sethoflagos

See what is happening here from a particular perspective: UV photolysis (and 'electrolysis') is creating a survival advantage to those molecular species that are less susceptible to their effects and/or less exposed to them due to their depth in the atmosphere; the remainder being more prone to being broken down back into simpler species: Gravitation is creating a survival advantage for larger, denser molecular species by drawing them deeper into the atmosphere where they are better shielded from UV radiation and/or being lost to space. Add to these the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics which creates by purely statistical means, a survival advantage for molecular species that are new to the mix or existing in very low concentrations due to the higher entropy of more diverse mixtures. The overall effect of UV on a 'primitive' atmosphere can hence be seen as the spontaneous generation of an ever-increasing diversity of increasingly complex UV-resistant molecular species. The origin of species by natural selection? It's so very similar isn't it. And for my money, was very much a significant part of life's earliest origins here on earth.

The strength of the CN triple bond in nitriles (the main ones of interest are acetonitrile and amino acetonitrile) are considerable more resistant to UV photolysis than their corresponding carboxylic acid whatever the UV intensity happens to be. In cold dense molecular clouds where UV input is extremely low, their half lives are of the order 10^8 years whereas that for acetic acid is perhaps a tenth of that. Since they are precursors of amino acids such as glycine, they are significant in the production of a number of biologically important compounds within galaxies.

You're not going to the right clubs

The UK Environmental Red List comprises: Aldrin, atrazine, azinphos-methyl, all cadmium compounds, DDT and metabolites, 1-2 dichloroethane, dichlorvos, dieldrin, endosulfan, endrin, fenitrothion, hexachlorobenzene, hexachlorobutadiene, gamma-hexachlorobutadiene, Malathion, all mercury compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls, pentachlorophenol, simazine, trichlorobenzene, trifluralin, tributyltin compounds, triphenyltin compounds There was a time when the water authorities tested for all these on at least a weekly basis. That all went out of the window after privatisation of course.

Predominantly expatriate male workers - a demographic (and I speak from personal experience) that often struggles to find a healthy lifestyle. When we were in UAE in the early noughties, I picked up a copy of The Great Curries of India by Camellia Panjabi. It opened my eyes to the huge range of regional variation in Indian cuisine and can heartily recommend it. It goes into some detail of the Ayurvedic philosophical basis, and above all emphasises BALANCE. I wouldn't touch chicken makhani with a barge pole. But a couple of days a week I'll get by on tarka dal, a couple of freshly made roti and a dish of mixed pickles. There's a smidgeon of ghee in it, but a 500 ml jar will last me about six months. Probably get more saturated fat from my occasional treat of canned spam. For heart health, my understanding is that liberal use of garlic and ginger with ghee/jaggery not so much is a reasonable approach..

What makes you think that the many regional cuisines of India are unhealthy? I ask, since my own diet is heavily weighted towards a mish-mash of Eastern Mediterranean and Indian recipes. Do you recommend I switch to Big Macs and Pizza Express?

An albeit slight restoration of my faith in humanity. The still ARE good people everywhere. Just sometimes hard to find.

Now that the tone of the discussion has calmed a little, I recommend reading this paper: The future of frequency response in Great Britain It's quite short and not too technical, and deals with the critical consideration of grid stability. The meat of the analysis is in this paragraph: To be clear, R here represents staged interventions by the grid to maintain frequency within statutary limits in response to imbalances, I, between generation and demand. In my day, 20% of UK average load was met by three stations (Ferrybridge, Eggborough, and Drax) strung out along just 15 miles of the Aire Valley at the heart of the grid. 14 turboalternators churning out 8 GW This centre was bolstered by a similar capacity generated by a string of somewhat smaller stations (Rugeley, Drakelow, Castle Donington, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, High Marnham, Cottam, and West Burton) on the Trent Valley. Between them, their huge combined angular momentum provided the cental 'flywheel' of the system, to which all more remote generation units were forced (by physics) to follow in both frequency and phase. The resulting high value of Dn resulted in exceptionally low fluctuations of grid frequency, and consequently very rare need for direct intervention by the grid. Hence, the historically excellent stability and reliability of the UK grid. As the paper referenced suggests, the transfer from coal to renewables will greatly reduce the rotational kinetic energy of grid supply. Essentially, it will become dominated by the considerably smaller nuclear component. And hence, if grid stability is to be maintained, there is going to be a far greater reliance on grid intervention, R. And key stages of this must activate within one second of notice. This is the real challenge to be faced by the transistion to renewables. Everything else is simple in comparison.

Considered a threat by whom and on what basis? Your post maybe factually correct, but hey, do you consider the response reasonable? It's par fror the course in Nigeria (on occasion) but you guys are supposed to be setting the standard for civilised behaviour are you not?

Advanced Gas-Cooled Reactor?! Perhaps you meant CCGT station? I know. Sutton Bridge was one of mine. A little before ENRON hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Just level it and construct a 15 GW nuclear station on the site. God would smile.

Did you take my point about hot standby requirement? Yes or no.

This was never in dispute. I presume you read the bit about London being powered from South Wales during the blitz? Necessary at the time no doubt, but it is generally most economic to keep short distances between generation and demand centres.

So we can replace current natural gas powered generation and go carbon free by sometime between 2030 and 2050. Plus the power for bulk transfer to electric vehicles will have to come from somewhere. Your premise is false. It can be accommodated - on average the grid is only running at 50% maximum capacity - but hot standy capacity has to be available for when demand rises to 80% capacity which it sometimes does. The economic and operational considerations for which generating units are on base load, peak-lopping and hot standby can vary by the hour, and are not simple. The National Grid was, and I understand still is, extremely good at managing this.

