"The heater was warmed to approximately 700C. The heater block glowed a dull red color, observable with room lights turned off. The ballast tank was filled to 300 torr with oxygen, and fluorine was added until the total pressure was 901 torrā¦
And yes, what happens next is just what you think happens: you run a mixture of oxygen and fluorine through a 700-degree-heating block. "Oh, no you don't," is the common reaction of most chemists to that proposal, ". . .not unless I'm at least a mile away, two miles if I'm downwind." This, folks, is the bracingly direct route to preparing dioxygen difluoride, often referred to in the literature by its evocative formula of FOOF.
Well, "often" is sort of a relative term. Most of the references to this stuff are clearly from groups who've just been thinking about it, not making it. Rarely does an abstract that mentions density function theory ever lead to a paper featuring machine-shop diagrams, and so it is here. Once you strip away all the "calculated geometry of. . ." underbrush from the reference list, you're left with a much smaller core of experimental papers.
And a hard core it is! This stuff was first prepared in Germany in 1932 by Ruff and Menzel, who must have been likely lads indeed, because it's not like people didn't respect fluorine back then. No, elemental fluorine has commanded respect since well before anyone managed to isolate it, a process that took a good fifty years to work out in the 1800s. (The list of people who were blown up or poisoned while trying to do so is impressive). And that's at room temperature."
"It was about the beginning of 1942 when I was a prisoner of war of the Japanese, when I was ordered to go on a working party which eventually finished up in Sandakan in British North Borneo. 2,000 odd of us were on this work party and it wasn't long before we noticed the absence of information as to the international situation, what was happening in the outside world, and the whole camp had a real craving to get news by whatever means. Escape parties were being organised, but none of these was very successful. The next thing people turned to was a means of getting some radio news, and this is where the building of a radio set became an urgent requirement.
The main thing, of course, was that we didn't have any components and although we had some contacts outside which later on were helpful in the building of this receiver, it limited our requirement to a regenerative receiver as distinct from a superheterodyne receiver and the decision to do that was borne out by the results. The high frequency spectrum during that time of the war was fairly quiet in that part of the world and the BBC, we hoped, would be able to be received. This was aided by the fact that the Japanese in their wisdom called a friend of mine out one evening to repair their radio set and he took the opportunity, of course, to switch over to the short wave bands, with headphones while doing that, and picked up the BBC successfully. That day was memorable because it was the day that the BBC broadcast the death of the Duke of Kent in an aircraft crash. That was the only news we had of the outside world for something like six months."
"Institutions like Stanford have consistently demonstrated sclerosis in their decision-making over the course of the pandemic. Public pressure to appear consistent and steadfast in their determination to reduce any COVID spread, bizarre COVID competition between elite institutions comparing themselves to each other to make sure they are not out of step with the latest consensus, and private pressure from the most risk-averse internal constituencies repeatedly overwhelm even the most sincere institutional desires to be nimble, respond to new data with revised attitudes, and return to some semblance of normalcy. I believe that Stanford and the law school do sincerely want to return to normal, but I do not believe that administrators have a plan to overwhelm this consistent pattern of bureaucratic policy lock-in.
Stanfordās preemptive announcement is useful for planning purposes, and I greatly appreciate that the University did not hide the ball, but the policyās timing creates a predictable problem for the return the University claims will occur. There is a very good chance that in the two weeks of online instruction we will be experiencing either a national Omicron case spike or a regional spike contributed to in part by the travel that will bring students back to campus. I accept the Universityās ostensible rationale for this timing ā addressing logistical challenges related to travel, boosters, and potential travel-related quarantine for sick students, rather than committing to elimination of all COVID spread ā at face value. But I do not accept that this rationale would remain operative in the midst of a case spike. COVID bureaucratic logic will likely set in if a spike occurs, whether just before we return to in-person class or whether the spike has already subsided by the time of the planned return, and the policy will be revised to give administrators more time to reduce spread. I expect at least one extension of several more weeks of online instruction, and perhaps several more extensions. I wonāt be surprised if the entire quarter is online regardless of health outcomes, which I expect to be mostly mild given age profiles and universal vaccination of those in our community.
I also expect that Stanford will adopt flawed metrics to systematize its decision-making, as many local governments have done for the last two years. After a case spike, I expect an announcement that we need to wait for test positivity to reduce to some arbitrarily selected level before we can return to normal. I do not trust the University to properly consider whether such a threshold is achievable or accurately reflects the trajectory of any surge we may experience. I also do not trust the University to revise its thinking if the health risks posed by Omicron turn out to be low despite high infectivity."
