The pH sensitive glass electrode

A pH electrode is composed of two main parts, a glass electrode and a reference electrode. The glass electrode, or with a different name the measuring electrode, is the part that is actually measuring pH.

Let's take a closer look at the function of the electrode.

pH sensitive glass

The most fragile part of the measuring electrode is the hydrogen sensitive glass tip.

The electrical potential created at the glass tip is related to the pH value of the sample. And that is what we want to measure!

Reference element

To be able to connect the electrode to a pH meter (voltmeter) you need to electrically connect to the internal buffer (inside of the glass bulb). A silver (Ag) wire, on to which is coated a layer of silver chloride (AgCl), has shown to be a good solution. Silver is the best electrical conductor of all metals. A common name for the Ag/AgCl wire is reference element.

Sensitive measurements

The pH electrode has a very high internal resistance, typically of the order of 100 MOhm. To be able to make reliable potential measurements the input resistance of the pH meter should be at least 10000 times larger than the resistance of the sensor.

Deviations from the ideal electrode

Nothing is perfect, not even a pH electrode. It has a couple of shortcomings:

Different sources of error in the output voltage of a pH electrode. The pH measurement is a potentiometric measurement of a very small potential difference between a measuring electrode and a reference electrode. It's a sensitive measurement, where there are several sources of error inherent in the electrode.

Temperature is an important factor and a source of error in pH measurement.

In strongly acidic and alkaline medium the electrode reacts not only to hydrogen activity.

When we share, we learn from each other!

Feel free to share your experiences and opinions of pH measurements. Submit your article or see contributions from other visitors!


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A Tribute to Our Earth on This Earth Day

To celebrate this Earth Day, an appropriate quote from the ending of my book. I hope it resonates with you on what this day should mean to us all:

“Possibly for the first time since the Universe began, matter and energy have come together in such a way as to be able to ask the ultimate questions about its existence: ‘What am I? How did I get here? Am I alone?’

Humanity lives in a unique moment in history. No civilization on Earth before us has experienced existence in quite the same way. The Mayans, Norte Chico, and Olmec never had our level of education, medicine, and security, not to mention the endless variety of entertainment options at the push of a button. If we could go back in time and experience what the lives of individuals in those early civilizations were like, we would probably be quite content to continue in the present with our air-conditioned homes and indoor plumbing.

Each one of us is a unique thread of existence woven into a vast tapestry called civilization. This tapestry of humanity tells the story of an entire species’ monumental effort to understand and explore its place in the cosmos. All that we have ever learned is contained on this single planet in computer archives, shelved in vast libraries, painted on ancient cave walls, and shared through stories passed down from one generation to the next. This knowledge is worth preserving for future generations of explorers and great thinkers.

We have a duty to all who came before us to act now to counter the threat of countless events that would guarantee our swift destruction, and erase all of our great history. To ensure that as many of those threats as possible are mitigated, we need to keep developing new technologies, secure the world’s infrastructure, and educate the public in science. The dinosaurs didn’t stand a chance against the asteroid that struck them. Humans also almost went extinct before – some say we got down to just 40 breeding pairs – after the supervolcano Toba erupted 72,000 years ago.

In the past, humanity didn’t have the capabilities to prevent or dodge these calamities. Now we do. A diversified residence in the Universe is the ultimate solution to not only humanity’s quest for survival, but also our ability to expand our experiences. Residing on multiple worlds would significantly reduce the risk of any single event wiping out everything we have created in one catastrophic blow. The greatest realization of the lofty goal of colonizing space is that it is entirely possible to make happen. We only need the will and focus to get it done.

Are there alien civilizations that have transcended the struggles that are a part of being an evolving species, and have successfully expanded beyond their home planet? We could learn from them, and perhaps they could learn a few things from us in return. The seeming emptiness of space would not be so empty if we knew of each other. If there are indeed other civilizations out there, it would be smart to present humanity in the best possible way. The scientists leading our quest into space are generally some of the brightest, most noble humans that can represent our ideals.

Although we may yearn for companions in the cosmos, we would be wise to not trust them too hastily. We could do without a stellar “frenemy” – or as they call it in French, faux ami – false friend. Wolves in sheep’s clothing might catch us by surprise; we don’t want to end up like the fools in The Twilight Zone’s episode “To Serve Man.” Feeling lonely might be an unfortunate consequence of being alone, but we might thank the heavens for the rather peaceful rapport with outer space which we have now. Mieux vaut être seul que mal accompagné, a French proverb, translates “It’s better to be alone than in bad company.”

If humanity one day ventures out to explore other star systems, only to discover worlds in ruin that once hosted thriving civilizations, then we should pay tribute to those civilizations and ensure they are remembered. Whatever evidence we can gather of their existence must be studied. And where an extinct civilization is found, a monument should be created there that preserves their identity and way of life, so that future generations can learn from their achievements, and their mistakes.

If dead worlds are indeed all that exists in our cosmic neighborhood, then perhaps we will have to adjust our hopes that a civilization could last for eons, and that we will ever be able to share our experiences with another intelligent species. We might have to accept that a more realistic goal for all civilizations is merely to live well and discover what they can, alone, in the time available to them.

Fate may yet deal us this most dire of cards as we attempt a journey to the stars. Someday humanity might fall back to a primitive society here on Earth, perhaps forever. If we at least did our best to establish a unified civilization that reached as far as it could into the depths of space, then maybe that is all that counts. Perhaps it will be some alien visitors eons from now that memorialize our once great civilization. They may honor the efforts humanity made to better itself and reach other sentient creatures that were indeed there, but just out of reach.

The ultimate quest then may not be to push forever forward one’s own potential, but to learn about and remember the dignity of others. It is my hope then that we will be remembered well.” – Mathew Anderson

Our Undetermined Future

If we wish to not stumble back into a new dark age, we must do everything humanly possible to avoid the fall of civilization. On a global scale, this means securing our aging power grids from natural disaster or attack, stockpiling key resources such as food, medicine, and water in protected shelters in all major cities, and hardening more military and civilian equipment such as radios, vehicles, and generators. Countries also need to work together instead of against each other to prevent a global catastrophe.

