Posts by JedRothwell

Quote from anonymous

With regard to finding and identifying the abstract -- wait 10 years -- by then there should be an open source (i.e. free) LLM that knows how to read a paper and find the abstract.

Yup. That seems likely.

Quote from anonymous

Hopefully by 10 years it will be a librarian's dream -- let it crunch for about 1 minute per paper and it is all indexed and abstracted for future search.

Yes. Which means that I will have done thousands of hours of work that a computer will do in 10 minutes. A strange feeling . . . But think of how many people devoted their lives to things like assembling dictionaries in the past. Alphabetizing lists and so on. There is Japanese movie about making a paper dictionary in the 1990s -- The Great Passage -- which I saw with mixed feelings.

The Great Passage (2013) ⭐ 7.3 | Drama

2h 14m

www.imdb.com

The database at LENR-CANR.org was assembled manually, mainly by Dieter Britz and Ed Storms, and later by me. You can download the entire database here, in EndNote format:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/EndNoteExport.txt

You can install this in the free version of EndNote. The most recent paper I uploaded looks like this in the on-line index:

I convert it from EndNote to MySQL with a program. Here it is in the EndNote export format, with the fields marked with EndNote's peculiar notation:

%0 Journal Article

%A Tsarev, V. A.

%A Worledge, D. H.

%D 1991

%T New results on cold nuclear fusion: a review of the conference on anomalous nuclear effects in deuterium/solid systems, Provo, Utah, October 22-24, 1990

%B Fusion Technol.

%V 20

%P 484

%! New results on cold nuclear fusion: a review of the conference on anomalous nuclear effects in deuterium/solid systems, Provo, Utah, October 22-24, 1990

%K review

%X INTRODUCTION

A conference entitled "Anomalous Nuclear Effects in Deuterium/Solid Systems," organized by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the U.S. Department of Energy, and Brigham Young University (BYU) was held October 22-24, 1990, at BYU in Provo, Utah. It was not by accident that BYU was chosen as the venue for the conference on cold nuclear fusion (CNF). It was there that 1 \ yr earlier Jones et al. first discovered (independently of Fleischmann and Pons) neutron emission following the loading of crystal lattices of the transition metals palladium and titanium with deuterium. Thus started the "cold nuclear fusion era."

%U http://lenr-canr.org/acrobat/TsarevVAnewresults.pdf

Quote from RobertBryant

Lets take the price of D2O as $460/kg..

What is the material cost per Kwh equivalent of the 23 Mev fusion yield per D atom?

assuming 100 % conversion efficiency to electrical Kwh?

I get something like 0.01 cents/Kwh

That is wrong. 1 kg of D2O produces 69 million MJ, or 19 million kWh. See Borowski, S.K., Comparison of Fusion/Antiproton Propulsion Systems for Interplanetary Travel. 1996, NASA, Table 1, “Cat-DD”:

https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/supplement/ComparisonFusionAntiproton.pdf

At $460/kg that comes to 0.0024 cents per kWh ($0.000024). However, nearly all of the cost of heavy water goes to pay for the energy used to extract it. With today's techniques, it would take 0.05% of the energy from fusion to separate out the deuterium. So the cost would be close to zero. Not $460 but more like 4 cents. So the cost per kilowatt hour would be $0.00000024.

Average global per capita energy consumption is 3,204 kWh. In the U.S. it is 11,267 kWh. So if you live 85 years in the U.S. you will spend ~$0.23 on heavy water over a lifetime.

The methods now used to extract heavy water were developed in the 1940s. Experts say much better methods can be developed. They would produce less pollution and use less energy. So we are looking at ~$0.05 over a lifetime.

Quote from Lenora

Again, this is the direct quote ==> " Deuterium is not widely available, but it can be extracted from water, which is widely available."

Deuterium is widely available. It is everywhere on earth. In any sample of water, 1 in 6700 hydrogen atoms is deuterium. It is one of the most widely available substances on earth. It makes no sense to say it is "not widely available." This is like saying hydrogen is not widely available because it is all bound to oxygen in water; or saying that aluminum is not widely available because it is all in bauxite. It is easy to separate hydrogen from oxygen, and almost as easy to separate hydrogen from deuterium. It takes a lot of energy but the various methods are well established and unlimited amounts could be separated. So it is widely available.

As I said, the energy cost would be trivial compared to the energy produced by fusion. The dollar cost would fall from ~$500 per kilogram to a few pennies.

