An archive of the South African PCFormat forums.
https://tuhinga.ron2k.za.net/pcformat/
LiveScience... what a farce!
very much so...StarPhoenix wrote:the above site is dubious?
Follow the link for further reading...Dispatches from the birth of the Universe: sometimes science gets lucky
Scientific breakthroughs can come in unexpected ways.
For the generations that grew up with TV before the age of cable, the box in our living room was a time machine, capable of taking us back to just a few hundred thousand years after the birth of the Universe. We just didn't realize it. Nor did the scientists that discovered this, at least at first. But luck seemed to play a large role in one of the biggest discoveries of our lifetime.
That may not have been the intended message of the discussion called "Dispatches from the Birth of the Universe," hosted by the World Science Festival on Friday. The panel provided a good picture of our current state of knowledge on the birth of the Universe, and a glimpse at what we'll likely find out next. But the history of the field turned out to be ripe with examples of things that were both hiding in plain sight (but required a bit of luck to spot), and others we've been lucky to see at all (well beyond the luck of being the right age to have seen the TV static).
Lawrence Krauss, who moderated the panel, introduced it by turning on an old TV set on stage. When turned to an empty channel, the TV displayed a familiar wall of static. About one percent of that noise, Krauss said, comes from the Universe itself, a remnant of an event that took place roughly 13.7 billion years ago. That's when, 375,000 years after the Big Bang, the Universe finally cooled enough that protons could hang on to electrons, forming hydrogen atoms and emitting photons in the process. These photons, stretched out and cooled by the expansion of the Universe, have been with us ever since. And, with just a regular old TV set, you can capture some of them.
...
Think its high time we nuke the moon to teach it a lesson! Stop interfering with our Science!Full moon affects Large Hadron Collider operations
Tidal forces cause differences in the position of LHC hardware.
Biologists often have to do some very technically difficult experiments that, for one or another mysterious reason, will sometimes fail and fail badly. It's not unheard of for the victims of these failures to jokingly blame the phase of the Moon. But it was a bit of a surprise to find out that the physicists running the LHC actually do see odd behavior caused by the phase of the Moon.
As the LHC's Pauline Gagnon describes at the Quantum Diaries, the changing force exerted by the Moon as it orbits—the same thing that drives the tides—creates subtle differences in the position of the hardware within the LHC. The differences are tiny for any individual piece of hardware, but they add up when it comes to something as big as the LHC, which has a circumference of nearly 27km. Plus, the LHC hardware is very, very sensitive to being out of alignment, given that it has to accurately direct bunches of protons that are moving at nearly the speed of light.
The net result is that the LHC's operators sporadically have to tweak the beam's alignments, leading to a temporary drop in the rate of collisions, seen as periodic dips in the plot above. According to Gagnon, the operators also have to make tweaks in response to everything from the level of water in nearby Lake Geneva to the passage of the French high-speed rail.
This story also gives us a chance to highlight the Quantum Diaries, which provides a great insider's view of high-energy particle physics work. The site is sponsored by an international consortium of physics labs, and features articles and blog posts written by the people doing research at the LHC and other facilities. It's a great example of public outreach by the scientific community.
. Bit disappointed though, would have been fun to fly a flaming satellite into it to see a massive explosion... 
Read on for a intriguing read...Your Brain Scan Looks Different on Mac and PC
Science and medicine are supposedly based on rigor—a rigor where theories are only correct if you can replicate results. It turns out, though, that the software used to analyze medical images of your brain gives wildly different answers if it's run on Mac or PC.
The finding is completely crazy, and casts doubt over the way many scans—such as CT and MRI—are analyzed in routine practice.
...
You couldnt cause see the normal reaction for the combustion of methane is :Anakha56 wrote:Stupid question time...
Saturn's moon Titan is largely comprised of methane, so what would happen if something fiery would descend into it? Would the moon go boom or would it just create a "everlasting" inferno until the methane was no longer there? Just a random thought...
