EdEarl

I just saw a documentary about the Piraha, an Amazonian culture, whose language apparently has no recursion. For example it has no conjunctions, so you cannot say Mary and Mike drank water. It has started a war among linguists, with Chomskyians and others getting pretty hostile, kind of like the war between theists and atheists...not very scientific in some cases. There is no linguistics forum, so I didn't know where to post this.

There are a couple of references to the Piraha in Religion; they do not have a belief in god. The linguist who reported this language went there as a missionary whom the Piraha converted him to atheism.

It was also about the Piraha culture, so I guess this could be posted in sociology, The only social controversy is whether the Piraha should be forced to modernize or left untainted by modernization.

The Piraha also had no concept of numbers.

I thought it was a very interesting documentary.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqkQJiDXmbA

I saw this talk a while back. It was good, and frankly a little surprising in the conclusion that more cattle grazing in smart patterns would help reduce climate and improve local agriculture.

Clearly more grazing is possible after the land is recovered, because there is more to eat. But, when the land is desert, it may mean a little grazing with many cattle to trample the existing grass flat to provide mulch and add fertilizer. He didn't explain in enough detail to really understand the process completely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCTKHHfsM7Y

Very interesting, thank you for the video. I knew about the cloning of sheep, but I was unsure if it would work on humans, and if it could be used for childless couples.

In theory yes, but I would not recommend human cloning, mainly because I am basically ignorant about the process.

The scientific method is not causal of why we don't know the answer to your question.

Quantum mechanics has not been linked to classical physics and relativity, which may be why we don't know the answer to your question. The elusive "Theory of Everything" has not been discovered. Perhaps string theory will be explain everything, maybe not.

However, we may never know the answer, even if it is theoretically possible to know the answer, because tools such as CERN are not big enough to discover strings (or whatever) that are smaller than quarks. I heard that it might require an atom smasher as big as the Milky Way galaxy to do the experiments necessary to verify string theory. But, I think we can learn more than we currently know without converting the galaxy into an atom smasher. Progress is often slow. Humanity has been studying the universe for only a 100,000 years or so. Give us a bit more time.

I think you have not provided enough information.

Is Open URL the knowledge base or Uniform Resource Locator?

What parts of the system can your company control or affect?

The most important thing I can think of you should do is determine which parts of the system are performing poorly and which are doing well, unless you have identified which "program" needs to go faster. In that case, you need to analyze the program to determine which part or parts of the program are slow.

If the "program" is the knowledge base, I don't know anything about it. But, if it is anything like databases, data organization can affect performance.

Internet pictures such as my thumbnail on this page do not contain true colors, only red, green, and blue (RGB), because our eyes only see those colors. That we see all the colors of the rainbow is an illusion. Spectroscopy will not give the same results from internet pictures as actual things.

It sounds like a nervous breakdown to me; the predator brains would terrify the prey brains.

The video is consistent with things I have learned.

The power company in San Antonio, Texas is using renewable power sources more an more, because they are less expensive. They are a corporation, not owned by the city. They have been increasing their renewable portfolio for many years, and recently installed a 500MW solar PV farm and decommissioned a coal plant.

Elon Musk started Pay Pal and sold it. He has now started three companies, Tesla Motors, SolarX and SpaceX (check out interviews with him on youtube). Tesla makes only electric cars, a sports car that outperforms most other sports cars and can go 250 miles on a single charge, and a sedan similar to other S series cars which also can go 250 miles on a charge. He is now making a less expensive electric designed for the mass market. Several people have stated that electrics use less energy and cause less CO2 emissions, even if they are charged with electricity from a coal powered plant. I consider him a modern day Howard Hughes because he is chief scientist for his companies. Although, he is different from Howard because he seems happily married and not crazy.

Corporations are madly reducing their energy costs and installing solar panels on roofs, because it saves them money.

Earthship homes need no connection to the grid, and have been built in several countries.

If you search the internet, you can find all kinds of stuff about energy savings and alternative technologies, and I don't mean things done by amateurs...though there is a lot of that, too. Here are a few links.

http://www.cps-satx.com/Services/Generate_Deliver_Energy/Solar_Power/Blue_Wing_Solar_Farm/

http://i2.ytimg.com/vi/A5FMY-K-o0Q/mqdefault.jpg

http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2005/01/07/some-facts-about-wal-marts-energy-conservation-measures

http://prakash-t.hubpages.com/hub/Top-10-Energy-Efficient-Skyscrapers

http://earthship.com/

PS: Maybe CO2 will be reduced as new deserts are reclaimed for grassland.

Several things similar to your description have been done, including cloning of sheep and the following.

3D chips have been a subject of discussion for over 30 years. Up to now, they're only a buzzword to describe but more than 2D chips.

Until recently chip manufacturers have been able to shrink transistors and make faster integrated circuits with higher transistor densities and more capability. Thus, they have not needed a new technology to continue shrinking computers. There is a limit, which they are near or perhaps have already encountered. When they cannot make smaller transistors, they will need a new technology. There are at least two candidates, quantum computing and 3D chips.

