HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: u894793@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (Timothy D Little)
Subject: Re: Merpeople
Organization: University of Tasmania, Australia.
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 07:40:55 GMT

kathrynw@radian.UUCP (Kathryn Whitworth) writes:

>Okay, I admit it.  I'm too literal-minded to be happy about merpeople,
>and someone in my writing group just brought one into the story.

>My objections have to do with the standard type gills, mainly.  I'll
>explain my reasoning, then shoot me down if I'm wrong.  Hey, I'll
>learn something.

>Oxygen in air at atmospheric pressure runs about 12%.  

Let's see - density of air is about 1.3 g/L, so we get 156 mg/L O2.

>  (I don't know how much of this we actually use -- postulating a normal,
>healthy adult male -- or how much O2 the blood contains, either in % or 
>mg/L.)

>Dissolved oxygen in water should average 4 - 5 mg/L to support fish.  Call
>this 0.045% O2.

How did you obtain this figure?  .005g O2 to 999.995g H2O gives .0005% O2.

>Again, I don't know if this is the normal DO in sea-water,
>although Standard Methods for the Analysis of Water and Wastewater leads me
>to believe it might be.

Which figure did you get from your source, the 5 mg/L or the .045% ?
.045% gives O2 concentration of 450 mg/L, seems too high.

>We are now looking at gills that must be 267 times more efficient than lungs
>at extracting O2 ...

Well, the ratio seems to be  156/5 = 31.  Not 267.

> in order to support the normal healthy adult male mentioned
>above, and I suspect that extracting the O2 from the water is not so easy as
>from the air.

Strange - I would suspect the opposite.  Taking the O2 from air requires
the molecules to pass an air/water interface.  Gills don't.

Further, gills operate continuously, whereas lungs require air to be pumped
in/out.  I also suspect that lungs require more time to extract oxygen from
air than gills, since most of O2 is still present in the exhaled air.
I have absolutely no data on the efficiency of oxygen extraction by gills.

However, your original problem would presumably be that gills could not support
a mammal the size of a human, underwater.  (Correct me if not)

Strange - aren't whales mammals?
--
Timothy D Little   a.k.a.   u894793@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au
"I'm a Tasmanian." - Yahoo Serious, in the film Young Einstein.
From: evansmp@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mark Evans)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Merpeople
Date: 18 Aug 92 10:21:38 GMT
Organization: Aston University

gapdrr@gsusgi2.gsu.edu (Daniel R T Rothman) writes:
: bjgaed@bb1t.monsanto.com writes:
: 
: I don't believe this is the case. there are well documented instances
: of smaller, mammal-like dinosaurs that appear to have come relatively
: far along the intelligence ladder before getting squashed.

How mammal like?
The last I have heard the metabolic heat generating capacities of 
dinosaurs are open to conjecture.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Evans                                   |evansmp@uhura.aston.ac.uk
+(44) 21 565 1979 (Home)                     |evansmp@cs.aston.ac.uk
+(44) 21 359 6531 x4039 (Office)             |
From: janowsky@math.rutgers.edu (Steven Janowsky)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: High Tc Superconductivity is different
Date: 13 Aug 92 15:08:07 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

Unfortunately high Tc superconductors DO dissipate energy if carrying
significant amounts of current.

Although the resistance is zero at zero current density, when there is a
magnetic field (= when current > 0) they exhibit what is known as `flux
creep' as the magnetic flux lines make thermally activated dissipative
moves.

I can't recall the exact reference but I know this theory comes from B.
Halperin et. al.

This unfortunately rules out `battery' type uses for high Tc
superconductors (at high temperatures).

SJ
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: stevew@teleride.on.ca (Stephen M. Webb)
Subject: Re: dragons were dinosaurs?
Organization: Teleride Sage Ltd.
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 21:33:01 GMT

In article <auwen.714089675@starman> auwen@convex.com (John David Auwen) writes:
>I've always been curious about the origin of various dragon myths.
>I've always read that the dinosaurs were all dead by the time man
>walked the Earth.  But could some of them have survived longer?
>Is this where the concept of dragons and sea monsters came from?

