Here’s a cool NewScientist article on 50 years of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Just in case you didn’t know, you owe DARPA for the ability to read this blog. The earliest version of has become the World Wide Web was a DARPA project, ARPANET.
(Hat tip: KurzweilAI.net)
The one-time Reagan speechwriter, longtime GOP supporter and Wall Street Journal columnist has over the years been many things for the Republican Party — apparatchik, cheerleader, gently guiding hand — and now, over a series of columns, she’s been forced to speak truth to power on how the GOP is no longer a “conservative” party. It serves some new god, but certainly it is no longer the party of Lincoln or Reagan. Or Nixon for that matter.
She keeps the pressure on the party she loves with today’s column.
Some excerpts:
The Democrats aren’t the ones falling apart, the Republicans are. The Democrats can see daylight ahead. For all their fractious fighting, they’re finally resolving their central drama. Hillary Clinton will leave, and Barack Obama will deliver a stirring acceptance speech. Then hand-to-hand in the general, where they see their guy triumphing. You see it when you talk to them: They’re busy being born.
The Republicans? Busy dying. The brightest of them see no immediate light. They’re frozen, not like a deer in the headlights but a deer in the darkness, his ears stiff at the sound. Crunch. Twig. Hunting party.
And,
“This was a real wakeup call for us,” someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. “We can’t let the Democrats take our issues.” And those issues would be? “We can’t let them pretend to be conservatives,” he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.
… from a GOP reeling and gearing up for the final act in a historic fall from grace.
From the link:
During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.
“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”
From KurzweilAI.net, nanotech that may boost solar efficiency and black holes may have an escape hatch of sorts …
Nanowires may boost solar cell efficiency, engineers say PhysOrg.com, May 14, 2008 University of California, San Diego electrical engineers have created experimental solar cells spiked with nanowires that could lead to highly efficient thin-film solar cells of the future.
Physicists Demonstrate How Information Can Escape From Black Holes PhysOrg.com, May 14, 2008 Physicists at Penn State and the Raman Research Institute in India have discovered such a mechanism by which information can be recovered from black holes.
They suggest that singularities do not exist in the real world. “Information only appears to be lost because we have been looking at a restricted part of the true quantum-mechanical space-time,” said Madhavan Varadarajan, a professor at the Raman Research Institute. “Once you consider quantum gravity, then space-time becomes much larger and there is room for information to reappear in the distant future on the other side of what was first thought to be the end of space-time.”
From KurzweilAI.net, taking steps toward an invisibility cloak …
New material may be step towards 3D invisibility cloak New Scientist, May 13, 2008 A researcher at the University of California at Berkeley claims to have made a 3D metamaterial with a negative refractive index, the first 3D material of this kind.
Physicists have in recent years made it possible to bend, or refract, light in the opposite direction to any natural materials. These metamaterials make it possible to create invisibility cloaks that hide an object by steering light around it. The materials and “invisibility cloaks” built so far have all been flat, working only in two dimensions.
The negative refraction index will have to be confirmed by measuring the speed of light in the material.
See Also Physicists draw up plans for real ‘cloaking device’
Some might say it’s a little late in the game, but John Edwards officially endorsed Obama today.
From the link:
He didn’t give the Clinton campaign a heads up — correction, yes he did), and most of his senior campaign staff were caught unawares.
One the titans of the art world, American Robert Raushenberg, has died at 82.
From the link:
A painter, photographer, printmaker, choreographer, onstage performer, set designer and, in later years, even a composer, Mr. Rauschenberg defied the traditional idea that an artist stick to one medium or style. He pushed, prodded and sometimes reconceived all the mediums in which he worked.
Building on the legacies of Marcel Duchamp, Kurt Schwitters, Joseph Cornell and others, he thereby helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.
