Comment Re:What...how...? (Score 1) 89
800 kg must be a typo...the paint alone supposedly weighs 350 kg.
Comment The problem isn't the tax tables (Score 2) 105
...the problem is that many companies/institutions close the pay period and issue pay stubs well in advance of the pay date. For example, I'm paid on the 1st of the month, but my January 1 pay check is for a pay period that ends December 22 (this Thursday), and by the evening of December 23 I will have an electronic pay stub waiting for me that shows my Social Security deduction for January 1. If Congress extends the tax holiday on, say, December 27, that doesn't leave much time to update the system, re-issue all the pay stubs, and change all the direct deposit information with the banks. Not impossible, but not a real friendly after-Christmas gift to throw to all the HR departments all across the country. And it's no way to run the world's largest economy.
Super-Earths Discovered Orbiting Nearby, Sun-Like Star 242
likuidkewl writes "Two super-earths, 5 and 7.5 times the size of our home, were found to be orbiting 61 Virginis a mere 28 light years away. 'These detections indicate that low-mass planets are quite common around nearby stars. The discovery of potentially habitable nearby worlds may be just a few years away,' said Steven Vogt, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UCSC. Among hundreds of our nearest stellar neighbors, 61 Vir stands out as being the most nearly similar to the Sun in terms of age, mass, and other essential properties."
Is Console Gaming Dying? 496
mr_sifter writes "PC gamers love to obsess over whether PC gaming is dying, but bit-tech thinks it's time to look at the other side and examine if console gaming is really as secure as publishers would have us believe. All three console manufacturers suffered from the recession — this year, Sony announced its first net loss in 14 years; a stunning ¥989.9bn, which includes record losses of ¥58.5bn in its gaming sector. Microsoft also announced its first loss since it went public in 1986 in the second quarter of this financial year, with a $31 million US loss coming straight from the Entertainment and Devices division, which is responsible for the Xbox 360. Not even Nintendo has escaped the financial plague either, with sales of the Wii dropping by 67 percent in the US, 60 percent in Japan and 47 percent in the rest of the world. In addition to reduced profitability, casual games and the rise of the iPhone further suggest the current model is not invulnerable."
Comment Re:Another limit? (Score 4, Interesting) 201
Since flowing current creates a magetic field, you can't use cuprate superconductors to carry large currents.
Don't confuse critical fields with critical currents. This paper is talking only about critical fields - it is not trying to describe the amount of current that this material might eventually carry.You're right that electric current creates a magnetic field. In a type-II superconductor (like the cuprates and these new FeAs materials), this is managed by introducing defects in the material (grain boundaries, inclusions, etc.) that "pin" the quantitized magnetic flux vortices and prevent them from moving through the material and destroying superconductivity. So it's not fair to say that you CAN'T use cuprates to carry large currents - it's just an engineering problem that has to be dealt with by clever manipulation of the structure of the materials.
So here's the short version:
Critical field = intrinsic property of the material.
Critical current = extrinsic property that depends on critical field, grain structure, presence of second phases, etc.
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