Is tiny nuclear really much use?

This may be mainly all PR to help university funding, but there's a story on phys.org about a new-ish reactor design (which doesn't really explain if one has been built):

BYU professor and nuclear engineering expert Matthew Memmott and his colleagues have designed a new system for safer nuclear energy production: a molten salt micro-nuclear reactor that may solve all of these problems and more.

The standard nuclear reactor used in America is the Light-Water Reactor. Uranium atoms are split to create energy, and the products left over will radiate massive amounts of heat. They are kept in solid fuel rods, and water is run through the rods to keep everything cool enough. If there is not enough of a flow of cooling water, the rods can overheat, and the entire facility is at risk for a nuclear meltdown. Memmott's solution is to store these radioactive elements in molten salt instead of fuel rods...

In Memmott's new reactor, during and after the nuclear reaction occurs, all the radioactive byproducts are dissolved into molten salt. Nuclear elements can emit heat or radioactivity for hundreds of thousands of years while they slowly cool, which is why nuclear waste is so dangerous (and why in the past, finding a place to dispose of it has been so difficult). However, salt has an extremely high melting temperature—550°C—and it doesn't take long for the temperature of these elements in the salt to fall beneath the melting point. Once the salt crystalizes, the radiated heat will be absorbed into the salt (which doesn't remelt), negating the danger of a nuclear meltdown at a power plant.

Another benefit of the molten salt nuclear reactor design is that it has the potential to eliminate dangerous nuclear waste. The products of the reaction are safely contained within the salt, with no need to store them elsewhere. What's more, many of these products are valuable, and can be can be removed from the salt and sold.

But how small is this design?   Pretty small:

A typical nuclear power plant is built with a little over one square mile to operate to reduce radiation risk, with the core itself being 30 ft x 30 ft. Memmott's molten salt nuclear reactor is 4 ft x 7ft, and because there is no risk of a meltdown there is no need for a similar large zone surrounding it. This small reactor can produce enough energy to power 1000 American homes. The research team said everything needed to run this reactor is designed to fit onto a 40-foot truck bed; meaning this reactor can make power accessible to even very remote places. 

 I have my doubts this is useful.  Maybe good for somewhere like Antarctica, though?

Freshwater crabs considered

 CGTN shows how a lake in China is famous for its (freshwater) hairy crabs:

and I thought -that seems a useful thing to have in your country, why don't we have them here (in Australia)?

But it turns out there is an Australian inland freshwater crab - but it's small, only growing its carapace to about 5 cm, apparently.

The Chinese crab has in fact spread around the world:

This crab originates from the temperate waters between East Russia (Vladivostok) to South China, the Korean Peninsular, Japan and Taiwan Province of China. It has been transferred, probably in ballast waters to northern Europe in 1900s and appears to have established self-reproducing populations there. It has more recently been found in North America and Hawaii.

 Learning something new every day...

Quick takes

*  Elon Musk might be buying Twitter after all?   I hope someone is working on an alternative, because I can see a lot of people happy to leave it if Trump and endless lies and disinformation resumes on the platform.

*  Really, I find it puzzling that being CEO of an aussie rules football club is such a newsworthy thing.  

*  It certainly seems true that we are in for yet another cool, very wet, summer.   

*  This is a pretty boring post. 

*  Update:  famously great Christian husband defends another famously great Christian husband -

It's clear, by the way, that this is end result of - what? - 40 decades of increasing use of demagoguery (kicked off by Gingrich himself) as the Republicans' prime political tactic:  if you keep telling your followers that anyone to the Left of you is 100% evil and wants to destroy everything good, absolutely any loser with terrible personal morals can represent you by just saying "but I'm not evil like them." 

More mystery needed

About a week ago, Noah Smith tweeted a little nostalgically about this:

...and I am also sympathetic to the view that it's a little sad that there seems less mystery around lately.  Yes, I know, so much of it was silly, but as someone said in response, it was a bit of an early education in empiricism to read debunking books on the likes of von Daniken and the Bermuda Triangle.   With UFOs, though, I was never satisfied with the debunking efforts, and while Hynek may have been gullible about some cases, I always found his books pretty persuasive.   