Mr. Rauschenberg was also instrumental in pushing American art onward from Abstract Expressionism, the dominant movement when he emerged during the early 1950s. He became a transformative link between artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and those who came next, artists identified with Pop, Conceptualism, Happenings, Process Art and other new kinds of art in which he played a signal role.
No American artist, Jasper Johns once said, invented more than Mr. Rauschenberg. Mr. Johns, John Cage, Merce Cunningham and Mr. Rauschenberg, without sharing exactly the same point of view, collectively defined this new era of experimentation in American culture. Apropos of Mr. Rauschenberg, Cage once said, “Beauty is now underfoot wherever we take the trouble to look.”
Only one update for this story. Already called for Clinton, and she might win this state by 50 points or more. This result has been expected for some time.
In the meantime, Obama is picking supers, and even some of Clinton’s pledged delegates. Depending on your source, he needs somewhere in the range of 150 or so to clinch.
I don’t have a link handy, but there’s some chatter that Clinton will ride out tonight and win handily in the upcoming Kentucky vote then drop out of the race. It’s expected Obama will pass the magic number based on superdelegates by that time. She goes out on a strong note, he doesn’t have to campaign too hard in states he was always going to lose — good for all involved.
Yeah, I went to b-school and learned all the signifiers and markers, and if you knocked me down I might remember some of them. And, yes, I know we don’t meet the classic standard for a “recession.”
I argue that facts override academic models any day.
From the link:
The foreclosure crisis is hitting yet another American locale: the self-storage center.
As they lose their homes, people are turning to these humble cinderblock and sheet-metal boxes to store their stuff. But some people cannot keep up with their storage bills any better than they could handle their mortgage payments, and storage companies are auctioning off their property for a pittance.
Rasmussen is no longer polling the Democratic nomination race.
From the link:
At the moment, Senator Clinton’s team is busily trying to convince Superdelegates and pundits that she is more electable than Barack Obama. For reasons discussed in a separate article, it doesn’t matter. Even if every single Superdelegate was convinced that the former First Lady is somewhat more electable than Obama, that is not enough of a reason to deny him the nomination.
With this in mind, Rasmussen Reports will soon end our daily tracking of the Democratic race and focus exclusively on the general election competition between Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama. Barring something totally unforeseen, that is the choice American voters will have before them in November. While we have not firmly decided upon a final day for tracking the Democratic race, it is coming soon.
Here’s an interesting post describing the daunting task facing the GOP for this election cycle, and beyond. The quoted bit below describes exactly how the GOP completely ceased to be fiscally conservative by any measure. To my mind the GOP has ceased to be even socially conservative — I think it’s fair to say Republican social policy over the last twelve years, give or take, is much more Christianist than conservative.
From the link:
Republicans held all the levers of power in Washington for six years. They turned budget surpluses into huge deficits, which put pressure on the dollar. The financial industry’s house of cards got blown down and the Federal Reserve cut rates to head off a recession. That put even more pressure on the dollar. Its value sank against other currencies, and investors have taken refuge in commodities, driving those prices up. Republicans’ aggressive, swaggering foreign policy has shot uncertainty through the market, driving (dollar denominated) oil to record highs. Simply put, their policies have put us in a position where we can’t deficit spend, can’t lower prices, can’t cut rates and can’t do much to restore value to our currency. Even simpler, every time you fill up your tank or buy a loaf of bread you pay the Bush Tax.
Great example of momentum resonance effect … (Go check out Phil Plait’s awesome explanation of this video.)
Hat tip: Boing Boing Gadgets
Here’s an interesting Time.com article on the five main mistakes committed by Team Clinton leading to Obama’s Democratic nomination win.
The short version:
1. She misjudged the mood
2. She didn’t master the rules
3. She underestimated the caucus states
4. She relied on old money
5. She never counted on a long haul
From KurzweilAI.net — a city of the future is going up in Abu Dhabi, and “Fantastic Voyage” gets one step closer to reality.
