1TB solid state drive on a postage stamp

Well not really on a postage stamp, but really that small. Let’s review: one terabyte solid state drive packed into around a square inch of real estate. This definitely fall into the “I’ll really believe it when I see it on store shelves and installed on motherboards,” but man this is one data storage breakthrough. For the record Toshiba thinks these will be on the market in two years.

From the link:

A team of Japanese researchers from Toshiba and the Keio University in Tokyo, led by Professor Tadahiro Kuroda, claims to have developed a technique that will reduce the size of SSDs by around 90 per cent. Not only that, but the technology also increases their energy efficiency by 70 per cent and makes them cheaper to manufacture.

Laissez le bon temps rouler!

Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone. Have fun and be safe while the good times roll for the Lombardi Gras celebration.

Mardi Gras 2010 -- Lombardi Gras!

Synthetic biology marches on

Via KurzweilAI.net — Synthetic biology is here to stay and is branching out.

DNA 2.0: A new operating system for life is created

New Scientist Life, Feb. 14, 2010 University of Cambridge scientists have created a new way of using the genetic code, allowing proteins to be made with properties that have never been seen in the natural world. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the creation of new or “improved” life forms incorporating these new materials into their tissue. For example, they could help make drugs that can be taken orally without being destroyed by the acids in the digestive tract, or produce entirely new polymers, such as plastic-like materials; organisms made of these cells could incorporate the stronger polymers and become stronger or more adaptable as a result. In the genetic code that life has used up to now, there are 64 possible triplet combinations of the four nucleotide letters; these genetic “words” are called codons. Each codon either codes for an amino acid or tells the cell to stop making a protein chain. The researchers have created 256 blank four-letter codons that can be assigned to amino acids that don’t even exist yet. Read Original Article>>

Is the insurance industry trying to force health care reform?

It sure seems like it. This is akin to the credit industry going draconian in advance of increased regulation only to prod DC into pushing the date of all that regulation up quite a bit.

Of course, the health insurance industry stands to gain a lot if health care reform with mandatory insurance and no public option is in place. Maybe the move of drastically raising individual health insurance premiums is a ploy to force something close to the current set of bills in Congress through and stifle any new debate on how to fund reform and cover the uninsured. I’m guessing the industry sees its future as something of a complete spin of the roulette wheel with a lot of possible outcomes and just a few that are favorable to its interests. Crazy moves with this bad of PR strike of a desperate attempt to influence that spin.

From the first link:

AP reports that insurance companies in at least four states are raising their premiums for individual insurance policies (those that people have to buy themselves, because they don’t get coverage from an employer) by 15% or more. To give you a sense of what we are talking about if these rates go into effect, a family of four in Maine (which is a relatively poor state) can expect to pay $1,876 a month–about $22,500 a year–for health insurance, starting in July.

And this is just the beginning of what we can expect to see pretty much everywhere:

Premiums are far more volatile for individual policies than for those bought by employers and other large groups, which have bargaining clout and a sizable pool of people among which to spread risk. As more people have lost jobs, many who are healthy have decided to go without health insurance or get a bare-bones, high-deductible policy, reducing the amount of premiums insurers receive.

Free 3D tech “lunch & learn” for aerospace industry

The event will be held at the SculptCAD office near downtown Dallas next Wednesday, February 24. This seminar on 3D technology for the aerospace industry involves 100 percent inspection and reverse engineering for maintenance, repair and operations (MRO). Topics include exploring Steinbichler’s White Light Scanning technology and how it differs from laser scanning, CMM measurement and why white light scanning is a better scanning option with more value and speed, and discussing the inspection and reverse engineering features of the GeoMagic Studio and Qualify software package.

Here’s what SculptCAD founder and president Nancy Hairston told me about the upcoming seminar, “This event will be a great opportunity to view the newest white light scanner from Steinbichler and the pairing of GeoMagic for aerospace applications. GeoMagic’s inspection, reverse engineering and parametric exchange toolsets enable fast and accurate workflows with seamless transfer into CAD systems.”

This “lunch & learn” includes demonstrations of the Steinbichler Comet 5 digital sensor and  GeoMagic’s Studio 11 3D modeling software.

