Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#241

Post by mmmm8 »

I too have no idea and am very curious to understand what FB did for WhatsApp to completely overtake Viber. They're exactly the same app and Viber was more popular for a good chunk of time, at least in Europe and LATAM.

I use WhatApp to communicate with a lot of people who are right here in New York, but it's mostly because we/they have foreign connections and travel and it's the easiest way to maintain contact no matter where you are.

@JazzNu, PayPal is not ubiquitous at all anymore, it's Zelle in LATAM and Venmo in the US.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#242

Post by dryrunguy »

Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and technically Dr. Anthony Fauci's boss, will step down at the end of the year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/05/us/p ... s-nih.html
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#243

Post by Suliso »

Nobel prizes in sciences for 2021 were awarded this week. Here is an overview of the laureates and what they did to deserve it.

Medicine or Physiology

David Julius, UC San Francisco (born 1955 NYC) and Ardem Patapoutian, Scripps institute, CA (born 1967 Beirut, Lebanon) for their discovery of receptors for temperature and touch.

Our ability to sense heat, cold and touch is essential for survival and underpins our interaction with the world around us. In our daily lives we take these sensations for granted, but how are nerve impulses initiated so that temperature and pressure can be perceived? This question has been solved by this year’s Nobel Prize laureates.

David Julius utilized capsaicin, a pungent compound from chili peppers that induces a burning sensation, to identify a sensor in the nerve endings of the skin that responds to heat. Ardem Patapoutian used pressure-sensitive cells to discover a novel class of sensors that respond to mechanical stimuli in the skin and internal organs. These breakthrough discoveries launched intense research activities leading to a rapid increase in our understanding of how our nervous system senses heat, cold, and mechanical stimuli. The laureates identified critical missing links in our understanding of the complex interplay between our senses and the environment.


Physics

Syukuro Manabe, Princeton University (born 1931 Shingu, Ehime prefecture, Japan), Klaus Hasselmann, Max Planck institute for meteorology (born 1931 Hamburg, Germany) for the physical modelling of Earth's climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming and Giorgio Parisi, Sapienza university of Rome (born 1948, Rome, Italy) for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.

Three Laureates share this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for their studies of chaotic and apparently random phenomena. Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann laid the foundation of our knowledge of the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it. Giorgio Parisi is rewarded for his revolutionary contributions to the theory of disordered materials and random processes.

Complex systems are characterised by randomness and disorder and are difficult to understand. This year’s Prize recognises new methods for describing them and predicting their long-term behaviour.

One complex system of vital importance to humankind is Earth’s climate. Syukuro Manabe demonstrated how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lead to increased temperatures at the surface of the Earth. In the 1960s, he led the development of physical models of the Earth’s climate and was the first person to explore the interaction between radiation balance and the vertical transport of air masses. His work laid the foundation for the development of current climate models.

About ten years later, Klaus Hasselmann created a model that links together weather and climate, thus answering the question of why climate models can be reliable despite weather being changeable and chaotic. He also developed methods for identifying specific signals, fingerprints, that both natural phenomena and human activities imprint in the climate. His methods have been used to prove that the increased temperature in the atmosphere is due to human emissions of carbon dioxide.

Around 1980, Giorgio Parisi discovered hidden patterns in disordered complex materials. His discoveries are among the most important contributions to the theory of complex systems. They make it possible to understand and describe many different and apparently entirely random materials and phenomena, not only in physics but also in other, very different areas, such as mathematics, biology, neuroscience and machine learning.


Chemistry

Benjamin List, Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung (born 1968, Frankfurt, Germany) and David W.C. McMillan, Princeton University (born 1968, Bellshill, UK) for the development of asymmetric organocatalysis

Building molecules is a difficult art. Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 for their development of a precise new tool for molecular construction: organocatalysis. This has had a great impact on pharmaceutical research, and has made chemistry greener.

Many research areas and industries are dependent on chemists’ ability to construct molecules that can form elastic and durable materials, store energy in batteries or inhibit the progression of diseases. This work requires catalysts, which are substances that control and accelerate chemical reactions, without becoming part of the final product. For example, catalysts in cars transform toxic substances in exhaust fumes to harmless molecules. Our bodies also contain thousands of catalysts in the form of enzymes, which chisel out the molecules necessary for life.

Catalysts are thus fundamental tools for chemists, but researchers long believed that there were, in principle, just two types of catalysts available: metals and enzymes. Benjamin List and David MacMillan are awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2021 because in 2000 they, independent of each other, developed a third type of catalysis. It is called asymmetric organocatalysis and builds upon small organic molecules.

“This concept for catalysis is as simple as it is ingenious, and the fact is that many people have wondered why we didn’t think of it earlier,” says Johan Åqvist, who is chair of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry.

Organic catalysts have a stable framework of carbon atoms, to which more active chemical groups can attach. These often contain common elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur or phosphorus. This means that these catalysts are both environmentally friendly and cheap to produce.