On the definite downside in the current mystery Noosphere:  it seems that terrible, cheap and trashy American "ghost hunter" reality shows have really killed the credibility of ghosts and haunting stories.   (I know these shows have never been really popular in Australia, but I see bits of them on Youtube and elsewhere, and they are awful.  American cable TV still seems to have a lot more space to fill up with trash than we do in Australia.)  Same for bad shows about celebrity mediums.   I haven't seen a medium make a convincing looking "hit" with a reader for a long, long time.

And it's not just TV or Youtube:  it seems that I haven't even read a good first hand account of any ghost or mediumship story in an online newspaper or magazine for a very long time.   

This is a real pity.   I love a good story of that kind from a person who found it unexpected and hard to explain.   But you just get the feeling lately that the souls of the departed may be too depressed by all the fakery going on that they can't bother appearing to anyone anymore!

On the upside, of course, we have seen a real and major revival of UFO speculation, with the US Navy story which, I admit, is very cool and interesting.   Of course, drones and Starlink launches are making for many, many fake events, but there still is enough real mystery about the military related events to keep a good level of excitement there.  And revisiting some older cases is still pretty interesting.

I also somehow recently again came across this story from 2018, which I don't think I have mentioned before.   It's hard to believe, but it is seems it is still possible for a large white jet aircraft to be flying over California and Oregon and to have no one know where it ended up.  (It was tracked on radar, had no transponder working, was sighted by commercial pilots at some distance, and F 15s were sent up to try to identify it.)   I mean, really:  how is that possible that they lost track of it.  But it appears they did.  

One other persistent mystery, although again it is more of a technological than a paranormal one, is the Havana syndrome.  I don't think I have ever gotten around to commenting on it, but I saw a clip this weekend of a doctor explaining what happened to him when he visited Cuba, and again it's a case of a first hand account by a credible sounding person being surprisingly convincing.   I am inclined to think that there is a real phenomena there. 

Update:   I suppose the better heading for the post might be "Paranormal mystery down; technological mystery up".  

While I do like technological mystery, paranormal ones have always struck me as having potential to be truly revolutionary.   I mean, convincing proof of an afterlife, or even ESP, would blow the current state of scientific materialism out of the water; proof of observation by alien UFOs - not at all, really.  Hence I am a little disappointed if evidence for paranormal events seems to be fading. 

I think I would pass on being the first to try this...

Odd headline from Science magazine:

RoboCap: Robotic mucus-clearing capsule for enhanced drug delivery in the gastrointestinal tract 

The story:

Here, we describe the development of the RoboCap, an orally ingestible robotic drug delivery device that locally clears the mucus layer, enhances mixing, and topically deposits the drug payload to enhance drug absorption (Movie 1). The RoboCap’s rotational and churning movements are generated by surface features designed to interact directly with small intestinal (SI) plicae, villi, and mucus. We hypothesize that drug bioavailability will be significantly greater when delivered with the RoboCap compared with standard oral delivery. We test the efficacy of the RoboCap in delivering two model peptide drugs, vancomycin and insulin, through Franz cell diffusion and in vivo testing in swine.

There is a video embedded in the article which I can't copy, but the commentary to it sometimes strikes me as inadvertently funny.

Oh, another unhappy poet

Put this in the drawer marked "Reasons all parents of teenagers should be happy if their child says they don't have any interest in writing poetry":  a review of a new book about TS Eliot enlightens me about his unhappy personal life.   Sure, sure, there must have been happy famous poets - just that they seem to be in the serious minority:

In 1915 Eliot proposed to Vivien Haigh-Wood, partly out of desire for sexual experience, which he was too shy to seek in other ways. Following “the awful daring of a moment’s surrender/Which an age of prudence can never retract,” the young poet found himself shackled to a needy, fragile woman he grew to dislike, then pity and finally loathe. He would turn for love and sympathetic understanding elsewhere....

This second half of Crawford’s biography begins with a brief account of Eliot’s short-lived, unsatisfactory affair with the rich, notoriously promiscuous Nancy Cunard. Soon, though, this unhappy husband found his thoughts returning to the girl he had left behind in America, Emily Hale. In due course, Eliot and Hale embarked on an intense correspondence that would continue for more than 20 years. Any guise of mere friendship was soon abandoned: “I would literally give my eyesight to be able to marry you. … If I ever am free I shall ask you to marry me.”  ...

