kale

A side effect of this is that the "pure" olive oil is much more stable and has a higher smoke point. Wikipedia lists "Extra Virgin" at 160C and "Refined" up to 243C. So if you're trying to create a non-stick surface on something, pure olive oil is better than virgin olive oil.

I always though sapphire fulfilled the requirements of "transparent aluminium". It's used as a lens material for a lot of phone cameras.

My understanding is that Lehman Brothers still has a few employees left. Mainly to sort through the mess of paperwork left behind. Here's an article from 2013 where they still had employees working on liquidating the assets.

[1] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-lehman-fiveyear-people/you...

Without branching (or with limited branching, last I checked it masked and re-ran instead). A core implies both instruction and data operations, rather than SIMD behavior.

PlayOn desktop works pretty well too. That plus Plex is way more convenient when travelling internationally and in places with poor network access.

Illinois has had difficulty recently paying lottery winnings to citizens. In 2015, 3900 winning tickets had delayed payouts [0]. Risk should always be factored into financial decisions, and risk of a lottery institution going insolvent is non-zero.

[0] http://money.cnn.com/2017/06/27/news/illinois-lottery-state-...

Stainless Steel is a huge class of metals, most (but not all) have nickel in them. Also alloys of cupronickel, coin metal, cobalt chromium, and nitinol all have nickel in them. And certain countries lie constantly about nickel content in metal they sell. When we source for medical implants, we have to specify no material from certain countries, because we can't trust their certifications, and we can't re-do all of the certification testing on our own.

Nickel is just too useful (and pre-existing in a lot of metal ores, I think) to stop using it, despite the fact that a large percentage of people are allergic to it.

From a toxicity standpoint they are safer. Bismuth can be consumed in medicine (Pepto Bismol). I work in toxicology and we are worried about the "big four": lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic. These are from the Q3D guidelines on toxicity. Tungsten and Bismuth aren't on the list at all. Nickel is a unique concern, since it's so dang useful in metal alloys, and a high percentage of people have an allergic reaction to nickel particles.

Edit for a plug: Don't throw away NiCd batteries folks! Recycle them properly!

https://www.call2recycle.org/locator/

My daughter has an Android tablet. For a while it was vanilla Android until I realized she was downloading an app, tapping the initial ad on the app, which lead to another app. Repeat ad nauseam until she couldn't install anything else. She isn't able to distinguish quality of apps, and was installing apps that were one giant copyright violation (My little Ponies, Mickey Mouse, and a Minion, all in the same app!).

For the life of me I can't figure out how these apps make money. They're like flotsam in the Google App store, so they're making money somehow. For all I know they turn on the microphone and send the data to a rogue organization.

This is very different to when I grew up. I had to write my games in Basic (I got them in the back of a catalog!) and I learned how to modify them. I plan on giving her free use of any of my Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, and if she shows interest in those big, expensive RGB LED matrices, I'll buy those for her. She can go nuts with those!

The senate has the filibuster provision to give the minority party the ability to slow down or block legislation. To overcome a filibuster, 3/5* of the senate have to vote to end it.

At some point, the senate was afraid of gridlock, so there was a special provision made for things that deal with money (not sure if tax only), where things that have a minimal impact on the budget can overcome a filibuster with a simple majority. The parliamentarian is the one who decides if a bill is "minimal impact", which is set at $1.5T at the moment.

Therefore the parliamentarian has decided that changing the non-profit law would cause this tax bill to be more than $1.5T in net change, meaning it can be filibustered.

Edit: Wikipedia article [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentarian_of_the_United_...

[2] * corrected my math, thanks to dragonwriter

Titanium is also a relatively poor conductor of heat. Aluminum conducts heat over 10 times better than Titanium. Use of aluminium would be much better at conducting heat away from the body of the notebook.

So I'm reading that LASEK still cuts a flap, just a thinner one than LASIK. It also appears to have a longer healing time than LASIK[0].

It does appear to have fewer complications with the flap, since it's a thinner one, and less chance of hazing.

[0]http://www.the-lasik-directory.com/lasik_lasek_chart.html

No, Yagis have a single driven element like a dipole, and you have longer elements behind the driven element (reflectors), and shorter elements in front (directors I think?).

