“It is physically impossible—as in, against the laws of physics—for triso to melt in a reactor,” says Sell. “And when you start with a reactor that can’t melt, your safety case completely changes.”
Author: David
Why the US military usually punishes misconduct but police often close ranks
2019-12-06
When police are revealed to have killed an unarmed suspect or used excessive force during arrest, police generally defend those actions. Cops who report wrongdoing are routinely ostracized as “rats” and denied promotions, according to a 1998 Human Rights Watch study. Researchers identify this so-called “blue wall of silence” – the refusal to “snitch” on other officers – as a defining feature of U.S. cop culture today.
…
U.S. military culture stresses organizational, rather than personal, loyalty.
…
And the pride Marines famously feel, for instance, comes from being part of this well-respected corps. Personal relationships with other Marines are of secondary importance.
Is Dark Mode Such A Good Idea?
2020-02-02 Raluca Budiu
Results showed that light mode won across all dimensions: irrespective of age [of the individual], the positive contrast polarity [light mode] was better for both visual-acuity tasks and for proofreading tasks.
Fractal flaming hydrogen wiggles through tiny gaps
2020-06-08 Chris Lee
Hydrogen, in low concentrations in a confined space, burns with a branching network instead of with a wide flame.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/fractal-flaming-hydrogen-wiggles-through-tiny-gaps/
Coffee Run – Blender Open Movie
2020-05-29 Blender Animation Studio
Fueled by caffeine, a young woman runs through the bittersweet memories of her past relationship. Get the production files, assets, tutorials and exclusive making-of videos by joining Blender Cloud at https://cloud.blender.org/p/coffee-run
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVGeM40dABA
Discovered from https://www.blendernation.com/2020/05/29/coffee-run-blender-open-movie/
Sleeping Brain Waves Draw a Healthy Bath for Neurons
2019-12-16 Elena Renken
Scientists are beginning to understand one of the ways in which sleep may benefit the health of the brain: by organizing the flow of fluids that can wash away harmful build-ups of proteins and wastes around neurons.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/sleeping-brain-waves-draw-a-healthy-bath-for-neurons-20191216/
Dinosaur Footprints on a Cave Ceiling
“The trails that we see are actually casts, corresponding to the base of the sauropods’ feet,” Moreau explains. “It’s as if you were looking at the tracks left by the dinosaurs from below. What happened is that infiltrated water eroded the rock beneath the sedimentary layer which contains the footprints.”
https://scienceblog.com/516341/dinosaur-footprints-on-a-cave-ceiling/
A foolproof way to shrink deep learning models
2020-04-30 Kim Martineau
They showed that a deep neural network could perform with only one-tenth the number of connections if the right subnetwork was found early in training.
Train the model, prune its weakest connections, retrain the model at its fast, early training rate, and repeat, until the model is as tiny as you want.
https://news.mit.edu/2020/foolproof-way-shrink-deep-learning-models-0430
Spiking Neural Networks
2020-02-17 Martijn van Wezel
The SNNs bio-inspired neural networks are different from conventional neural networks due that the conventional neural networks communicate with numbers. Instead, SNNs communicate through spikes. … Having multiple spikes in a short period can stimulate the neuron to fire. However, if the time periods are to big between spikes, the neuron lose interest, and goes to sleep again.
… one major benefit of a Spiking Neural Networks is the power consumption. A ‘normal’ neural network uses big GPUs or CPUs that draw hundreds of Watts of power. SNN only uses for the same network size just a few nano Watts.
The science of soap – here’s how it kills the coronavirus
2020-03-20
Alcohol-based disinfectants are also effective, but soap is a highly efficient way of killing the virus when it’s on your skin
… Health authorities have been giving us two messages: once you have the virus there are no drugs that can kill it or help you get rid of it. But also, wash your hands to stop the virus spreading. This seems odd. You can’t, even for a million dollars, get a drug for the coronavirus – but your grandmother’s bar of soap kills the virus.
So why does soap work so well on the Sars-CoV-2, the coronavirus and indeed most viruses? The short story: because the virus is a self-assembled nanoparticle in which the weakest link is the lipid (fatty) bilayer. Soap dissolves the fat membrane and the virus falls apart like a house of cards and dies – or rather, we should say it becomes inactive as viruses aren’t really alive.