There is no concrete evidence that any dinosaurs have been alive for the
past several hundered million years.  This isn't to say there haven't been
any, but a few hundred million years is a long time.  Humans have been 
around in approximately recognizeable form for about 1 million years.
The oldest known "civilization" is about 7,000 years old.


-- 
------- Stephen M. Webb -------

Ack!  I've accidentally broken my leg!  -- Ed the Happy Clown
From: sl25@emu.pmms.cam.ac.uk (Steve Linton)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Superconductors, power storage
Date: 19 Aug 92 10:13:59 GMT
Organization: Cambridge University DAMTP

There is a large hydro storage plant in Wales that has been in use for
some years (15?). I think it's peak power in or out is about 3GW and
efficiency of recovery is about 50%.

Superconducting magnetic energy storage (SMES) systems have been tested. On a
large scale, refrigeration is a negligible cost, so high-temperature
superconductors wouldn't help much. The limits are provided by critical current densities and magnetic field strengths for the superconductor and by the mechanical strain on the coil due the field contained. Designs I have seen were
built underground, supported on a steel framework and layered with ultra-pure aluminium to take the current in the event of an emergency quench.
From: mab@wdl39.wdl.loral.com (Mark A Biggar)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: dragons were dinosaurs?
Date: 21 Aug 92 22:09:23 GMT
Organization: Loral Western Development Labs

It is most likely that dragons are just exaggerated descriptions of
crocodiles.  For example there use to be sea water crocs in the eastern Med
(simular to the ones in No. australia), and it is believed that the story of
St George and the Dragon comes from the tale of someone who single handedly
killed a big one in the Tyre and Sidon area.

--
Mark Biggar
mab@wdl1.wdl.loral.com
From: kathrynw@radian.UUCP (Kathryn Whitworth)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Winged men
Date: 13 Aug 92 17:41:33 GMT


Lee Killough's book *The Monitor, the Miners, and the Shree* has the
Shree as a winged race, not too unlike humans.  They didn't strike me
as utterly improbable, and I enjoyed the book, too.  The Shree are more
like flying squirrels than birds, as I recall.


Kathryn Roth Whitworth
Radian Corp.
Austin, Texas

... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.  Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold
them is left as an exercise for the reader.  The question of the
existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god
coefficient.  (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism
is beyond the scope of this article.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: jchapin@Xenon.Stanford.EDU (John M. Chapin)
Subject: Re: Evolution under High Gravity
Organization: CS Department, Stanford University, California, USA
Date: 14 Aug 92 19:56:29 GMT

daynem@byron.u.washington.edu (Dayne Miller) writes:

>     It seems to me that there was a story in some anthology dealing with
>representatives from a bunch of different planets being brought together
>by some "superior" alien race to test their mettle in a competitive environ-
>ment, or to fight a battle for them, or some such plotline. Anyway, the 
>rep from the humans found that his chief rival was some dude from a high-
>gravity world. His race was slightly shorter than the average human, but fairly thin, though quite strong. The single most notable effect of evolving in high
>gravity, though, was shit-hot reflexes. The alien could move in a blur when
>he wanted to. This makes sense, because in a high-gravity situation, acceler-
>ation is much higher, and any evolved beings that deal with ballistics (such
>as throwing rocks, swinging from trees, avoiding falling obstacles, etc.) 
>would have to have the reflexes to deal with it.

>     Anybody know what story this was?


I don't know the title, but I remember the story well.

The plotline involved one representative from each species being
brought together to fight a climactic battle to defend the galaxy
from an invading alien force.  The competition referred to above
was merely the way that one ship (the one the human ended up on)
determined the line of command.  If you could beat someone in hand-to-
hand combat, you could order them around.

The human became important when the computers of the defenders decided
that the cause was lost and ordered a retreat.  The human did the
usual white-western-male-"I'll-never-give-up"-mythic-hero routine,
the one little ship charged the alien force, disturbed the pattern,
and the defenders carried the day.

