If this were true, there would already be nuclear powered aircraft which would be a much more "achievable" goal given the size and weight of even the smallest nuclear power plants.
But there are no nuclear powered aircraft and so no nuclear powered missiles. And many countries have had nuclear _capable_ weaponry for a very long time because nuclear weapons can be small and relatively light.
I have long maintained that scientific consensus is always political and only rarely based on fact. The noisiest and most politically astute scientists rise in stature and influence and sometimes viciously defend their pet beliefs whether they are correct or not.
Oracle stuff didn't help. It's initial appeal was that it ran everywhere. Now all languages do. So people who just want to code something quickly w/o worries for security, etc. use Js/Node for web stuff and Python for pretty much everything else. For people really concerned about speed and security C/C++ is the 'real' programmer's tool of choice. Java code gets very ugly, very quickly and code reuse, one of the big promises, just never took off. So Java is kind of purposeless. Pick a task and there is something better and easier to use than Java.
Years of fomenting fear of 'climate change' and painting it as a dire crisis has opened up the general public to the predations of snake oil peddlers. With the public demanding immediate action and an immediate fix, they are primed to be ready to accept any and all proposed solutions. In this case the proposal is another instance of geoengineering a body of water that human science is still far from understanding in its role in the planet's climate. We still do not completely understand ocean chemistry nor its effect on the climate and consequently cannot model long term effects. Perhaps it's time to accept that just as it took a long time to create the current problem and it will take a long time to correct it. There is no silver bullet.
The commitment to fossil fuels is a) far greater than you can imagine and b) will not change anywhere in the near future. Bottom line: 'fossil' fuels are second only to nuclear energy in the amount of energy by volume. Nothing else is close. And we need vast amounts of energy just to grow enough to feed this planet's population let alone distribute it to where it needs to go.
This is a very cute way of getting people's emails. Link to a link to a 'register for free access'. Kind of where I stopped (w/o registering) but clever ... and also last time I do that.
mastodon: transfer control from a publicly answerable company to private citizens
how does this make sense? it might work at a small scale but how does it scale up? how is is legally held responsible? will this prevent hate promoters from creating their own private forums and when they do who will be held accountable?
it just seems that people are reacting to the CEO and not the platform. What if all the Twitter/Musk complainers & haters put their money together and took control and made it work their way? pffft ... ridiculous suggestion b/c their collective strength is complaining not _doing_.
In a nutshell, they induced the symptoms of hypothermia (shivering, etc.) in a monkey "model" (biologist code for a real living monkey). One of the 'stunning' findings from the data was that monkey body temperature control is more complicated than that of white mice "models". And the conclusion is that being able to induce hypothermia is a step towards human hibernation ... wtf?
Typical of biology, it's not obvious that the results were expected. On the contrary b/c biology lacks first principles most experiments are done on a "let's see what happens when we ...". That seems fine until you understand the approach is being used on living creatures.
Biology is butterfly collecting and animal torture.
When you know exactly how things will be affected, then feel free to make changes.
When you don't know exactly how things will be affected, then you shouldn't make changes.
This action was the second case and it was only done for monetary concerns. This wasn't motivated by environmental concerns, it was motivated by profit. And the profit motive is exactly what got this planet in to its climate situation.
The irony is that the math is straightforward and something a 3rd year engineering or physics student will have seen over and over again BUT biology students would find it challenging. It's also much simpler than statistics another key tool that a biologist should be deeply knowledgeable in. Sadly, biologists by and large eschew math and we occasionally see it used here to explain things after the fact. Biology will become a science when it uses math for prediction and modelling in short when it establishes mathematically sound first principles ... like all the real sciences have.
Chilling. The best of reasons are likely present in the research proposal but it takes little imagination to see where this can (and likely will) go. It's only paranoia until it happens.
Fascinating read esp. in light of another article here (somewhere) about the surreal legal manipulations to bring down Sabatini (cancer researcher). It is all about the exercise or misuse of power for personal gain at every level.
Valid points in the article but they boil down to:
1) WFH unexpectedly made for awkward at-home office arrangements (eg kitchen table) and meeting formats (eg. zoom) BUT over time people sorted these things out
2) WFH people worked much longer hours perhaps over compensating for not being in the office, and that takes its toll on health
That's it. So really nothing to see hear _except_ that this is a subtle attack on the WFH spun to favour those who need to see their workers in the office.
The funny thing is: WFH favours those who are productive but penalizes those who get ahead by 'networking' or 'schmoozing with the boss'. If you're in the latter group where promotion-by-popularity is what works for you then, yeah, WFH is a bummer.