If we fail now to reach outer space and tap the plentiful resources there, humanity may be doomed to a limited existence on Earth, disaster torn and eventually reduced to a patchwork of wandering groups in a hostile and energy-starved environment. Subsequently, we may plateau at a much more primitive stage of development than what we have now. Civilization could be set so far back that we would never be able to travel into outer space again. Children in the new world would read about the old ideals through tattered history books, flipping past images of great cities and rocket ships from what was once a grand civilization largely devoid of the problems they now faced.

Idiocracy (2006) is a satirical science fiction comedy movie set in a dystopian future 500 years from present day. All of the modern conveniences are exaggerated, such as microwave meals, easy access to goods, and a sense of individual freedom and superiority. Society is seen to have long ago reached its peak of intellectual greatness, now instead being pictured as a dumb society reliant on the system for literally every facet of life. Intellectualism is viewed as a threat, and technological progress has screeched to a halt. While life continues on, it is evident that eventually the species itself is destined to having a reduced intelligence, progressing within a handful of generations to a stage not much smarter than the great apes themselves.

Whether it’s an immediate disaster, or the slow decline of our species intellectual capacity (‘intellectual fatigue’ as I call it), I personally do not want to ever find myself in that kind of crumbling world. What a tragedy it would be if civilization never recovered from a natural disaster or, worse, a disaster of our own making.

One thing is certain if we ever had to rebuild–for better or worse, the way of life for future generations would never be as it was for those who lost so much the first time around.

The Cosmos as Our Savior

Humanity is currently fighting to stay afloat on the great cosmic barge that is the Earth. Achieving a permanent space presence would present a real jackpot: the resources we can harness from Near Earth Objects (NEOs) like asteroids and the moon. The process of colonizing space can start as a business venture of mining asteroids. Even a medium-sized asteroid contains plenty of water that can be broken down into hydrogen for fuel and oxygen for air, not to mention the billions of dollars’ worth of rare metals. Eventually colonies could be established on Earth’s moon, and thereafter on the moons of the outer gas giants. All is conceivable with today’s great thinkers working on getting us to this point. Expanding our civilization’s presence in the solar system – or maybe even throughout the galaxy – will not be easy or quick, just as it wasn’t for the first explorers who crossed the Atlantic ocean. The exciting part is that the possibilities are endless, just extremely challenging to get started.

While sentient creatures traveling through space might be a temporary blip in the evolution of the Universe, humanity has proven that it can be accomplished at least once. We should refuse to stall our trek to the stars when we haven’t even left the proverbial driveway. Exploring the rest of our cosmic suburbia may prove to reveal only empty houses, but it’s worth every effort because knowledge of the cosmos is empowering to humanity. As far as can be ascertained, we embody the Universe’s best and perhaps only opportunity of leaving a legacy worthy of its existence.

Carl Sagan’s saying “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself” could be applied locally in the sense of “We are a way for the Earth to save itself.” We might one day learn how to prevent natural disasters from occurring. We might also one day learn how to push the planet into an orbit further from the sun in order to escape the sun’s increasing heat. Moving the orbit of the planet may sound extreme, but it should be viewed as a very large engineering challenge to meet and not as an impossibility.

The International Space Station (ISS) is one of many important stepping stones to reaching other locations in the solar system and beyond. All of the other planets and their orbiting moons will provide valuable construction real estate, as well as raw resources, to help encourage our species to reach even further. These worlds will allow us to run experiments which would be impossible on Earth. Many of those experiments will be critical to ensuring the survival of future generations of space explorers that will not have the luxury of returning to Earth.

For instance, it is extremely costly to build a telescope and launch it into space. We would need to spend several billion dollars, and there is great risk of it blowing to smithereens upon launch. If permanent colonies were established in space, telescopes could be built directly there, and be far larger and more effective than anything we could ever launch from Earth. Telescopes could be so massive, in fact, that we could easily peer at the atmospheres of millions of other worlds to see if they have life upon them.

At the very least, space will be impossible to overcrowd. There are enough rocky surface areas in the inner solar system alone to theoretically support trillions of humans and animals, not to mention countless locations for space stations.

If the public views space travel as not worth the risks, then we need to do better to educate the public. Human civilization’s time to colonize space is now, for we may not get a second chance. As we will explore in Our Cosmic Story, this might be equally true for every budding civilization in the Universe. One shot to colonize space is perhaps all that anyone ever gets.

Our Cosmic Story – An Introduction

The editing phase for Our Cosmic Story is nearly finished! To celebrate this upcoming milestone, I am releasing the introduction to the book here as a blog update. I would love to hear what you think of it. Enjoy!

“When scientists are asked what they are working on, their response is seldom ‘Finding the origin of the universe’ or ‘Seeking to cure cancer.’ Usually, they will claim to be tackling a very specific problem – a small piece of the jigsaw that builds up the big picture.” -Martin Rees

It is rare that we get a chance to reflect upon life, to smell the roses or to look at the cosmic picture. Yet it is important to find the time for such reflection when the grand cosmos is on our doorstep. How did life appear on Earth? How did our fantastically complex civilization develop? When will we encounter other civilizations out there, if ever? This book will explore our history and place in the universe, examine why Earth is so hospitable for life and civilization, and consider the likelihood for life to exist on other worlds, some that may be far more different than our own.

The quest to reach beyond the confines of our world is a natural consequence of being a very small part of a grand and dynamic universe. Looking up at the sky instills within us some expectation that we are not alone, and we wonder if there is not something amazing happening out there somewhere. This sense of awe may not be exclusive to Earthlings; for in a galaxy truly far away, there could be creatures with similar musings as they peer towards our corner of the universe. The idea that we share this existence with potential aliens is a recurring theme in this book.

