstimate is nil to none, besides some poor critter getting squashed by the wheels of the maintenance truck.

Photovoltaic energy on top of the buildings doesn't really scale with building size, so forget about it for anything but low-rise buildings. But low-rise buildings means more space dedicated to humans instead of wildlife. I think the ecologists may have something to say about that too ;)

You can have wind _and_ solar power together, by the way: you can put solar stations on the south facing slopes and wind stations on the north facing ones. You can even mix and match them because solar onbly works during the day, but wind is there at night too.

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