Details on this “lunch & learn”

• Date: Wednesday February 24, 2010
• Time: 11 am – 2 pm
• buffet lunch provided
• Cost: free!
• registration required in advance

From the first and last links in this post:

Topics expected to be covered but are not limited to include:

· The use of 100% noncontact inspection complementing traditional CMM inspection including the use of robotics
and automatic geometrical dimensional & tolerance report generation

· “Best practices” regarding the scanning of physical objects directly into your CAD system

· How to digitally recreate, modify and/or repair existing tooling

· Examples of applying cost saving 3D technologies to structure, engine, systems and interior components by
Engineering, QA and Inspection departments

A little nano bling …

… may lead to some serious nanotech applications in medicine, data protection and supercomputing.

The release:

Digging deep into diamonds, applied physicists advance quantum science and technology

Diamond nanowire device could lead to new class of diamond nanomaterials suitable for quantum cryptography, quantum computing, and magnetic field imaging

		IMAGE: A diamond-based nanowire device. Researchers used a top-down nanofabrication technique to embed color centers into a variety of machined structures. By creating large device arrays rather than just “one-of-a-kind ” designs,… Click here for more information.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., By creating diamond-based nanowire devices, a team at Harvard has taken another step towards making applications based on quantum science and technology possible.

The new device offers a bright, stable source of single photons at room temperature, an essential element in making fast and secure computing with light practical.

The finding could lead to a new class of nanostructured diamond devices suitable for quantum communication and computing, as well as advance areas ranging from biological and chemical sensing to scientific imaging.

Published in the February 14th issue of Nature Nanotechnology, researchers led by Marko Loncar, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), found that the performance of a single photon source based on a light emitting defect (color center) in diamond could be improved by nanostructuring the diamond and embedding the defect within a diamond nanowire.

Scientists, in fact, first began exploiting the properties of natural diamonds after learning how to manipulate the electron spin, or intrinsic angular momentum, associated with the nitrogen vacancy (NV) color center of the gem. The quantum (qubit) state can be initialized and measured using light.

The color center “communicates” by emitting and absorbing photons. The flow of photons emitted from the color center provides a means to carry the resulting information, making the control, capture, and storage of photons essential for any kind of practical communication or computation. Gathering photons efficiently, however, is difficult since color-centers are embedded deep inside the diamond.

“This presents a major problem if you want to interface a color center and integrate it into real-world applications,” explains Loncar. “What was missing was an interface that connects the nano-world of a color center with macro-world of optical fibers and lenses.”

The diamond nanowire device offers a solution, providing a natural and efficient interface to probe an individual color center, making it brighter and increasing its sensitivity. The resulting enhanced optical properties increases photon collection by nearly a factor of ten relative to natural diamond devices.

“Our nanowire device can channel the photons that are emitted and direct them in a convenient way,” says lead-author Tom Babinec, a graduate student at SEAS.

Further, the diamond nanowire is designed to overcome hurdles that have challenged other state-of-the-art systems—such as those based on fluorescent dye molecules, quantum dots, and carbon nanotubes—as the device can be readily replicated and integrated with a variety of nano-machined structures.

The researchers used a top-down nanofabrication technique to embed color centers into a variety of machined structures. By creating large device arrays rather than just “one-of-a-kind” designs, the realization of quantum networks and systems, which require the integration and manipulation of many devices in parallel, is more likely.

“We consider this an important step and enabling technology towards more practical optical systems based on this exciting material platform,” says Loncar. “Starting with these synthetic, nanostructured diamond samples, we can start dreaming about the diamond-based devices and systems that could one day lead to applications in quantum science and technology as well as in sensing and imaging.”

###

Loncar and Babinec’s co-authors included research scholar Birgit Hausmann, graduate student Yinan Zhang, and postdoctoral student Mughees Khan, all at SEAS; graduate student Jero Maze in the Department of Physics at Harvard; and faculty member Phil R. Hemmer at Texas A&M University.

The researchers acknowledge the following support: Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) grant from National Science Foundation (NSF), the NSF-funded Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at Harvard (NSEC); the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. All devices have been fabricated at the Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) at Harvard.

Dick Cheney admits to being a war criminal

Cheney openly declared himself a “big supporter of waterboarding.”

Waterboarding is considered torture under U.S. and international law, and the imposition of, or ordering from a leadership position of, torture constitutes a war crime.

There is no possibility Cheney was confused and didn’t realize he was admitting to criminal activity. He clearly is either playing chicken with the Obama Justice Department on the potential for legal action on his admission, or he’s truly gone around the bend and sees himself far enough above the law that legal statutes no longer apply to to his activities.

At any rate I doubt he travels to many first world nations around the globe for the rest of his days.

From the link, Andrew Sullivan on this admission:

The question is therefore not if, but when, he is convicted as a war criminal – in his lifetime or posthumously.