Regardless of the possibility of countless other life forms existing on rocky barges adrift throughout the cosmos, we should still hold the belief that humanity is special. Our world is rare enough that we may appreciate it just as much as if we are in fact alone. Recent studies have shown that, while life’s ingredients are common throughout the universe, the exact quantity and assortment of chemicals and minerals that make up Earth are unlikely to exist elsewhere. This may have significant consequences for life and evolution on another world that’s close in properties, but not quite the same as Earth.

For a close-to-home example, both Mars and Venus can be considered distant cousins of Earth and once thought to be habitable, though you wouldn’t want to book a vacation to either of them anytime soon. While Mars and Venus are rocky bodies with solid cores, Mars today lacks a dense oxygen-rich atmosphere and liquid water on its surface because the planet is simply too small. Venus is nearly the same size as Earth, but is far too close to our scorching sun. There are many other variables of habitability to consider as well, many of which we will explore in upcoming chapters. The physical makeup of the Earth and how it compares to other planets in the solar system is an important starting point for understanding where we may find life elsewhere in the universe.

Even though we may currently be well off on Earth, humanity should make every effort to voyage into space, if only for the practical reason that Earth will not support life forever. We may one day need to flee Earth in order to preserve the existence of our species from a variety of cosmic and terrestrial extinction events, like asteroid impacts and supervolcanoes. Currently, all of our proverbial eggs are dangerously in one basket. While the lack of evidence of life on other worlds may suggest at first that the endeavor to colonize space is futile, this is a dangerous assumption we just cannot afford to make.

The act of colonizing space will of course come at initially great cost, but in the long run it may pay off in ways we cannot even imagine. Many great explorers like Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan and Charles Darwin risked their lives and boldly faced peril to sail across vast oceans in the name of science and discovery. Diseases and other formidable barriers attempted to stop them from making progress, but they pushed on in the hope that a better future lay ahead. These great explorers, and many great thinkers throughout history, have helped to lay the foundation of our civilization as it stands today.

Whatever our future may hold, let us not forget where we came from or fail to cherish this home base. Protecting the Earth for as long as possible may be important for facilitating our ability to leave it someday – and perhaps in our need to return to it, should space be more unforgiving than we had realized. The Earth is not a place that we can spoil with the assumption that a better one will eventually be found. Assuming in advance that our existence in the cosmos is assured will be the ultimate undoing of our way of life. Many of Earth’s past civilizations made this arrogant assumption about their destinies, and it resulted in their swift demise.

In order to begin to understand how we achieved all that we have so far, and further our chances of carrying our knowledge into space, there is one thing that must always be with us: a sense of hope and drive to improve the whole of civilization, beyond just our own lives. The motivation to pass down prosperity to future generations has the power to be a catalyst for expanding into a spacefaring civilization that can counter the constant threats against our one world. While great things will still be accomplished if we stay grounded to the Earth, it will be tragic if humanity one day forgets that we once long ago nearly made it to the stars, but did not.

I hope that this book heightens your sense of wonder about our tiny but special place in the cosmos, as well as fires your imagination and intensifies your intrigue in exploring the potential for other worlds where human civilization may one day call home.

– Mathew Anderson, Our Cosmic Story

The Fermi Paradox – “Where Is Everybody?”

An excerpt of The Fermi Paradox in the last chapter, ‘Chapter 9: Is Anybody Out There?’:

Italian physicist Enrico Fermi asked in an informal chat over lunch in 1950 with other physicists, “Where is everybody?”

The question has been asked as long as humans have known that space is filled with so much more than seemingly nearby twinkling lights, and the question boggles the brains of astronomers to this day.

When Fermi asked the famous question, scientists thought that there should be countless civilizations in nearby space, and at least some should be easily detectable.

The question by Fermi became known as the Fermi Paradox. Fermi and his colleagues considered it a conundrum that if intelligent life in the universe should be, based on their observations, plentiful, then why had we been unable to make contact with anyone? We know that there are billions of stars in the Milky Way, and at least 10% of those stars are sun-like and thus conducive to hosting a habitable planet. More recently we have learned that there are at least as many planets as there are stars. With this in mind, we may suppose that there could be millions of intelligent civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy alone! This again begs the question, “Where are they?”

While the majority of civilizations may never make it out of their star system, or even off their planet, pure statistical reasoning suggests that some of them should have. Humans on Earth have shown that it is possible to achieve space travel. We also know enough about physics and space to suggest that interstellar travel is not impossible. Amongst the intelligent lifeforms in the galaxy, humans, it ought to be presumed, are of average intelligence; if this is so, then it follows that aliens of greater intelligence should be able to travel through the galaxy. Space is vast, but Fermi and others thought that with technological prowess that far outweighs our own, some alien civilizations should have been able to tour the galaxy many times already.

Is life and eventually the evolution of intelligent creatures a freak occurrence in the cosmos? We know that there are about 40 billion sun-like stars in the galaxy and, according to data from the Keck Observatory and the Kepler spacecraft, 20% of sun-like stars in the Milky Way have an earth-sized planet in the habitable zone. Statistical probabilities alone tell us then that planets with life and, by extension, intelligent civilizations, should be scattered throughout the galaxy. Life then should not be a freak occurrence.

The mediocrity principle states that any single item selected at random from a set of items, such as any given star selected at random from a set of stars, will likely be a more common item in the set than a rarer item. For example, 70% of all stars in the galaxy are Red Dwarfs. The mediocrity principle suggests that if we randomly selected a star from the galaxy, it would likely be a Red Dwarf. The same goes for planets like Earth and, by extension, life and civilization. Since we know that Earth exists, then it is reasonable to assume that Earth is not of the rarest category of planet, and neither are we as intelligent creatures. Moreover, it becomes quite unreasonable to propose that we are entirely alone in the universe.

If this principle of mediocrity applies, then, indeed, where are they?

