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  1. X

    Why do ice at the poles not float away?

    Most ice in the arctic ocean is drift ice. It is floating and moves according to the winds and currents. Sea ice is another word for drift ice. Ice shelves are also technically floating although they are attached to the land so they don't move. Ice shelves are called "fast ice", because it...
  2. X

    Toxic Algae Bloom in Lake Erie: What should be done?

    Decomposing Barley Straw... http://www.apms.org/japm/vol31/v31p203.pdf
  3. X

    How large of a sample do I need?

    Thanks again SW. A focus team meeting was held today regarding the testing plan. Practicality is a major factor, so our team recommendation was to test 28 machines. These are the easiest & cheapest population to test, which also contains the 20 most likely to fail. At least it is a start...
  4. X

    How large of a sample do I need?

    Thanks SW; I do have a MODEL for predicting performance of each machine. Not sure how good it is, but suspect that it is conservative. That is to say, the MODEL seems to be over stating the deterioration of each machine. So, perhaps instead of picking machines at random to test, I could pick...
  5. X

    How large of a sample do I need?

    Need assurance that a population of 185 devices are OPERABLE. A MODEL has been developed for prediction of each devices condition. Periodically, it is necessary to TEST the devices in case the MODEL is wrong. However, it is expensive to TEST these devices. Therefore, it would make sense to...
  6. X

    Physics High-Paying jobs accepting physics BAs?

    Investment Banking
  7. X

    Medical Radiation and human health

    The weighting factors for x-rays, gamma rays, electrons, positrons and muons is 1. Neutrons range from 2 to 20 depending on their energy. Alpha particles are 20! Consequently, alpha radiation is far more dangerous to human health. X-rays, gamma rays and electrons generally form diffused ions...
  8. X

    Temperature change and Milankovitch cycles

    Any links supporting NASA's alleged position?
  9. X

    Origin and Development of Earth's Atmosphere

    My impression is the timeline outlined in Wikipedia is about all we know from a scientific point of view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Earth Notice that there was a time that Earth had no atmosphere; immediately after the big impact.
  10. X

    Medical What does sunlight do that incandescent light can't do?

    Go shopping for compact fluorescents; they come in different temperatures.
  11. X

    Weather on a planet with no continents

    Kevin Costner already did that story with Waterworld.
  12. X

    Temperature change and Milankovitch cycles

    Cooling; the Milankovitch theory as tuned by Imbrie predicts that the long-term cooling trend which began some 6000 years ago would otherwise continue for 23,000 years. http://math.virginia.edu/~ji2k/Home/Papers/Imbrie-Imbrie.pdf [Broken]
  13. X

    Medical Gray to mrem

    my bad; it's the Novac7 that uses electrons. Anyhow, the average survival rate for breast cancer patients with a similar diagnosis as my wife are excellent (Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Stage 1, Grade 2 ER/PR positive, clear margins without lymph node involvement). Radiation is considered...
  14. X

    Medical Gray to mrem

    Thanks tiny-tim; I was missing the tissue weighing factor... It's a treatment for Breast Cancer, so that would include both skin and breast tissue. Weighing factors according to Wikipedia: skin 0.01 breast 0.05 However, Wikipedia also claims 1 Gy = 115Rad So, skin dose would be 4.4 Rem...
  15. X

    Medical Gray to mrem

    Does anybody know how to convert Gray's to mrem? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TomoTherapy My wife is thinking of undergoing a treatment using the above machine. The "Plan" is a total of 38.5 Gy in 10 sessions over 5 days. A Gy is about 115 Rad. Since this machine uses electrons, the...
  16. X

    Precipitable Water Vapor calculation

    It's a complex problem and I'm not about to solve it. Conceptually it's fairly straight forward to calculate the amount of water vapor in a given volume of air. However, in the atmosphere temperature generally decreases with rising altitude and the saturation point of water is reached. This...
  17. X

    The Groundhog Day Blizzard of 2011?

    Good; then it will be cloudy and winter will be almost over.
  18. X

    What triggers el nino events?

    El Nino's don't happen every year, because they occur near the equator where seasonal variations of the sun are minimal. It's is an oscillation of hot and cold waters. The time to charge and discharge are influenced by weather systems which are chaotic. Typical frequency if 5 years, but can...
  19. X

    Scientists warn California could be struck by winter ‘superstorm’

    ARkStorm stands for Atmospheric River 1000 Storm (k=1000). It's meant to represent a storm that happens on average about every 1000 years. As the other link stated, significant storms have occurred in the past: 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, 1605 and 1862. Figure 11.12 of the following link...
  20. X

    Energy in -> Energy Out

    Most of the winds energy is dissipated as frictional heat, not physical work.
  21. X

    Connection between Freezing Europe and the BP spill

    When ice forms out of sea water, salt is mostly excluded from the ice. The left over brine, is very dense and sinks downward. The North Atlantic Drift is a thermohaline driven current. That is to say, as warmers waters cool and eventually freeze to form sea ice, they become denser and sink...
  22. X

    Connection between Freezing Europe and the BP spill

    Freezing weather in Europe? For starters the Arctic Oscillation is offscale low and has been for a while: Notice that NOAA needs to redraw the scale on this index; it's that low. Anyhow, the extreme AO may be caused by a lack of sea ice, which also happens to currently be at...
  23. X

    Recent Journal/Paper of Antarctic/Artic Sea Ice Monitoring

    Here is a link to NOAA's October 2010 report for Arctic Sea Ice: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/reportcard/seaice.html [Broken]
  24. X