In fact, the attorney general of the United States is legally obliged to prosecute someone who has openly admitted such a war crime or be in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on Torture. For Eric Holder to ignore this duty subjects him too to prosecution. If the US government fails to enforce the provision against torture, the UN or a foreign court can initiate an investigation and prosecution.

These are not my opinions and they are not hyperbole. They are legal facts. Either this country is governed by the rule of law or it isn’t. Cheney’s clear admission of his central role in authorizing waterboarding and the clear evidence that such waterboarding did indeed take place means that prosecution must proceed.

Cheney himself just set in motion a chain of events that the civilized world must see to its conclusion or cease to be the civilized world. For such a high official to escape the clear letter of these treaties and conventions, and to openly brag of it, renders such treaties and conventions meaningless.

DVD recommendation — “Black Dynamite”

Had the chance to watch a pre-release DVD of “Black Dynamite” tonight. It is simply great.

Kung fu treachery? Pool hall fight? Crooked politicians? The Mob? Kung fu action from the 37th President? Count me in.

It’s touted as a cinematic satire of blaxploitation flicks from the 70s, but it goes far beyond mere satire in production and entertainment value. Michael Jai White (creator/co-writer/titular actor) is simply awesome as Black Dynamite, and period details are spot-on. The film was shot in 16mm color reversal and the film stock truly provides the look and feel of a 1970s movie.

Hit this link to head to Amazon for the “Black Dynamite” DVD.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day!

Hope everyone’s having a fun/relaxing/romantic/sexy/or whatever floats your boat kind of day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Saturday video fun — Mr. Show’s “The Joke”

Yes, it’s the hated milk machine from the first season of Mr. Show with Bob and David. And yes, that is a young Jack Black.

Nanogenerators and electric clothes

(Number two of two posts on nanotechnology and electricity. Hit this link for part one)

The idea of smart clothes has been around for ages. Looks like this might just be a breakthrough to electric clothing becoming a reality.

That oughta bring a whole new meaning to “social networking.” Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all weekend. Be sure and come back tomorrow for the complimentary Saturday buffet and half-price happy hour.

The release:

New fiber nanogenerators could lead to electric clothing

By Sarah Yang, Media Relations | 12 February 2010

BERKELEY — In research that gives literal meaning to the term “power suit,” University of California, Berkeley, engineers have created energy-scavenging nanofibers that could one day be woven into clothing and textiles.

These nano-sized generators have “piezoelectric” properties that allow them to convert into electricity the energy created through mechanical stress, stretches and twists.

“This technology could eventually lead to wearable ‘smart clothes’ that can power hand-held electronics through ordinary body movements,” said Liwei Lin, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering and head of the international research team that developed the fiber nanogenerators.

Because the nanofibers are made from organic polyvinylidene fluoride, or PVDF, they are flexible and relatively easy and cheap to manufacture.

Although they are still working out the exact calculations, the researchers noted that more vigorous movements, such as the kind one would create while dancing the electric boogaloo, should theoretically generate more power. “And because the nanofibers are so small, we could weave them right into clothes with no perceptible change in comfort for the user,” said Lin, who is also co-director of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center at UC Berkeley.

The fiber nanogenerators are described in this month’s issue of Nano Letters, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Chemical Society.

The goal of harvesting energy from mechanical movements through wearable nanogenerators is not new. Other research teams have previously made nanogenerators out of inorganic semiconducting materials, such as zinc oxide or barium titanate. “Inorganic nanogenerators — in contrast to the organic nanogenerators we created — are more brittle and harder to grow in significant quantities,” Lin said.

The tiny nanogenerators have diameters as small as 500 nanometers, or about 100 times thinner than a human hair and one-tenth the width of common cloth fibers. The researchers repeatedly tugged and tweaked the nanofibers, generating electrical outputs ranging from 5 to 30 millivolts and 0.5 to 3 nanoamps.

Furthermore, the researchers report no noticeable degradation after stretching and releasing the nanofibers for 100 minutes at a frequency of 0.5 hertz (cycles per second).

Lin’s team at UC Berkeley pioneered the near-field electrospinning technique used to create and position the polymeric nanogenerators 50 micrometers apart in a grid pattern. The technology enables greater control of the placement of the nanofibers onto a surface, allowing researchers to properly align the fiber nanogenerators so that positive and negative poles are on opposite ends, similar to the poles on a battery.

Without this control, the researchers explained, the negative and positive poles might cancel each other out and reducing energy efficiency.

The researchers demonstrated energy conversion efficiencies as high as 21.8 percent, with an average of 12.5 percent.