I'm not an expert in the field, but I do annealing work on occasion (simulated annealing, which is kind of like copying polymer annealing).

Simulated annealing is just an optimization. I use it for modelling human motion. You have the position and acceleration of each bone in the legs and feet. You start by deciding on a variable (say, reducing energy expenditure for gait), and then letting the algorithm alter variables and attempt to minimize a variable.

So if quantum annealing is anything like simulated annealing, you aren't "solving" for a single, correct answer, but getting a solution that minimizes or maximizes an outcome faster than brute force.

So a quantum computer could solve "What is the factorization of this huge number?", while quantum annealing could solve "Given these 30 different engine configurations, which combination of intake pressure, fuel flow rate, turbocharger performance curve, and engine timing would result in the best fuel efficiency?"

This is the frustrating part to me. I bought a house with a broker I used a lot (flipped abused houses for a few years). He sold the loan to company A, which was great. They sold the loan to company B after a year, and the nightmare started.

One month, they withdrew my mortgage twice on the same day (found out when my debit card declined at the grocery store).

They sent a mortgage interest statement in January. I filled out my taxes, then after I had gotten my refund, they sent a corrected mortgage interest statement. I had to make a judgement call on whether this required re-filing taxes and the expense that entailed.

The worst was when we got a $2500 check from the mortgage company, saying they had recalculated our escrow, and they had overestimated it initially. We spent most of that money on setting up a nursery for a new baby. Two months later, we received another letter saying, "whoops, our bad, we actually did have escrow calculated correctly the first time. Pay us $2500 in 30 days or your house note is going up by $200 a month until escrow is funded again".

EDIT: Recalled another issue with this company. I'd get e-mails monthly: "You're late on your payment. We're about to foreclose on your house". This would be followed by an e-mail: "Our computer system is being upgraded. Please disregard late payment e-mails if you've paid your mortgage. We should have this fixed within three months".

I know war and tension have always been part of the modern era, but it does seem like we're going back to cold war levels of tension again. U.S. vs Saudi Arabia. U.S. and Europe vs Russia. India vs Pakistan. North and South Korea (although it's been like that for a long time). One "Archduke Ferdinand" event and things might get ugly. With as much internal tension that we see inside the US right now, politicians might not be so reluctant to go to war. Giving citizens a common enemy might calm things domestically.

Breeder reactors run on a different cycle, and allow uranium to capture neutrons and turn into plutonium (spallation). Last time I checked the US had two breeder reactors operational, to make material for nuclear weapons, and one ready but not operational.

I think we could take a vast majority of the nuclear waste we have today and turn it into fuel. But it would make plutonium as part of the process, which makes some lawmakers uncomfortable since it's easier to make small nuclear bombs from plutonium.

Why can't we build a breeder reactor near Yucca mountain, have a reactor core that's completely closed off from human interaction, and breed react current nuclear waste into energy? Design it to need refueling every 10 years or so, and have local national guard present during each refueling session. Considering it should need much less interaction than a non-breeding reactor, I think the plutonium threat could be mitigated.

Biofilms are nasty stuff. I did part of my master's thesis on them. They group together and communicate with each other (with electrical grids, according to Dr. Costerton, one of the forefront researchers of biofilms before he passed away). Some species use the film to coordinate a certain percentage of bugs stay in a "dormant" state, so they won't intake an antibiotic and die.

For artificial joints like a hip and a knee joint, you have a lot of exposed materials like titanium, stainless steel, or medical polymer, so it doesn't have an immune system. Getting a biofilm infection forming on an artificial joint sometimes means taking the implant out, even if it's working fine.

So biofilms are a tough problem. They're far more sinister than conventional bacterial colonies. Since this is in the digestive tract, I wonder if some type of detergent can be found that simply dissolves the film matrix, washing away the bacteria and fungi.

Mathematically, "inside" our stomachs and intestines are "outside" our body. They are also outside of our body by looking at epithelial tissue, which has an inside/outside orientation.

Does sleep perform the same function as melatonin? A hormone that allows greater sleep "efficiency" than normal sleep.

Melatonin is the hormone that regulates sleep normally. You're taking additional sleep hormone by taking it orally. So sleep is melatonin.