There are many theories about why we have not yet detected an alien civilization, but we can divide the theories into two groups: detection and existence. That alien civilizations are out there and we have simply failed to detect them is one possibility – it is quite another to realize that there may be none out there at all, at least at the present time. There may be an insurmountable progress barrier that stops them (and eventually us) from advancing far enough to be detected.

Read more when the book becomes available later this year at:

The Oregon Trail and Great Distances

Editing of the last chapter of the book is in sight! 3 months writing, 13 months editing, whew! Here is the kick-off to ‘Chapter 8: The Scale of Things’. A nod to all my gamer friends:

The Oregon Trail was a popular video game when computers were just becoming available to the public in the 1970s. The most popular version of the game later arrived in schools on the Apple II in 1985. The game helped to raise awareness of the actual Oregon Trail in the United States which spanned from the eastern state of Missouri to Willamette Valley in Oregon. The trail extended about 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) at its peak use in the mid-1800s with over 412,000 settlers, traders, miners, and others using the trail to access rich farmlands and growing towns along the upper west coast.

A half century went by before the Oregon Trail was completed and used regularly. Traversing the trail could take as long as 170 days, especially when traveling with children and heavy belongs that slowed down progress. If you were a pioneer in charge of exploring the west coast for farmland, the trail could be traversed in as little as 120 days. Completing the route today would take (also with considerations of sleep and other needs in mind) 14 days by pedal bike, 3 days by car, and a brisk (though still arguably just as uncomfortable) 4 hours by plane.

The trail was extremely dangerous, even at its peak upkeep in the mid-1800s. The most dangerous part of the trek were the many rivers wagon parties had to cross. For every river traversed, another threatened to tear out a wheel axle, drown the helpless that fell off and were dragged under current, or cause illnesses and frostbite along rivers high in the mountains. Food had to be hunted and eaten on the spot before it spoiled. On many occasions, threats from Indians or even other wagon parties could spell doom for those traveling alone.

Initial expeditions and journeys into new lands are nearly always a dangerous task, especially when the distances involved open up the opportunity for accidents, disease, and death to occur with no help in sight. As we advance in our knowledge of the dangers and ways to mitigate them, we not only create a safer path for others to follow, but faster to traverse as well. Airplanes are not only the safest way today to get from Missouri to Oregon, but by far the fastest. Every technological advance humanity has made over the last two centuries has brought us one step closer to that four hour reality we enjoy today.

Outer space will provide a new frontier in exploring vast areas that are orders of magnitude in scale beyond the travel times of the Oregon Trail. The moon is on average about 384,400 kilometers from Earth, or about 120 times the distance of the Oregon Trail. Light travels at the blistering speed of 299,792 kilometers per second, yet it would still take over a second to reach the moon. Using the latest in-use rocket technologies, the fastest we could get to the moon is about three days. We could get there in a quick eight hours or less though if we didn’t care to slow down or stop for a visit.

Three days is just a long weekend, which doesn’t sound so bad for traveling to such a cool place as the moon, until you scale distances up in magnitude. Using planetary gravity to slingshot a spaceship to higher speeds by hitching a ride around another planet’s gravity field, it still takes about ten years to get to the furthest planet in the solar system–Neptune. At Neptune’s closest approach to Earth, which is 4.3 billion kilometers away, it is a mind boggling 1.3 million times farther than the length of the Oregon Trail. Without rest and at the modest pace of 25 kilometers per hour (wagon speed), it would take 53,000 years to reach Neptune.

Our Cosmic Story – The Opening of Chapter 9, Is Anybody Out There?

The last chapter’s opening has been written! Hope you find it intriguing. I want you to buy the book after-all :). Thank you for reading:

“Despite all that we have come to know about the universe, there is still so much left to understand about the probability of life elsewhere. There are many unknowns yet to explore, and surely just as many that we can’t even imagine, but we can start with what we know about Earth and the solar system to hypothesize. The gaps in our knowledge are being filled in with new data all the time, but scientists admit that there is a lot of uncertainty about what we might find.

The solar systems we have discovered so far with the Kepler Space Telescope indicate that our own solar system is not the normal configuration of planets and other bodies one would expect. In fact, we have thus far detected no two similar solar systems. The galaxy contains a virtual zoo of various sizes, orbits, and compositions of solar systems. Some have massive Jupiter-sized planets hugging their parent stars, while many have a super-Earth. Others have no asteroid belt at all, and at least one solar system we know of has a massive asteroid belt many times greater than our own. There are even solar systems with four or more orbiting planets that could fit within the orbit of Mercury!

Partly because solar systems are so diverse and not of the expected norm, detecting life on these other worlds is one of the most challenging things humans have ever set out to accomplish. Excitingly, we are just now developing the technology to detect the gases in the atmospheres of worlds outside our solar system, which will tell us a lot about any life there. Certain gases like oxygen and methane, especially in combination, can indicate the presence of life. Future generations of telescopes will greatly improve our ability to make more detailed observations.

Detecting life’s signatures on these worlds may be as far as our technology will ever be able to provide. Because of the vast distances involved, we may never know how alien life differs from that on Earth. They may have four arms, multiple brains, or a host of unique senses that don’t even exist on our planet. Life must conform to the laws of physics and chemistry regardless of where it comes from though, so some features are bound to be similar to creatures on Earth, while others are just as likely to be more different than our wildest science fiction stories can craft.”

Our Cosmic Story by Mathew Anderson, available late spring at:

On the Shoulders of Giants – Quotes from Great Thinkers

To add a little spice to my upcoming book about life, civilization, and the universe, each chapter is kicked off by a quote from a great thinker from civilization’s deep history. These quotes closely tie into what you will be reading throughout the chapter. Here they all are in one scoop!