Here's the r.a.sf.sc angle: there seems to be this theme in a lot of
pulp sf that "humans are great because we never give up."  Is there
any psychological evidence that humans *as a species* are biased
towards not giving up in the face of "impossible" odds?  Is there any
evolutionary reason to suppose this might be the case -- eg., the long
discussion held on a.f.u last year on humans as cursorial hunters who
chased their prey all day and out-endured it??

Personally I think this is just an artifact of the hero model of the
white western writers who dominate pulp SF.  SF written by, say, a
Japanese woman would likely have a different view (perhaps "humans are
great because we can endure any amount of suffering without losing our
humanity").

-John Chapin
 jchapin@cs.stanford.edu

-- 
-----------------------
John Chapin
jchapin@cs.stanford.edu
-----------------------
From: wiml@milton.u.washington.edu (William Lewis)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: Superconductors
Date: 20 Aug 92 03:25:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Aug20.032505.24142
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle

In article <1992Aug13.122812.8253@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> ins894r@aurora.cc.monash.edu.au (Aaron Wigley [Wigs]) writes:
>When better lithography processes are used to layer chips, then this
>benefit you mention about higher densities will come about, without the
>help of superconductors. Visible light Lithography isn't used any more,
>and X-Rays have a limited resolution, so perhaps they will start etching
>with Gamma radiation?

   Electron beams, actually. I don't think electron lithography is in
commercial use but it's been being researched for a good while.

   I wonder where people will go after electrons? Maybe you could fire
cannonballs at the microchip and count on their short de Broglie 
wavelength ;-) 


-- 
email: wiml@u.washington.edu             |  Home:  Seattle, Washington   |
     (William Lewis)                     |  47 41' 15" N   122 42' 58" W | 
NeXTmail: wiml@ingalls.cs.washington.edu `-------------------------------'
        --*-- Member, Coalition to Preserve Semantic Vacuity --*--
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: ccw@prefect.uucp (26554-wood)
Subject: Re: Superconductors
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 14:43:33 GMT

In article <1992Aug18.060748.2986@ee.eng.ohio-state.edu> rob@guinness.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere) writes:
>In article <1992Aug17.092101.25220@odin.diku.dk> nomann@diku.dk (Ole Nomann
>Thomsen) writes: 
>>tmyoung@mailbox.syr.edu (Thomas M. Young) explained to me via E-mail:
>>2. The critical magnet field is large*, so you could store energy in 
>>   a big magnet instead (many loops of sc wire).  It would have to be big, to
>>   solve the cooling energy problem, and it would try to tear itself apart.
>>   This is _dangerous_.

>No matter what the critical current density, that's your _only_ option.  The
>electrical energy stored in the loop is I^2*R, and since R=0...

NonononononononoNoNoNoNONONONO!

I^2*R is the expression for the amount of power dissapated by a load
that follows Ohm's Law.  It comes directly from E=I*R and P=E*I.

The amount of energy stored in a magnetic field is a volume integral of
the magnetic field strength.  I do not recall the details...

>As for it being dangerous, that's by definition.  Large amounts of energy are
>dangerous, period.  You're going to have the some such problem with any kind
>of battery (For example,  droppping a wrench on your car's battery is bad for
>your health...)  A magnetic field is probably one of your more obnoxious
>storage methods in this regard, though.

Maybe, maybe not.  The dangerous part about storing energy in a magnetic
field is that if the current that generated the field is interrupted
somehow, all the energy in the field comes out at once, in the form of a
high-voltage spike.  Which can cause arcing, and other generally
destructive effects.




Chris Wood     Bellcore     ...!bellcore!prefect!ccw
                         or ccw@prefect.cc.bellcore.com

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: matoh@lysator.liu.se (Mats \hrman)
Subject: Re: Merpeople
Reply-To: matoh@sssab.se
Organization: 3S AB
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 11:00:08 GMT

u894793@bruny.cc.utas.edu.au (Timothy D Little) writes:

>However, your original problem would presumably be that gills could
>not support a mammal the size of a human, underwater.  (Correct me if
>not)

>Strange - aren't whales mammals?

Yes, whales are mammals. But they don't have gills, they have lungs
and breathe air... :-)

Better would be to look at *fish* with a mass larger than or equal to
a human, for exampes sharks. What percentage of a shark's volume is
gills? Could you fit that volume into a human neck/ribcage? Would a
"human" survive on a shark's metabolic rate?

