experiment0

This is a great paper.

As a counterpoint, one place where determinants are incredibly useful is in Hartree-Fock theory, where they effective encode the Pauli exclusion principle (or anti-symmetry requirements) of atomic orbitals.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartree–Fock_method

We really don't have a shortage of space to put solar panels. The challenge is making solar panels that are cost effective (e.g. $ per Watt).

In response to your edit: That is a possibility, that yes they may find a niche in the fancy of the rich.

But the point I'm making is that the article is hyperbolic and misleading.

Transparent solar is not the future of utility scale power generation. It is not going to solve any of the problems currently holding back solar power from becoming ubiquitous.

We are already struggling to make low cost solar panels that have a high efficiency using light absorbed from the visible spectrum (which accounts for most of the sun's spectral irradiation [1]).

Furthermore, you can't just have solar cells that absorb a wide range of the solar spectrum, there is an optimum band gap for these materials of around 1.34 eV [2].

This means that the most popular solar cells in development, namely CIGS and CdTe are already occupying the niche for maximum efficiency. The challenge now is finding new materials that are cheaper to make and show greater efficiencies whilst not relying on the use of rare earth/toxic elements.

(Hint: the real development in this area at the moment is hybrid perovskites [3])

Basically, this is irrelevant cruft.

[1] http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~imamura/122/images/solar_spectrum.p...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit

[3] http://www.nrel.gov/ncpv/images/efficiency_chart.jpg

(source: currently doing a PhD in a new photovoltaic materials)

He delivered the BBC Reith Lectures this year too, which were fantastic.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9

Gay marriage has this week been legalised in the UK. I'm really not sure what else they can do.

> So a person who lays the iPad2 on their chest while napping, or holds one on their chest while reading, could trigger magnet mode.

I think the point the article is trying to make is that holding an iPad close to your chest is both more likely to happen, and less noticeable than holding a magnet to your chest.

Why would you suggest to ignore me when I was aiming to promote discussion. I was primarily questioning the science behind the post as there's a lot of questionable reporting on topics like these and so if it looks dubious, then I'm set to promote clarification. As it turns out oliyoung does seem to know what he's talking about, so I guess I needn't have worried.

And the snark at the bottom of your reply is really quite unnecessary.

OK. I understand what you were trying to put across. But ultimately what you described was a set of symptoms of a disorder that you didn't fully explain, so I found it confusing reading the essay with vague hints of the underlying issue.

I'm just saying this as cognitive scientists spend a lot of effort working out which mechanisms and pathways are malfunctioning for a specific disorder, and a generalised statement listing 3 neurotransmitters didn't sit well with me.

From a neuroscience perspective, there is a major issue with self diagnosis, its very hard to be objective when you're examining yourself and once you begin to notice something, you tend to 'fix' the evidence in your mind. Psychosomatic symptoms are surprisingly common. However I don't want to sound like I'm questioning your diagnosis, so if you are aware of a deficit on a functional level please ignore me.

I'm really not sure what this means:

> My brain works a little differently than most people’s. My body doesn't balance chemicals like serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine well and as a result I get “sick”, my label for my particular mix of anxiety, depression and general mental health issues.

Chemicals like serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine? So neurotransmitters? And what does balance have to do with it? Do you lack dopaminergic neurons? Do you have an over expression of serotonin? I'm not asking for you to go into detail about your problems but that sounds a little too wishy washy.

A lot of these issues sound exactly like what many other people also suffer from every day. So it's hard to not think that on some level this is psychosomatic.

It still doesn't tell you who it is on the about page though, just that he's on the AppKit team.

Hey so did I!

My first programming experience was working on RS2DBase. It was pretty popular back in the day. I met loads of great people through those forums and I don't think I'd have gotten into programming without them.

I've done the same thing, I've customised holmans dotfiles and just replaced the content with my preferences. I really like the rake mechanism for symlinking. Simple and convenient.

Well Lisp is dynamically typed and Javascript, Ruby and Python seem to be doing pretty well.

Only one submission on the page you linked to was actually a comparable tool tip.

What? Edge detection is pretty much the only use for the Sobel operator.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sobel_operator

I guess this is a good a time as any to show the organic chemistry notes that I've been writing up.

https://github.com/alexganose/chem1201

So far I've done my first year notes. They aren't particularly organised, they are literally just latex versions of my handwritten notes so they won't be good to learn from, however as a summary they are quite useful.

I'm doing it for purely selfish means as I can revise from these notes better, but I thought it would be good to open source them so people can use them if they want.

Theres an analysis of his deconstruction here:

http://functional-orbitz.blogspot.se/2013/01/deconstructing-...

When I signed up around a year ago it wasn't a discount. It was a free micro account that lasts two years. I'm not sure if that's changed however.

They do offer a free plan for students. I get 5 free private repos.

I can't get the link now since GitHub is down ha, but when it's back up, just have a quick google and you'll find a quick form to fill in and voila. It's great.

A little bit more info here:

https://status.github.com/messages