Future of steel production?

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/steel-without-greenhouse-gas-emissions-0508.html

Details of a new process have been revealed, for alloying electrochemical production of iron, either for making iron (and oxygen!) on the moon or making electrolytic iron (and oxygen) on earth. The original process was developed for release of oxygen from moon rocks, using iridium metal electrodes. The new process uses chromium-iron electrodes.

The process has the potential to further reduce the carbon dioxide produced during steelmaking, when combined with electricity production from ‘carbon-dioxide neutral’ source.

Danger of using spreadsheets

The dangers of using spreadsheets for calculations should never be underestimated, it’s so easy to make a copy paste error, or inadvertently corrupt your calculation. But it seems from reports that this may have been one of the more costly mistakes, and somehow not picked up by the peer review process, or public dissemination sufficient to reproduce the results. Economists from Harvard studied debt and GDP growth level and found that a 90% GDP ratio was a magic number which was bad for the economy, but recently an undergraduate repeated there calculations and found they were wrong (-0.1% GDP growth predicted should have been +2.2% growth). This results has been quoted by policy leaders to justify austerity measures around the world. The economists stand by their conclusions.

Correlation is not causation?

Link to youtube video by Liberal Viewer

First web page recreated

CERN is set to publish a recreation of the first web page (report BBC), a page which encompass all the ideals that Tim Berners Lee built into the heart of the internet, with his innovation of the hyperlink. — interconnectivity and sharing of information openly

First Website as seen in 2013

http://info.cern.ch/is the location of the first website, currently at the url you can read information about the first web site, including a link to a copy of the website from 1993 1993 website

Tim Burners Lee

The earliest available phase transformation group website is from 1997 and can be found here: http://web.archive.org/web/19970427151128/http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/phase-trans/. No news yet about if Harry Bhadeshia has plans to recreate the first PT-group website.

Way back machine – an archive of the internet

Boeing Dreamliner flies again

The Boeing dreamliner has made some return to service with operations beginning in Africa after the US Federal Aviation Administration issued an “air worthiness directive” allowing 787s to fly after being fitted with the modified battery.

Boeing says it put 200,000 “engineer hours” into fixing the problem, with staff working round the clock. They have not been able to find the source of the burning which took place which grounded the all 787s, instead they have had to identify all the possible ways the heating could take place and introduce measures to

Addis Ababa to Nairobi

‘Scientist’ jailed for faking results

BBC report about scientist jailed for faking results. Steven Eaton from Cambridgeshire was convicted in March 2013 under the 1999 Good Laboratory Practice Regulations. The court heard that while working at the Edinburgh branch of US based pharmaceutical firm Aptuit in 2009, Mr Eaton manipulated experimental results, so that a drug would proceed to human trails.

Mr Eaton was convicted by Sheriff Michael O’Grady QC, and received the maximum possible sentence of three months, the Sheriff said his powers were inadequate for this case, and a longer sentence would be justified. Mr Eaton’s defence lawyer, claimed his client did not benefit financially from the fraud, as he was only making £35,000 per year.

Mr Eaton was reported by his employers after they became suspicious and reported him to the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency.

Story with generic science pictures can be found also at these sites:

 

http://news.stv.tv/scotland/221777-steven-eaton-faked-research-data-for-experimental-anti-cancer-drug/

http://www.scotsman.com/news/scottish-news/top-stories/scientist-jailed-for-faking-research-data-1-2898750

Superbainite

Structure of superbainite. Inset is a same-scale image of a carbon nanotube. [1]

According to archaeologists, the Iron Age began in 1300 BC and lasted for around two millennia. Today, steels (alloys of iron and carbon) comprise 95% of global metal consumption and this trend shows no sign of declining.

Glancing at the media, however, one would be forgiven for assuming that steel is now a has-been. We are bombarded with stories of novel materials: carbon nanotubes, metallic glasses, graphene, carbon fibre, nickel superalloys. . . all of which are “stronger than steel”.

“Now we can construct space elevators!” claim the articles. “Let’s build a climbing frame to the moon! We’ll use this stuff to make everything!”

The observant among us, however, will note that most cars, trains and buildings still don’t feature superalloys, metallic glass or magic nanotubes. Neither are they invisible; nor do they fly; nor do they do any of the other things that journalists tend to ‘predict’.

Instead, steels somehow remain the best — and cheapest — materials for the job. Also, they are stronger than steel. This is because ‘steel’ is a vague construct used by sensationalists, with an unspecified strength guaranteed to be less than that of a novel material. Metallurgists rarely refer to ‘steel’, just as the Inuit have fifty words for snow, not one of which is ‘snow’.

Bitcoin crash?

Bitcoin (Bitcoin on wikipedia) has had a lot of exposure in the media recently due it’s apparent rise in value. Also with apparent troubles in the world economy it is of interest to talk about Bitcoin as a alternative to centrally managed currencies. The recent price rises seems to have triggered some speculation which pushed the price to rise exponentially, and eventually fall.

Charts from http://bitcoincharts.com/

News media has had a lot of stories talking up the price rise and the fall.

This rapid adjustment in price against the dollar has been described as a crash.

If we take a look on a logarithmic chart of the bitcoin price against dollars, we can see similar movements have occurred before. I think this would count as a crash for a centrally managed currency because it would call into question the managing authorities ability to provide price stability.