sarcas

Both IU/d and nmol/L are measurements of molecules. nmol/L is "nano-moles per liter", and is a measure of concentration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molar_concentration

"IU" is a measurement common in pharmacology, and has to do with trying to standardize how much mass/volume of a substance will give a particular biological effect. The "/d" is per day.

In summary, the article is saying that, based on a meta analysis[1] of previous research, we have misunderstood or misreported some of these measurements. They suggest both the safe dosage and the effective dosage for Vitamin D should be much higher, and argue that this is a cheap and effective way of treating problems associated with Vitamin D deficiency.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-analysis

(edited for spelling)

Both Jen Simmons and Rachel Andrew have lots of good resources for understanding the new CSS layout techniques. This article of Rachel's is a year old, but will still give you a good understanding of the differences between the two: https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/03/30/should-i-use-...

Jen's got lots of great links here: http://jensimmons.com/post/feb-27-2017/learn-css-grid, including thoughts about how we're going to be able to use all these new layout techniques in ways both new and old.

It's an exciting time to be designing on the web :->

You can still see bits of the Glitch game on Slack's 404 pages: https://slack.com/wherever

It's a good story that they were happy to give up the name and domain to Fog Creek for this.

Also: I really like HyperDev/GoMix/Glitch. Making this tooling available for people seems like the next juddering step forward. There's easy comparisons to things like HyperCard and Yahoo! Pipes, and the intentions seem the same here. Looking forward to the future of this.

Hydro is the main provider for sure, and like in the case of Iceland made the whole thing possible when solar was more expensive and less efficient. Numbers from the link in my comment above:

> Three hydroelectric generators produce electricity from running water. The biggest hydro above at Laig on the west side of the island is 100kW, with two smaller 5-6kW hydros on the east side.

> Four small 6kW wind turbines below An Sgurr

> 50kW Photovoltaic array producing electricity from the sun.

> Although the capacity of the scheme is around 184kW, not all renewable resources produce their maximum output all the time or at the same time.

I think this means that solar would provide 27% of their total coverage if everything was running at full capacity (which never happens). Long summer days with low cloud coverage at time of low wind makes solar an important part of their summer mix.

They're also experimenting with using solar on homes to heat water to see how much much less fuel they burn.

>The sun can be used to heat water instead of fuel. Solar panels are being installed by islanders on three homes on Eigg to test how much less fuel is being burnt, and how much money is saved.

Interestingly, Eigg, a small hebridean island off the west coast of Scotland has been operating 95% of their power on renewables since 2008: https://islandsgoinggreen.org/about/eigg-electric/ (they keep diesel to drive baseload backup)

The initial reason for this was that to get electricity from the grid to them was going to cost _lots_ of money. Solar is an important part of their mix - the Hebrides get a a good chunk of sun in the summer (and long days too). They've been a case study for a number of similarly isolated communities - either islands or other locations far away from existing electricity infrastructure.

Making batteries more efficient (and cheaper), and making each of the renewables mix more efficient and cheaper will make this possible for more and more communities.

That sounds like a great solution, and isn't something we've tried yet. What's the team spread like? Are you folk fairly cross-functional? As in do you have members of the same team in each of the countries? And if you do, is the split fairly even (2 from each for example)?

I might suggest we trial what you're doing on Monday.

Oh that's interesting. It looks like it would cover some of requirements (ie by presenting everyone with a list of stand up notes). I wonder if you can schedule when your 'day' starts with stand up mail on a team member by team member basis, since that's one of the problems we were trying to solve. I'll dig into it, thank you!

Since the events of the blog post we've been experimenting with some similar steps, which have been working quite well. I hope to write them up soon.

I was talking about the Scottish parliament. As I read it, the article talks about both (as I read it). Feels like I'm derailing the discussion a bit but essentially:

Overall Scottish spending is not related to UK tax levels directly, but is directly related to spending in England and Wales[1]. So the argument is that there is little point in a party trying to get voted into Holyrood (the Scottish parliament) promising a smaller states and fewer taxes at the moment, because they have little proportionate control on the taxes (although again, on the spending they do in theory).

The reverse is not true for Westminister - the more they spend in England and Wales, the more is available for Scotland to spend, and vice versa.

Hope that clarifies what I was saying!

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_formula

The BBC's charter states that it is not allowed to express a view on the matter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_News#Political_and_commerc.... Of course, an organisation is made of people and so individuals will occasionally stray from that line (and get called out for it). But they do strive to be balanced on the matter. Here's a link to their "Scotland Decides" pages to give you an idea of how they're trying to balance it out: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/events/scotland-decides

The issue comes down to how the money is distributed and spent. The current Scottish Government has control over something on the order of 75% of the money spent in Scotland (the other 25% coming from central government in Westminister on reserved matters like defence). Conversely, as it currently stands (ignoring the new rules from 2016), the Scottish Government only has control over something like 15% of tax raising powers (again, everything else coming from Westminster).

Thus, if you were a party who wanted to promise cutting taxes to the population you could, but you'd have very little impact on the taxation's bottom line. I actually don't know what the Barnett formula says about money the Scottish government doesn't spend from Westminster (wondering if you could in theory as a party in Holyrood decide just not to spend the money you were given, as a forcing tactic).

Regardless, all parties (in both London and Edinburgh) and the Scottish population are in agreement, the situation of controlling spending but not tax raising is an unfit state for a government to be in.

[edit - make my 'all parties' comment clearer]