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Comment Biology in space (Score 0) 129

There's no guarantee that yeast will behave in microgravity the same way they do at 1g. Microgravity has an interesting way of affecting protein expression. My guess is that brewing in space won't be very effective. Some people have enough trouble doing it on terra firma.

Also, backup hydration? And "medical source?" Glad we don't let 11-yr olds do important things...!

Comment Health, convenience, and scale (Score 1) 98

Sounds pretty ground-breaking. Six second from the recommended 120 seconds--and how many of us do that?--is a lot of time saved, and if the device cleans our teeth better than we normally do (needs verification as noted above), that's a net win there too. Given the market for teeth whiteners and electric toothbrushes, there's certainly a social premium placed on attractive teeth, not to mention the very important health benefits of consistent dental care.

Comment Re:Love my MacBook Air, hate the battery (Score 2) 363

Yikes--same format movie played on both laptops = differing battery lives? Definitely sounds like an OS power bug (or several), unless the movie formats differed (lower vs. higher qual). And if not that, the minute possibility remains that someone in the processor architecture team made a tradeoff in the graphics hardware that didn't work as intended.

Going from 7 hrs active to 4 hrs idle is depressing :(

Comment Letting the battery cycle? (Score 3, Informative) 363

Most modern lithium batteries should *not* be cycled or discharged "fully"--such a practice degrades the battery capacity quite rapidly. I think the practice of fully discharging the battery comes from the NiMH-type rechargeable AA(A) batteries.

Yeah, sometimes people recommend fully discharging a lithium battery during operation so that the monitoring software can recalibrate it's battery power meter to adjust for the decline in total capacity, but I'm not sure it's worth it.

As mentioned earlier, temperature is a big factor as well. Maybe Haswell will save the day...

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