The last section is focused on the author’s monastic life, but the need to maintain focus and set aside distractions applies to all of us. When I left Facebook I described it as a “time sink.”
Scottish scientists develop whisky biofuel
Using samples from the Glenkinchie Distillery in East Lothian, researchers at Edinburgh Napier University have developed a method of producing biofuel from two main by-products of the whisky distilling process – “pot ale”, the liquid from the copper stills, and “draff”, the spent grains.
The new method developed by the team produces butanol, which gives 30% more power output than the traditional biofuel ethanol. It is based on a 100-year-old process that was originally developed to produce butanol and acetone by fermenting sugar. The team has adapted this to use whiskey by-products as a starting point and has filed for a patent to cover the new method. It plans to create a spin-out company to commercialise the invention.
Via Slashdot.
From Azimuth:
Global warming has been causing the "bleaching" of coral reefs. A bleached coral reef has lost its photosynthesizing symbiotic organisms, called zooxanthellae. It may look white as a ghost — as in the picture above — but it is not yet dead. If the zooxanthellae come back, the reef can recover.
With this year’s record high temperatures, many coral reefs are actually dying:
• Dan Charles, Massive coral die-off reported in Indonesia, Morning Edition, August 17, 2010.
Thursday evening I went a great class on sharpening hand saws at the Metro Woodcraft store. Continue reading
From a note at the end of _+3=5+7=_: it depends what ‘equals’ equals (An interesting post generally, BTW):
….a scary chain: Female first and second grade teachers who are anxious about math pass that anxiety along to their female students. More female students are likely to agree with the suggestion that boys are better than girls at math after being exposed to this anxiety, and the female students who did agree with this stereotype performed worse in math as the year went on. Great article and PNAS makes the full text publicly available.
From the abstract of that article:
We show that when the math-anxious individuals are female elementary school teachers, their math anxiety carries negative consequences for the math achievement of their female students. Early elementary school teachers in the United States are almost exclusively female (>90%), and we provide evidence that these female teachers’ anxieties relate to girls’ math achievement via girls’ beliefs about who is good at math.
The Economist looks at the troubles of the bookstore chain.
Continue reading
Irish Class, August 9. 2010
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Fadas: áéíóúÁÉÍÓÚ
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| cóip | copy | f2 pl cóipeanna |
| le seachtain amháin | for one week | |
| inis | island | f2 |
| inis | tell | vn insint |
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 