I’ve only just skimmed the paper, but I think the authors are missing a HUGE confounding variable: the plants of today are not the same plants of yesterday. Commercial food operations have selectively bred crops for traits like colors that consumers prefer, the ability to survive mechanical harvesting and long-distance shipping, drought, disease and insect resistance, reduced time from planting to harvest, and profitability. Neither nutritional value nor flavor is prized.

If you need to see this in action, compare a supermarket tomato with a notoriously fragile Cherokee Purple tomato, or supermarket white rice with Carolina Gold rice. They are damn near incomparable. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if that’s a far bigger impact than a few ppm of CO2 changes.

(I’m not saying that CO2 isn’t a factor; I’m saying that the study design doesn’t support any real conclusions.)

tmc

but remember when “they” were saying the same thing about HDTV being no better “at normal viewing distances” than standard-def NTSC?

"Five Stones hasn't yet hired such candidates because the coffee shop gives priority to more traditional entry-level baristas, like high-schoolers..."

Umm, isn’t that age discrimination by another name?

Actually, replacement nipples could be a huge step forward for women who are facing a mastectomy. Their choices are 1) mastectomy and reconstruction with no nipple, 2) mastectomy and reconstruction with a tattoo where the nipple was, or 3) a "nipple-sparing" mastectomy, which is a much more difficult procedure, carries risks because some tissue gets left behind, isn't always appropriate/possible for women with small breasts, and sometimes fails.

I was dating somebody a few years ago who was diagnosed with breast cancer, and went to most of her surgical consults. (She's fine now; thanks for asking...) Preserving the nipple was a big deal for her, even though there was a good chance that she'd never get sensation back. she went with the nipple sparing option, despite the potential downsides, and was happy with the outcome. (Her summary: "It doesn't look perfect, but it doesn't look deformed, either")

I suspect that if 3D printing of a new nipple was possible for her - and mitigated some of the risks, she might have gone with that.

This was the premise of the first naval battle in Clancy's Red Storm Rising. TFA is neither original nor insightful. Even armchair strategists understand the concept of attrition.

...there's still tons of work to do.

I've got a friend with brain cancer who was enrolled in one of the current virus trials - one which has shown great promise in animal studies. He ended up leaving the trial after a month or so, with tumor regrowth and tremendous swelling around the tumor site, causing all sorts of problems with speech, reading, and sight. He has surgery scheduled for tomorrow, after that, hopefully another trial.

Not to be a downbuzz, but it's a long road before this kind of therapy is anything more than an experimental crapshoot.

Political patronage in Chicago?

I'm shocked!

If I had to guess, despite the summary's "irony of taking out a newspaper ad to protect the Web" being "lost on no one", that the irony will be lost on the RIAA, the MPAA, Righthaven, LLC, and most members of Congress.

...because the latest in Virginia's IT outsourcing saga is that the State Police are having severe access problems to servers hosted by NG.

Outsourcing to these guys has been a disaster for the Commonwealth. And it happened on Vivek Kundra's watch.

+ 1.

Well played, sir, well played.

"If you're putting more than 50 words on a slide, you've fucked up."

50? Seriously? Unless you're showing a screenshot, listing some code, or pulling a quote, the magic number is seven. In general, if you have more than seven words on a slide, you've fucked up.

More than that, and the presenter is usually just reading the Powerpoint deck. And in that case, why are you wasting my time, when you could have just emailed it to me in the first place?

So, the Liberty will be able to put about 20,000 kg into LEO for about $9,000 per Kg. The Falcon 9 can put just over half that (10K kg or so) into LEO for somewhere between $5,400 - $6,000 per kg, depending on the load factor. (Numbers pulled from the SpaceX web site.)

Of course, there are other costs besides the raw launch cost (insurance, etc.), but it will be interesting to see how these two vehicles compete. For things like ISS resupply missions, it may make sense to just shoot the Falcon twice.

Once the Falcon 9 heavy gets into the mix (32,000 kg to LEO for $95M), ATK & Astrium will need to sharpen their pencils a bit. That'll be one and a half times the payload for half the cost or so.

Price wars for space launch capacity? I can't wait to watch!

just look how long it took to replace the M1911

With all due respect to your FPS experience, obviously, you've never fired a M1911 or one of it's variants. Personally, I find it much easier to hit what I'm aiming at (yeah, there's more recoil, but the energy profile is more easily controllable) , and there a lot of people in the field who will tell you that the stopping power of the 9mm Parabellum cartridge is simply inferior to the .45 ACP.

The 1911 is a sweet weapon. It's reliable, and is a lot of fun to shoot.

You might be surprised to know that the 1911 is still preferred by everyone from Delta Force to the FBI's HRT to Marine Recon.

I'd opine that the M1911 took so long to replace was that it did the job it was designed to do because it was the best at what it did - NATO politics notwithstanding. I'll take a 1911 (throated and ramped, to be sure) over a M9 any day of the week.

Really? You prefer a weapon that's "sorta in the vicinity of the target with a pretty large explosive charge" (mortar) , as opposed to "small munition with a CEP of one meter with a laser-measured target"?

Time to brush up on the old critical thinking skills.