Except that on all but the most expensive hobs, "simmer" is on-off and scorches the sauce. And on all but the most expensive hobs, the coil is much smaller than the pan you'd want to use (and many times much smaller than advertised). And the sides don't heat up like gas. And you can't use copper or clay pots like gas. And like many electronic things but unlike gas or the old resistive coil tops, induction seems to have longevity problems (perhaps that gets better as the technology matures, or perhaps it runs into the same electronic parts availability issues that plague modern appliances, I tend to think the latter).
Induction is fantastic for boiling water, and good for many things, but there's too many shortcomings to declare "superior than gas".
Those are either artifacts of a bad stove or using extremely thin pans. We have a fairly low-mid range model and the low mode doesn’t burn anything and the coils match the sizes of the pans we use.
I agree it’s not great to get rid of a pure copper pot but those (and even many of the Korean dolsot pots) seem to be easily available with induction bases now. The flip side was that our cheap $5 IKEA cast iron works even better so we use it more, and this was also true of some Costco ceramic skillets which weren’t trying to be so light that they didn’t have a hefty iron slug.
Between air quality and child safety, my general decision tree is simple: “are you a chef doing things like wok cooking?” Induction is probably better if you don’t have a specific technique requiring unusually high BTU output. I have had to learn to stop saying “come on” when we visit relatives with gas stoves, though.
> Those are either artifacts of a bad stove or using extremely thin pans. We have a fairly low-mid range model and the low mode doesn’t burn anything and the coils match the sizes of the pans we use.
It’s a smaller than advertised coil, 6”, causing the problem, which is endemic but not limited to portable hobs. Warped a Lodge carbon steel pan the first time I used induction (2mm thick). Then I dove deeper and saw the issues others had. Since then I moved to a larger coil (first a Max Burton, now a Nuwave PIC Titanium). On reddit, you can find any number of examples of shattered cast iron pans and warped pans and ruined seasoning, and it’s not just portable hobs causing the issues.
The issue with simmer is well-known and rears its head if you’re working with delicate sauces. Most people don’t.
Induction bases don’t fix that gas heats the sides too and if you’re able to use that feature it’s not something you want to give up. And actually, wok cooking on induction is pretty darn good if you have one of the specialty wok hobs, better than a wok ring on gas (but not better than a specialty wok burner).
Again, my point isn’t that induction sucks, it’s that it isn’t superior to gas across the board. My dream setup? One proper induction burner, one induction wok burner, a French top in the center, and two proper gas burners on the other side, all with a giant vent fan.
The cheap cooktop which I got out of curiosity about 15 years ago now, had segmented coils(not only rings, but like pieces of pie), adjusting to the diameter and/or position of the the pot/pan. Had 25cm diameter. And didn't do that on/off thing. I measured that with an 'E-smog-meter', with multicolor LED-bar :-)
And that was an entry level thing, equivalent to the stuff you'd get at Ikea for about 50 to 60 bucks now. Mine was €25.
And still working, when I'm back where I lived at the time.
I'm unsure about the Ikea stuff. I only mentioned them because of comparable price range.
Regarding the coils thing, their segmentations and how they are driven? Can only be measured after buying, or trusting the raging reviews on Amazon, Ali(Express), or whatever Costco and the likes are offering, I guess?
75USD. Hm, time flies, inflation... But this wouldn't be good anyways, because 1800 Watts only, because 120V AC. You'd want 2500 Watts at least, better 3000. Which you won't get out of a standard US wall socket.
That IKEA portable hob is unfortunately one of the bad ones and the coil size is misleading. I haven’t seen any low cost segmented ones like you’ve described on the induction subreddit.
And a lot of what gets reported as ghost guns in the press aren’t 3d printed, they’re commercially-made serialized firearms that have had the serial number obliterated.
Due to how turbulent federal funding has been over the past year, many or most PhD programs are being extremely picky about how many candidates they can extend offers to and are also on the eye for signs that applicants may be trying for the very option you're bringing up.
Interestingly, while on-patent medications in the US tend to be significantly more expensive than elsewhere, generics in the US tend to be less expensive than generics available elsewhere.
The increase in F&A rates is due to the facilities portion, which in the "before times" was negotiated every 4 years with DHHS and had concrete data in the negotiation process to help ensure it was fair. The admin portion for universities has been capped at 26% since 1991.
I think there are a couple of misconceptions stated.
One, endowments, this is thoroughly covered by others in past threads about funding on this site and in any number of articles elsewhere. University endowments are directed to specific purposes and largely do not cover basic science, nor can they be redirected to do at will. This is not a discretionary research fund.
Two, the private sector funds projects on time horizons that are far too short for fundamental discoveries to reach a technology readiness level that supports commercial R&D efforts, and in many cases, is unwilling to fund the commercial development too. You're frequently looking at a decade plus for fundamental R&D, with massive upfront costs and no clear commercialization path. Even if you have something that is ready for commercial development, it's still an uphill battle to get across the valley of death with patient capital.
It really depends on what you mean by "decades", but I've been in the system for a generation and what you're saying doesn't match what I see on the ground.
During the doubling of the NIH budget under Clinton and Bush the younger times were great. After, budgets stagnated and things were harder but there was still funding out there. The disruption we're seeing now is a completely different animal: program officers are gone, fewer and less detailed summary statements go out, some programs are on hiatus (SBIR/STTR) and if you have something in the till it was wasted time, &c. NSF is a complete train wreck.