“Surprisingly, the energy efficiency ratings of the nanofibers are much greater than the 0.5 to 4 percent achieved in typical power generators made from experimental piezoelectric PVDF thin films, and the 6.8 percent in nanogenerators made from zinc oxide fine wires,” said the study’s lead author, Chieh Chang, who conducted the experiments while he was a graduate student in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley.

“We think the efficiency likely could be raised further,” Lin said. “For our preliminary results, we see a trend that the smaller the fiber we have, the better the energy efficiency. We don’t know what the limit is.”

Other co-authors of the study are Yiin-Kuen Fuh, a UC Berkeley graduate student in mechanical engineering; Van H. Tran, a graduate student at the Technische Universität München (Technical University of Munich) in Germany; and Junbo Wang, a researcher at the Institute of Electronics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China.

The National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency helped support this research.

Shown is a fiber nanogenerator on a plastic substrate created by UC Berkeley scientists. The nanofibers can convert energy from mechanical stresses and into electricity, and could one day be used to create clothing that can power small electronics. (Chieh Chang, UC Berkeley)

Nanoparticles, optics and electricity

(Number one of two posts on nanotechnology and electricity. Hit this link for part two)

This sounds like a tech with a range of applications.

The release:

Penn material scientists turn light into electrical current using a golden nanoscale system

		IMAGE: Material scientists at the Nano/Bio Interface Center of the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the transduction of optical radiation to electrical current in a molecular circuit. Click here for more information.

PHILADELPHIA –- Material scientists at the Nano/Bio Interface Center of the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the transduction of optical radiation to electrical current in a molecular circuit. The system, an array of nano-sized molecules of gold, respond to electromagnetic waves by creating surface plasmons that induce and project electrical current across molecules, similar to that of photovoltaic solar cells.

The results may provide a technological approach for higher efficiency energy harvesting with a nano-sized circuit that can power itself, potentially through sunlight. Recently, surface plasmons have been engineered into a variety of light-activated devices such as biosensors.

It is also possible that the system could be used for computer data storage. While the traditional computer processor represents data in binary form, either on or off, a computer that used such photovoltaic circuits could store data corresponding to wavelengths of light.

Because molecular compounds exhibit a wide range of optical and electrical properties, the strategies for fabrication, testing and analysis elucidated in this study can form the basis of a new set of devices in which plasmon-controlled electrical properties of single molecules could be designed with wide implications to plasmonic circuits and optoelectronic and energy-harvesting devices.

Dawn Bonnell, a professor of materials science and the director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center at Penn, and colleagues fabricated an array of light sensitive, gold nanoparticles, linking them on a glass substrate. Minimizing the space between the nanoparticles to an optimal distance, researchers used optical radiation to excite conductive electrons, called plasmons, to ride the surface of the gold nanoparticles and focus light to the junction where the molecules are connected. The plasmon effect increases the efficiency of current production in the molecule by a factor of 400 to 2000 percent, which can then be transported through the network to the outside world.

In the case where the optical radiation excites a surface plasmon and the nanoparticles are optimally coupled, a large electromagnetic field is established between the particles and captured by gold nanoparticles. The particles then couple to one another, forming a percolative path across opposing electrodes. The size, shape and separation can be tailored to engineer the region of focused light. When the size, shape and separation of the particles are optimized to produce a “resonant” optical antennae, enhancement factors of thousands might result.

Furthermore, the team demonstrated that the magnitude of the photoconductivity of the plasmon-coupled nanoparticles can be tuned independently of the optical characteristics of the molecule, a result that has significant implications for future nanoscale optoelectronic devices.

“If the efficiency of the system could be scaled up without any additional, unforeseen limitations, we could conceivably manufacture a one-amp, one-volt sample the diameter of a human hair and an inch long,” Bonnell said.

###

The study, published in the current issue of the journal ACS Nano, was conducted by Bonnell, David Conklin and Sanjini Nanayakkara of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Penn; Tae-Hong Park of the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sceicnes at Penn; Parag Banerjee of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland; and Michael J. Therien of the Department of Chemistry at Duke University.

This work was supported by the Nano/Bio Interface Center, National Science Foundation, the John and Maureen Hendricks Energy Fellowship and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Quite the misleading lede

Here’s the lede in an article about the banking industry and the ongoing credit crunch:

Those wicked bankers–refusing to lend to small businesses! So say the pols. The reality is something else.

