Cap'n Refsmmat

http://www.sciencemag.org/about/authors/

Your wish is my command. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/album.php?albumid=1&pictureid=148

They can also generate revenue just by being viewed. I'm not actually certain which way we're set up.

This is the only website I whitelist in Adblock, actually. We ought to set up a donation system for those of you who block ads and feel guilty about it. (You should feel guilty.)

Your average science magazine won't do peer review. You'll have to look for a journal (like Nature) that covers whatever field it is your work is in, and submit it to them. Procedures vary. The website of the journals will probably tell you.

Water is a compound rather than a mixture. I would also be afraid of separating sodium chloride into sodium and chlorine, as chlorine gas is fairly dangerous. It's still fairly easy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen with electrolysis, and you can capture the gases in test tubes or something. I've done that before with some nine-volt batteries.

Blast, you're right. For some reason I thought I had only promoted five people...

At least on Ubuntu, you can check the disk space on any of the partitions on the drive. When you're using Windows, you probably won't be able to check the Ubuntu partition -- Windows doesn't know how to read Ubuntu's filesystem.

It's been a long, long time since we last nominated resident experts, and we've noticed some new expert faces among the members since then. To help recognize those members who have shown expertise and knowledge on the forums, we've promoted over the past few days five members to Resident Expert status: Bignose - Maths Expert CharonY - Biology Expert D H - Physics Expert hermanntrude - Chemistry Expert Klaynos - Physics Expert lucaspa - Biology Expert On behalf of all the staff here at SFN, I'd like to welcome the new experts to the team, and thank them for their contributions to SFN.

As for the first two questions: MySQL and PHP are not the same. PHP is a programming language that you can use to create things such as this forum you're using right now. MySQL is a database software -- it stores data for later retrieval. PHP can access data stored by MySQL. (For example, the posts you're looking at now were stored by MySQL and retrieved and displayed to you by PHP.)

Thread split off. This is better off in its own topic.

They're different galaxies, unless the universe happens to be round (which it doesn't seem to be).

Because what's in front of you is a bunch of randomly splattered galaxies, and what's behind you is even more randomly splattered galaxies. It's just more galaxies wherever you look. It gets boring after a while.

No. It's just that the universe looks the same in all different directions on a higher level: there are galaxies splattered about randomly in every direction, so wherever you look, you'll just see some more galaxies.

I presume they're taking the names from particle physics: a tachyon is a hypothetical particle that travels faster than light, and a tardyon is any particle that travels slower than light.

Oxygen isn't flammable by itself. It still needs fuel. It's just that combustion reactions require fuel -- take, for example, the combustion of natural gas (which is mostly methane, CH4): [ce]CH4 + 2O2 -> CO2 + 2H2O[/ce] The [ce]O2[/ce] won't burn. It's only facilitating the combustion of the methane.

As you "steal" energy from the fire, you'll eventually remove enough to make the combustion reaction unable to continue (assuming you're removing energy faster than the fire creates it). So if I had a match burning and dumped it in a vat of liquid nitrogen, it would "freeze", although there would be no "fire" per se -- the flames go away when the heat goes away.

I use Ubuntu, and I haven't had performance issues, but then I don't use OpenOffice often and my use of image editing is minimal. My computer's relatively old and not the greatest, so it's not really fair to compare anyway. My experience has, in fact, been the opposite of yours: it takes my Windows XP install (on the same computer) several minutes to even boot, while it takes Ubuntu less then one. I see the following advantages of Linux: Package management. Instead of installing software from random places all over the Internet, you can get it all from one central package repository, and it all updates automatically (and without you having to restart). This means you get the latest versions of software without having to check fourteen different product websites to see if they've released a new version. Free software, and lots of it. Need a spectrum analyzer? There's one in the software repositories. Need a Morse code decoder? There's probably a few of them. Need the latest version of Perl? It's there too. No need for anti-virus and firewall software that ends up slowing down the computer and being a pain in the rear. I operate with none at all. The BBC once did a test where they connected a Windows XP computer (with no firewall) to the Internet and found that it was attacked within 15 minutes. Linux is secure enough that I don't have to worry. Software development is easier. All the tools are right here: I don't have to install PuTTy to SSH into SFN's server, gedit has built-in syntax highlighting, and any compiler or interpreter you want is easily installed. Oh, and as for hardware support: it's getting far better. I installed Ubuntu on this laptop and only had to do minimal tweaking to get the graphics card working properly. (The card is so old that the vendor's official driver dropped support for it.) If you check over on ubuntuforums.com you'll probably find instructions to get your hardware working easily under Ubuntu. The main problem is that Linux isn't well-used enough for vendors to even bother making drivers for it, but Linux awareness is going up and that problem will gradually solve itself.

I use Mozilla Thunderbird. I'm not too picky -- I don't email much -- and given that I use Linux, Outlook Express is out of the question. It's a good email client.

The reason the inner core would be solid is because of the immense pressure (the entire Earth) pressing on it. That makes it a solid regardless of its incredibly high temperature. (Although the solidity of the core is not firmly established -- it's hard to gather evidence about the center of the planet.)

Because it doesn't make car companies enough money to justify their investments. Hybrid cars cost several thousand dollars more than the equivalent non-hybrid car; people just don't want to spend the money on hybrids.

NATO is a mutual defense treaty, not a governmental organization. It limits itself to military roles.

How exactly would the US force Canada and Mexico into an unwelcome agreement? You guys are sufficiently democratic -- heck, Quebec's voted on independence a few times, even.

The blog update has been completed successfully. If you notice any lingering problems, PM me or just post them here and I'll take a look.

Check over on the Ubuntu forums to see if there are any tutorials on how to get your network card working under Ubuntu. Sometimes you have to get drivers from elsewhere or configure them differently.