Quote from Lenora

Kindly please post acknowledgement of your error, and please apologize to Krivit.

It is not an error. Saying deuterium is not widely available yet water is available makes no sense. It is contradictory. All water everywhere includes deuterium. It can easily be extracted at close to zero cost. Do you understand that?

It would take 6,162 tons of heavy water to produce all of the energy we consume on earth (403 quads). One cubic kilometer of water has 150,000 tons of heavy water in it, enough for 24 years. There are approximately 1.4 trillion cubic kilometers of water on earth, so we have enough for 58 billion years. If we start to run short, there is at least 25 times that amount of heavy water readily available in the solar system (plus much more in Jupiter). The sun is expected to last around 10 billion years, so we have at least 60 times more deuterium than we can use. Probably more like 1,500 times more.

As Arthur Clarke said, energy is the most abundant resource in the universe.

I uploaded several more papers. Many of them are inconsequential. The most recent papers are here, as always:

Most recent papers

I decided to add more papers to the main library, rather than to a "Storms Reading Room." I am adding papers that are directly related to cold fusion, written by authors who asked me to upload their papers in the past. As I said, many papers in this collection are not directly related to cold fusion. I still plan to put them into a separate folder.

There are still ~1,800 left. This is taking too long. I need to write more programs to automate the process. The index system will be simpler than the one for the main library, with no abstract. I cannot automate the process of identifying and extracting the abstract. I am not going to do it manually 1,800 times!

Quote from Alan Fletcher

Microsoft's Project Silica is an example of research into this technology, focusing on storing digital data in quartz glass for long-term archival storage.

That's great stuff. It would be an improvement on what we have now. But I think in the long term they will need to develop DNA storage. Microsoft and others are working on this.

Here is one of the most successful document preservation projects in history:

Haeinsa Temple Janggyeong Panjeon, the Depositories for the Tripitaka Koreana Woodblocks

The Temple of Haeinsa, on Mount Gaya, is home to the Tripitaka Koreana , the most complete collection of Buddhist texts, engraved on 80,000 woodblocks between 1237 and 1248. The buildings of Janggyeong Panjeon, which date from the 15th century, were constructed to house the woodblocks, which are also revered as exceptional works of art. As the oldest depository of the Tripitaka , they reveal an astonishing mastery of the invention and implementation of the conservation techniques used to preserve these woodblocks.

Haeinsa Temple Janggyeong Panjeon, the Depositories for the Tripitaka Koreana Woodblocks

The Temple of Haeinsa, on Mount Gaya, is home to the Tripitaka Koreana , the most complete collection of Buddhist texts, engraved on 80,000 woodblocks between…

whc.unesco.org

Quote from Alan Smith

I disagree too, but simply adding the word 'Pure' in front of 'Deuterium' would fix it.

It would still be weasel words. He said "deuterium is not widely available." Pure or impure, it is one of the most widely available substances on earth. For that matter, nothing is pure. You need to purify iron or salt, or water before drinking it. I guess you can use sand as-is for construction, but not for silicon wafers.

Krivit should not mix valid arguments with statements such as "deuterium is not widely available." It makes the whole letter lose credibility.

I disagree with parts of Krivit's letter.

"Deuterium is not widely available, but it can be extracted from water, which is widely available."

Deuterium is ubiquitous, available in unthinkably large amounts, on earth and everywhere in the solar system. There is enough to power civilization at far higher rates than now, for longer than the sun will last. Saying it is "not widely available" is absurd. The only reason deuterium is expensive is the energy cost of separating it from ordinary water. With plasma fusion or cold fusion the energy overhead would be 0.05%, compared to 10% to 20% for coal or oil.

"No fusion reactor produces, or has ever produced tritium in a closed circuit."

I do not think this would difficult to arrange, and there are other ways to make tritium.

". . . This is an extremely misleading and deceptive question and answer pair. It misleads the reader to think that a) present fusion devices produce more than ten megawatts of potentially usable power, b) that any fusion device has produced any potentially usable power . . ."

It says "fusion power." It does not say "usable power" or "electricity." I do not find this deceptive, but perhaps that is because I have been reading fusion papers since the 1970s. Perhaps this would confuse a reader unfamiliar with fusion.

"As explained above, the fuel for fusion does not presently exist. Thus, this statement is entirely false."

As I said, deuterium fuel is everywhere, in unthinkably large amounts. Lithium is also available in far larger amounts than we could ever consume.

