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https://phys.org/news/2019-01-landscape-unseen-years.html Glacial retreat in the Canadian Arctic has uncovered landscapes that haven't been ice-free in more than 40,000 years and the region may be experiencing its warmest century in 115,000 years, new University of Colorado Boulder research finds. The study, published today in the journal Nature Communications, uses radiocarbon dating to determine the ages of plants collected at the edges of 30 ice caps on Baffin Island, west of Greenland. The island has experienced significant summertime warming in recent decades. "The Arctic is currently warming two to three times faster than the rest of the globe, so naturally, glaciers and ice caps are going to react faster," said Simon Pendleton, lead author and a doctoral researcher in CU Boulder's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR). Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-landscape-unseen-years.html#jCp :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: the paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08307-w Rapidly receding Arctic Canada glaciers revealing landscapes continuously ice-covered for more than 40,000 years: Abstract Arctic temperatures are increasing faster than the Northern Hemisphere average due to strong positive feedbacks unique to polar regions. However, the degree to which recent Arctic warming is unprecedented remains debated. Ages of entombed plants in growth position preserved by now receding ice caps in Arctic Canada help to address this issue by placing recent conditions in a multi-millennial context. Here we show that pre-Holocene radiocarbon dates on plants collected at the margins of 30 ice caps in Arctic Canada suggest those locations were continuously ice covered for > 40 kyr, but are now ice-free. We use in situ 14C inventories in rocks from nine locations to explore the possibility of brief exposure during the warm early Holocene. Modeling the evolution of in situ 14C confirms that Holocene exposure is unlikely at all but one of the sites. Viewed in the context of temperature records from Greenland ice cores, our results suggest that summer warmth of the past century exceeds now any century in ~115,000 years. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> https://phys.org/news/2019-01-faster-co2.html Faster CO2 rise expected in 2019 January 25, 2019, University of Exeter Figure 1: Forecast CO₂ concentrations at Mauna Loa over 2019 (orange), along with previous forecast concentrations for 2016 (blue), 2017 (green), 2018 (pink) and Scripps Institute measurements (black). Credit: University of Exeter With emissions already at a record high, the build-up of carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere could be larger than last year due to a slower removal by natural carbon sinks. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2019-01-faster-co2.html#jCp

Which is interesting as alcohol is generally speaking a more dangerous drug, in terms of adverse effects.

Bottom five states specifically listed in the study your link cites are Kentucky (#46), Massachusetts (#47), New Jersey (#48), Connecticut (#49), and Illinois (#50). Kentucky & Massachusetts have had a Republican Governor since 2015, New Jersey's Governor was Republican Chris Christie from 2010 up till just 2 weeks ago, and Illinois Governor was Republican Bruce Rauner up till 2 just 2 weeks ago. 4 of the 5 states were Republican led at the time of the study. Of course that is a meaningless fact because the study your link cites didn't look at political party affiliation or tax policy as factors it analysed. Your link is gross misrepresentation of the study it cites. This link clearly identifies itself as an opinion piece and cites research done by American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which is a well known conservative activist group.

Freezing out the water is also an option- especially in Winter. Of course, that's not when you need weedkiller, so you need to plan ahead.

You essentially answered your own questions. Think of the liquid crystals as 'shutters' which allow light to pass through or not. And just as shutters always leak a little light, no polarizer is 100% effective. Some light always leaks through, and 'blacks' aren't really black. In OLEDs ( or plasma displays ) the pixels themselves emit the light, and are either on or off. And when they are off 'blacks' are black, giving better contrast. The fact that the pixels also radiate in all directions, instead of the LCD/LED case, where the backlight passes through a crystal 'window', means that the viewing angle is not reduced by the 'window'. Black 'blacks', high contrast and viewing angle are what makes for a good TV. For watching TV movies, high refresh rate plasma displays used to be the favorite. Now they are being replaced by OLEDs with HDR ( more important than 4K ) for the best contrast. For computer screens LED is perfectly adequate.

