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Sci-Tech watch

Wind turbine promotions

Here: While, wind is a part of energy diversity, ask, what is not being said here? (As in, fluctuations and non load following.) END PS, part of this is to equip us to detect balanced or balancing information from what leaves out significant issues or buries the lead. That is significant as it is then easy to trot out the buried reference to X, when someone asks questions. Meanwhile, the rest of the story — X — is subtly marginalised relative to the pushed point P.

Pebble Bed Modular Reactor developments (and other fission technologies)

Energy is a central issue for the future, and we need a positive focus on where we can go. Accordingly, let us consider the Chinese pebble bed initiative: As a backgrounder, Wiki: The pebble-bed reactor (PBR) is a design for a graphite-moderated, gas-cooled nuclear reactor. It is a type of very-high-temperature reactor (VHTR), one of the six classes of nuclear reactors in the Generation IV initiative. The basic design of pebble-bed reactors features spherical fuel elements called pebbles. These tennis ball-sized pebbles (approx. 6.7 cm or 2.6 in in diameter) are made of pyrolytic graphite (which acts as the moderator), and they contain thousands of micro-fuel particles called TRISO particles. These TRISO fuel particles consist of a fissile material (such as 235U) Read More ›

Sabine Hossenfelder on a fusion energy milestone (plus . . .)

2.5 MJ in, 3.15 MJ out . . . not counting the inefficiency of lasers: Counting 400 MJ to get the 2.5 MJ from the lasers, that is not yet “there” but it is a step. Here is another recent attempt, based on firing two plasma “donuts” at each other: The Helion people explain the challenge involved, here. Let us watch as we inch towards a fusion world. END

Let us listen to Dr Robert Malone, dissenting expert, on the COVID-19 crisis

HT LCD, here is a sobering, 3-hour video on the Covid-10 crisis, by a dissenting expert: U/D: Based on a transcript and a debate on what is in Uttar Pradesh home isolation Covid-19 kits, I post two pictures: and: Here is a kit label passed to Malone from someone in Uttar Pradesh, it seems there were/are likely several suppliers and different levels of kits — notice the electronics in one kit above: I note a Dr John Campbell video that should be pondered: Let me put in the transcript clip from comment 3: Joe Rogan 37:52 So were they [= China, v. early in the pandemic, in its protocols] using Ivermectin as well? No. But other countries have, like Japan Read More ›

The reality of “imaginary” numbers — discovery, not invention

Over at YouTube, there is a bit of history of Math, on study of cubic functions — and yes there is as usual, some less than exemplary detail — that led to the “invention” of imaginary numbers: Now of course, I contend that this was discovery not invention (I often don’t buy Veritas Sum’s narrative, but here is a way to see the story). In News’ thread on i, I commented at 33: your definition [– Eugene at 8: “there exists such a pair of real numbers (0, 1) that (0, 1) * (0, 1) = -1, where “*” is the specific multiplication rule defined for these types of pairs” –] is tantamount to describing the role of sqrt – Read More ›

Semi-circles and right angle dilemmas . . .

Daily Mail reports on a class assignment for seven year olds that happened to be set for the daughter of a Mathematics Lecturer at Oxford. Maths lecturer is left baffled by his seven-year-old daughter’s geometry homework and turns to Twitter for help – so can YOU work out if it’s true or false? Dr Kit Yates shares his seven-year-old daughter’s maths homework to Twitter The question asked students whether a semi-circle had ‘two right angles’ or not The maths lecturer, from Oxford, admitted that he was stumped by the problem  People were left baffled by the question and came up with conflicting answers  By Kate Dennett For Mailonline Published: 17:40 GMT, 25 February 2021 | Updated: 17:40 GMT, 25 February Read More ›

Room temperature superconductivity achieved (but at huge, crushing pressures)

From Nature: Published: 14 October 2020Room-temperature superconductivity in a carbonaceous sulfurhydrideElliot Snider, Nathan Dasenbrock-Gammon, Raymond McBride, Mathew Debessai, HiranyaVindana, Kevin Vencatasamy, Keith V. Lawler, Ashkan Salamat & Ranga P. Dias  Nature  586, 373–377(2020) One of the long-standing challenges in experimental physics is the observation of room-temperature superconductivity1’2. Recently, high-temperature conventional superconductivity in hydrogen-rich materials has been reported in several systems under high pressure . . . Here we report superconductivity in a photochemically transformed carbonaceous sulfur hydride system, starting from elemental precursors, with a maximum superconducting transition temperature of 287.7 +/- 1.2 kelvin (about 15 degrees Celsius) achieved at 267 +/- 10 gigapascals. The superconducting state is observed over a broad pressure range in the diamond anvil cell, from 140 to Read More ›

Dr Raoult Roars — new articles on findings and issues about HCQ + Cocktails for Covid-19

IHU- Méditerranée Infection, Marseille, is a significant French research institute that has continued its work on CV 19. For the record, here are excerpts from some recent work, headlined from threads where such would be buried: EXH 1: >>COVID-IHU #15 Version 1 du 27 Mai 2020 Early diagnosis and management of COVID-19 patients: a real-life cohort study of 3,737 patients, Marseille, France Abstract Background: In our institute in Marseille, France, we proposed early and massive screening for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Hospitalization and early treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin (HCQ-AZ) was proposed for the positive cases. Methods: We retrospectively report the clinical management of 3,737 patients, including 3,054 (81.7%) treated with HCQ-AZ for at least three days and 683 (18.3%) Read More ›

Dragon Docks with the International Space Station

Vid: Ponder the exacting systems engineering, reliability testing, required qualifications and multiple i/o instrumentation and control involved. Observe the precise, corrective jets to keep the process under control. This, is how a good future is going to be built: near earth colonisation and Lunar colonisation are the first stages to Solar system colonisation. (Note, they are expected to remain on the ISS for 30 – 119 days.) Blue Danube is extra, but it speaks to the cultural patterns that lie behind that precise docking exercise and all the rich promise it reflects. END

Dr Zelenko on Israel National News, May 21, 2020 — forthcoming paper ~ two weeks?

Dr Zelenko expects to be in publication along with some German colleagues, in about two weeks. In the following video (pardon quality issues): . . . he asks, in effect, isn’t it standard to treat a disease as early as possible, so why the strange difference here? He makes a comparison to how a fire can flash over into a much more dangerous stage and notes how much easier it is to hit it while it is small. He expresses a measure of anger with medical and political establishments, /do allow for that. He identifies that by the time people are at a Doctor’s office they are likely to be about day 5 in the disease process, on the verge Read More ›