Or you could base your merpeople on whales and dolphins instead of
fish, making them airbreathers who have to surface regularely...
--
     _
Mats Ohrman     Scandinavian System Support AB       E-mail:   matoh@sssab.se
                Box 535    _                      Telephone:  +46 13 11 16 60
                581 06 Linkoping, Sweden            Telefax:  +46 13 11 51 93
From: phl@cs.man.ac.uk ( Peter H Liyanage)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: general relativity
Date: 14 Aug 92 10:58:59 GMT
Reply-To: phl@fiveg.icl.co.uk ( Peter H Liyanage)
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester UK

Just something I need to clear up. 

	If a large object(ie. an aircraft) was travilling at the 
speed of light, and is on a direct path to collied with a tall
building. At the time of collision, what would happen to the building/
aircraft ??.
		(I ask this cause in a science program I saw a few
weeks ago, it said that the object would go through the building
without damaging either its self or the building)

			Is this possible ??????.(I mean, is this
true in theory?>)

			Pete.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: swf@teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: dragons were dinosaurs?
Date: 19 Aug 92 19:46:53 GMT
Reply-To: swf@tdat.teradata.com (Stanley Friesen)
Organization: NCR Teradata Database Business Unit

In article <1992Aug18.101647.1@skcla.monsanto.com> jjfink@skcla.monsanto.com writes:
|
|Also, I recall a book I read years ago, that might have been "Boris Karloff
|Presents" or something like that,  which featured stories about dragons.  The
|one that stuck in my mind is one where a biologist surgically changes a
|crocodillian heart from two to four chambers, enabling its metabolism to
|crank up to its genetic dragon potential.
|
Sounds nice.  Only one problem though - the crocodillian heart is *already*
functionally four-chambered, except when diving.   All that surgical
alteration would do is make the croc's lungs burst the next time he went
for a deep dive.
-- 
sarima@teradata.com			(formerly tdatirv!sarima)
  or
Stanley.Friesen@ElSegundoCA.ncr.com
From: evansmp@uhura.aston.ac.uk (Mark Evans)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: dragons were dinosaurs?
Date: 18 Aug 92 10:26:42 GMT
Organization: Aston University

auwen@convex.com (John David Auwen) writes:
: I've always been curious about the origin of various dragon myths.
: I've always read that the dinosaurs were all dead by the time man
: walked the Earth.  But could some of them have survived longer?
: Is this where the concept of dragons and sea monsters came from?

There is a book, called 'flight of the dragon' (I think) which puts the
case for dragons as a spieces contemory with early man.
-- 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Evans                                   |evansmp@uhura.aston.ac.uk
+(44) 21 565 1979 (Home)                     |evansmp@cs.aston.ac.uk
+(44) 21 359 6531 x4039 (Office)             |
From: JLOCK00@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU (Joseph L. Lockett)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Re: dragons were dinosaurs?
Date: 18 Aug 1992 06:47:53 GMT
Organization: Rice University

In article <auwen.714089675@starman>
auwen@convex.com (John David Auwen) writes:
>I've always been curious about the origin of various dragon myths.
>I've always read that the dinosaurs were all dead by the time man
>walked the Earth.  But could some of them have survived longer?
>Is this where the concept of dragons and sea monsters came from?
 
I'd think dinosaurs alive that late would have left a more substantial
record than mere myth.  More likely, perhaps, is that early fossil
discoveries (bones unearthed by erosion?) led folk to dream about
the destructive power of these giant lizards.  Bones can be even
more evocative to the imagination.
 
Joseph L. Lockett
jlock00@ricevm1.rice.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: ccw@prefect.uucp (26554-wood)
Subject: Re: Superconductors
Organization: Bellcore, Livingston, NJ
Date: Tue, 18 Aug 92 14:50:05 GMT

In article <Bt66ry.H2B@helios.physics.utoronto.ca> neufeld@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Christopher Neufeld) writes:
>In article <1992Aug18.060748.2986@ee.eng.ohio-state.edu> rob@guinness.eng.ohio-state.edu (Rob Carriere) writes:

[discussion of superconducting coil energy storage systems trimmed]

>   I expect I'd be more comfortable with a superconducting coil storage
>system than with, say, a compressed air energy storage system which
>pumped tens or hundreds of megawatt-hours in energy into a salt dome for
>recovery by turbines. At the moment, though, there are no practical
>large-scale energy storage systems in common use. 

