The original Pons/Fleischmann experiment was deeply flawed, and it seems the same errors are reproduced in followup experiments these past 30 or so years. The Pons/Fleischmann apparatus was not properly purged of He before the experiment. An independent examination of their electrodes, ‘Measuring helium in electrolyzed palladium’ precisely quantified the presence of He in the P/F electrodes, but one lab noted that this looked like the palladium contained He from a manufacturing process. Precious metals are typically processed with an induction furnace and an inert atmosphere of helium or argon.  “Induction furnaces are widely used throughout metallurgy not just because of their efficient melting abilities, but also because of their usefulness in forging new alloys. Because induction is a no-contact process that doesn’t utilize combustion, induction furnaces can work in inert atmospheres and vacuums – which is necessary when creating alloys that oxidize if heated in the presence of air. As an additional benefit, the magnetic forces in an induction furnace can be directed to stir the molten metal, which is very useful for creating fully homogenized alloys.”    So, there really is no question of a nuclear fusion reaction without any validated reaction products. That the same errors are repeated over and over again by cold fusion proponents in search of a positive result suggests something pathological.
Cold fusion is being mentioned a lot lately because of some new setup that apparently works. This is an unverified claim.  See for example:         ( of that last link in the Wayback Machine, given frequent  from that page.)   While we should give the scientific community time to evaluate the set up and eventually replicate the results, there is undoubtedly some skepticism that cold fusion would work at all, because the claim is quite extraordinary.  In the past, after Fleischmann and Pons announced their cold fusion results, in perfectly good faith, they were proven wrong by subsequent experiments.  What are the experimental realities that make Fleischmann and Pons style cold fusions experiments easy to get wrong?  Would the same risks apply to this new set up?
How does a graduate program's admissions committee operate? How does a typical graduate program's admissions committee operate? (In the US --- I understand that in Europe admissions are often structured differently.)  My mental model at the moment is several professors sitting in a conference room with a stack of printed applications and a few piles: accept, maybe, and reject. Three or so professors will read an application and then make a decision. If the volume of applications is large enough, multiple meetings might be required. This is purely my imagination --- I don't know how accurate this model is.  Of course, I'm sure that how admissions are handled depends greatly on the school, program, and department. I'm interested in a few data points to get a rough idea of what the average is.  A few more specific related questions:   How much time does a typical committee spend on each application? I suspect there's a distribution. Obviously unqualified applicants will probably have their applications tossed into the reject pile pretty quickly. Qualified applicants' applications might receive more attention. Do admissions committees look online for more information about an applicant? I've read some professors (in CS --- not my field) will look at a student's research/project website, but I have no idea how common this is. Meta sites in "Your Communities" display different reputation While using the top bar to navigate across communities, I noticed that the reputation displayed on meta sites on that list does not match the one of their corresponding main sites:    I have noticed on past situations that reputation gained takes a bit to "update" on the display on Meta sites (that is, if you gain rep on SO, for example, it will take some time for you to see your updated rep on MSO).  However, I have never noticed this behavior here, on the Sites List of the top bar. Furthermore, the "delay" here seems to be more severe, as the "outdated" rep showed is of several days ago (for example, I turned 3k on SO almost exactly a week ago, but the rep shown on MSO is still &lt;3k).  Any idea what could be causing this behavior?    Update: 2 months later this persists: my main site rep updates correctly but their corresponding meta rep remains the same as in the image above.     Update: As per Catija's  I removed the site (MSO) and put it back in, but it didn't update the rep.   However, after removing one site (TWP Meta), waiting at least a day, and then adding it back I see that although the reputations still don't match, the number displayed did changed a bit (previously 29,924 but now 33,112): Does Overhand Chop override the damage bonus from wielding a two handed weapon? I was showing a GM friend of mine a build I was making that uses the Two-Handed Fighter Archetype and we are both unsure of how it interacts with the damage bonus you get from two-handed weapons (which is 1-1/2 times your STR.) It reads:     Overhand Chop (Ex): At 3rd level, when a two-handed fighter makes a single attack (with the attack action or a charge) with a two-handed weapon, he adds double his Strength bonus on damage rolls. This ability replaces armor training 1.   So, does Overhand Chop turn the 1-1/2 times multiplier from two-handed weapons into a 2 times multiplier, or do the two add up? Or, do they interact in some other way?   This assumes a Medium sized character with 20 STR and a greatsword with 3 levels. How is canon determined for the works set in the world of ASOIAF? Comment font sizes are inconsistent on Android With the Superman lore, we know that light from a yellow star gives him his powers, light from blue stars makes him stronger, and light from red stars weakens him.  However, what happens if he is near a white dwarf, or a neutron star?  Has there been any evidence of Superman visiting a star system that wasn't red/yellow/blue? I asked this question for many people/professors without getting a sufficient answer, why in QM Lebesgue spaces of second degree are assumed to be the one that corresponds to the Hilbert vector space of state functions, from where this arises? and why 2-order space that assumes the following inner product:  $\langle\phi|\psi\rangle =\int\phi^{*}\psi\,dx$  While there is many ways to define the inner product.  In Physics books, this always assumed as given, never explains it, also I tried to read some abstract math books on this things, and found some concepts like "Metric weight" that will be minimized in such spaces, even so I don't really understand what is behind that, so why $L_2$? what special about them? Who and how physicists understood that those are the one we need to use? I have been working on the following problem:     For a given $c\in \Bbb Z^+$, find $a,b \in \Bbb Z^+: c=a^2-b^2$.   I have already figured out and proved a number of things:   A way to directly determine if a particular instance is solvable:  $\exists a,b \in \Bbb Z^+: c=a^2-b^2 \iff c \not\equiv 2 \mod 4$ An upper bound on the values for a (and b): $b \lt a\le\lfloor\frac{c-1}{2}\rfloor$ And a simple algorithm to find a solution:     $$ \begin{align*}  (a_0, b_0) &amp;= (0, 0) \\  (a_{n+1}, b_{n+1}) &amp;= \begin{cases}   (a_n+1, &amp;b_n&amp;)&amp;\text{if } a_n^2-b_n^2 &lt; c\\   (a_n, &amp;b_n+1&amp;)&amp;\text{if } a_n^2-b_n^2 &gt; c\\  \end{cases} \end{align*} $$   This can be iterated until a solution is found or the upper bound is reached.   I am currently trying to work out a more direct way to find an answer, but I have been unable to figure out any other ways to approach the problem.  How can I more directly find values for $a$ and $b$ for a given value of $c$? Evaluating logistic regression and interpretation of Hosmer-Lemeshow Goodness of Fit Word for something sad and funny at the same time I hear so many terms involving the word "linear". Linear function, linear equation, linear system, linear operator, linear transformation, linear mapping, linear space, linear algebra, linear electrical circuits, linear filters, linear electrical elements, linear approximation, linear optimization.  I'm getting crazy trying to understand the application of the "linear concept" to all this aspects (function, equation, mapping, system, operator, transformation, algebra, etc.) and I wish to know the one essence that is to be linear. What something has to be to be linear? If I say something is linear, what do I know for sure about that something (no matter what the something is)?       I heard a definition of linearity is by homogeinity (scaling the input results in a scaled output) and addition (summing the inputs results in summing the outputs). Can I apply this simple definition to all the branches (operator, mapping, system, transformation, algebra, ...) I mentioned ? Do they all behave like a line ?  y = ax + b, for example, is a line but doesn't behave like a line because y is not linear. Incorrect whitespaces or list item size in Android SE app Noticed that sometimes when there are 10+ answers to a question - some answers look like they have \n\n...\n line breaks in the end, so the body of the answer has incorrect height.  It probably has something to do with ViewHolder or adapter not setting correct row height. Although as far as I know, it should do this according to text amount/length. Exclusive differences Profiles vs permission sets? I understand, the differences between Profiles and Permission Sets. I just wanna ask are there some configs that make Profile or Permission Set unique.  Are there things that could only be done via permission set and not via Profiles and vice versa ? Are upvotes on competing posts counted per question or per answer for Sportsmanship? The definition of the :     Up voted 100 competing answers   doesn't specify whether each upvote on competing answers to the same question counts towards this criteria, or if it's limited to one "point" per question no matter how many additional competing answers you upvote. Can someone explain how it works? The performance impact of using instanceof in Java Over the years I've written some libraries. These libraries sometimes depend on each other.  As a result, the "tex" directory is structured as follows:  tex ├── library |   ├── library1.sty |   ├── library2.sty |   └── library3.sty ├── project1 |   ├── master.tex |   ├── chapter1.tex |   └── chapter2.tex ├── project2 |   └── article.tex └── project3     └── paper.tex   The libraries depend on each other. As a result, in every library that depends on another library, this is part of the header:  %library2.sty \ProvidesPackage{library2} \RequirePackage{../library/library1}   In other words, the library is imported from the "root of every project". This is not a good design choice. What if someone copies the libraries in the folder of the root of a project, or what if the folder "library" is renamed...  It is however reasonable the "active directory" still remains in the project root.  What can be done to resolve such library dependencies? The prime example is C# and .Net. 95% of C# questions are also tagged .Net. The reverse isn't the case so it's not a synonym. Basically, C# is a child of .Net.  Would it be possible to create some sort of one-way linkage like this? Validation Rule on picklist under opportunities There are 2 requirements:    standard users can’t update the status of a record beyond “open won” (so that only SF Admins or auto processes update “registered” and the stages beyond registration. Validation rule for this:    ~   AND(       $Profile.Name &lt;&gt; "System Administrator",      ISCHANGED(StageName),      OR(TEXT(StageName) = "Registered",     TEXT(StageName) = "Pre-Certified",     TEXT(StageName) = "Documentation, Submission",     TEXT(StageName) = "Performance verified",     TEXT(StageName) = "Appeals",     TEXT(StageName) = "Certification/ Closed Won")      )   Requirement 2: Standard users cannot update the status of a record that is already Registered (or post-registered phase). For us, some Opp was already “Registered” but some standard user  was able to change the record to “Open Won.”    I am looking for the validation rule of requirement 2 and which should align with first requirement also.  Thanks, Please guide. Electrical Machines based on Electric Fields Our teacher asked us this question during the lecture for Power Electromagnetics. We know that Electric Fields and Magnetic Fields are easily transformable into one another. And they are used greatly in various systems.   He asked us why is it that almost all the electric machines are still based on exchange of magnetic energy? Why isn't electric field used for power exchange and interaction through air gaps for a machine? Is there a way to give a profile a different default list view then "Recently Viewed" in Lightning?