Building the Zero-Emissions City Technology Review, May 8, 2008 Construction has started on a city in Abu Dhabi that will house 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses but use extremely little energy, and what it does use will come from renewable sources.
The city, which is expected to cost $22 billion, will implement an array of technologies, including thin-film solar panels that serve as the facades and roofing materials for buildings, ubiquitous sensors for monitoring energyuse, and driverless vehicles powered by batteries that make cars unnecessary. The city’s founders hope that it will serve as a test bed for a myriad of new technologies being proposed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
Nanoworms target tumors KurzweilAI.net, May 8, 2008 Scientists at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and MIT have developed nanometer-sized “nanoworms” that can cruise through the bloodstream without significant interference from the body’s immune defense system and home in on tumors, reminiscent of the science fiction movie, Fantastic Voyage.
The scientists constructed their nanoworms from spherical iron oxide nanoparticles that join together, like segments of an earthworm, to produce tiny gummy worm-like structures about 30 nanometers long. Their iron-oxide composition allows the nanoworms to show up brightly in MRI diagnostic devices.
Using nanoworms, doctors should eventually be able to target and reveal the location of developing tumors that are too small to detect by conventional methods. Carrying payloads targeted to specific features on tumors, these microscopic vehicles could also one day provide the means to more effectively deliver toxic anti-cancer drugs to specific tumors, organs and other sites in the body, in high concentrations without negatively impacting other parts of the body.
An interesting story at Reason on the REAL ID. The article comes from a bipartisan Cato Institute event.
From the link (the quotes are from South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford and Montana Senator Jon Tester):
“Outside of the liberty component, outside of the security standpoint, if you care about spending you’d ought to care about REAL ID.”
On the time it’d take to assign people their IDs: “Two hours is a lot of time on earth. You can spend it with friends, you can spend it with family, or you can spend it in a DMV line.”
Sanford rattles off a list of information abuses, like the passport file breaches of the presidential candidates. “One-stop shopping for every computer hacker around the world is not a good idea for our security.”
Tester gets up to speak and tosses down the gauntlet. “When our rights get trampled upon, the terrorists win.”
Tester calls the application of the law-”cringe”-worthy, especially the “arbitrary deadline” that states were given to comply. DHS is “using federal resources to bully states to go with the program.” He points out that full agreement with the Act isn’t mandated until 2017.
“Creating a national ID — make no mistake, that’s what REAL ID is — will create countless opportunities to access our information in a way we have not agreed to.”
Starting price a mere $3 million.
From the WSJ link:
The Super Bowl has always been a tough ticket, but now NBC is telling advertisers it will cost them $3 million just to get into the game — for 30 seconds.
NBC Universal, a unit of General Electric Co., plans to announce next week that $3 million will be the entry price for a commercial at the 2009 Super Bowl. While individual slots have sold at that level before, it’s never been the starting point for negotiations for the dozens of 30-second ads sold for the game. It represents a price increase of more than 10%, roughly double the usual annual rise.
From KurzweilAI.net — Upright copper nanowires may be key to better flat panel displays, single-walled carbon nanotubes form ultramicroelectrodes, more news on solar electricity that rivals fossil fuels in cost.
Nanowires for Displays Technology Review, May 6, 2008 Researchers at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign have developed a simple process to grow upright copper nanowires on different surfaces.
The nanowire arrays could find use in field-emission displays, a new type of display technology that promises to provide brighter, more vivid pictures than existing flat-panel displays.
Nanotube production leaps from sooty mess in test tube to ready formed chemical microsensors PhysOrg.com, May 6, 2008 University of Warwick chemists have produced single-walled carbon nanotubes that instantly form ultramicroelecrodes that could be used to create biocompatible, ultrasensitive sensors with high signal-to-noise ratios and fast response times.
The research team is exploring how these ultramicroelecrodes could be used to measure levels of neurotransmitters and catalysis in fuel cells.