š“ Mode choice, substitution patterns and environmental impacts of shared and personal micro-mobility
"Shared micro-mobility services are rapidly expanding yet little is known about travel behaviour. Understanding mode choice, in particular, is quintessential for incorporating micro-mobility into transport simulations in order to enable effective transport planning. We contribute by collecting a large dataset with matching GPS tracks, booking data and survey data for more than 500 travellers, and by estimating a first choice model between eight transport modes, including shared e-scooters, shared e-bikes, personal e-scooters and personal e-bikes. We find that trip distance, precipitation and access distance are fundamental to micro-mobility mode choice. Substitution patterns reveal that personal e-scooters and e-bikes emit less CO2 than the transport modes they replace, while shared e-scooters and e-bikes emit more CO2 than the transport modes they replace. Our results enable researchers and planners to test the effectiveness of policy interventions through transport simulations. Service providers can use our findings on access distances to optimize vehicle repositioning."
"You are a contestant on a game show, known for having perfectly logical contestants. There is another contestant, whom youāve never met, but whom you can count on to be perfectly logical, just as logical as you are.
The game is cooperative, so either you will both win or both lose, together. Imagine the stakes are very highāperhaps life and death. You and your partner are separated from one another, in different rooms. The game proceeds in turnsāround 1, round 2, round 3, as many as desired to implement your strategy.
On each round, each contestant may choose either to end the game and announce a color (any color) to the game host or to send a message (any kind of message) to their partner contestant, to be received before the next round. Messages are sent simultaneously, crossing in transit.
You win the game if on some round both players opt to end the game and announce a color to the host and furthermore they do so with exactly the same color. That is, you win if you both halt the game on the same round with the same color. lf only one player announces a color, or if both do but the colors donāt match, then the game is over, but you have lost.
Round 1 is about to begin. What do you do?"
"Despite Japanās international reputation for using futuristic technology, the country still uses a lot of paper. We spoke with YAMAMOTO PAPER and learned that paper became a central part of Japanese life because of its many uses and ties to culture. Old, traditional ways of using paper are still prevalent, from the gohei (a paper offering made to gods) in shrines, to the shÅ«gi-bukuro (money envelopes) given at celebrations, and New Yearās cards. In more modern uses, purchases are typically made with cash; important documents are faxed rather than emailed; and nearly everyone uses hanko, a personalized stamp used in lieu of a signature.
Japanās dependence on paper, combined with their high expectations for consumable products, means that companies design products with the smallest details in mind. One quality of their products that Japanese paper companies emphasize is the interaction between a writer, their paper, and their pen. In addition to characteristics like bleedthrough, showthrough, and thickness, they also consider how different pens pair with their paper. Various paper-pen combinations drastically change qualities like resistance and feedback, which is the sensation of the writing instrument moving across the paper.
When compared to American notebooks, Japanese notebooks have many more options for paper color, sheet style, and other features. Japanese paper companies want people to have an exact paper type for every use."
"But thereās something else different this time around, at least in the U.K.: the statistical relationship between Covid-19 cases and deaths appears to have broken down with Omicron.
Looking at daily death rates in the U.K. from May 15 ā essentially from the point at which the Delta wave began ā to Sept. 15, there is a highly statistically significant relationship between daily new cases and deaths. In short, case rates accurately predict death rates.
But beginning the analysis on Sept. 15, coinciding with flattening of the Delta curve and the onset of Omicron, shows no statistical relationship between Covid-19 case rates and deaths.
In earlier waves, rising death rates would follow an increase in cases; the impact of rising cases on death rates could be seen visually and validated statistically. Deaths would follow cases upward, and peak roughly two to three weeks after new cases began trending downward. With Omicron, however, we not only donāt see the rise in death rates that were associated with the first waves, but we actually see a continuing decline in death rates, despite a radical increase in cases.
Whether or not this breakdown of the relationship between Omicron cases and deaths will play out in other countries, like the U.S., is hard to say. Omicron is currently more prevalent in the U.K. than in the U.S., and the U.K. has far better screening rates, both of which could alter the outcome in the U.S.