Defended my thesis in front of the examination board. They were very pleased, found both the thesis and the presentation excellent, appreciated my direct and to-the-point answers to their questions ... Couldn't ask for more! 8 February is verdict day ...

What you describe is part of the problem, especially your first sentence. The classic approach to pain is to treat everyone the same (or just use a pain chart) and expend drugs and perhaps therapy accordingly. Based on what I am hearing from pain specialists (from infrequent meetings) is the desire to establish more individualized approaches trying to figure out sources and individualized therapies that reduce pain. The reason being that newer research has shown a vast variance in terms of how patients with certain types of pain respond to treatment and pain management. The limitations here are obviously that one needs to find a specialist who makes the effort to establish such plans, with an understanding that especially for chronic treatments a rapport has to be established over time. However, that approach does not work well with how most physicians work, so there are incredibly barriers in practice. Rather unfortunately, it does not seem to be changing in the short run. Having new drugs will allow us to proceed with the old model, but there is quite a progressive movement among medical scientist and medical professionals who are aiming at larger overhauls.

You are misquoting me! I said the Y2K event was vastly overblown, overhyped, and a case of mistaken mass hysteria. Just as appears to be happening with "AI". Yeah, that's NASA. Didn't they lose one over a temperature conversion bug too. I'm quite familiar with UTC. We've been aware of the 2038 problem since forever, and here 20 years before the event have taken steps to upgrade. (I have.) Still, not sure why they don't just use that 32nd bit; I guess they can, it's just that existing software still needs to be upgraded. Still, I hope you aren't suggesting planes fall out of the sky, or nuclear reactors will melt down on 1/18/38? You've proven my point. Which was: the majority of the population didn't think programmers could fix all the problems so they vastly overestimated the risks. I was there. We had to set the date on all of our PCs and see if they were compliant. I recall, "Yeah the old Packard Bell in the closet says it's 1900. Should we upgrade the firmware? No just throw it in the garbage." And, my industrial controllers don't care what year it is, to make it so would be negligent. They care about temperatures and motor speeds; worst case would have been activity log files would have reported the year as 1900 on timestamps. Embarrassing but not catastrophic. I've never claimed engineers are perfect, they make mistakes all the time. For example, a certain Asian nation put a nuclear reactor on the shoreline known to be susceptible to earthquakes and tsunamis. Didn't work out too well, but we learn and move on. That'll be the case with AI too. Edit: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/25/technology/automation-davos-world-economic-forum.html A very relevant article about managers at Davos secretly conspiring to eliminate jobs with autoamation. Reminds me of my early career in commercial avionics. The Fortune 100 company I worked went through a phase of investing and proposing we eliminate all software engineers by automatic code generation. The idea was all you needed were systems engineers that wrote specs. The new magical (and expensive) software system would automatically generate the code. It was a boondoggle. And most of us knew it would be, just not management. They found out eventually, and some had to be "reskilled" (they were fired).

GDP stats for 2018 Q4 are due out this week; expected to be around 2.9%. The average GDP growth under Trump is also 2.9%. The average for Obama was 2.1%. So Trump would argue his policies have increased GDP growth by about 38%. Why is the stock market down? Competition from other asset classes (e.g. increasing interest rates), reduced corporate earnings, and/or reductions in growth of earnings. It is my assertion that the drop in the stock market seen in late last summer was most likely primarily the result of increasing probabilities of democrats making gains in the upcoming elections. Democratic influence is a negative factor economically, obviously due to their tendencies toward higher taxation and regulation. The massive stock crash in 08 was in fact caused by the subprime mortgage fiasco (directly attributed to democrats - Carter and Clinton et al) and made worse by the increased likelihood of Obama winning the presidency. Ironically, Obama didn't inherit a bad economy, he helped create it, first by supporting policies leading to the mortgage crisis, and then by getting elected.