Focusing on Solar’s Cost Technology Review, May 7, 2008 Solar startup Sunrgi says that it will soon be able to produce electricity from the sun at costs that are competitive with fossil-fuel generation.
The company has created a concentrated photovoltaic system that uses a lens to focus sunlight up to 2,000 times sun concentration onto tiny solar cells that can convert 37.5 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity. Stronger concentrations of sunlight allow engineers to use much smaller solar cells, making it more economical to use higher-efficiency–but higher-cost–cells.
The last big delegate day has arrived — both Indiana and North Carolina are voting. Early predictions have Obama winning North Carolina handily (and maybe by double digits) and Indiana too close to statistically call. A total of 172 pledged delegates are at stake in the two primaries.
I’ll periodically update the results. Unless otherwise noted all numbers are from CNN and CNN.com.
Update 6:26 pm — This is pretty funny from Matt Yglesias at Atlantic.com:
I should make an official prediction about tonight, right? Well, clearly the universe is conspiring to make this primary last as long as possible. So what’s going to happen is that (of course) Clinton will win Indiana and Obama will win North Carolina. But Clinton will win Indiana by a larger margin than Obama wins North Carolina, and Clinton’s supporters will note in somber tones that Obama lost the white vote in NC. At the same time, because NC has substantially more delegates than Indiana, Obama will actually make a small gain in net delegates causing his supporters (i.e. me) to become further enraged at Clinton’s refusal to admit that she’s lost and the press’ insistence on indulging the idea that there’s real doubt about the ultimate outcome.
In very early returns from Indiana, Clinton leads 57-43 with 16% reporting. McCain is getting 75% of the GOP vote.
Update 6:49 pm — With officially 0% reporting Obama leads North Carolina 65-32 and CNN is already calling the state for Obama. Clinton is holding steady at 57-43 in Indiana with 28% reporting. No call for that state just yet.
Update 7:33 pm — Switching to NYT for numbers since CNN.com is pretty much non-loading at this point. They break it out to tenth, so I will too.
North Carolina with 11% reporting: Obama 64, Clinton 34.4
Indiana with 47% reporting: Clinton 55.3, Obama 44.7. interestingly, these numbers have been slowly tightening and the NW, including Gary, an expected Obama stronghold, has yet to report.
Update 8:11pm — Both states are tightening a bit, but Obama’s completely blowing Clinton out of the water in NC. His gap-closing in Indiana has to have Team Clinton very concerned. It’s the longest of shots, but he could win that state.
NC with 27% reporting: Obama 60.7, Clinton 37.5
Indiana with 68% reporting (and no call yet): Clinton 53, Obama 47.1
Update 9:11 pm — NC 66% in, Obama 56.1, Clinton 41.8; Indiana 79% in, Clinton 51.9, Obama 48.1
Update 10:19 pm — Final update of the night. Indiana remains uncalled becuase of Lake County in the northwest. Right now with 86% reporting Clinton holds a narrow margin of 51.8-48.2. It’s a long shot, but it’s possible Obama could squeeze a tiny victory with strong numbers from the not-yet-reporting county. However you slice it, this is hard blow for Clinton.
In North Carolina Obama’s lead is holding around the numbers from an hour ago. 92% in, he leads 56.1-41.7
Here’s an interesting Reason interview with Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and angel investor of Facebook. They discuss libertarianism, The Singularity and the ongoing progress of science.
From Ronald Baily’s introduction:
I first met Peter Thiel—co-founder of PayPal, angel investor in Facebook, founder of the hedge fund Clarium Capital Management, adviser to the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, and self-described libertarian—at a party in his San Francisco home last September. Perhaps 100 digerati wandered through Thiel’s sleek Marina District townhouse, chatting amiably over wine and canapés in rooms filled with up-to-the-minute abstract art.