My startup had an STTR in for the last cycle and we can't talk to the program officer about our summary statement, nor can we resubmit, nor are we likely to be funded. That's a lot of lost time and money for a startup that, since we're atoms and not bits, is funded on a shoestring budget. The only time something like this happened in my memory was the shutdown in 2013 and that wasn't even close to the disruption we're seeing now.
I was also in science during Clinton, and what I’m saying was true then. The increase in funding went hand in hand with a massive increase in people seeking funding. So maybe there was some golden era of happy times when nobody had to chase grants, but it hasn’t been in my lifetime.
But again, I explicitly said that my point was independent of recent changes in funding. I am no longer in science, but it seems to be true that funding has declined. That doesn’t mean that chasing grants is something unprecedented for scientists to be doing.
The Clinton era was the golden age for life sciences (can’t speak to others) and it’s been a decline since then, either stagnant or a sharper downturn. Now? Complete operational collapse, a completely different animal altogether, and it’s not one agency it’s all agencies. You seem to be saying that chasing grants is not unprecedented, which has been true since Galileo and the patron system, but that isn’t a profound observation it’s the status quo. What I and others on the ground are saying is that now is a sudden and profound shift, having committed funding pulled or applications in process effectively frozen and simultaneously new awardees decimated, in a way that is impossible to sustain the basic and translational research enterprise. And outside of the feds, there isn’t a viable source of patient capital to turn to on the scale we’ve been operating.
Yes, I understand your claim that things are tighter now; I've repeatedly acknowledged that fact, and in any case, I have no personal basis to dispute the argument. But again, that's not related to the point I'm making.
One last time: OP was complaining that the group has to spend all of it's time raising funding, but that's always been true in my lifetime. There's never been a magical age where being a PI (or even a senior lab member) wasn't a perpetual process of raising funds, and anyone going into science should know this. Hence my comment: welcome to academia.
For whatever it's worth, this is basically reason #1 that most PhD grads I know voluntarily jumped off the hamster wheel. Anyone who gets a PhD and expects to be doing labwork as a PI is deeply deluded, and it needs to be shouted for the folks in the back: you are signing up for a lifetime of writing grants, teaching classes, and otherwise doing bureaucratic schleps. The current administration did not suddenly make this true.
I read SubiculumCode's post in the same context as bane's, speaking to the current environment.
You're saying that a group having to spend all of its time fundraising has always been true in your lifetime and you link it to your time as a grad student decades ago and earlier when you were an undergrad. Do I have that right? The dominance of fundraising might have been true for your specific experience and viewpoint, but I don't understand your basis for claiming it was universal: it certainly wasn't my experience (R1 engineering, not software) nor my colleagues around that time.
Complaints about fundraising and administrivia have always been plentiful but actual time spent on teaching and service and research were dominant, with the expected proportions of the three legged stool varying based on role and institution. What SubiculumCode and bane and myself are reacting to now is the dramatic shift in how dominant (because funding has been pulled, funding allocation methods have suddenly shifted) and unproductive (fewer summary statements, less or no feedback from SROs and POs, eliminated opportunities for resubmissions) that work has become. The closest I can remember to the current was around the aftermath of the 2008 recession and 2013 government shutdown and that pales in comparison to the disruption of now.
> You're saying that a group having to spend all of its time fundraising has always been true in your lifetime and you link it to your time as a grad student decades ago and earlier when you were an undergrad. Do I have that right?
I mean, yes...but everyone on this thread admits that it's still true (in fact, worse today), so I'm not sure what point you're making with this. Y'all are arguing that it's worse now, which is not a claim I am disputing [1]. The entire point of citing my "old" experience is that, in fact, we were all doing the same stuff back in the stone ages. I also haven't forgotten or misremembered due to my advancing age [2].
> The dominance of fundraising might have been true for your specific experience and viewpoint, but I don't understand your basis for claiming it was universal: it certainly wasn't my experience (R1 engineering, not software) nor my colleagues around that time.
OK. I never said my experience was universal. I was in the biological sciences, not engineering. To be clear, I'm not claiming experience in economics or english literature, either.
Again, I don't dispute that things might be worse today, but the situation is absolutely not new, and any grad student in the sciences [3] who expects otherwise has been seriously misled. That is my point.
[1] To be clear, I'm not saying it is or isn't worse today. I am making no claim with regard to the severity of the fundraising market. The market can be a bajillion times worse than when I came up, and my point is still valid -- back then, professors spent nearly all of their time chasing money! Today, professors spend nearly all of their time chasing money!
[2] This is a joke. I'm not old, and my experiences not as ancient as you're alluding. I understand that every generation clings to the belief that their struggles are unique in time, but it's probably a bad idea to take that notion seriously.
[3] Yes, I made the general claim "in the sciences". Because insults about age aside, and even though the specifics will vary from year to year and topic to topic, it's very important to realize that if you become a professor in the sciences, this is what you will be doing. You will not be in the lab making gadgets or potions or whatever -- you will be filling out grants, making slide decks, reviewing papers, and giving talks. If you cannot handle this life, quit now. It will not get better.
There are certainly ways to go work in a lab and do "fun stuff" forever, but a) you often don't need a graduate degree for these, and b) you shouldn't be deluded about which path you're on.
Induction is fantastic for boiling water, and good for many things, but there's too many shortcomings to declare "superior than gas".