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Submission + - Should plant-based meat replace beef completely? (pbs.org) 1

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Is beef still 'what's for dinner?" Plant-based meat substitute startups say they could provide enough protein to feed the world using only 2% of the land on Earth, dramatically reducing the resources required to create beef products. And adopting plant-based burgers could help reduce heart disease, protect water resources, and stop deforestation. But Beef producers say no laboratory can beat a steer's ability to turn plant-based nutrition into tasty protein, and animals are the best source for natural fertilizer to grow crops. There's a coming war for your dinner plate. Who will prevail?

Submission + - The Mathematical Case for Buying a Powerball Ticket 4

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Neil Irwin writes at the NYT that financially literate people like to complain that buying lottery tickets is among the silliest decisions a person could make but there are a couple of dimensions that these tut-tutted warnings miss, perhaps fueled by a class divide between those who commonly buy lottery tickets and those who choose to throw away money on other things like expensive wine or mansions. According to Irwin, as long as you think about the purchase of lottery tickets the right way — purely a consumption good, not an investment — it can be a completely rational decision. "Fantasizing about what you would do if you suddenly encountered great wealth is fun, and it is more fun if there some chance, however minuscule, that it could happen," says Irwin. "The $2 price for a ticket is a relatively small one to pay for the enjoyment of thinking through how you might organize your life differently if you had all those millions."

Right now the Multi-State Lottery Association estimates the chances of winning the grand prize at about 1 in 175 million, and the cash value of the prize at $337.8 million. The simplest math points to that $2 ticket having an expected value of about $1.93 so while you are still throwing away money when buying a lottery ticket, you are throwing away less in strictly economic terms when you buy into an unusually large Powerball jackpot. "I am the type of financial decision-maker who tracks bond and currency markets and builds elaborate spreadsheets to simulate outcomes of various retirement savings strategies," says Irwin. "I can easily afford to spend a few dollars on a Powerball ticket. Time to head to the convenience store and do just that."

Submission + - Inside the Internet's hidden science factory (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Sarah Marshall has completed roughly 20,000 academic surveys. Clay Hamilton has finished about 40,000. Marshall and Hamilton are part of a small but highly-active community of paid online study participants on Amazon's Mechanical Turk who generate data at break-neck speed to fuel modern scientific research. But can a person who's completed thousands of surveys still provide good data? Here's a look at the humans feeding science from inside the machine.

Submission + - Temporary classrooms are bad for the environment, and worse for kids (pbs.org) 3

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: You've always suspected those trailer-type portable classrooms are no good, right? It turns out you’re right. Analysis of prefabricated classrooms in Washington shows the structures often don't allow for proper ventilation, leading to terrible air quality for kids. Students in temporary classrooms have higher rates of absenteeism than those in standard classrooms. And the energy-inneficient structures often become permanent, sucking on school energy bills for decades, and requiring more upkeep than permanent classrooms. What's needed are new designs for healthy, sustainable temporary classrooms.

Submission + - Why You shouldn't use spreadsheets for important work (lemire.me)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Computer science professor Daniel Lemire explains why spreadsheets shouldn't be used for important work, especially where dedicated software could do a better job. His post comes in response to evaluations of a new economics tome by Thomas Piketty, a book that is likely to be influential for years to come. Lemire writes, 'Unfortunately, like too many people, Piketty used speadsheets instead of writing sane software. On the plus side, he published his code on the negative side, it appears that Piketty’s code contains mistakes, fudging and other problems. ... Simply put, spreadsheets are good for quick and dirty work, but they are not designed for serious and reliable work. ... Spreadsheets make code review difficult. The code is hidden away in dozens if not hundreds of little cells If you are not reviewing your code carefully and if you make it difficult for others to review it, how do expect it to be reliable?'