Chapter 2 – Evolution and the Building Blocks of Life: “The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.” – Richard Dawkins

Chapter 3 – The Rise of Civilization on Earth: “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.” – Carl Sagan

Chapter 4 – The Engine of Modern Civilization: “Modern technology has become a total phenomenon for civilization, the defining force of a new social order in which efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity imposed on all human activity.” – Jacques Ellul

Chapter 5 – A House of Cards: “Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we’re still at the mercy of nature.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson

Chapter 6 – Exploring the Cosmos: “I think it would be a very rash presumption to think that nowhere else in the cosmos has nature repeated the strange experiment which she has performed on Earth.”
– Harlow Shapley

Chapter 7 – The Boundaries of Habitability: “Some may argue that a diamond is still a diamond, even if it is one among millions. It still shines as brightly.” – Guinan, Star Trek: The Next Generation

Chapter 9 – Is Anybody Out There?: “In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree.” – Richard Dawkins

Summary – A Lonely Pale Blue Dot, Likely One Among Many: “Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring–not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.” – Carl Sagan

I hope you like the quotes that I chose! Stay tuned for more about the book in this regular blog series. As the podcast is rolled out later next month, I will add more related juicy posts here.

Meanwhile, if you like what you see in this book’s premise and these associated updates, I would greatly appreciate support by following @OurCosmicStory on Twitter and Facebook. Thank you!

Do Aliens Cry?

I wrote this post last year as a reflection from the season finale of Cosmos. An interesting related topic to the upcoming book. Have a read:

The long history of Earth’s roaming bands, tribal groups, and eventually great civilizations like the Roman empire came close to seeing the Universe as we do today, but just missed its grandness. For the first time in our planet’s history, we have the opportunity to complete a monumental quest in understanding our place in the Universe. How many other worlds that are out there that have accomplished the same thing may be irrelevant. Just knowing that we did it is what counts.

I wonder if aliens, should they exist, are like us at all? Maybe we compare to aliens just like they are depicted in so many science fiction stories. While nature has restrictions, it also shows incredible variety. Perhaps they are even more like us than we would think possible at first–even uncomfortably so. Eyes have independently evolved several times on Earth, so some aliens probably have eyes in which to see their surroundings.

Take a look up at the night sky tonight and count the stars. If there are none to be seen, imagine for a moment thousands of them turning on and off over millions of years, like a never ending ocean of lighthouses.

That’s our Universe breathing.

Are those the lucky stars that have life bearing planets? What are their worlds like? Do their civilizations go through all of the trials and tribulations that we humans have struggled with for eons? What similar hopes and fears do all aliens share? Perhaps they are experiencing right now such horrors that even us war mongering humans could never have imagined to befall a conscious creature that is capable of experiences pain.

Do alien children go to school, grow up into adults, get jobs, have a family, and then retire? Do they have vast cities with streets that extend for miles, where anyone can walk endlessly to ponder their own existence? Are those streets lined with the inevitable consequences of civilization’s engine, such as clothing shops, grocery stores, banks, schools, and prisons?

Do aliens cry?

Will we ever defy the seemingly impossibility of swimming through an ocean of harmful radiation and other unseen icebergs that extends for eons in order to meet these other worlds? If humanity one days comes to the conclusion that we are alone for all practical purposes, would that change the way we think of ourselves on the only planet we know can support us? Would it change us otherwise?

With our present knowledge of physics, astronomy, and practical reasoning, even if there are alien civilizations out there right now, we may never meet. We are ships passing in the night, never to experience each others’ interests. When we look up at the night sky, we see the dim light of a countless ocean of stars with one every few thousand years sprouting a civilization, only for that civilization to be destroyed before we could ever hope to make contact.

No, I don’t think aliens, or ourselves, should shed a tear for each other. Instead, we should be excited that we all have the ability to at least make the attempt to find each other among the grand emptiness. The ultimate achievement in any species should be its ability to discover and learn from what possibilities exist, and what boundaries remain firm. We need to march forward on this quest, despite our deepest hopes and dreams, for it may be the only truly universal worthwhile goal that we can all share in.

Isn’t it worth celebrating that a place like our world could exist elsewhere, and if statistical reasoning has anything to say about it, just may do so in countless other corners of the galaxy and beyond? I only shed a single tear in comfort that alien civilizations probably reflecting the same as we do in some way. It doesn’t matter whether they do so at this very moment, have done so millenia ago, or have yet to exist and will be destined to do so a millenia from now.

Let’s find out though, shall we?

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How to Select Good Essay Topic

Selecting an Interesting Essay Topic

Most of the Article/Blog writers nowadays must be pretty much comfortable in writing essays of various types. But many of them are not aware that there are different categories of essay types if we differentiate them. Perhaps there is no significant/practical use in having the knowledge of essay categories. It is still be worth in spending a while to know about those categories as “essay topics” has become a part of our life.

Academic essay writing in schools/colleges is how essay topics have entered into our life. This is a competition where the student has to present his/her views on the given subject.

A Technology essay demonstrates about a technology and uses lot of other sources of technical information to support/prove the writer’s ideas about the technology. Research papers/thesis can also be categorized in Technology essays as they also require rigorous research and secondary sources to support the main subject. This is the primary difference between Academic essay writing where the writer doesn’t need to present any support information and the Technology essay.

An essay that presents information about a constitution, its laws and regulations those essays come under law essays. Some times essays on politics, economics, psychology etc also be categorized under law essays. This research papers require presenting many references to support the writer’s idea and always demand great research about the society.

As the name suggests, history essays are the essays that are written about the ancient times, human history, great civilizations, memorable past events of a nation etc. History essays mainly deal with how new ideas are generated and transformed from one group of people to another. History essays are very interesting and sometimes fun because these deals with how new inventions which are now very useful are happened.

Narrative essays include essays on dramas, tales, novels, movies or on the writer’s own experiences etc. They can also be defined as Creative essays. This essays topics sometimes give valuable feedback on the original ones including critics. These essays may narrate the story in a different way than the original so sometimes it might be little different from the audience point of view. Often these essays might change the audience opinion also. Romeo and Juliet essay may narrate the original story line written by William Shakespeare or may describe other features of the novel like great literature of the novel.

