why exactly does NBER charge for any of its taxpayer funded papers?
NBER is not a governmental organization.
Readit Newssubnaught commented on Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship nber.org/papers/w24489... · Posted by u/dalek2point3
subnaught commented on Deodorants, perfumes, soaps pollute air at levels as high as cars nytimes.com/2018/02/16/cl... · Posted by u/joshwa
> most of us don't need daily showers
You must live in a cool climate. Your claim doesn't hold true for lots of places in the world.
You must live in the late 20th or early 21st century. Your claim doesn't hold true for most of human history.
subnaught commented on Budweiser's ex-marketing chief: Weed is the new craft beer syracuse.com/business-new... · Posted by u/fishcolorbrick
Just as beer went through it's 'extremes' phase, weed is going through this right now too. Beer was super hoppy, then super stouty, then had loads of coffee, then loads of NO2, then sours, then glassware.
Finally, beer settled on the 'all-day-IPA': a beer that tastes good, and you can bring to your niece's birthday party but not get too tanked to be able to drive her to the hospital after the bounce-house gets out of hand.
Weed needs that for a recreational substance that 'relaxes' but still allows for emergencies to occur. Think a bag of something (bitter orange chips?) that kids won't eat outright, that comes in low/variable dosages just enough to chill with, that will allow you to drive your kids to the hospital should the need arise. It, frankly, needs to be an 'adult' thing, not juvenile and bacchanalian as it is perceived to be today.
Just a nit: beer never had loads of NO2. So-called "nitro" pours are pushed with nitrogen gas (N2), not NO2. This is a good thing, since NO2 is rather toxic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_dioxide
subnaught commented on Nestlé Takes Majority Stake in Blue Bottle nytimes.com/2017/09/14/bu... · Posted by u/joshcarr
> The rapidly expanding niche accounts for 15 to 20 percent of coffee consumed in the United States, according to the Specialty Coffee Association.
One in every five or six cups of coffee is Blue Bottle or "third-wave specialty" coffee? This simply can't be true considering the scale of Starbucks, McDonald's, and Dunkin' Donuts, let alone brewing at home and coffee consumed at diners and non-specialty restaurants.
I'm surprised the Times would cite the SCAA so uncritically.
I think it's pretty clear that the article intends "rapidly expanding niche" to refer to all of "third-wave specialty coffee," not just Blue Bottle.
This appears to be a based on a paper from last year. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/351/6268/74
While good and interesting work, there's a lot left to do. They're using cysteine as a reductant, so not all of the energy is coming from light. Furthermore while the system uses 90% of the cysteine and 80% of blue light, it is only 2% efficient with broad spectrum (sun-like) lighting. Even that well only under dim lighting.
Edit: Here's a group that's developed a system that's 5 times as efficient and only uses CO2 and water as feedstock rather than cysteine and cadmium. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6290/1210
That's an apples-and-oranges comparison. The system you cite differs from the one under discussion in several ways; the most important of which are:
1. The cited system does not include a light-harvesting component. It merely postulates that the required energy could be generated from photovoltaics. This would introduce additional cost and complexity along with an efficiency hit.
2. The cited system comprises a bacterium in conjuction with an electrode-supported catalyst, whereas the system under discussion is solely an engineered bacterium.
Finally, it is not correct to refer to cadmium and cysteine as feedstocks. They are components of the catalyst, and they are not consumed during catalysis. The only feedstocks for both systems are CO2 and water.
>"The hybrid organism, M. thermoacetica-CdS, produces acetic acid from CO2, water and light."
I love bacterial and algal based approaches to fuel generation. Re-purposing nature's own highly advanced (relative to our own state of the art) chemical processing machinery seems an easier path forward than building our own from scratch.
That said, relying on a fuel source that requires CO2 as input seems just as potentially destabilizing to the global carbon cycle as relying on a fuel source that produces CO2 as byproduct.
>That said, relying on a fuel source that requires CO2 as
>input seems just as potentially destabilizing to the global
>carbon cycle as relying on a fuel source that produces CO2
>as byproduct.
Not really. Using CO2 to generate a fuel which then liberates CO2 when it is consumed ends up being CO2-neutral, which is exactly the way to go.
If you're as inept at Chemistry as I am, I highly suggest the video in the article. I'm inept at Chemistry but this sounds fascinating. Here's my TLDR summary of this article for others like me. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding it.
TLDR: A bacteria that can't photosynthesis sunlight is covered with semiconductors that allow it to use the sunlight. The bacteria efficiently produces an acid that can be turned into fuels, medicine, polymers & more. The bacteria can regenerate & replicate as well so there is no waste.
What I don't understand is the regenerating & replicating part. I'm assuming they take this bacteria & place the semiconductors on it. When it replicates, does the new bacteria created have these semiconductors on it as well? If so, how?
You've got a lot of it right, but you're missing the key advance described here, which--if true--is pretty wild.
Taking a step back, in 2016, this group did cover a bacterium with tiny semiconductor nanoparticles (specifically CdS) just as you say. That work is described here: http://www.pnas.org/content/113/42/11750.full In short, the semiconductors act as mini-solar cells, converting light into electrical current. The bacteria then use that electricity to convert CO2 into acetic acid. That already is pretty cool.
However, what they claim now is that they don't even need to make the semiconductor nanoparticles. They can simply grow the bacteria in an environment containing cadmium and sulfur sources and the bacterium will synthesize it's own cadmium sulfide coat, and use it for photosensitization.
This is really pretty wild. Bacteria will often incorporate various elements from their host medium, but the generally use them to make biomolecules, not semiconductors. Right now, this is just being presented at a conference, but it will be very interesting to see the details when the full paper comes out.
subnaught commented on Facebook – You are the Product lrb.co.uk/v39/n16/john-la... · Posted by u/rditooait
I'm here to fix some ignorance, since the source of the "you are the product" idea is not these books.
Metafilter user blue_beetle first put this idea online when he said "If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold" in response to the Digg revolt of 2010. The idea apparently existed for a few decades prior regarding TV advertising. I prefer to think blue_beetle was the one who brought it into the zeitgeist.
http://www.metafilter.com/95152/Userdriven-discontent
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/
Edit: Alex3917 posted a similar idea on HN on 6 May 2010, beating blue_beetle by a couple months. Gotta give credit where it's due: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15030959
That may be the origin of this particular phrasing, but the idea is much older:
In 1973, the artist Richard Serra made a film called Television Delivers People which declares "You are the product of TV" [0]
Key to Noam Chomsky's _Manufacturing Consent_ (1988) is the idea that advertising-supported media caters to the desires of the advertiser, not the media consumer [1]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_Delivers_People [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent