135436610
submission
Heart44 writes:
There is a lot of C14 radioactive waste from graphite rods that is expensive to store. This graphite according to the article can be converted to C14 diamonds covered in C12 diamonds. C14 has a half-life of 5,700 years, so such batteries would last a long time and are supposedly safe. Sounds like an April fool but ...
95541447
submission
Heart44 writes:
A number of outlets are reporting a Samsung laboratory breakthrough allowing smaller and faster charging lithium-ion batteries using three-dimensional graphene. Original article is in Nature https://www.nature.com/article..., news sources: https://www.digitaltrends.com/... and https://www.ft.com/content/5a6... (paywalled, but with interesting comments about commercialisation issues).
85354643
submission
Heart44 writes:
News sites are reporting that the Australian census website has been shut down until further notice. This happened on census night, Tuesday (Australian time) August 9th, 2016. This is the first attempt at an online census where online is the default data collection method. You had to call an often busy number to get a paper form.
This is on top of a long running controversy that the Australian Bureau of Statistics will keep the names and addresses of everyone for five years. I presume more useful links will appear over time.
83758855
submission
Heart44 writes:
A lot of researchers when using Google Scholar are being asked to prove they are not a robot https://productforums.google.c.... You have to find all the rivers (but not the sea or lakes) or all street numbers (but not other numbers) or all the store fronts from nine poor quality images, sometimes more than once and, surprise, you will fail more than two thirds of the time and then just get an error 400 "Malformed request, that's all we know". You are offered an audio challenge but clicking on that simply loads more pictures. Some people use VPNs but other's don't. Logging in with your name doesn't seem to help. People on the same IP address get different treatments.
Don't be evil may be too difficult but why is this happening? Are their servers overloaded? Is that the best they can do distinguishing between man and machine? It is happening to light users as well so what are they up to? Is Google Scholar on its way out? It is a great way to find out what are the most cited papers on a subject.
70198651
submission
Heart44 writes:
A study in the bmj (British Medical Journal) shows that consuming alcohol — any volume, any type — does not increase life expectancy. Study here, bmj editorial here.
The article is not paywalled. From the conclusions: "Beneficial associations between low intensity alcohol consumption and all cause mortality may in part be attributable to inappropriate selection of a referent group and weak adjustment for confounders. "