There are many more custom essay topics like critical assays, romantic essays, philosophy essays, religious essays etc and it goes on. Under one roof they can be kept as General essays…

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William Pynchon Biography

Pynchon was a controversial Puritan landowner and community leader who actively challenged the theological visions offered by the church. Though his writings had little impact on the religious climate in England, they were important expressions of enlightened inquiry in the New World. A strong believer in individual freedom and intellectual inquiry, Pynchon clashed with the Puritan hierarchy, who ultimately banned his works.

Pynchon was one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and he became a prominent farmer and trader in that region. In 1641 he founded the town of Springfield, and served as treasurer and justice in the Connecticut and Bay colonies until 1651. Yet despite his powerful position within the Puritan community, he diverged from the religious orthodoxy and commercial conservatism. As early as 1638 he took a controversial stand on the granting of fur-trade monopolies on the grounds that they curtailed individual determination. He was further branded a renegade after he removed Springfield from the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay government.

These actions contributed to the larger denunciation of the man and his works. In 1650 Pynchon published The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption, which attacked the central tenets of Puritan theology by suggesting that Jesus Christ did not pay for man’s sins. The book was burned, and a day of fasting and humiliation was proclaimed to purge the colonies of Pynchon’s heresy.

Despite the attempts at censorship, Pynchon never made a full retraction. He went on to publish two more editions of his book in 1655, building on his eloquent and well-reasoned rebuttals of extreme Puritan theology. His scholarly reevaluation of theology in the colonies was carried further in Pynchon’s The Jewes Synagogue (1652) and The Covenant of Nature Made with Adam (1662).


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No. The transaction log is not compressed in any way under any circumstances. Rows from tables and indexes that have compression enabled will be logged in their row compressed forms, even if page compression is enabled.

Does data compression compress LOB columns?

No. There is no native compression support for any LOB columns (n/text, image, n/varchar(max), varbinary(max), XML), whether stored in-row or out-of-row. There's also no native compression support for FILESTREAM data.

Does log shipping use compression to compress the logs being shipped?

Log shipping does not ship transaction logs – it ships log *backups*. If backup compression is enabled for the instance hosting the log shipping primary database, or the log shipping job is changed to enable backup compression, then the log backups will be compressed and less data will be sent over the wire to the log shipping secondary(s).

Is backup compression the same as log stream compression with database mirroring?

No. Backup compression compresses backups (see my previous blog post here). Log stream compression with database mirroring compresses transaction log records before sending them between the principal and the mirror (see my previous blog post here).

Should I just turn on backup compression at the instance level?

Not necessarily. It depends whether the majority of database on the instance will benefit from backup compression. Backup compression (and any compression algorithm) uses CPU whether a decent compression ratio is achieved or not. Check what compression ratio is achieved first and then enable backup compression if its worth it. Otherwise, just enable it for individual databases.

Does data compression use the same algorithm as backup compression?

No. Backup compression uses a proprietary block-based compression algorithm that is part of Windows. Data compression uses up to 3 algorithms, depending on the level of compression configured. Row compression just makes all non-LOB columns into variable-length columns. Page compression does row compression, then common-prefix compression for each table columns, then common-value dictionary compression for each page. Details can be found at the following BOL sections: Row Compression Implementation  and Page Compression Implementation.

Hope this helps!


Sandy Beach 3D Screensaver 1.0

"Sandy Beach 3D Screensaver" snapshot

Tranquility, endless ocean, sun-soaked sand. A light breeze, the roar of waves and not a soul nearby. Would you like to go to this paradise? Sandy Beach 3D puts a private beach on your desktop. It won't wash away the icons but it will help you relax!

Software information
Windows 7/Vista/XP
File size:
32.65 Mb
Date added:
August 8, 2012
Product page:
Description from the Publisher
Allow yourself to be carried away to a forgotten island where time stands still. Watch gentle waves lap at the shore while you feel the sea breeze on your skin. Grab a seashell that was swept onshore by a foamy wave and leave your footprints in the wet sand... You don't have to go to the ends of the earth to get to this paradise! Download the animated screensaver Sandy Beach 3D and meditate on this natural beauty at any time of the day.
Users reviews & testimonials

This software is not reviewed yet.

Other downloads from this publisher

A legendary American 4-4-0 train will take you on a wonderful journey. You'll visit a small western town with its railway station, industrial area, and ore mining works. Enjoy an exciting journey across the breathtaking views of the western railway!

You are a sea explorer searching for unknown mystery hidden in the blue depth. In the distance you see a mysterious ancient sunken ship. Once it furrowed the seas and now it is in profound sleep dreaming of waves and sails spread to the wind.

Launch a true marvel of engineering on your own computer screen! These steam-powered mechanisms work non-stop to always give you the exact time. A gnome feeds coal into the heart of this amazing contraption so that not a second slips by...

Say goodbye to snow and freezing cold, and hello to spring! This animated springtime screensaver will put spring on your computer and on your mind. Babbling streams, the first blossoms and birds coming home - savor it all from your office chair!

Faraway Planet 3D Screensaver combines peace, calm and tranquility with an alien world beauty. It is an attractive, yet otherworldly environment designed to create a sense of serenity and exotic beauty on your pc screen.


This is an experiment to embed Processing sketches in my blog.
To achive this I used the iframe html code:
iframe src=”http://www.yourserverdomain/applet/index.html” height=”500″ width=”500″

The ‘applet’ folder is the folder in the root of the server where the processing html, jar, and pde files are placed. For this action you need a web server, for example the one where your website is located.


This article is intended as an overview of patent litigation in China.  It is not intended to be an all inclusive know-how guide for litigation in China.  For detailed case specific information, please contact us
separately with detailed information.

