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The Almighty Buck

Bank Robbing a Terrible Business, Statistically 207

Posted by timothy from the far-better-to-steal-by-printing-money dept.
isoloisti writes "Three UK economists got access to national data on bank robberies. The conclusion is that robbing banks pays, but not very much. Average take is about $19k per person per robbery. But, there's a 20% chance of being caught per raid. To make an average income, a robber needs to do two jobs per year, and has greater than 50% chance to be in the slammer after 2 years."
Supercomputing

Europe Plans Exascale Funding Above U.S. Levels 70

Posted by Soulskill from the go-big-or-go-home dept.
dcblogs writes "The European Commission last week said it is doubling its multi-year investment in the push for exascale computing from €630 million to €1.2 billion (or the equivalent of $1.58 billion). They are making this a priority even as austerity measures are imposed to prevent defaults. China, meanwhile, has a five-year plan to deliver exascale computing between 2016-20 (PDF). The Europeans announced the plan the same week the White House released its fiscal year 2013 budget, which envisions a third year of anemic funding to develop exascale technologies. Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy science budget asked for nearly $91 million in funding for the efforts in the current fiscal year; it received $73.4 million. DOE science is trying for about $90 million for exascale for 2013. There's more funding tucked in military and security budgets. The U.S. wants exascale around 2018, but it has yet to deliver a plan or the money for it."
Biotech

FDA Regulating Your Stem Cells As Interstate Commerce 332

Posted by timothy from the oh-that's-raich dept.
New submitter dcbrianw writes "A non-surgical procedure that treats joint pain involves removing stem cells from a patient's blood and reinserting them into the joint. The facility conducting these procedures resides in Colorado, but because it orders equipment to perform the procedure from outside of Colorado, the FDA claims it must regulate this process and that it can classify stem cells as a drug. This issue opens the debate of what the FDA, or other regulatory bodies, may regulate within each of our own bodies." Quick: Name five activities with no possible plausible effect on interstate commerce.
Earth

Pouring Water Into a Volcano To Generate Power 321

Posted by samzenpus from the pele-approved dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Until recently, geothermal power systems have exploited only resources where naturally occurring heat, water, and rock permeability are sufficient to allow energy extraction. Now, geothermal energy developers plan use a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of the dormant Newberrry Volcano, located about 20 miles south of Bend, Oregon, in an effort to use the earth's heat to generate power. 'We know the heat is there,' says Susan Petty, president of AltaRock Energy, Inc. of Seattle. 'The big issue is can we circulate enough water through the system to make it economic.' Since natural cracks and pores do not allow economic flow rates, the permeability of the volcanic rock can be enhanced with EGS by pumping high-pressure cold water down an injection well into the rock, creating tiny fractures in the rock, a process known as hydroshearing. Then cold water is pumped down production wells into the reservoir, and the steam is drawn out. Natural geothermal resources only account for about 0.3 percent of U.S. electricity production, but a 2007 Massachusetts Institute of Technology report projected EGS could bump that to 10 percent within 50 years, at prices competitive with fossil-fuels. 'The important question we need to answer now,' says USGS geophysicist Colin Williams, 'is how geothermal fits into the renewable energy picture, and how EGS fits. How much it is going to cost, and how much is available.'"
United States

Submission + - When Having the US Debt Paid Off was a Problem 4

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "NPR reports that not so long ago, the prospect of a debt-free US was seen as a real possibility with the potential to upset the global financial system. As recently as 2000, the US was running a budget surplus, taking in more than it was spending every year and economists were projecting that the entire national debt could be paid off by 2012. So the government commissioned a secret report outlining the possible harmful consequences of retiring the debt completely. For one thing, paying off the national debt would mean the end of Treasury bonds, a pillar of the global economy. Treasury securities are crucially important to the world financial system in a number of ways: banks buy them as low-risk assets, the Fed uses them for executing monetary policy, and mortgage interest rates vary based on Treasury rates. "It was a huge issue ... for not just the US economy, but the global economy," says Diane Lim Rogers, an economist in the Clinton administration. In the end, Jason Seligman, the economist who wrote most of the report entitled "Life After Debt," (PDF) concluded it was a good idea to pay down the debt — but not to pay it off entirely. "There's such a thing as too much debt," says Seligman. "But also such a thing, perhaps, as too little.""

Comment 100 Mhz is the bottom end of the radio spectrum (Score 1) 2

by cjcurrie (#37843086) Attached to: Harness electromagnetic wave for energy
They said, "... relies on an ultrawideband antenna to capture energy from the 100 megahertz and greater frequencies." 100 Mhz is the bottom end of the radio spectrum. And the radio spectrum (wireless devices) is at the bottom end of the electromagnetic spectrum, even below microwaves (more wireless devices and heating rays) and infrared rays (more heating rays, from the sun or a fire), which is below the visible light. And so on, up through the radiation spectrums. That's a lot of potential energy sources.

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