Ophiolite

It's a partial view of a used 12 1/4" PDC (Polycrystalline Diamond Compact) fixed cutter drill bit. This particular one drilled approximately 3' date='500' of Mezozoic sediments in the southern North Sea, on a gas field, suffering severe vibration during the run as evidenced by the impact damage to some of the cutters. Price as new, approximately $80,000. (Use once and discard.) I imagine that's more than you wanted to know.[img']http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/images/icons/icon7.gif[/img]

Would you need any help emptying the bottles?

Dehydration is one of the main factors. When you stumble back to your home (or anybody else home) force yourself to drink two pints of water. If you wake at any time during the night, drink another pint. An alternative, thought much maligned, solution is moderation.

I am confident that once the votes are counted the US will get the president they deserve. Whether the rest of the world will deserve him is a separate matter.

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None. If there were an evolutionary advantage in getting your oxygen from the water they might evolve that way, but to my recollection it never has. Seals and dolphins and whales all started out as land animals. The seals aren't quite so far along the route of adaptation as the cetaceans, so they still spend time on land. In the Mezozoic pleisiosaurs, the long necked sea creatues, also evolved, I believe, from land animals. Clearly not. Difficult to argue with a blue whale, unless you're a giant squid. And evolution is clever: dolphins sleep with one half of their brain at a time to keep watch for predators.

So' date=' as a non-mathematician I can safely conclude that if I multiply zero by infinity, I shall get a big fat non-numeric nothing, and I shall get it an infinite number of times. I'm glad we straightened that out. Edit: Ed, you can't look at a maths issue non-mathematically. Several posters have made it clear the question has no meaning. Why are you going on? (Rhetorical question. Please don't answer.)

A back-of-the-envelope calculation without the envelope suggests they were smarter! Brain size is partially a function of body mass. At half the height of a present day human these hominids would have had roughly an eighth of the body mass. (If you want to be slightly more accurate it is closer to 1/6.) Yet, their brains were only 1/3 the size, ergo smarter! I'm sure the real biologists out there can demolish this logic in short order.

A common failing. I think I am junking about three draft posts a day because when I re-read them and the question I realise I had missed the point entirely. Which reminds me of a classic remark I heard from an accountant at a business meeting on one occasion. (This is completly off-topic, but I've started so I'll finish.) He had been asked an akward question which several of us knew he would be unwilling to answer. His response - "Ah. Well, that's not actually the question you've asked." And he proceeded to answer a completely different one. It worked.

Hopefully one of the posters is pilot and will confirm this. I think if you are flying much above 10,000' - 12,000' you need to be pressurised because the oxygen content is too low for comfortable breathing. (Unless of course you have been living at altitude and are acclimatised.) Since most commercial jets are flying at 25,000 - 40,000 feet, it is obviously essential for them. If the plane were to depressurise at that altitude you would be unconscious within one or two minutes - so grab that oxygen mask if it ever appears above you. Military fighter pilots use oxygen, and I believe their planes are unpressurised, but thats something of a reasoned guess rather than knowledge.

You can if you are Canadian. This from the Transport Canada - Launch Safety Office:Sub-orbital/Orbital Rocket Launches require a launch authorization pursuant to CAR 602.44. An application for a launch authorization may be obtained and must be sent to the Launch Safety Office in Ottawa — AARRG. A launch authorization will be issued if Transport Canada is satisfied that adequate measures are in place that deal with the safety of the launch. The authorization may also contain some additional conditions to enhance launch safety.

Sorry Sayonara, you're definitely wrong on this one. Just tracked down a site from which I quote the following: The pressurisation system ensures that the cabin altitude does not climb above approx 8,000ft in normal operation. However in late 2004 the BBJ will be certified to keep cabin altitude to below 6,500ft thereby increasing passenger comfort. Source: http://www.b737.org.uk/pressurisation.htm

The cabin is pressurised, but not to sea level pressures. Instead the pressure is equivalent, if my memory serves me correctly (and it probably doesn't), to that at an altitude of around 7,000'. Since nobody plans to run a marathon in the aircraft the lower oxygen level is not a problem. I believe the primary reason for this is to reduce the structrual load on the hull. So there is still quite a bit of pressure decrease/increase to deal with at the start and end of the flight, hence the discomfort in the ears. (And sinuses, if you have problems with them.)

You may find these links are a good starting point. They are the home pages of organisations dealing with dsylexia. It seems that while dyslexia has a genetic component, it is also affected by environmental factors: http://www.dyslexia-inst.org.uk/ http://www.interdys.org/ This one deals with the probable causes: http://www.readingsuccesslab.com/BiologicalBasisForDyslexia.html

This site looks as if it may answer your questions painlessly, clearly and accurately. http://particleadventure.org/particleadventure/

Hyperlite, I am one of a substantial number of persons who recognise the value of removing Saddam from power, but are appalled by the way in which it was done. UN approval should have been sought. Unilateral (OK, duolateral) action is not the way to encourage the rule of law around the planet. And if we were right to remove Saddam, what about the other unsavoury characters ruling a variety of countries. Are we going to march in there also? I have a list, if you wish. Do we avoid them because they have nuclear weapons, or don't have oil? The US is the most powerful country on the planet (at present). It has the power to do great good in the world, but to achieve that it must listen to what the world considers good. The alternative, if it acts purely for its own interests, will be to turn the rest of the world against it. Everyone loses if that is the path that is taken.

Originally Posted by Pangloss "To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt Don't think so: and by extension, to criticise the President. Pangloss makes an important and relevant point.

Can you give me some references on this. It's a reversal of the accepted wisdom of a decade ago.

Nalos, here is how it works. There is x amount of money available for scientific research. That's always at least half of what scientists think they need, but it is all there is. At present the funding for that research comes from a variety of sources; private industry, foundations, international bodies, but the majority comes from government, i.e. from your pocket. But even in the case of the government it is administered by a variety of agencies, many of whom do not get on especially well with each other. The result of this diversity of sources is a matching diversity of recipients. So although this sytem has many drawbacks and is certainly far from perfect it does ensure that a broad range of appropriate research projects are funded in a reasonably balanced way. If all of the funding comes from a single source, with a single objective, that diversity will be lost. If a project does not relate directly to the advance in to space it is dead. Your are quite right to suggest that a major space goal could revitalise the American economy and lead to all sorts of technical spin-offs, but not if all science research falls under one agency.

Scientists learn things. Engineers apply them. Scientists are obssessed with knowledge, engineers with function. They are opposite sides of the same coin, but it is the same coin.

Which part of Muhammad's response was unclear?

Well, I rather think someone who was prime minister of approximately 1/6 of the world's population (not to mention the world's largest democracy) is entitled to fit that category. And if you were prime minister of a country that is centre stage of many of the disputes and wars of the lasts forty years, then that could be argued for also.