The party launched the second annual Singularity Summit, held at the nearby Palace of Fine Arts during the ensuing two days. The Singularity, a term coined by the science fiction writer Vernor Vinge in 1983, refers to the eventual technological creation of smarter-than-human intelligence. Just as our model of physics breaks down when it tries to describe the center of a black hole, Vinge observed, our attempts to model the future break down when we try to foresee a world that contains smarter-than-human intelligences. The Singularity Institute takes it for granted that exponentially accelerating information technology will produce such artificial intelligences; its chief goal is to make sure they will be friendly to humans.
In 1987, while studying philosophy at Stanford, Thiel helped found the libertarian/conservative student newspaper The Stanford Review. As a law student at Stanford he was president of the university’s Federalist Society. After working briefly for the law firm Sullivan and Cromwell in New York, Thiel switched to trading derivatives for Credit Suisse Financial. In the mid-1990s, Thiel transformed himself into a venture capitalist and a serial entrepreneur. He returned to California, where he has backed a number of startups. In addition to PayPal and Facebook, Thiel has invested in the social networking site LinkedIn, the search engine company Powerset, and the Web security provider IronPort.
Thiel also joined the culture wars by co-authoring The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford (1996), and was an executive producer for the 2005 feature film Thank You for Smoking, based on Christopher Buckley’s politically incorrect novel of the same name. Besides backing the Singularity Institute, Thiel pledged a $3.5 million matching grant in 2006 to the Methuselah Foundation to support its anti-aging research agenda.
I interviewed Thiel between sessions at the Singularity Summit.
From KurzweilAI.net, nanotrees are a new type of nanowire and Arizona State researchers have created the fastest nanomotor.
Spiraling nanotrees offer new twist on growth of nanowires PhysOrg.com, May 1, 2008 University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers have discovered a new way of growing nanowires that leads to “nanopines”–elaborate pine-tree-shaped nanowires–caused by a “screw” dislocation, or defect, in their crystal structure.
Dislocations are fundamental to the growth and characteristics of all crystalline materials, but this is the first time they’ve been shown to aid the growthof one-dimensional nanostructures.
Engineering these dislocations may allow scientists to create more elaborate nanostructures, and to investigate the fundamental mechanical, thermal and electronic properties of dislocations in materials.
Revving up the world’s fastest nanomotor PhysOrg.com, May 1, 2008 Arizona State University researchers have developed a new generation of nanomotors with an average speed of 60 micrometers per second.
Tracks left by various types of speeding nanomotors (American Chemical Society)Existing catalytic nanomotors–made with gold and platinum nanowires and fueled with hydrogen peroxide–have top speeds of about 10 micrometers per second.
The new design adds carbon nanotubes to the platinum (boosting the average speed) and spikes the hydrogenperoxide fuel with hydrazine to increase the nanomotor’s top speed to 200 nanometers per second.
Actually it’s trendy to rail against hippies, and on the other hand the “love generation” of the 60s is still idealized and glamorized as a time of peace, love and happiness.
Too bad most people don’t understand the realities of those days. A lot of peaceful “hippies” were nothing more than predators working over a bunch of naive, and somewhat affluent, kids. And don’t get me started with the ridiculous sense of entitlement to goods and services “hippies” of yore and today hold dear.
“You have two blenders? Wow, you don’t need two and I don’t have one. I’m taking one with me, okay?” — actual paraphrased statement from a neo-hippie.
The response (from a friend of mine) to this less-than-casaul aquaintance who had the nerve assume they were walking out with my friend’s blender was something along the lines of, “Maybe you should get off the smack so you can stay employed for more than a week at a pop. And stay out of my kitchen.”
The anti-hippie rant doesn’t really have much application to the link, but it sure felt good.
From the linked CFO.com article:
A former CFO of the Haight Ashbury Free Clinics — established in the 1960s to serve the population of Hippie “flower children” migrating to San Francisco — was sentenced to seven years in prison for embezzlement.