Quote from Wyttenbach

One answer here: The separation of Lithium into 6Li/7Li is very easy but prohibited by US law!

The law can be changed with the stroke of a pen. Li-6 separation is prohibited because it takes a lot of mercury, which is dangerous. It can be made safe, or perhaps some other technique can be developed.

https://science.osti.gov/-/media/Isotope-Research-Development-and-Production/pdf/workshops/2008/presentations/Davis_Stable_Isotopes_For_Nuclear_Power_Isotope_Program_Brief_2012_Public.pdf

Quote from orsova

I have a hard time trusting SSDs, but for short term recovery (as opposed to archiving), they do seem best.

Me too. I use HDD for backup. I have two that I only use every 6 months. They have lasted for many years.

Plus they are cheaper.

Quote from orsova

Whilst writing a data integrity plan for the long term retention of family documents, I was shocked to learn that CD-Rs really only have a life of 5-10 years. It turns out that pretty much all digital storage media are wasting assets.

Yup. CD-Rs are not to be trusted. That is what I found trying to read old ones a few years ago.

The only way to reliably preserve data is with hard disks. HDD or SSD. You can use the ones in your own possession, or the ones at cloud services for individuals such as Google Cloud or Carbonite. I recommend you use both. Keep a rotating set of 3 to 5 backup disks and copy the data onto one every month. Use a program the confirms data integrity. I recommend copying data to both compressed images of the disk, and uncompressed copies of folders. Sooner or later one of your backup hard disks will fail. You will have 2 to 4 others. Probably, when one fails, the others are close to failing. Data is important, so buy new ones. They are cheap these days.

I use ordinary, off the shelf disks with an external caddy; a.k.a. docking station, such as:

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/insignia-2-bay-hdd-docking-station/6153102.p?skuId=6153102

I store the disks in plastic boxes with desiccant packs. Such as:

https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Protective-Shockproof-Dustproof-Anti-static/dp/B075688MR7

In the distant future, data storage technology will improve tremendously, probably with DNA storage. For now, and probably for the lives of your children and grandchildren, people will have to pay attention to preserve digital data. Keep in mind that digital data is actually more robust and easier to preserve than paper printed information. As long as you pay attention. It is less likely to be destroyed by a fire, flood or mold. Because you make multiple copies and you store them in different locations. One individual hard disk is as fragile as a soap bubble. They used to be, anyway. A little static electricity could erase them. Two hard disks are less likely to be destroyed. With five of them -- including one in a data center -- it is extremely unlikely you will lose all copies of the data. Redundancy is the secret to preserving data.

As late as the mid-1980s I knew of companies that got into deep trouble because they kept all data on one hard disk with no backups, and the disks failed. I heard a rumor than one company failed because of that. Even in 1968 anyone with knowledge of computers knew that was a disaster waiting to happen.

As I have mentioned, Ed Storms sent me a collection of papers. I mean physical papers in folders. There were approximately 3,400 documents including:

1,880 that I did not have

1,300 that are already on file at LENR-CANR.org

192 irrelevant documents

I finished scanning them all and I sent the images back to Ed. I threw away most of the actual physical paper.

The collection includes many papers that Ed thinks people should read to better understand cold fusion. Background information. Some of these papers are quite old. Here is the EndNote database showing some of them. The one selected here is by Lamb, written in 1937. Since these old papers do not directly pertain to cold fusion, I think I should put them in a separate library folder, which I will call The Storms Reading Room. I think the readers would be confused to find papers from 1937 in the main library.

I added several papers from Ed's collection to the main library. These are pertinent papers that I have been wanting to upload for some time. Just now I uploaded one by Gur, of the Stanford group.

Most recent papers

It took me about a month to winnow out duplicate papers and to compare the ones in Ed's files with the ones I already have. The author and title names were slightly different in many cases. I used the Levenshtein Distance algorithm to compare the database items, and to automatically reconcile them. It works remarkably well. I still have to do some preparation before uploading them. I am still concerned that this might constitute a copyright violation, so maybe I should not upload all 1,880 new ones. I think I am covered under the "fair use" provisions, but I hesitate to consult with an expert. If someone knows a friendly expert please have that person call me. I miss the late David French who was my go-to guy regarding copyrights and patents. He was a nice guy. A bit strange, but that comes with the territory.

U.S. Copyright Office Fair Use Index

Quote from Alan Smith

Did you know btw that Japan adopted the Korean Legal Code in almost it's entirety to use as their own?