The rapid expansion in the use of organic catalysts is primarily due to their ability to drive asymmetric catalysis. When molecules are being built, situations often occur where two different molecules can form, which – just like our hands – are each other’s mirror image. Chemists will often only want one of these, particularly when producing pharmaceuticals.

Organocatalysis has developed at an astounding speed since 2000. Benjamin List and David MacMillan remain leaders in the field, and have shown that organic catalysts can be used to drive multitudes of chemical reactions. Using these reactions, researchers can now more efficiently construct anything from new pharmaceuticals to molecules that can capture light in solar cells. In this way, organocatalysts are bringing the greatest benefit to humankind.


The text is from the official Nobel prize website. I'm quite familiar with both chemistry laureates, have heard their lectures and read numerous papers from their groups. A colleague in the office did his PhD with Benjamin List and is already looking forward to going to the party sometime soon. Another one did his postdoc with McMillan around the same time I did mine at UPenn.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#244

Post by ti-amie »



Someone in the Twitter thread mentioned Starlink.

Starlink explained: Everything you should know about Elon Musk's satellite internet venture
The billionaire SpaceX CEO is launching satellites into orbit and promising to deliver high-speed broadband internet to as many people as possible.

https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/star ... explained/
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#245

Post by Suliso »

Starlink, unlike virtually any other system, really only works in low population density areas. It is rather expensive, though.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#246

Post by ponchi101 »

Satellite internet is so expensive that when we run our projects it is always cheaper to pay for microwave links to the closest town, even if it is 100 miles away.
At sea, every boat I gave been on limits your use severely. Anybody caught using Skype will be made to walk the plank (figuratively).
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#247

Post by Suliso »

ponchi101 wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:22 pm Satellite internet is so expensive that when we run our projects it is always cheaper to pay for microwave links to the closest town, even if it is 100 miles away.
At sea, every boat I gave been on limits your use severely. Anybody caught using Skype will be made to walk the plank (figuratively).
For a whole ship it wouldn't be so bad - 100 $/month for a broadband. Starlink not yet available for ships, but likely will be in a year or so.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#248

Post by ponchi101 »

It has gotten cheaper, but it depends on the broad band. A seismic boat is uploading a couple of gigas of data per day. We need a lot.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#249

Post by Suliso »

ponchi101 wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 10:29 pm It has gotten cheaper, but it depends on the broad band. A seismic boat is uploading a couple of gigas of data per day. We need a lot.
Those 100 $ were for a service which doesn't exist yet on ships... On the land people say it's enough for Skype, Zoom, Netflix etc (user tested at 114 mbps). Downloading gigas of data might not be its strength.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#250

Post by ponchi101 »

Final comment. We do not DOWNLOAD data as much as we UPLOAD. We generate a few thousand records a day (3,000 is not uncommon) of HD seismic data, and we need to send it to the processing company.
It is the UPLINK that we need, and those are usually slower.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#251

Post by JazzNU »

Suliso wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:52 pm Starlink, unlike virtually any other system, really only works in low population density areas. It is rather expensive, though.
Legitimately don't know a single thing he's offering or planned to offer that can't be categorized as expensive and projected to stay that way for a long while.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#252

Post by ponchi101 »

The Model 3 sells for about $35K, about one third of the Model S.
And that is as close as I can get to what you describe :D
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#253

Post by JazzNU »

ponchi101 wrote: Sat Oct 09, 2021 1:52 am The Model 3 sells for about $35K, about one third of the Model S.
And that is as close as I can get to what you describe :D
Here I think the base model is almost $40k now and that's if you get the most basic And going by the forums, doesn't seem like that's the norm. And there's other common add-ons that are extra like the FSD is $10k.

So starting prices are an Acura here, which is considered a lower-priced luxury car brand. But from articles I've read, if you take that "most affordable" model of Tesla and get the longest range or fully loaded, you jump from an Acura to like a upper-end Mercedes.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#254

Post by Suliso »

JazzNU wrote: Sat Oct 09, 2021 1:49 am
Suliso wrote: Fri Oct 08, 2021 9:52 pm Starlink, unlike virtually any other system, really only works in low population density areas. It is rather expensive, though.
Legitimately don't know a single thing he's offering or planned to offer that can't be categorized as expensive and projected to stay that way for a long while.
Perhaps so, but one could always go with whatever competitors are offering. However, in this particular case nobody else offering much...

As for cars definitely not for the average guy, at least not yet. Then again Tesla can't make as much as there is demand for the current price. In this area though there are plenty of competitors. GM, Ford, Volkswagen all make serious electric cars these days.
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Re: Science/Techno Babble Random, Random

#255

Post by Suliso »

I checked what is sold in Switzerland. Currently here one could only get Model 3 long range performance version for ca 70k. Obviously that's about 2-2.5x more than the average guy would pay for a new car. We'll see how things change when the new factory in Berlin opens later this year. I think it's meant for model Y mostly.

I'm personally not in a market for a car, electric or otherwise. Just a curious bystander looking at this revolution. :)

Edit: I think I misunderstood. What I mentioned above is in the store and could be driven away tomorrow. Anything else one would need to preorder and wait till available.
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