Labs have made both quantum computers and 3D chips, and the race is on to transfer that technology into production. I do not believe computer improvements will halt, and the exponential rate of technology improvement tends to say once a thing is demonstrated in the lab, it can be mass produced faster than most people estimate.

One of the computers I used in university classes was a CDC6600 (a Seymour Cray supercomputer), which had a megabyte of hand-wired cores (magnetic donuts) that cost about a dollar a bit. If you had told me I would someday carry a portable telephone in my shirt pocket with more computer power than that $10M supercomputer, I would not have believed it. Conversely, it is probably hard for students today to understand the size and lack of power in the CDC6600.

A cat can learn a few words, but they forget you taught them, and think you learned their language.

A direct hit by two stars during the Andromeda, Milky Way collision is unlikely. I assume most stars are surrounded by Ort Clouds. If a star from Andromeda passes near our Sun, the interaction of the two Ort Clouds could cause an increase of Comets coming toward us.

tyvm

I finally looked up the equation for photosynthesis. The O2 comes from water, not the CO2.

Buy some small electric motors and take them apart.

Only some electric motors use permanent magnets. Many, only use electromagnets.

You might want to take a university class in electric motors, or at least buy some books used by professors teaching motors classes.

There are many youtube videos about electric motors, and other info on the internet...google electric motors.

I am no expert.

Currently microchips are characterized as 2D. Although, there are several layers of silicon to make a transistor, these transistors are not stacked one on top of another. However, I have read several reports that labs are working on 3D microchips having multiple layers of transistors. It will allow them to increase gate (transistor) densities which allows faster computers and faster memories.

As for carbon heat shielding, the space shuttle used carbon-carbon heat shields, because it has a high melting temperature. However, carbon-carbon, diamond, and graphite are good heat conductors.

tyvm Moontanman and Essay

I do not understand the ammonia, methane part of this graph...not oxygen related but curious.

There seems too little atmospheric CO2 at 500kyr and 250kyr to account for increased O2 levels. This graph has no spike in O2 at 2.5gyr. Interesting, but there is more to learn.

Eliminate the electorial college.

Term limits for congressmen.

Alternate voting.

The people should vote on tax changes and Supreme Court nominees.

The people should be able to veto line items on any bill. Generally line items are unknown to people, because bills are too big and complex. However, some people do read them, and occassionally, a line item gets into the news. Concerned citizens could log in to vote.gov and veto a line item, if a majority of registered voters reject it, it's gone.

I'm not sure why you would expect them to be inversely proportional, Much of the CO2 is sequestered in limestone not biomatter, cooler temps mean more rain and erosion and the release of more CO2 which raises temps and lowers rainfall and erosion. The amount of O2 in the atmosphere is tiny compared to the CO2 sequestered in limestone...

Oh! CO2 sequestered in limestone and comes out. That explains a lot. ty

I see no cross in the video. Besides, shit happens.

The page from Wikipedia (link below) has two graphs one of paleo CO2 levels and one of paleo O2 levels. From casual inspection, the O2 and CO2 levels do not appear to be inversely proportional. Do you know of any similar graphs that would be easier to compare.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#History_of_the_atmosphere

"The Doppler effect (or Doppler shift), named after the Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who proposed it in 1842 in Prague, is the change in frequency of a wave (or other periodic event) for an observer moving relative to its source. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn approaches, passes, and recedes from an observer. The received frequency is higher (compared to the emitted frequency) during the approach, it is identical at the instant of passing by, and it is lower during the recession." From the Wikipedia page on Doppler Effect.

Note: higher frequency during approach (distance changing), and lower during recession (also distance changing).

I am not an expert.

The Wikipedia page about the Higgs was updated to say CERN had found a Higgs like particle the same day it was found. I assume by someone at CERN.

The following link explains the current status. My understanding is that they are still uncertain whether they found the Higgs boson or not, but the tests they have completed are consistent with it being a Higgs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#Current_status_of_the_125_GeV_particle

If enough methane hydrate entered the earth's atmosphere it definitely would have an effect on the level of atmospheric oxygen. A huge amount of CO2 is sequestered in limestone, in fact it has been estimated that Earth and Venus have approximately the same amount of Carbon but all of the Carbon on Venus is in the atmosphere while most of Earth's Carbon is sequestered in limestone.

I understand a lot of oxygen is sequestered in iron compounds, too.

Are there natural processes that release large amounts of oxygen from limestone? Iron compounds?

I think there is a process for released, burned methane hydrate to become methane hydrate again.True or False?

I am trying to understand varioius processes that could change atmospheric O2 levels by 40%.

Does atmospheric oxygen, including O2, CO2, NO, NO2, etc., sometimes become sequesterd in solids or liquids in significant amounts (e.g., >1%) for long periods of time (e.g, > 1 yr). For example, if much of the methane hydrate entered the atmosphere, would the additional water from burning that methane significantly decrease atmospheric oxygen.