It's the hormone that is theorized to be involved in the "blue light" sleep effect. When the high-wavelength cones are stimulated, melatonin release is reduced, according to current theory. [0]

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11487664

Thanks for linking that. I researched melatonin previously and found these same studies.

It appears that there's not much of a tolerance effect when taking melatonin. This is unusual, our experience tells us that most drugs have a tolerance effect. Extended use of caffeine causes the body to make more adenosine receptors, meaning that it takes a higher dose to have the same effect.

This does not appear to happen with melatonin. Less science and more anecdote from a lot of users: melatonin also has an amount where it is less effective. You'll find several reports of people that see no effect at the higher doses (10mg), yet a lower dose (3mg) has a good effect.

This is all moot if you're in the UK or Australia, since melatonin is a prescription drug.

Not OP but: High quality mats inside and outside every entrance to the house/apartment. I use a stiff bristle mat outside and a softer/more absorbent mat inside.

Nothing can prepare you for the "crap I can't do anything spontaneous now" like having children. I recently had to let tickets to a concert go (that I was really looking forward to) because the babysitter had a family emergency.

And this is a deep confession that I've never really told anyone: I envy my divorced friends with kids. Every other week they (usually) are child free. And get to do things like mow grass, have a dinner with an SO at a place that doesn't have a built-in playground, or go on weekend trips on a whim. That guaranteed time without children that you get from custody agreements has a ton of perks. I won't admit this out loud, though.

Can anyone really know what the root of his great performance is? If anyone did, wouldn't they be as successful?

Bluetooth v4.2 is not yet 2 years old. Bluetooth v5 is coming out in the next couple of years.

Bluetooth 4.0 really dropped power requirements for a lot of use cases. It's an adapting standard that's not sitting still by any stretch.

The FDA has tiers of regulation. Things like "supplements" are loosely regulated, while "pharmaceuticals" are much more highly regulated.

With supplements, the FDA pretty much lets things go until they start causing problems. DMAA was legal for a long time until people started having heart attacks. Melatonin, which is a straight-up hormone, is over-the-counter in the US, and it's by prescription only in Europe.

Now, if you're marketing something as a treatment for a disease, you have to have concrete data to back it up.

So it's very possible to have something that the FDA will let you sell as a supplement (i.e. there's no evidence that it's dangerous), but not make any claims about its efficacy (i.e. you can't say it will treat XYZ).

I experimented with nootropics at one point of my life (found them worthless, FYI), and it was funny how all of the labels just stated what it was, purity, and a blurb about the company selling it. There was no language whatsoever telling you what the supplement was for. Just a giant "PIRACETAM" label on the front.

In addition to newer regulations aimed at exclusion. After a burst of new development of upper-middle-class homes in my town, the new residents voted in a new mayor and aldermen, and the new leadership passed a law preventing the construction of any home within city limits of less than 2000 square feet. The old part of the city would be mostly illegal to build under current regulations.

I deal routinely with use patents in the medical field. There's a chemical that's been in use for 30+ years to stabilize polymers from ionizing radiation. It's used in practically all gallon milk jugs to protect them from UV degradation. A company has a bright idea in 2006 that this chemical would also stabilize medical device plastics during sterilization (usually gamma radiation), and get a use patent on this stabilizer for use in the medical industry. 30+ year old technology, used in several fields, but requires licensing to use it in medical devices. And this is a world patent.

I'm guessing the patent would be a use patent. The patent is on a specific use of the math (although it doesn't sound all that specific from the claims that I've seen).

Even then, this assumes you'll have enough deductions to not take the standard deduction. I did this analysis once. I took the cost of a rental I was considering, figured out how much I claimed on long-form taxes. Then I re-calculated using the standard deduction (loss of housing interest deduction meant standard deduction was better for me). Then used the tax difference spread out over 12 months to calculate the "true" cost of my mortgage. It turns out the mortgage was quite a bit cheaper.

Even still, though, I am taking on a risk of not being able to sell the house if I ever change jobs. It's appreciating rapidly right now, but everyone knows this can change in months.

That's been less effective lately, so I've also added an HTML5 autoplay blocker. It's fairly effective. Not sure how much it prevents from loading to save on data, but at least it prevents being halfway down the page reading and suddenly having noise come from the speakers.