The former finance chief, Carl Gill, pleaded guilty to stealing $773,000 from the citywide health care provider for the poor, which has evolved from those roots in San Francisco’s famous “summer of love.” The plea included two felony counts of grand theft and six counts of tax evasion, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Nice group from KurzweilAI.net today. News that solar is coming down in price, “erasable” printer paper, and a simplification for sending medical imaging data.
A Price Drop for Solar Panels Technology Review, May 1, 2008 A shortage of the silicon used in solar panels is almost over, industry analysts predict. This could lead to a sharp drop in prices over the next couple of years, making solar electricity comparable to power from the grid.
Added silicon production capacity is now starting to begin operations. While only 15,000 tons of silicon were available for use in solar cells in 2005, by 2010, this number could grow to 123,000 tons. And that will allow existing and planned production of solar panels to ramp up, increasing supply and reducing prices.
Prices for solar panels could drop by as much as 50 percent from 2006 to 2010. In areas that get a lot of sun, that will translate to solar electricity costs of about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, matching the average price of electricity in the United States.
Xerox touts erasable paper, smart documents Computerworld, April 29, 2008 Xerox has developed paper that can be reused after printed text automatically deletes itself from the paper’s surface within 24 hours.
A single piece of paper can be reused up to 100 times for black and white printing. The paper contains specially coded molecules that create a print after being exposed to ultraviolet light emitted from a thin bar in a printer. The molecule readjusts itself within 24 hours to its original form to delete the print, or heat can readjust the molecule instantly.
Xerox scientists also demonstrated technologies to make documents more intelligent by providing a deeper meaning to text and images. This is done by cross-referencing similar data and images mined off the Internet and incorporating other sources like e-mail messages and corporate networks.
Cellphones used for medical imaging? ZDNET, April 30, 2008 University of California at Berkeley researchers have developed a technique for transmitting medical images via cellphones.
The cell phone, hooked up to the data acquisition device(breast tomoography sensor, xray or MRI machine, etc.), would transmit the raw data to a central server, where the information would be used to create an image. The server would then relay a highly compressed image back to the cell phone, where the doctor could view it on the cell phone screen.
The system makes medical imaging much cheaper and more accessible to the poor because the apparatus at the patient site is greatly simplified, and there is no need for personnel highly trained in imaging processing.
Scientists make chemical cousin of DNA for use as new nanotechnology building block PhysOrg.com, April 29, 2008 Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute scientist John Chaput and his research team have made the first synthetic self-assembled nanostructures, composed entirely of glycerol nucleic acid (GNA), a synthetic analog of DNA.
(Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University)With GNA, the five carbon sugar commonly found in DNA (deoxyribose) is substituted by glycerol, which contains just three carbon atoms.
Unlike DNA and proteins, which have evolved to exist only as right-handed, the GNA structures are “enantiomeric” molecules (both left and right-handed). The ability to make mirror image structures opens up new possibilities for making nanostructures.
… for this vicious Democratic primary squarely on the shoulders of the superdelegates.
I have to admit I’ve pretty much stopped blogging the election for the time being. I’m among many who has become sick and tired of the debacle the Democratic party is throwing at the electorate. I’m just glad I’m not a partisan Democrat, otherwise I’d probably just lay in bed with a towel over my head until the supers come to their senses and hand the deserved victory to Obama.
The destructiveness of Team Clinton combined with her previous nemeses on the hard right is amazing to me.
From the link:
For most of this campaign, the Democratic Party has been unified by optimism that our eventual nominee would trounce the Republican candidate in November, 2008. That began to change towards the end of February, when the contest between Senators Clinton and Obama began to turn sharply negative.
The media and the Clinton campaign deserve their share of blame for this. And Obama is not perfect, either. But the people who deserve the most blame are the superdelegates, for it is their indecision that has made this mess possible in the first place.
Since late February, it has been clear that the Clinton campaign’s only hope for victory rested in their hands. Over the past two months, the soleuncertainty about the campaign has been whether or not superdelegates will stage a coup against the voters.