I refer you to this quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Grid_(Great_Britain)

Every region between generator and consumer has to carry that additional GVA loading over and above their own local demand. Are you seriously claiming that there's no cost to this?

I was also drawn into looking at the action of the enzyme myrosinase that in the presence of water convert glucosinates to the spicy isothiocyantes as mentioned in @toucana's last post. The enzyme's action is apparently reduced by higher temperatures and reduced pH. Although in Indian cuisine, mustard seeds seem invariably to be dry roasted or fried in ghee for half a minute or so, I'm wondering if this detracts from the heat strength of the flavour. Also, presumably it takes sometime for the enzymatic reaction to proceed, so my taste test immediately after adding water was probably premature. Should have let it stand for a few minutes. @Peterkin, when you made your own mustard, did you heat the seeds first? As mentioned earlier, I've tried grinding them without pre-roasting and made very little progress with my basic kit.

The bit where anti-nett zero is presented as a respectable policy with no mention of its negative global impact; the bit where the BBC yet again utterly ignore the viewpoints of the Liberal Democrats and Greens; the bit that's just a list of right-wing dog whistles (ie all of it)... Moray East and West between them have an installed capacity of just shy of 2 GW. At current tariffs that yields a full load potential income of around £500,000 per hour. If perchance, the Grid needs some rapid start generation capacity to sit on hot stand-by in case one of its larger units trips out unexpectedly, what better than than one or two of these wind farms? They wouldn't want to use coal or nuclear plant because they're both saddled with a maximum ramp rate of 5% of full load per hour. Too slow. CCGT plant is faster but more expensive, and Dinorwig is pre-booked for peak lopping duty. If the grid manages to buy 2 GW of hot standby capacity for 15% of potential lost revenue, that sounds like a very good deal, doesn't it? And of course, there'd have to be a fair breeze blowing at the time otherwise the capacity wouldn't be there, would it? Pointless otherwise. And as for making up a generation shortfall 500 odd miles away to the South - has anyone mentioned the distribution losses over such a distances? No, not the BBC. Better to make up some guff about the wires being too thin and keep the dishonourable Toad of Clacton happy with his grovelling pet toadies. Sorry for the rant. It's 30 years since I did a Christmas weekend night shift at a control desk in Drax. But I've still some memories of how the system should operate

Interesting that the BBC article has a paragraph uncritically praising the anti-nett zero stance of Reform Party's Richard Tice. A little research shows that the author, Justin Rowlett has a significant oil company share holding in his portfolio. It is not a balanced piece of journalism.

Well, in the interest of science, an experiment. About 3 tsps of black mustard seeds. After 15 minutes mortar and pestle action beneath the blazing sun... NB when I tried this with unroasted seeds, I got nowhere fast. Split the ground seeds into three portions and formed paste with plain water (top left), 5% white vinegar (top right), and mustard oil (bottom). Tsp of turmeric in the middle for contrast. Water gave no discernable taste. White vinegar, a faint, sweet taste reminiscent of German mustard. But mustard oil released a strong mustard kick (that isn't in the oil alone) that hard more than a hint of horseradish to it. So I mixed all three with the turmeric adding a bit more vinegar and oil to get the right consistency, and tested it out on barbecued liver and kidney. Definitely had worse. But I need to treat myself to an electric spice grinder.

That makes a lot of sense. If you start with the Olduwan, Acheulean, and Mousterian for Africa it will give you a good early foundation for understanding the progression in other regions. You might consider taking a craft course in flint knapping, if there is one sufficiently close to you.

In my youth, much of which was spent in Scarborough, fish and chip restaurants were plentiful and the tables always had three shakers: two small ones for salt and pepper and a larger one for sugar. The latter was to sweeten your tea - the only beverage provided in such establishments. I do recall mistakenly putting sugar on my chips. A mistake you only make once. Me too, though European mustards are hard to obtain/ridiculously expensive in my neck of the woods. However, our large Indian community ensures the ready availability of black mustard powder and mustard oil, which services my home production of pickled onions and lime pickle. I'm trying to summon the courage to try these options on devilled kidneys and devilled eggs, both of which I've previously only made with Coleman's English. I know the yellow is just turmeric, but will roasted and ground black mustard seeds made into a paste with mustard oil be a good substitute? Guess there's only one way to find out.

There is no 'before' the palaeolithic. It is an archaeological term for a stage in human development characterised by the occurrence of the earliest recognised human artefacts - stone tools. It occurs at different times in different places, first appearing in Africa about 3.3 million years ago and later elsewhere as our ancestors migrated. In Australia, the palaeolithic began perhaps 60 thousand years ago and is generally not regarded as ending before the late eighteenth century. There is no particular tie-in with the geological timeline other than on a very local basis. It's a measure of cultural development, not absolute time.

Our family tradition was to use whole black peppercorns in stews. This went back to at least my maternal great-grandmother's kitchen when the stew was cooked in a set pot overnight in front of an open hearth ready for the menfolk's breakfast before they headed off for a shift down Saint John's in the West Riding coalfield. I'm not sure exactly when she was born, but I was left her father's birth mug dated 10th October, 1840 as we shared a birthday 118 years apart. Anyway, she passed her tradition down to my grandmother and mother, and although we'd left the pit villages and scrag end and shin behind, our stews still were seasoned with whole black pepper, with ground white pepper reserved for tomatoes, strawberries and peas pudding mainly. Btw how can anyone mention nutmeg and not mention rice pudding? Match made in heaven!

Sorry, senior moment. Deposition came from south and west so that's Dartmoor as you say. Well spotted!