His eventual commitment to an exceptionally austere Anglicanism revolutionized Eliot’s later life but ruined Hale’s. The bonds of matrimony, he repeatedly told her, were sacrosanct. There could be no divorce. Nonetheless, the two would meet occasionally during the interwar years — both in America and in England — for what seem to have been afternoons of decorous yearning. Hale would long cherish the remembrance of their few kisses ...

Both Vivien and Eliot almost continually suffered from an array of illnesses. Hers included intestinal inflammation, shortness of breath, influenza, shingles, emotional and mental instability, and drastic weight loss — at one point she was down to 80 pounds — while Eliot ran his wife a respectable second with recurrent colds, bronchial trouble, seriously decayed teeth (five were extracted on one dental visit), a hernia that required a truss, surgery on his finger and frequent periods of nervous exhaustion. He also drank impressively, as many as five gin drinks during dinner...

Crawford estimates that in 1925 alone the couple spent a third of their income on doctors, medicines, and stays in hospitals or sanatoria. During the ’30s, Eliot arranged for the increasingly troubled Vivien — at one point he wondered if she might be suffering from “demonic possession” — to be cared for in various rest homes, and in 1938 he signed papers committing her to an asylum. With typical Prufrockian cowardice, he did this by letter while out of the country. He never saw her again....

Then, get this!:

...in 1947, Vivien died. At this point the now-free Eliot suddenly recoiled at the prospect of actually marrying Hale, to whom he wrote, “I cannot, cannot, start life again, and adapt myself (which means not merely one moment, but a perpetual adaptation for the rest of life) to any other person.” Hale was crushed but hoped he’d change his mind.

He went on, at age 68, to do this, after lodging with " wheelchair-bound bibliophile John Hayward."

Eliot’s bedroom was flamboyantly ascetic: a single bed, an ebony crucifix, a bare lightbulb hanging from a chain. Very early one morning in 1957, though, Hayward’s “lodger” announced — without warning, through a letter — that he wouldn’t be back the next day or, indeed, ever. The 68-year-old Eliot had proposed — via letter! — to his adoring 30-year-old secretary, Valerie Fletcher, and been accepted. In due course, Hale received her own letter, disclosing this ultimate betrayal. For the final years of his life Eliot was soppily besotted with his new young bride, and the two grew inseparable. He died in 1965 at age 76.

Sounds quite the cad.

How's the current Russian holy war going

Of course, it was utterly predictable:   Putin would have know that if he brought transexualism into his ranty "Russia will rise again against the evil and corrupt West" speech justifying the invasion of Ukraine, American and Australian Right wing culture war reactionaries would be impressed with that, and ignore broader matters like, you know, how wars of conquest should no longer be a thing.  And sure enough, the disgusting and madly ignorant (of anything other than arcane Catholic history) Currency Lad could not resist but repeat Putin's words with approval.

He might, if he had any credibility as a Catholic at all, question the issue of how a key figure of the Russian Orthodox Church has tried to turn it into a Holy War - promising that soldiers killed on the battlefield of Russian expansionism would automatically have their sins forgiven.    And I see there was a rally in Moscow (with a bussed in crowd, but still) which featured this rally cry:

I would have thought a Catholic should have concerns about this, but you know, as long as Putin joins in with the moral panic about transgenderism*, all is forgiven.  Or at least, not worth making a song and dance about.

 

[* an issue on which it is possible to believe - as I do - that there are nutty and unreasonable pro-trans activists, and conservatives who have taken up the issue in true "moral panic" style that sounds at times as if they think kids are at risk of being put under the knife even without consent.]

Confucius is (literally) big in China, again

As the dear reader may know, I like both big statues and watching clips from CGTN to keep on top of what is "in" with the  Chinese government at the moment, hence this recent clip of a Confucian centre at his birthplace caught my eye:

 

(And, seriously, once again I find myself wishing China had a more "normal" regime to which Westerners could feel safe visiting, because it's clear there are many, many awesome looking places to see. That library looks fantastic, although I doubt it caters to English readers.)

I thought that this video might have appeared because the statue, or accompanying centre, was new; but I see online that the statue (if not the whole centre) was opened 6 years ago.  I must have missed that.

CGTN has lots of videos up endorsing the philosopher, including a stream of the recent, annual, "Grand Ceremony of Worship of Confucius" featuring lots of costume and dance and a precision that makes you worry for the wellbeing of anyone who might make a mistake. 