At any point during the last two months, superdelegates could have made it clear that they would support the will of voters. Instead, by declaring their indecision, they provided Clinton with a new rationale for her campaign. Effectively, they encouraged her coup attempt. It was if they said to her: if you can prove to us that Barack Obama is unelectable, we will overturn the judgment of voters.
It is now clear just how foolish and unwise the superdelegates were for offering Clinton such a destructive path to the nomination, for she has tried to meet it with unrestrained vigor. Two months later, a party that was once unified is now divided. The septuagenarian Republican presidential candidate who devised the Iraq war strategy and wants to stay there for one hundred years is leading or tied in most polls.
US researchers have built a proto-prototype nano assembler Nanowerk, April 28, 2008 Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed an early prototype for a nanoassembler.
The NIST system consists of four Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) devices positioned around a centrally located port on a chip into which the starting materials can be placed. Each nanomanipulator is composed of a positioning mechanism with an attached nanoprobe.
By simultaneously controlling the position of each of these nanoprobes, the team can use them to cooperatively assemble a complex structure on a very small scale, using using a scanning electron microscope for real-time imaging of the nanomanipulation procedures.
The researchers suggest it should be possible to have multiple nanoassemblers working simultaneously to manufacture next-generation nanoelectronics.
Spent a bit of time at Edgefest today supporting a gig by Proud Wine. An up-and-coming neo-psychedelia band fronted by a relative of mine. The bulk of the bill is emo and screamo, however.
In that vein today’s vido goes back to the days when emo was just simply goth, and some of the skinny boys wore skirts.
The standard? Peter Murphy, Bauhaus and “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”
Today’s KurzweilAI.net news includes a quantum computer breakthrough and news on the ubiquity of nanotech products:
Riding D-Wave Technology Review, May/June 2008 In November of last year, with $60 million in funding, D-Wave demonstrated what it claimed was a 28-qubit adiabatic quantum computer, based on a design by MIT quantum computing scientist Seth Lloyd.
Now, the company’s scientists are attempting to demonstrate the fundamentally quantum-mechanical nature of their device.
New nanotech products hitting the market at the rate of 3 to 4 per week PhysOrg.com, April 24, 2008 New nanotechnology consumer products are coming on the market at the rate of 3 to 4 per week, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) Project Director David Rejeski said in testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee Thursday.
The number of consumer products using nanotechnology has grown from 212 to 609 since PEN launched the world’s first online inventory of manufacturer-identified nanotech goods in March 2006. Health and fitness items, which includes cosmetics and sunscreens, represent 60 percent of inventory products. The list of products is available free at www.nanotechproject.org/consumerproducts.
Read Original Article>>
Aligned nanotube swarms may lead to nanoprocessors KurzweilAI.net, April 24, 2008 Duke University chemists have found a way to grow swarms of long, straight cylinders only a few atoms thick in very large numbers by using the crystal structure of a quartz surface as a template.
These single-walled carbon nanotubes also follow parallel paths as they grow, so they don’t cross each other to potentially impede electronic performance. Carbon nanotubes can act as semiconductors and could thus further scale-down circuitry to nanometer features.
The availability of forests of identical nanotubes would allow future nanoengineers to bundle them onto multiple ultra-tiny chips that could operate with enough power and speed for nanoprocessing, using less-expensive semiconductor wafers normally used in computer chips.
Source: Nanotubes grown straight in large numbers, Duke University
… on the state of the current Democratic situation. Along with a lot of poll information.
The summation?
So remind me again how is Clinton “more electable” against McCain than Obama?
She’s lost more contests to Obama than she’s won. She’s raised less money than he has. She fares poorer in the polling against McCain than he does. She trails in the popular vote.
And somehow, despite the fact she runs behind Obama in the general, the supers are supposed to overturn the will of the primary electorate and spur intra-party civil war on her behalf? Is she really that narcissistic?
Apparently so.
