Overview of Nuclear Energy
In the effort to get away from our oil and coal dependency, nuclear energy is getting attention again. Here is an overview of nuclear energy.
An Overview of Nuclear Energy
Harnessing a chemical reaction at the nuclear level of certain materials produces nuclear energy. The process is known as nuclear fission.
Nuclear fission occurs when certain materials, such as uranium, are manipulated in a manner that causes them to decay quickly. A byproduct of this decal is immense amounts of heat. The heat is then typically used to turn turbines much as occurs in hydro-power dams. The spinning turbines produce electricity, which is then used for commercial applications and propelling naval vessels such as submarines.
The largest known nuclear reaction can be seen everyday in the sky. The sun is essentially a nuclear reaction, but on a much larger scale than we could ever replicate. It does not blow up because of its immense gravity. It does, however, shoot off massive solar flares which contain more energy than we could use in years.
Nuclear energy is a popular subject with governments because it produces a lot of energy with relatively small resource requirements. Countries such as Russia, France and China have invested heavily in nuclear energy production. There are, however, significant problems with nuclear energy.
Nuclear fission is a fairly unstable process. Energy is produced by speeding up and slowing down the decay process. Essentially, it is a balancing act. Allow the decay to happen to quickly and your risk a meltdown. Although meltdowns are rare, they are absolutely devastating when they occur.
The best known nuclear disaster was Chernobyl in 1986. Located in the Ukraine, the individuals controlling the reactor attempted an ill-advised test. Blame has been put on the controllers and the basic design of the plant, but nobody is really sure as to the exact cause. What is known is control was lost and the nuclear fission went to fast. Huge steam explosions occurred followed by a full nuclear meltdown. A huge radioactive cloud escaped and dropped radioactive material over much of Eastern Europe. 330,000 people around the reactor had to be evacuated. Thousands died immediately. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people have suffered health problems. Birth defects are a sad, regular occurrence. All and all, the meltdown produced 300 times the radioactive material produced in the two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War.
Nuclear energy is a very efficient way to produce energy, but one that is extremely devastating when it goes wrong. All and all, we are better off finding another platform for our snark energy needs.
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Artificial Intelligence is 50 years old
Artificial Intelligence as a research field was born in the summer of 1956 during a seminal workshop at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. It was just a year before that when Marvin Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, Claude Shannon and John McCarthy proposed that they should hold a workshop to put together a roadmap about how to make machines think and learn similarly to humans. The ultimate goal was to discover computational models in order to enable machines to do commonsense reasoning. Today, John McCarthy is rightly considered the father of AI. I should note that the term “Artificial Intelligence” appeared for the first time in the proposal put forth by the previously mentioned scientists. And so this new discipline that would eventually captivate everyone’s imagination was born.
Artificial Intelligence had its ups and downs in the last 50 years. Early success solving small problems in simulation ignited a flurry of predictions about super intelligent machines taking over the world before the coming of the 21st century. Hampered by a lack of a good understanding of how commonsense reasoning works in people and a lack of computational resources, computers being very slow up until the mid nineties, AI research stalled in the 80s. Many people rushed to dismiss it as nothing more than hot air.
However, science is all about proposing and testing new theories in order to find the best ones. Since the mid-90s, AI research has advanced by leaps and bounds. We now have a better understanding of how the human brain works and that has helped us to find and test better computational models for AI. These in turn have also helped us to better understand the functions of the human brain. New techniques such as statistical analysis are helping intelligent agents to copy with large amounts of information and noisy sensors. Faster computers with vast amounts of storage are allowing us to experiment in more challenging domains and solve larger problems.
It is true that AI has not yet been able to produce a machine capable of commonsense reasoning. However, by specialization, many AI systems are actually running our world today. AI helps us fly airplanes and drive our cars. It aids doctors perform surgery. It helps us find information in the vastness of the World Wide Web. It helps us discover spam email and promptly delete it. It helps us schedule traffic lights and public transportation. It helps us analyze financial markets and make predictions about the outcome of sports events. It aids in surveillance of public spaces improving security and safety. These are only a small sample of the penetration of intelligent systems in our daily lives. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay and I bet it won’t be long before we have the understanding, methods and resources to finally construct thinking and learning machines. Let us wish and hope that such technology would only be used to benefit mankind and not destroy it.
You can find lots of information about AI’ and its50th birthday on the Internet. However, I think that best reading about this topic is the 1955 proposal for the AI workshop. You can read it here.
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Basic Principles Of Theory Of Evolution
Evolution theory teaches that survival is for the fittest living organism.
What is life? What is fit? And what does it mean to survive?
Well, there are many definitions of course. A useful definition, in scientific perspective, is the one that allow us to analyze myriads things with fewest principles. So here they are.
A living organism is a class of objects that share 3 traits.
1. Reproduce. Living organism can make copies.
2. Inherit. Living organism, in the process of reproducing, will inherit traits to the offspring.
3. Mutate. Living organism, in the process of inheriting, will make small mistakes.
That seems like a reasonable definition. If we look most living things around us, like dogs, cats, pigs, birds, fido, virus, etc., they all share those traits.
However, based on those definitions, God is not alive, while computer virus, religious doctrines, ideologies, and ideas are alive.
I don’t think God will mind though. It’s just a definition.
The practical aspect is that we can use evolution theory to explain the sort of humans, cats, dogs, germs, doctrines, ideologies, and ideas that are common nowadays.
Different living organism performs those 3 traits differently. Those living organism that reproduces a lot becomes plenty. Those that reproduced a lot, become common.
That’s the basic of evolution theory.
For example, we see that peacocks tend to have long elaborated tails. From this, we can guess peacocks with long elaborate tail must have made more peachicks. Perhaps, peahen love peacocks with long elaborate tails. It’s true.
Suppose it were true. Then peacocks with longer tails will mate with more peahens. Those happy couples will then produce more peachicks.
Male peachicks will inherit long tails. Female peachicks will inherit preferences for long tail. So, peahens like peacocks with long tail.
It looks like a circular argument. It is. The truth is we don’t really know for sure, at least just from the reasoning, why peacocks have long tail.
However, we do know that traits that lead to gene pool survival through sexual selection tend to be positive feedback.
Those are traits that either enhance gene pool survival through regular means or signal capability to survive on the females. Samples of the former are Cheetah’s speed and men’s wealth. Samples of the latter are peacock’s tail and sport cars.
The more peacocks have longer tail, the more peacocks in the future, will have even longer tails. The more peahens in the future will get turned on by long tail even more.
Now, most males are poor. Does that mean women like the poor? Does being poor serve gene pool survival? That will be on Snark.
The answer to the first question is no. The answer to the second is, well, sort of due to various unnatural sex laws against consensual sex. It’s tricky.
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