Anyhow, this got me thinking that I was pretty sure Confucianism was on the outer for quite a while in China, but clearly the Party has revised its view of him.  I could watch a CGTN produced forum  discussion about this*, but instead, I went to extremely erudite Religion for Breakfast channel to watch his video the Confucian revival:

 Well worth watching, as is virtually  every single video he puts out.  My only complaint is that sometimes I think his delivery is so rapid and dense, I can tell I won't remember much of it, as it is too fast to process.

 

*  I haven't watched much of it, except I am amused to see it does say the worship ceremony has it origins from the 1980's! 

Their conspiracy paranoia makes them a danger

Update:  Sharlet later deleted the Tweet, explaining that he was being targeted by morons saying "if you're against capital punishment for pedophiles, you must be one."  

Makes the wingnut theory look rather improbable

Noted on Axios:

NATO formally labeled the mysterious leaks in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines detected earlier this week the result of deliberate sabotage and warned that such attacks would be met with a collective response from the organization.

Driving the news: "All currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage," the North Atlantic Council said in a press release Thursday.

    "Any deliberate attack against Allies’ critical infrastructure would be met with a united and determined response," the statement added.

    "NATO is committed to deter and defend against hybrid attacks," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg tweeted, noting that the "sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines is of deep concern."

Would be most surprising if one or more members of the organisation actually hasn't admitted to the others that they did it.  

The most incredible storm surge video you are likely to see

This is really remarkable stuff:

 

Friday nudism update

The history of nudism as a social movement of the 20th century (and its relative decline even though one might have expected otherwise with the sexual revolution) has always interested me - go and use the search bar at the side to find my previous post, if you want..

For more on this topic, there is an essay up at Aeon (which will require you to get past the "begging for donations" page which appears half way through it, but if you guess where the "X" is on the top right hand side, you can close it and continue.)

It explains the "high minded" attitude of (some) intellectuals of the early 20th century that it was a society changing, morally uplifting, movement:

The New York sociologist Maurice Parmelee was one US visitor who became a convert to the cause. His much-reprinted book Nudism in Modern Life: The New Gymnosophy (1929) developed a theory of nakedness for an Anglophone readership. He claimed that ‘gymnosophy’ – his preferred term, as an ancient Greek word combining nakedness and wisdom – ‘stands for simplicity, temperance and continence in every phase of life. It is useful in the rearing of the young,’ he claimed, ‘in the relations between the sexes, and in promoting a democratic and humane organisation of society. Consequently,’ he argued, ‘the implications of gymnosophy extend far beyond the practice of nudity alone, for it connotes a thoroughgoing change in the outlook upon and mode of life.’

For Parmelee, and those who followed his line of thinking, nudism was libertarian, democratic and humanitarian. He claimed it would deliver a more egalitarian world, destroying class and caste systems, and establishing gender equality. Nudism, he asserted, ‘is a powerful aid to feminism, because it abolishes the artificial and unnecessary sex barrier and distinction of dress. The gymnosophic movement is,’ he believed, ‘the logical continuation and consummation of the woman’s movement, for it at last brings woman into the man’s world and man into the woman’s world, so that they can see each other as they really are.’ Parmelee’s study was illustrated with black-and-white photographs of naked white German youths assuming expressionist dance poses or boldly leaping for joy in the open air.

But, of course, the rise of readership of nudist magazines indicated that they were being bought for reasons other than moral uplift:

By the early 1930s, several nudist periodicals could be purchased cheaply from British newsstands, from the short-lived monthly Gymnos, which styled itself as ‘For Nudists Who Think’, to the longer-lasting quarterly Sun Bathing Review. Both were populated with high-brow articles written by physicians, psychiatrists and clergymen who detailed the physical, mental and spiritual messages of the movement....

Sun Bathing Review particularly promoted its status as ‘copiously illustrated’, which ensured it a readership of 50,000 by its second issue, far more than the quantities of practising nudists at the time.  ...

By the end of the 1930s, nudist membership was at an all-time high in Britain, with around 40,000 members. New nudist magazines were launched, boasting readerships of more than 100,000 per issue; evidently, more people liked to look on than to join in. In wartime, nudists found new justifications for their cause, when sun and air were reconceived as ‘unrationed benefits’, and public health was a national priority.  The photographic nude also took on new meanings in a wider culture where pin-ups were achieving popularity as imports from the US....