I've read about hydro energy storage systems.  During the night, they
run separate pumps to put more water back into the reservoir from down
below.  During peak demand, they can run more water through the
turbines, and generate more electricity.  The problem with hydro systems
out west is that there isn't as much water flowing into the reservoir as
one would like...

>They're not really
>needed for the current crop of base load power plants like coal and
>nuclear. 

But every little bit helps.  When air polution is an issue, I'd much
rather see a nuke plant running close to capacity all night long to pump
water up a hill, instead of gas-turbines fired up during the afternoon
haze and evening rush hour.

>If solar or wind power were ever asked to take up the base load
>we would need some better electricity storage systems for leveling these
>intrinsically erratic generating schemes.

Yup.

> Christopher Neufeld





Chris Wood     Bellcore     ...!bellcore!prefect!ccw
                         or ccw@prefect.cc.bellcore.com
From: kathrynw@radian.UUCP (Kathryn Whitworth)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
Subject: Merpeople
Date: 13 Aug 92 17:37:57 GMT


Okay, I admit it.  I'm too literal-minded to be happy about merpeople,
and someone in my writing group just brought one into the story.

My objections have to do with the standard type gills, mainly.  I'll
explain my reasoning, then shoot me down if I'm wrong.  Hey, I'll
learn something.

Oxygen in air at atmospheric pressure runs about 12%.  
  (I don't know how much of this we actually use -- postulating a normal,
healthy adult male -- or how much O2 the blood contains, either in % or 
mg/L.)

Dissolved oxygen in water should average 4 - 5 mg/L to support fish.  Call
this 0.045% O2.  Again, I don't know if this is the normal DO in sea-water,
although Standard Methods for the Analysis of Water and Wastewater leads me
to believe it might be.

We are now looking at gills that must be 267 times more efficient than lungs
at extracting O2 in order to support the normal healthy adult male mentioned
above, and I suspect that extracting the O2 from the water is not so easy as
from the air.

For simplicity's sake, let's just lose the question of water temperature for
now.

What says net.wisdom on this subject?

 
Kathryn Roth Whitworth
Radian Corp.
Austin, Texas

... Any resemblance between the above views and those of my employer,
my terminal, or the view out my window are purely coincidental.  Any
resemblance between the above and my own views is non-deterministic.
The question of the existence of views in the absence of anyone to hold
them is left as an exercise for the reader.  The question of the
existence of the reader is left as an exercise for the second god
coefficient.  (A discussion of non-orthogonal, non-integral polytheism
is beyond the scope of this article.)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.science
From: m23364@mwunix (James Meritt)
Subject: Re: Superconductors + the 2nd law
Organization: MITRE Corporation, McLean VA
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 12:44:25 GMT

In article <1992Aug11.222648.4044@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> ins894r@aurora.cc.monash.edu.au (Aaron Wigley [Wigs]) writes:
}neufeld@helios.physics.utoronto.ca (Christopher Neufeld) writes:
}: In article <1992Aug11.043438.27611@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> pciszek@nyx.cs.du.edu (Paul Ciszek) writes:
}: >If nothing else, the superconductor can be used as a cooling medium; a
}: >superconductor will maintain the same temperature across its entire surface,
}: >as long as you don't force the issue too hard.
}: >
}:    Niven strikes again. Superconductors, at least the ones we know about,
}: are *poor* conductors of heat relative to the normal metals around. 
}
}You know the best heat conductor to date (at least to date a few months 
}ago :) ?
}
}Diamond made up of pure C-12 Isotopes, any C-11 brings the conductivity way 
}down. If you like I'll dig out the article this was mentioned in (should only
}take an hour or so :-)

I suggest that you read up on the thermal conductivity of Helium II before
you post.  :-)