Submission + - As species decline, so do the scientists who name them (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Few sciences are more romantic than taxonomy. Imagine Darwin, perched over a nest of newly-discovered birds in the Galapagos, sketching away with a charcoal in his immortal journals. Yet Taxonomy is a dying science. DNA barcoding, which can identify species from tiny fragments of organic material, and other genetic sciences are pulling students away from the classical studies of anatomy and species classifications. As the biodiversity crisis wipes undiscovered species off the planet, so to go the scientists who count them.
Mars

Submission + - Protecting the Solar System... From Us (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Imagine this crazy scenario: A space vehicle we've sent to a distant planet to search for life touches down in an icy area. The heat from the spacecraft's internal power system warms the ice, and water forms below the landing gear of the craft. And on the landing gear is something found on every surface on planet Earth... bacteria. Lots of them. If those spore-forming bacteria found themselves in a moist environment with a temperature range they could tolerate, they might just make themselves at home and thrive and then, well... the extraterrestrial life that we'd been searching for might just turn out to be Earth life we introduced.
Space

Submission + - New Soyuz Launch Facility Gets Equator Boost (pbs.org) 1

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Russian and French teams are currently hard at work in French Guiana on the northern coast of South America, building the first Soyuz launch facility in the Western Hemisphere. Soyuz rockets normally carry 3,500 pound payloads into orbit, but from the French Guiana spaceport, the rocket will have an added benefit of being near the equator where the Earth's spin extremely fast. This extra boost allows it to deliver a 6,600 pound payload into orbit. The first launches are scheduled for October.
The Internet

Submission + - Drudge Generates More Traffic Than Social Media (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: A report released today by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that the Drudge Report is a far more important driver of online news traffic than Facebook or Twitter. In fact, for the top 25 news websites, Twitter barely registers as a source of traffic. The report hits on several other interesting findings about news behavior.
NASA

Submission + - Solar Storm Nearly Wipes Out NASA's Messenger (pbs.org)

Submitted by
tcd004
tcd004 writes: "There was a close call last week when an enormous coronal ejection nearly hit Mercury, and the orbiting Messenger spacecraft. Scientists at the Space Weather Laboratory flew into action, modeling the event to determine how close it had come to the spacecraft using data from the twin STEREO sun observers. The group use an animated model called WSA-ENLIL, named after a Sumerian lord of wind and storms. Enlil, who wears a crown of horns, is known for being a kind but also cruel god who sends forth disasters, including a great flood that wiped out humanity. Fortunately Messenger escaped Enlil's wrath."
Facebook

Submission + - Old Facebook Apps Still Plunder Your Privacy (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: If you added the Youtube Facebook app prior to 2009, you're given YouTube free access to nearly all the data in your profile (as well as many of your friends). But if you install the same app today, it gets very limited access. Older versions of Facebook apps, it turns out, still have "grandfathered" access to data that the social networking service has restricted for new apps. If you're protective of your privacy, it might be a good idea to delete and reinstall any older apps in your profile.
Moon

Submission + - NASA strikes gold and water on the Moon (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: The PBS NewsHour reports: there is water on the moon ... along with a long list of other compounds, including, mercury, gold and silver. That's according to a more detailed analysis of the cold lunar soil near the moon's South Pole. The results were released as six papers by a large team of scientists in the journal, Science Thursday. The data comes from the October 2009 mission, when NASA slammed a booster rocket traveling nearly 6,000 miles per hour into the moon and blasted out a hole. Trailing close behind it was a second spacecraft, rigged with a spectrometer to study the lunar plume released by the blast. The mission is called LCROSS, for Lunar Crater Observer and Sensing Satellite.

Submission + - The 110MPG X-prize Car Was Built In Rural Virginia (pbs.org)

Submitted by tcd004
tcd004 writes: Instead of using Detroit engineers or Silicon Valley bitheads, Virginia-based Edison2 relied on retired Formula 1 and Nascar engineers to build its entry for the X-prize. Relying on composite materials and titanium, the team assembled an ultra-lightweight car that provides all the comforts of a standard 4-passenger vehicle, but gets more than 100 mpg. The custom engineering goes all the way down to the car's lug nuts, which weigh less than 11 grams each. Amazingly, they expect a production version of the car should cost less than $20,000.

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