When?

Did you know that the State of Louisiana originally had Napoleon's legal code, and much of it still remains? Even though the U.S. purchased the whole state in 1803?

Quote from Frogfall

This might sound like good news, but the downside is their implication that chatgpt might not help anyone research any technical or scientific subject.

That's silly. People are already using ChatGPT in research. I am using it in technical subjects such as programming and translating chemistry papers. It is very helpful. Astounding at times.

I translated a bunch of legal documents from English into Japanese with the DeepL translation program (https://www.deepl.com/translator). I do not know much about the law and I have never translated legalese. It was a tremendous help. I had my TextAloud screen reader read the Japanese while I checked the English. It made very few mistakes. Most of the mistakes were inconsequential and easy to spot. It is much better than Google translate or ChatGPT.

A screen reader is a good way to check a translation. It is also a good way proofread a document you write yourself, or one that you are editing. You should also read documents aloud yourself. Experienced authors recommend this.

Here is a gruesome section from one of the legal documents, a healthcare directive. Here it is translated from English to Japanese and back again. That indicates how accurate it is:

"Section (4) gives your agent specific guidance regarding the factors to be considered in making your health care decisions, including the specific preferences for your treatment which you have indicated in this document.

Section (5) gives to your agent certain authority to make provisions for an autopsy, organ donations and the final disposition of your body, except to the extent that you initial these entries to remove such powers. At the bottom of Section (5) you may also indicate whether you prefer to be buried or cremated. . . ."

セクション(4)は、あなたがこの文書で示した治療に対する具体的な希望を含め、あなたの医療に関する意思決定を行う際に考慮すべき要素について、あなたの代理人に具体的な指針を与えるものです。

セクション(5)は、あなたの代理人に対し、解剖、臓器提供、およびあな たの遺体の最終処分について規定する一定の権限を与えますが、あなたがこれらの権限を削除するためにこれらの項目を初期設定する場合を除きます。セクション(5)の下部には、埋葬または火葬のいずれを希望するかを記入することもできます。

[This sounds kind of English-y, with lots of borrow words, but it is correct. Translated back to English:]

Section (4) provides specific guidance to your representative on factors to consider when making decisions regarding your medical care, including your specific preferences for the treatment you have indicated in this document.

Section (5) gives your representative certain powers governing autopsies, organ donation, and the final disposition of your remains, unless you initial these items to remove these powers. At the bottom of section (5), you may also indicate whether you wish to be buried or cremated.

Quote from Frogfall

Isn't this what Theranos were promising?

I believe their main claim was the ability to test with a very small sample of blood. A pin-prick such as you use to measure glucose, rather than ~30 ml collected with a hypodermic needle. I don't see the point of that. Most people only need a blood test once a year and it does not hurt much.

There were many problems with the pin-prick. The main problem was there was no enough fluid for all of tests they need. Another big problem was contamination from the skin. The hypodermic needle goes into the vein before it begins collection, so contamination from the skin and skin surface are avoided.

I recall Theranos was also working on a nanomaterial chip to detect multiple conditions. They made significant progress with that. Other researchers are working on it.

I recommend this book. It is not about cold fusion per se, but you can learn a lot about cold fusion from it:

Cardwell, Donald. Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets: A History of Technology (Norton History of Science) (p. 498). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Here is an interesting quote from the book, p. 498 Kindle edition. This shows how important cold fusion researchers are. I think it also shows that while academic papers are important, hands-on cooperation in the lab is essential.

. . . The industry will have a corresponding professional institution and journal. In outline the same principle can be traced back to the medieval guilds. Such a system does not inhibit, in fact it may well encourage, evolutionary improvement but it may – and for familiar reasons – resist radical innovation for which there will be few or no precedents and which, as we saw, tends to be brought about by individuals from outside the industry or technology. The objection, then, is that a strictly evolutionary history of technology would obscure this, surely important, feature of the processes of invention and innovation. Furthermore, with a revolutionary invention a new language and a new vocabulary have often to be created, and ‘new men’ appear – much to the bewilderment and often the disapproval of the older generation. How many stagecoach drivers, for example, could have understood the terms used by locomotive engineers in 1831? Older people are baffled by the language of computing; their children take to it easily.