According to Chinese Patent Law § 11, any entity or person cannot use the patent without the permission from the patentee.  Use means manufacturing, producing, offering to sale, selling, or importing the
patented product, or implementing the patented method or using, offering to sale, selling, importing products manufactured employing such method.

According to Chinese Patent Law § 57, if someone employs the patented technology without the permission of the patentee or assignee, he or she is infringing on the patent rights of the patentee.  As a matter of principle, the disputing parties should negotiate to settle the disputes.

When the parties cannot reach an agreement, there are two paths to resolve the differences: (1) filing a lawsuit in People’s court or (2) seeking administrative relief from the patent administration agency residing
in each province or city.

Patent administration agencies are those executive agencies that have the capacity to determine accusation
of infringement and to issue administration orders to stop such activity.  If the agency determines that there is in fact infringement, the agency can order the other party to stop such activity that constituted infringement.  If the other party disagrees with the determination, the other party can appeal to the People’s court.  If the other party does not respond to the cessation order and continues with activities infringing the patent under consideration, the agency will apply for a court order to compel compliance.

The agency can also mediate in determining damages.  However, the agency cannot order any party to pay damages nor can determine the exact amount of damages.  If parties cannot reach an agreement, parties
can file suits in the people’s court seeking damages.

This resolution method has its advantages and disadvantages.  The advantage is that this method is relatively easy to invoke and enforce.  There is normally no fine or damage involved.  The agency simply orders the other party to cease certain activity.  Therefore, the decision is normally easier to be accepted
by the other party.  Another advantage is that this method is usually cheaper since there is no court cost
and relatively low attorney’s fees.  The disadvantage is that there is no time limit as to when the agency should render its decision (the courts have time limits for rendering decisions).  Therefore, the process might be stretched out to relatively long duration due to local protective influence.  And once a resolution path is selected, one cannot abandon the selected one and choose the other path. Therefore, one cannot file suits to courts when this administrative proceeding gets mired in the process.

There are four levels of courts in China.  The basic court resides in each local district.  Above basic court
is mid-level court.  To review mid-level courts’ decision, one has to seek review from the provincial
Supreme Court.  If one is not satisfied with the decision of the provincial Supreme Court, one can appeal
to the Supreme Court of China.

For patent litigation, only certain mid-level courts can hear the cases.  One has to file to the specified court or the filing will be rejected for lack of jurisdiction.  For example, in Beijing, one has to file to the Beijing First Mid-level Court for patent matters.  If one is dissatisfied with the mid-level court’s administrative decision, one can appeal to the Beijing Supreme Court.  The Beijing Supreme Court is required to hear the appeal.  After the Beijing Supreme Court renders its decision, one can still seek
review from the Supreme Court of China.  This review is elective, not mandatory.

The time limit to bring an infringement lawsuit in China is two years from the time the infringed
party knows or should have known about the infringing activity.  If the party already knows about the infringing activity before the granting of the patent, the two years starts when the patent is issued.

Under Chinese civil law, whoever brings a lawsuit has the burden of proof.  Therefore, under normal situations, the plaintiff has the burden to prove that the alleged
infringing activity is within the protection scope of his or her patent.  Specifically,
one has to provide proof as to (1) the exact protection scope of his or her patent and
its current status; (2) the time, location and activity by the defendant that constituted infringement; (3) the activity of the defendant is within the scope of the patent under consideration.

An exception to this rule is for manufacturing method claims.  Since the method is
only used in the manufacturing process, it would be difficult for the plaintiff to obtain actual objective proof.  Therefore, the burden is shifted onto the defendant to proof
that the method he or she is using to manufacture the product does not infringe on the patent right of the plaintiff.  If the defendant cannot disprove the allegation, the court presumes infringement.

Basic Process

The plaintiff in the lawsuit can file to the specified mid-level court in the area with an allegation of infringement.  The plaintiff should provide enough documents or sample for the court to determine the scope of the suit.  Normally, such documents include patent claims, other party’s product or other technical documents showing    the alleged infringement.

After the plaintiff files for infringement to the     court, the defendant has 15 days to file to the patent

review board to invalidate the patent after receiving the complaint.  For foreign entities that do not have addresses in China, the time is 30 days after receiving the complaint.

At this point, for different types of patent, the litigation process is different.  For invention type of patents, the court usually ignores the invalidation filing since all invention type patents have been examined substantively, so there should not be any question of validity.  Therefore, the trial would go on at this point for invention type patents.

For utility model and design patents, since there was no substantive examination in the prosecution process, the patent review board will accept the invalidation request and re-examine the patents substantively.  While the re-examination is in process, the trial is paused pending the end result of the
re-examination.  The re-examination process normally takes about one year.

After the patent board has determined the validity of the patent, the trial now can continue.  A lot of times the patent will be invalidated, and therefore, the trial is over.  Another result might be partial invalidation, meaning some claims were invalidated, but there are still valid claims.  The court, then,
will use the remaining valid claims to continue examine the infringement claims.  If the patentee is dissatisfied with the decision of the board, the patentee can file for judicial review of the board’s decision as a separate trial.

Because of this re-examination process, a lot of patentees choose other methods to enforce their patents before filing lawsuits.  One method is sending the alleged infringer a warning letter asking to stop using the technology, or negotiating with the other party to reach an agreement such as a
licensing agreement or some sort of restitution solution.

After the validity of the patent is no longer in dispute, the court will send out investigators to the defendant’s factory or production facility to seek evidence on behave of the plaintiff upon motion by the plaintiff.  All the technical evidence including things such as product manuals, actual product,
patent description and claims, and etc is then sent to a certified expert organization to compare the technical aspect of the plaintiff’s claims against the product of the defendant.  The result of such organization can now be questioned.  Things such as the expertise of the person given the report can
be disputed.

One of the items the court seeks from the defendant is the general Léger of the defendant.  A
certified accounting firm is used to determine the profits or losses the defendant has accumulated by using the alleged infringing technology.  This figure is used for the court to determine final damages.