Anakha56 wrote:Thanks guys
In other news however...
http://gizmodo.com/5919149/your-brain-s ... mac-and-pc
Read on for a intriguing read...Your Brain Scan Looks Different on Mac and PC
Science and medicine are supposedly based on rigor—a rigor where theories are only correct if you can replicate results. It turns out, though, that the software used to analyze medical images of your brain gives wildly different answers if it's run on Mac or PC.
The finding is completely crazy, and casts doubt over the way many scans—such as CT and MRI—are analyzed in routine practice.
...
You see I knew I was sane because I saw my quack using a Windows PC and I have always trusted the results of a Windows PC over a Mac...
uhm. The machines might be made by those people, and those people do supply the in hospital viewers. But the Radiologists do sometimes view the films from home computers. (not so much in public, but it happens a fair amount in private, the Senior Radiologist gets a call, asked for an opinion, so they boot up their computer, have a look and send in an email report).RiaX wrote:Anakha56 wrote:Thanks guys
In other news however...
http://gizmodo.com/5919149/your-brain-s ... mac-and-pc
Read on for a intriguing read...Your Brain Scan Looks Different on Mac and PC
Science and medicine are supposedly based on rigor—a rigor where theories are only correct if you can replicate results. It turns out, though, that the software used to analyze medical images of your brain gives wildly different answers if it's run on Mac or PC.
The finding is completely crazy, and casts doubt over the way many scans—such as CT and MRI—are analyzed in routine practice.
...
You see I knew I was sane because I saw my quack using a Windows PC and I have always trusted the results of a Windows PC over a Mac...
Utter nonsense for us at least, our MRI PET and CT machines are made by Siemens medical, General-medical and there is a third manufacture i forgot its name. They run their own software, they have specialised screens and the radiologist reports on the direct feed in the reporting room which the patient never sees. The disc they burn that viewed on a normal PC yeah ok maybe but with the radiologist report and the xray even distorted will not be a problem in diagnosis. The report was done on the live feed from the machines themselves. Its also printed out on paper and the orginal scan is store in the hospital's archive for decades
That disc is sent to the treating doctor so he can confirm the diagnostic doctor's results, however usually the radiologist is never wrong they work in pairs, and they so specialised that a surgeon/gp/ortho wont question them much. Then its annoying when the noob patients come and go "hello im Dr Google"
i'm guessing you didn't read the article. they are talking about one of the special programs, not just some run of the mill jpg viewer.RiaX wrote:No they use a special programme at home to scale it perfectly, also certain scans cant be done over the internet and the radiologist still has to go to the hospital to do certain medical procedures
Video at the link.NASA captures red sprite, puts it in a jar
Lightning doesn't always shoot downwards. Just occasionally, a thunderstorm will be accompanied by a red sprite: a huge, momentary electrical explosion that occurs around 50 miles high and fires thin tendrils many miles further up into the atmosphere. Sprites have been caught on camera before, but a fresh photo taken by arty astronauts on the ISS helps to show off their true scale. Captured accidentally during a timelapse recording, it reveals the bright lights of Myanmar and Malaysia down below, with a white flash of lightning inside a storm cloud and, directly above that, the six mile-wide crimson streak of the rare beast itself. Such a thing would never consent to being bottled up and examined, but somehow observers at the University of Alaska did manage to film one close-up at 1000 frames per second back in 1999 -- for now, their handiwork embedded after the break is as intimate as we can get.
audiophiles are, hands down, the best "mark"et ever. they have produced levels of woo i'd never have imagined... honestly..De-Magnetizer wrote: The Acoustic Revive RD-3 is a wonderful product. It completely demagnetizes optical discs such as CD, CD-R, DVD, MD, and it is easy to use.
If you use the RD-3 and demagnetize your disc, you will find that sound and picture quality are much improved. You will be able to hear aspects of the recording that were inaudible before the disc had been magnetized.
<..>
CD players contain magnetic substances, when a disc is played, the rotation of the mechanism, magnet and motor generates a flux which quickly causes discs to become magnetized.
The same problem occurs in CD-R, DVD and MD. In particular MD uses an iron ingredient for the Magnet Catch, so the influence of magnetism is increased.In the worst cases, it is impossible to read signals.