A second objection is ad hominem. The historian in his or her study can easily describe the early history of the steam engine as an evolutionary process, beginning with imaginative speculators such as Branca, de Caus, the Earl of Worcester and going on to include von Guericke, Hautefeuille, Huygens, Papin and then Savery, before Newcomen rounds off the story with his successful engine of 1712. However, our experiences in building and operating an exact replica of the 1712 engine (at one third scale it stands five metres high) has convinced us of the original genius of Newcomen, a real hero-engineer. Problems, not mentioned in any of the literature, were met and overcome; the true functions of the key components were fully understood and their relationship to the operation of the engine appreciated. . . . Much has already been learned that is not to be found in the written records. It follows that any levelling down of technological achievement, and with it of the hero-engineer, must tend to obscure key features of the process and make difficult any objective evaluation of individual cases. A final lesson is that there is great scope for practical experimentation to supplement (and correct) history based solely on documentary evidence. In addition to these specific objections, there is the general point that, the course of political history being determined, at least in part, by statesmen, kings, conquerors and prelates, the reader will expect to find analogous figures in the course of the history of technology. That expectation should be met. A history without notable figures, without major episodes and in which all is ascribed to social action, would be an unsatisfactory and, in the last resort, a sterile affair.

Quote from Diadon Acs

It should be relatively easy to create your own LLM using an open-source model ran locally.
You will just need to have a dedicated GPU that has at least 6GB RAM and maybe 20GB of storage. The challenge is in being able to serve an endpoint for a WebUI.

Something I am actively working on to sort out.

Well, if you figure out how to do that, and you want a window to your bot at LENR-CANR.org, let me know.

I spent a few weeks converting the entire LENR-CANR.org library from Acrobat to a format the ChatBot can use. The bot is supposed to accept Acrobat files but it does not. There are various rules such as paragraphs should not be long or the bot will lose track. I converted the files to ASCII and wrote a program to fit the parameters the vendor suggested. The files are here if you want to download them:

https://lenr-canr.org/Collections/ChatBotFiles.zip

This is out of date. I added ~50 papers after converting these. If you want to use them, I can convert the recent ones and add them to this batch.

I regret to say the LENR-CANR ChatGPT is now OFF LINE. I deleted it. It was costing a lot and few people were using it.

Quote from mkemp

Your cloud providers do not give a stuff about your data and will carelessly donate it to all and sundry!

That's not true. That is nonsense. You pay cloud providers. They give you a contract guaranteeing they will protect the data and keep it secret. If they gave it all and sundry, no corporation, hospital or other institution would store any data with them, or use their computing services. They would be sued for billions of dollars. It would an easy win in court. They would be bankrupt in no time.

This is like saying doctors don't care if their treatments cause harm. Yes, they do care. Not because they are good people but because they will be sued for malpractice and they will lose their licenses and their livelihood.

When you give data to Facebook, you pay them nothing. I don't know what their contract looks like, but as a practical matter, the data belongs to them, not to you. But when you store data in a cloud provider, it is your property, just as much as your stocks and bonds at a broker remain your property. The broker cannot give them away to "all and sundry."

Quote from Paradigmnoia

One would expect that the controls systems do not allow for dragged tires.

Do you mean the control systems do not take into account problems that cause dragged tires? Of course they do! Automotive engineers are well aware of such problems. No one would develop a start-up procedure that drags the tires and causes premature wear.

The Prius accelerates very smoothly when it is driven correctly. More smoothly than a manual shift, but a manual shift remains my favorite way to drive. I guess it is a dying art . . .

For a complicated set of controls and gears, look at a Model T Ford.

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Regenerative braking is a mode not available in most ICE vehicles, so certainly it is a difference with a distinction.

How is it physically any different to the tire? Regenerative braking resists the rotation of the wheel, which increases friction between the tire and the road. At the interface between the tire and the road, the effect is exactly the same as what happens with friction braking (the brake pad against the wheel).

Quote from Paradigmnoia

Tires dragging due to overagressive electromotive braking is feasible.

Actually, no. The control electronics prevent that. You have no way to aggressively apply electromotive braking. You have no control over it. When you press hard on the brake pedal, full electromotive braking turns on and along with that, the conventional friction brake pads are applied to the wheel. Conventional anti-lock brake pumping is applied to the brake pad calipers.

All EV and hybrid cars are equipped with both electromotive and conventional brakes. The driver cannot select one or the other. You cannot tell which is working, to what extent. It feels like a conventional ICE car with friction brakes only.

The electromotive braking does reduce brake pad wear. You can see that difference after a few years. The brake pads last longer.