Nudes were perceived as a national tonic under wartime conditions, and their viewing was restorative. But nudists were aware that there could be right and wrong ways of looking. A quiz in Sun Bathing Review in 1945 asked: ‘How Good a Sun Bather are You?’ To pass the test, readers were expected to be able to identify the Sun’s actinic and abiotic rays, the relative merits of artificial sunlamps, and a list of foods containing Vitamin D. ‘Good’ nudists were those who understood the practice intellectually. But highly educated members worried that readers were looking at depictions of flesh for less than scholarly aims. The experimental psychologist J C Flügel, for example, had warned a 1938 meeting of the Sex Education Society that ‘even the editors of our nudist magazines must admit that most of their readers are attracted by a sexual interest in the pictures’.

I've always found this funny:  the dedication in the magazines themselves, and in censorship bodies, to the pretence that nudist magazines were only being read, or bought by, the "high minded" nudist.   

The essay ends on a point about the apparent retreat from nudism acceptance on significant parts of the internet: 

A hundred years after the first tentative attempts to establish nudism as a collective cause in Britain, some of the founders’ ambitions may seem wrongheaded, quaint or merely curious. But as I assembled my recent book on the subject, Nudism in a Cold Climate: The Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-20th-Century Britain (2022), the echoes of their claims were still everywhere to be heard. A book about nude photography with a nude on the cover still cannot be sold on most bookselling platforms in the 21st century. Facebook and Instagram will not allow uncensored images from the book’s contents to be shown, even those with historic retouching or otherwise concealed pubic areas. Breasts and buttocks, deemed harmless a century ago, are now forbidden by social media moderators, our new censors. Nudists have long argued that seeing the bodies of others would open minds from repressive tradition and lead to a fairer world based on knowledge. The 50-year moral battles that were won for photography in print in the 1970s are still being fought on social media more than 50 years later.

 

 

 

Harassment on ice

The news story this morning:

Australians sent to work in Antarctica have complained about a widespread and predatory culture of sexual harassment with unwelcome requests for sex, taunting, displays of offensive pornography and homophobia.

surprises me a little, because I would have assumed that the problem would have been recognised and dealt with by strong leadership (and psychological assessment) long before now.   I mean, I assume that all people go through a selection process that includes psych assessment, and I would also assume that part of that would include questions like "How do you think you will handle the isolation and the effect that it may have on your sex life?  Do you expect to find a sexual partner there?"

In fact, I have a recollection of reading somewhere, many years ago, a woman who had gone there who said something like "You just go there expecting to face some competitive sexual tension amongst the men until you chose one of them to sleep with.  Then it settles down."   It surprised me for its pragmatism, but I thought "well, it would seem there are some well know issues for women who go there."

Is it perhaps that women have simply decided they do not have to put up with that anymore - perhaps an ongoing effect of the MeToo  movement?

I prescribe a ban on Fox News

This from NPR:

This experience – of farmers grappling with suicide – is devastatingly common. Farmers and ranchers are nearly two times more likely to die by suicide in the U.S., compared to other occupations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

I wouldn't mind betting that, if it was allowed to be studied, a ban in rural regions from watching Fox News would lead to an improvement in suicide rates.  

Media poison

I continue to be gobsmacked that the Murdoch family exert no editorial control over Tucker Carlson and are happy to watch him destroy any hope of anything resembling national unity on any issue, and that there isn't more consternation about it amongst the US political class.    

The latest example:

Tucker Carlson Fuels Suspicion U.S. Behind Nord Stream Sabotage

What a pure propagandist for Putin.  All so that Fox News can continue to demonise Joe Biden and Democrats.  And Rupert and Lachlan (and Carlson) can make a dollar. 

I mean, go back 30 or 40 years, and if any high profile media figure were speculating nightly against US interests, you would have had politicians from both sides cautioning about how damaging (or at least "unhelpful") unfounded speculation is.  I mean, it might not have been out of the question that someone on TV could have questioned if the US might have secret operations underway, but we all know Carlson and his gullible audience doesn't work that way - suggest a conspiracy, and they will believe it.

Yet I can tell from the Australian Right wing nutoverse that Carlson is very influential here as well.    

All part of how the Right has gone nuts, as my blog heading says.