    Recent Journal/Paper of Antarctic/Artic Sea Ice Monitoring

    The University of Washington Polar Science Center has a number of publications: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/publications/publications.php [Broken] They also provide a nice graph of the Arctic Sea Ice Volume anomaly: Arctic Sea Ice reaches a seasonal minimum in September. Monthly...
  25. X

    Temperature of the Earth

    Why do you want to know, since you don't want to do it yourself?
  26. X

    Medical Calories per hour & cardio

    Here: << Please remember to link to the source of the quoted text, to satisfy Fair Use Copyright requirements >> << link added by Mentor >> http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-242-304-311-8402-0,00.html
  27. X

    Medical Fructose Increases Cancer Cell Proliferation

    No; this maybe what the other poster was trying to get at about bad science. For a variety of reasons, we know that fructose is not the healthiest sugar. Its link to obesity is the primary problem, but there may be others as well such as cancer. While it is common in many natural foods such...
  28. X

    Medical Fructose Increases Cancer Cell Proliferation

    One more reason to avoid/minimize consumption of soft drinks and the like: http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/70/15/6368.abstract Notice that the above study examined only pancreatic cancer cells. However, the mechanism could easily apply to numerous other types of cancers...
  29. X

    Medical Carrots & Cancer

    Carrots are an excellent vegetable due to a number of health benefits. http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=21
  30. X

    Holocene temperature cycles

    There are several Professionals moderating various topics at the RealClimate website: http://www.realclimate.org/ Probably more likely to get a response there than from emailing universities. Concerning comparisons of our current interglacial and past interglacials; these are likely due to...
  31. X

    Medical Suffering from Kidney Stones: My Story

    Have you tried taking CoQ10? It won't work on current stones, but should help prevent future ones.
  32. X

    Medical Only 5-6.5 hours of sleep is ideal?

    The key point here being that there is a difference between self-reported sleep duration and that which is objectively measured. Sleep measured by a wrist actigraph typically less than what is self-reported. "Time-in-bed, sleep efficiency and the timing of melatonin metabolite excretion were...
  33. X

    Plate Tectonics and Life

    The notion that Granite is formed thru some type of dehydration process is wrong. Basalt is denser than Granite due to predominance of heavier oxides such as CaO, FeO & MgO at the expense of lighter SiO2.
  34. X

    For Workers in Nuclear Plants

    Sorry, but this a statement from somebody with limited working knowledge of radiation sources at a BWR. Fuel integrity at BWR's has historically been sufficiently high that there are no detectable fission product particulates in the main turbine. The majority of BWRs' have completely intact...
  35. X

    MTBE production starting with a vacuum residue

    Hate to tell you just how old that exercise is. Your teachers really should get something more up to date.
  36. X

    New Nuclear Plants

    Reactor Recirculation Pumps impart energy into the reactor coolant that eventually turns into heat.
  37. X

    Paleocene Eocene warming

    At it's warmest during those periods, Antarctica was not tropical like. Instead, the polar regions were at most a temperate rainforest. Deep ocean currents are known to have been much warmer than they are now. The tropics were larger and the temperature gradient between the equator and poles...
  38. X

    GOCE Geoid

    The elevations over the oceans are reflective of winds and currents.
  39. X

    How much nuclear fuel is in a nuclear sub?

    about a 1000 lbs
  40. X

    Medical Broken blood vessel in finger joint

    Could be a vitamin K deficiency or liver damage. A good medical doctor would test for Prothrombin.
  41. X

    Influence of the sun on the temperature of the ocean

    Obviously the sun heats the ocean, but it's so large that solar cycle variations in the suns output are not noticeable in the bulk temperature of the ocean. Keep in mind that the temperature of an object is a function of both input vs output. So, if the heat loss of the ocean were...
  42. X

    Massive cold region in the North Atlantic Ocean

    That map is misleading, since the zero is a color as opposed to being a neutral gray or white. Compare it to the NCDC map: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/sst/weekly-sst.php [Broken] You'll see that while their is a cold region in the Atlantic, it's dwarfed by several larger...
  43. X

    Nuclear Engineering jobs for Mechanical Engineers?

    The school I went to didn't offer an undergrad nuclear engineering degree either, so I took a couple of grad courses instead... if you've got the grades and talk to the Professors, they may let you in.
  44. X

    Fossil Of A Fish I Think ?

    The fish of the fossil lived between 30 to 100 million years before fish had evolved legs and started walking on land. So, there were plenty of land creatures by the time. Lots of coal beds were being laid down at the time because there were lots of plant life on land especially in marshy...
  45. X

    Fossil Of A Fish I Think ?

    opps, the first map I looked at had 2 colors (navy blue and black) for different geologies. One of those colors was near Swansea and my computer didn't display the difference very well. On a second map, it appears clearer that Swansea has a coal measure geology. That would be the upper...
  46. X

    Fossil Of A Fish I Think ?

    I looked up Swansea, and it appears to be an area of Torridonian sandstone. If so, then that would make it 542 million years old or more.
  47. X

    Earth's Magnetic Field

    Not true. This risk is equivalent to that which people living within the arctic circle currently face. Many people will probably not even notice a problem.
  48. X

    Medical Someone explain why my heartbeat is SO. SLOW.

    Sometimes low rates of heartbeats can be caused by dehydration (thickening of the blood). High hemocrit levels are not safe. Another possibility is a low metabolism. Of course it's also possible that the heart is just more efficient than most (one does not need to be athletic to have a good...
  49. X

    Earth's Magnetic Field

    Since modern humans have never observed a geomagnetic reversal, we can't be too sure about what the precise impact may be on electronics and our electrical grid. However, we do know that our ancestors (homo erectus) survived numerous reversals. There are also no wide spread die offs of life...
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