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Comment Re:What happens to the CO2 when the tree dies? (Score 1) 363

My guess would be that a fair bit of the CO2 will be released into the atmosphere but probably not all of it. An interesting thing to consider though is that trees do reproduce on their own if given an appropriate environment. If a forest is created where there was no forest before then the CO2 associated with those trees will be pulled out of the atmosphere. Eventually the forest region will probably reach an equilibrium with the environment: absorbing CO2 to produce new trees while at the same time emitting CO2 from decomposing trees. The change from "no forest" to "forest" will be a net decrease in atmospheric CO2.

The Media

What Does It Actually Cost To Publish a Scientific Paper? 166

ananyo writes "Nature has published an investigation into the real costs of publishing research after delving into the secretive, murky world of science publishing. Few publishers (open access or otherwise-including Nature Publishing Group) would reveal their profit margins, but they've pieced together a picture of how much it really costs to publish a paper by talking to analysts and insiders. Quoting from the piece: '"The costs of research publishing can be much lower than people think," agrees Peter Binfield, co-founder of one of the newest open-access journals, PeerJ, and formerly a publisher at PLoS. But publishers of subscription journals insist that such views are misguided — born of a failure to appreciate the value they add to the papers they publish, and to the research community as a whole. They say that their commercial operations are in fact quite efficient, so that if a switch to open-access publishing led scientists to drive down fees by choosing cheaper journals, it would undermine important values such as editorial quality.' There's also a comment piece by three open access advocates setting out what they think needs to happen next to push forward the movement as well as a piece arguing that 'Objections to the Creative Commons attribution license are straw men raised by parties who want open access to be as closed as possible.'"
Image

Living In Tokyo's Capsule Hotels 269

afabbro writes "Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510 once offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home. Now with Japan enduring its worst recession since World War II, it is becoming an affordable option for people with nowhere else to go. The Hotel 510’s capsules are only 6 1/2 feet long by 5 feet wide. Guests must keep possessions, like shirts and shaving cream, in lockers outside of the capsules. Atsushi Nakanishi, jobless since Christmas says, 'It’s just a place to crawl into and sleep. You get used to it.'”

Comment Fight fire with fire (Score 1) 340

I had a vague idea that I thought to share. Someone with more time please expand on it. Simply get the email spammers to fight against the CAPTCHA breakers! Email spammers are bots that are constantly trying to not be filtered by filter programs and yet still be understandable by humans. CAPTCHA breakers are bots that are constantly trying to not be filtered by filter programs but they are *not* trying to be understandable to any human.

If we use the understandability of email spam as a CAPTCHA that also feeds back to email filters we will, eventually, either eliminate spam or CAPTCHA breakers or come up with some totally ass kicking AI that rules us all.

Maybe this isn't such a good idea after all. ^_^

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