After considering the technology comparison results from the expert organization, if the court determines that there is actual infringement, the court will pronounce that the patent was infringed.
A board of no less than three judges renders the decision.  Normally, a senior level judge is the leader
of the team, but in actual practice, normally one judge will make the decision.

After the mid level court has rendered its decision, the plaintiff or defendant has 15 days to appeal to the provincial Supreme Court after receiving the decision.  (For foreign entities that do not have addresses in China, the time is 30 days after receiving the decision.)  The appeal brief has to be filed
to the court that renders the decision.  A fee is required to start the appeal process.  If within 7 days
the appellant does not pay the fee, the appeal is then considered withdrawn.  After the fee is paid, the mid-level court then transfers the files to the provincial Supreme Court.  The same procedure is used
to appeal to the Supreme Court of China.

The court will take into account the following factors to determines the damage:

 Damage to the plaintiff
 Benefit to the defendant
 Multiple of license cost (1-3 times)
 Official restitution damage

The basic principle of determining damage is restitution.  If the damage to the plaintiff can be determined, the award is normally determined by such damage.  If the damage to the plaintiff cannot
be determined or there is no measurable damage to the plaintiff, then the benefit to the defendant is used.  However, if there is no measurable benefit or the defendant actually suffered a loss in the process, the multiple of license fees or preset restitution damage is then used.

The present restitution damage is a set of numbers ranging from 5,000 RMB to 500,000 RMB.  The determination of such damage is rather arbitrary.  The judge will make a decision as to how much one should pay as restitution depending on how severe the judge considers the infringement activity is.
This method of damage determination has been greatly criticized due to its arbitrary nature. Therefore, a new method of using multiple of license fees is used today.  This method gives the
plaintiff the amount of damage equal to a multiple of the license fees the plaintiff is actually receiving. The multiple is normally one to three times.

There is no punitive damage in China.  Only restitution can be obtained.

Before filing a lawsuit if a party can show with objective proof that the infringement is in process and would caused severe harm or property damage if not stopped, then a party can apply for an
injunction to the People’s court to stop the infringing activity.

The Chinese patent law does provide a method to control exportation of infringing products from China. After obtaining the patent, a patentee can register the patent with the Chinese Customs Office by filling
out certain forms.  The Customs Office has the duty and responsibility to seize the alleged infringing product.  In practice, the Customs have almost always relied on tips from patentees or his licensees for information regarding the infringing product.  Nevertheless, this is still a way to enforce one’s patent
rights.  After the goods are seized, the patentee or his licensee can seek either administrative relief or file a lawsuit as we discussed above.

Client Testimonial


Saturday, November 6, 2010

I've said it before but it's totally worth repeating:  Start a Roth IRA as soon as possible.  Even if you can only invest $50 a month when you start, it will help you in the long run.  Tonight I made a new friend while at a bar with some other friends.  She is a stage manager on a Broadway show.  She started a Roth IRA at the age of 22 when she graduated from college.  Since she started her Roth at such a young age, she only has to invest $200 a month until retirement to get around 1.6 million dollars!  But if she were to wait till the age of 32, she'd have to invest $500 a month to get the same amount by retirement.  So, start ASAP.  The sooner you start investing, the sooner that money turns into more money.  Awesome, right?


Chinese astrology rabbit and horse

Simple chinese astrology rabbit and horse treacherous, and

I love numerologia 9 data urodzenia my horoscope at the beginning of each month from a few different sources, and it has totally panned out a few times. On the sky they are 30 apart. Brass instruments are made all over the world, but primarily in the USA, Germany, France, and China. You have to make a decision to be who you SHOULD be as revealed by your birth rabbif. KDeus - It's great that your parents gave you a name that you love. But Chineze Fredrik expected Tycho Brahe to make annual predictions. whether financial or physical involving other people will always make you horrse mistakes check the small print, then check it again. Hi sir, My daughter date of birth on 02 Chlnese 2017,could you please say the good chineee for new name. The deeply discounted rate of supply cost plus my time for 79 was a very exclusive and rare offering for a select number of new potential clients. Mars is fire and energy. However, they also require loyalty, and will not take kindly to your request to spend a quiet weekend tending to the garden. Throughout history, calendars were developed chinese astrology rabbit and horse different cultures to serve different chinese astrology rabbit and horse. There are four sunflowers, representing the four suits of the Minor Arcana, as well as the four elements. The 4 person will obey all the commands of No. The trick is to find, and continue to find, grounds for marriage. There are also numerous clues as to the pathways out of such toxicity and back into the light. Looking for a person with common values. The origins of the actual precise astrological horoscope (horoscopic astrology), chinese astrology rabbit and horse includes the Ascendant or Rising sign, etc. Anybody can take help of numerology for his success. In order to have a harmonious relationship, it's important that asgrology and the other person understand each other on an emotional level. Therefore believing in something which does not exist is, to say the least, absurd. This is the first time I have seen something like this. Pisces. For example the letter H is an 8, the letter N is a 5 and the rabgit R is a 9. What one does year 2016 predictions numerology cover, the other typically will. Calculate all important numerology numbers, expression charts, cinese cycles rabnit much more. If U r a girl you will be a chinese astrology rabbit and horse woman in astroloogy whole U r a man you will involve in fights arguments in the family or vice-versa. This is part 1 of the timeline of British Rule in India, and the major marriage timing vedic astrology took place in the period of 1498 to 1858 AD. Ignoring your goal number, and not following your Life Path tends to bring on the negative chinese astrology rabbit and horse of this number. But in actual, Hindus are not more than 65and when we think of entire Indian subcontinent, they are less than 40. Steadfast and dedicated to the cause, they frequently make great spouses and business associates, but friendships may be strained occasionally.

24.03.2015 at 05:55 Gogul:
Everything, everything.

26.03.2015 at 02:53 Tegis: