Robin

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#254

Friday, March 12, 2021

In This Edition:
Sound of Mars, Natrium molten salt HALEU nuclear reactor, Big O notation explained, Halt and Catch Fire syllabus, and NPR Shortwave on the sperm race fairytale!

I almost had an existential crisis thinking about this tweet!

Sound of Mars

Image: NASA

The NASA Sound of Mars website simulates how a range of sound clips sound on Mars versus on Earth. The differences in atmosphere and temperature mean sounds are attenuated, lower in volume, and slower.

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Natrium Molten Salt HALEU Nuclear Reactor

Image: Natrium

Nuclear reactor company Natrium, which is backed by Bill Gates' Terrapower, has received a US$80m Department of Energy grant to build a demonstration reactor by the mid 2020s. The 345MWe reactor can power 225,000 homes and uses molten salt as an energy storage and transfer system, which is safer than pressurised water and removes the need for a large amount of concrete shielding. This storage system offers a capacity much larger than any grid scale batteries which means any surge demand caused by a dip in renewable sources can be marshalled by scaling the reactor up to 500MWe for 5.5 hours using the molten salt storage. Additionally, the underground nuclear reactor is power by High-Assay, Low Enriched Uranium (HALEU), which can produced by processing the nuclear waste of traditional uclear power plants.

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Big O Notation Explained

Image: ThatComputerScientist.com

That Computer Scientist published a post that does a great job at explaining Big O Notation as easily as possible - "Big O Notation is a mathematical notation used to classify algorithms according to how their run time or space requirements grow as the input size grows."

Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus

Image: Ashley Blewer

For fans of the great TV show Halt and Catch Fire, technologist Ashley Blewer created a great course syllabus for the show. The site is split into 15 classes that link to important RFCs, articles, books, and other resources in the history of computer science and the IT industry that inspire the events of the show.

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Podcast of the Week: NPR Shortwave on The Sperm Race Fairytale

Image: Kateryna Kon/Getty Images/Science Photo Library

This recent episode of NPR Shortwave is mind-blowing. As it turns out, the sperm race story of contraception that we all learn in school is not what happens in reality, and is littered with mysogonistic bias. The Shortwave team do a great job in this episode describing how the biological process actually works.

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About Found This Week

Found This Week is a curated blog of interesting posts, articles, links and stories in the world of technology, science and life in general.
Each edition is curated by Daryl Feehely every Friday and highlights cool stuff found each week.
The first 104 editions were published on Medium before this site was created, check out the archive here.

Daryl Feehely

I’m a web consultant, contract web developer, technical project manager & photographer originally from Cork, now based in London. I offer my clients strategy, planning & technical delivery services, remotely & in person. I also offer freelance CTO services to companies in need of technical bootstrapping or reinvention. If you think I can help you in your business, check out my details on http://darylfeehely.com

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