I have tried a bit to determine how large the effect of palmitic acid is on cancer metastasis. If the effect of palm oil is 5% worse, then does it matter? Of course it may be much larger. My guess is that it will be somewhat larger, but not obviously damning to palm oil. Just saying it increases metastasis is not very useful.

Do you think 4 days would do the job?

I have a surgical mask which I keep in my car where it is exposed to sunlight. Since I began staying home I have shopped 3 times and I think the sunlight has disinfected my mask between each shopping trip. I think I will try to use InstaCart rather than shop in the future.

For most of us there is not a need to shop except maybe once or twice a week. There should be time to allow sunlight to kill the virus between trips. Also if you remove the mask (or scarf) carefully you can avoid touching the front of it. Still I think a good hand washing should be in order after any possible exposure. If you want to wash a cloth mask, go ahead. Just wash your hands after placing it in the washer. Perhaps it would be sufficient to place it in some diluted bleach to kill the virus and clean it up a bit.

I think the masks are a good idea. You could be an asymptomatic carrier and then the mask will help prevent to spread of the virus. It does require exercising caution to avoid mistakes. I always handle mine with the ear loops when I remove it and also wash my hands soon after. Then I use my diluted bleach to disinfect door knobs and anything else I may have touched. I may still catch it, but I am trying to be cautious.

The driver had set the following distance at the minimum which sounds like an unsafe decision. I have a Subaru with smart cruise control which allows setting the follow distance which is speed dependent. I set it on the maximum which is very close to my normal follow distance. Any less would seem too risky for me to respond to unexpected events ahead. I don't know if the stated 150 meters was sufficient warning based on his speed (unknown?). Clearly the driver should have been driving. 150 meters is likely sufficient distance to reduce speed enough to survive. Still the software should be studied to see why it allowed a car to run into a concrete divider at high speed. If there is not sufficient visibility the autopilot should refuse to drive and allow the driver to take his life in his own hands. Maybe in a few years the autopilot will be better than a human and simply not allow the car to be driven when it is unsafe.

I agree. I worked for NASA for several years. There were NASA people doing useful work. I did computer programming along with several others in my small group. At the time I thought it would be more economical to hire more government workers. The purpose of a government agency is not simply to transfer money to private contractors, so the presentation is flawed.

Then it does live up to the adjective, ultrafast. I found slower speeds. Thanks

The speeds offered are 30 down/20 up or 100 down/50 up (in Mbps). So it is about like cable internet in the US.

I have worked with a couple of 3D displays for scientific visualization. The university I worked for had a fairly expensive system with an 8 foot by 10 foot 3D display "wall". It was great for demos, but after a year or so of mostly demos, it was largely abandoned. I also got a set of 3D glasses for a 20 inch CRT system and added 3D support to a program I wrote for a physicist friend to display movies of particle simulations. Most of the benefit of seeing the 3D structure could be obtained by simply rotating the scene or movie. Another friend said that chemical display software frequently uses a "wobble" option to add some 3D-like effect to molecule displays. I added a wobble option to my program and it worked pretty well. My experience was that people didn't care enough to walk down the hall to use the big 3D wall and even with 3D glasses in his office, my physicist friend didn't bother. It's not much of a surprise to me that 3D TV is largely a bust. It is cool for a demo, but it seems destined to be used only for demos. Maybe with 3D systems not using goggles or perhaps with lightweight glasses there will be a future for 3D displays. I hope so, even after seeing no one really using it.

I'm sure there are other ways, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Your link was for federal income tax. There are many other taxes which hit the poor and up their percentages drastically. They pay sales tax on a large portion of their income. They pay gas taxes. They must buy car tags and pay a variety of other fees. Either directly or indirectly (as part of their rent) they pay real estate taxes. I found 1 site stating that the bottom 20% pay about 10.9% in state and local taxes. Overall this probably means about 13% vs 30% which is progressive, but the top group is quite mixed. You might recall that Mitt Romney's reported income tax rate was 14% for 2011. My guess is that the richer you are the lower your income tax rate. It is quite possible that Mitt Romney's total tax rate would be lower than many people making $50K per year. For those at the maximum taxable rate for SS, they would likely pay over 20% total taxes. I personally recall many years back when Jimmy Carter was President there was one year when he owed no income tax and donated $5000. I paid more than that on less than $30K. I believe the top marginal rate was 70% back then, but I never really believed that people paid 70% tax on any of their income. The tax breaks for the rich are not really available for the vast majority of us.

That's a good analogy. I suggest that the people involved could understand an API vs the implementation by observing the prototype for a function and then the actual function. They don't need to understand the code. They need to know that the provider for the implementation allows people to call the function by observing the API and not the code. It is simple enough to discuss without analogies. The decision needs to be made on the real thing and not on analogies.

Good suggestion! Articles could be rated much like SlashDot. There could be any number of reviewers for an article. Some reviewers would have more weight than others. Knowing that a large number of reviewers think an article is worth reading is good enough. This need not cut out the publish or perish game, but the rules would need to change.

The question of teaching quality is a part of the problem. Almost no university in the US judges professors based on teaching. They claim to do so, but the tenure decision is primarily a judgement of publications and external funding. In my case the quality of publications was largely irrelevant. I assume that better universities judge quality of research, but I haven't been there. We need to seriously consider having teaching positions for PhDs in addition to research positions. I am not sure if the institutional motivation is money or prestige, but I think that many schools short-change students to pursue research. Expecting research and funding degrades teaching. Better teaching will help to produce better research.

I also like the idea of researchers not being under such huge pressure to survive. Pressure, along with incentives, contributes to the willingness to take shortcuts and to publish made-up results.

My last comment is that publicly funded research should not result in private wealth. If the public pays for the research, we should get cheaper prices on the goods. Perhaps there could be a system where such products are public domain and available for all to develop and market competitively.

I like your plan. It's one of my pet peeves that I pay for satellite TV service and still have to watch ads. It seemed fair enough 50 years ago when the only choice was over the air and ads were the only way TV could make money. Those days are gone and the ads should die.

I like this suggestion. There could be revisions by year, month and day. So 15.2.13 would be Feb. 13, 2015. There would be a need for a few times with multiple releases in a day. This could be done with an optional sequence number: 15.2.13-3 for the third release for 2/13/15 (or 15/2/13 for a more rational date format). At least the version numbering has some meaning. It's almost meaningless to me to see 3.16.0-30 as a version number.