Itās still, of course, early days. While it is possible that death rates due to Omicron may rise later, at the moment in the U.K., Covid-19 daily cases no longer meaningfully link to deaths. So, according to the math, Omicron cases rising no longer automatically means impending doom and gloom, nor does it require apocalyptic language like weāre hearing from the media and political leaders implying mass waves of death with rapidly increasing case rates."
"Over the last few years, hundreds of thousands of Swedes have spent an estimated total of more than ten million euros on a book which many of them believed contained a scientific account of human psychology, written by an expert in the area. The bookās success has led many companies and other organizations to order personality tests, from a growing number of suppliers eager to exploit the new market, and apply them on their employees. Surrounded by Idiots has had a major impact on how Swedish people talk to each other about psychology and discuss the behaviour of those around them. Indeed, Thomas Erikson has undoubtedly had the greatest influence on the publicās interest in psychology in a generation.
Unfortunately, the theory behind this book, and the various follow-ups, is no more than pseudoscientific nonsense. And Erikson appears to lack even basic knowledge of psychology or behavioural science. This is why we at VoF (Vetenskap och Folkbildning ā the Swedish Skeptics Society) named Thomas Erikson fraudster of the year in 2018.
Accusing an individual of being a fraud should never be done lightly. We need to be very sure of where we stand. Here I lay out the case as to how and why Thomas Erikson books have misled so many peopleā¦"
"There is some logic to the idea that the game could sustain a mix of players, some of whom are net recipients of capital and some of whom are net contributors who are in it for a good time. This is how other in-game economies have sustained themselves. Iām wholly unconvinced that Axie Infinity is headed in that direction, frankly, because it just doesnāt look fun enough that people will pony up upwards of $1,000 to play it for its own sake. Informal polls, unscientific as they are, seem to bear this out.
(As for power and respect, well. Iām old enough to remember the momentary schoolyard respect associated with earning a rare Pokemon in the original GameBoy game, but itās not a kind of respect that can be bought and sold.)
By blurring the line between āplayerā and āworkerā, the game has effectively built a Ponzi scheme with built-in deniability. Sure, some users will be net gainers and other users will be net losers, but who am I to say the net losers arenāt in it for the joy of the game? The same could be said about online poker or sports betting, to be sure, but we would rightfully recoil if those were positioned as a way to lift people out of poverty."
"A book where you can enter āsportā and end up with āa diversion of the fieldā ā this is in fact the opposite of what Iād known a dictionary to be. This is a book that transmutes plain words into language thatās finer and more vivid and sometimes more rare. No wonder McPhee wrote with it by his side. No wonder he looked up words he knew, versus words he didnāt, in a ratio of āat least ninety-nine to one.ā
Unfortunately, he never comes out and says exactly which dictionary heās getting all this juice out of. But I was desperate to find it. What was this secret book, this dictionary so rich and alive that one of my favorite writers was using it to make heroic improvements to his writing?
I did a little sleuthing. It wasnāt so hard with the examples McPhee gives, and Google. He says, for instance, that in three years of research for a book about Alaska heād forgotten to look up the word Arctic. He said that his dictionary gave him this: āPertaining to, or situated under, the northern constellation called the Bear.ā
And that turned out to be enough to find it."
"From my experience, the big mistake that people often make is that they treat depression as a mood, as if saying or doing the right thing will lift the depression. What you must remember is that depression isn't a mood - it's a very debilitating illness.
If somebody had a broken leg, you wouldn't tell them to go for a run. You would be patient, you would understand that it will take time, patience and rehabilitation. When the leg heals and you can walk again, it still can take weeks for it to regain full strength. It may never be as strong again. Depending on how bad the break was, it may alter how you walk, what exercise you can do, even how you stand. It may never be the same again.
That is EXACTLY what depression is like.
Just because you can't see an injury doesn't mean that it isn't debilitating. After my worst bout of depression, it took months before I felt I could do my job properly. Even now, two years on, I'm not the same as I was.
I don't do overtime. I don't work nightshifts. I don't get left on my own for too long. There are countless other little things as well. This is because my depression completely changed my entire outlook on life, and it changed who I was as a person.
When loved ones are battling depression, when they are in that darkness, human nature is to try and 'fix' them. For a lot of people, this approach won't work. Whilst there are things you can do, like giving the day a routine, and trying to find activities to keep the person's mind active, you are not going to be able to make someone 'snap out of it', it's just impossible."