You read that and think, man this whole credit crunch thing is just some sort of hoax cooked up by the mainstream media or opportunistic politicians. Then you hit the link up there, read the article and realize the gist of it is a lot of businesses have drastically cut expenses and are now self-capitalizing because profitability is up and operating costs are down.

The problem there is those companies drastically cut expenses — those pesky things like salaries for jobs that no longer exist and such — because the banking industry completely screwed Main Street and continued a ridiculous credit squeeze long after receiving billions in Federal bailout money. And trust me, the credit crunch is still going on.

It’s great some companies managed to pare down to the point of self-capitalizing. But I bet both the newly unemployed from those companies, and the now overworked employees doing a job that once was covered by two, or more, workers would prefer for those companies to hoard a little more cash (something like what banks are still doing) and dip into the credit market to cover operating costs. I bet some of the companies would love to do just that, but can’t — why?, because of that still overly tight credit market

Can China’s computer manufacturing industry be trusted?

A very good question, and the current answer is a bit unsettling.

From the link:

Is it safe to buy Chinese-made computer equipment?With Google and the National Security Agency now teaming up to investigate supposed Chinese hacking and most of our PC hardware coming from China, it’s a fair question. And a hard one to answer with certainty.

It is made more urgent by a report in the Sunday Times newspaper that Chinese spies in the U.K. have been handing out bugged memory sticks and cameras to targeted businesses in an attempt to steal the companies’ intellectual property.

Headlined, “China bugs and burgles Britain,” the story quotes a classified report from MI5–their equivalent of our CIA–and says, “The gifts–cameras and memory sticks –have been found to contain electronic Trojan bugs which provide the Chinese with remote access to users’ computers.”

My friend, security blogger Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, yesterday posted an item suggesting it wouldn’t be too difficult for Chinese PC manufacturers to build backdoors into their products and use them to spy on pretty much anyone.

“If China’s government really is hell-bent on keeping an eye on American and European businesses, why not just incorporate 21st century backdoors into their products? Then, you could just have them automatically call home to do a data dump of documents. If there’s anything interesting in the files, it can be set to monitor its user on a regular basis,” Vaughan-Nichols wrote.

“There’s nothing difficult about doing this. Not only are backdoors easy to create, running an automatic check for words of interest, even in terabytes of documents, just requires some servers. After all,Google does it every day with far more data than such a plot could ever uncover.”

Pop art comes to life — a real Lichtenstein

Amazing make-up work by MAC artist Karin Stone of Chicago:

Hit the link for more photos of the make-up work in progress.

(Hat tip: Boing Boing)

Big Brother …

… may well be a little electronic device in your pocket. It shouldn’t be shocking, but I never cease to be amazed at the unconstitutional power grabs the Federal government continues to attempt and take in terms of civil liberties and personal privacy. New technology is wonderful, but it is very important to track, and reign in, the long, sneaky arm of the Fed.

From the link:

If you own a cell phone, you should care about the outcome of a case scheduled to be argued in federal appeals court in Philadelphia tomorrow. It could well decide whether the government can use your cell phone to track you — even if it hasn’t shown probable cause to believe it will turn up evidence of a crime.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology will ask the court to require that the government at least show probable cause before it can track your whereabouts.

And:

There’s no question that cell phones and cell-phone records can be useful for police officers who need to track the movements of those they believe to be breaking the law. And it is important for law enforcement agents to have the tools they need to stop crimes. However, it is just as important to make sure such tools are used responsibly, in a manner that safeguards our personal privacy.

But documents obtained by the ACLU and the EFF as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that the government takes advantage of this technology to track cell phones as extensively as possible — often without first obtaining warrants — except in states where courts step in to establish boundaries.

And here is the absolutely ridiculous government argument for retaining this right to breach your privacy:

The government has argued that “one who does not wish to disclose his movements to the government need not use a cellular telephone.” This is a startling and dismaying statement coming from the United States. The government is supposed to care about people’s privacy. It should not be forcing the nation’s 277 million cell-phone subscribers to choose between risking being tracked and going without an essential communications tool.

What’s at stake in the case is not whether it’s OK for the government to track the locations of cell phones; we agree that cell-phone tracking is lawful and appropriate in certain situations. The question is whether the government should first have to show that it has good reason to think such tracking will turn up evidence of a crime.

Update 2/13/10 — the above link and quotes are from the ACLU. Here’s the Cato Institute’s take on this issue. As with many, many public policy issues, Cato and the ACLU are in total agreement here.

The Iranian despots crack down

From credible accounts coming out of Iran on 22 Bahman, an expected day of renewed green wave protest, the totalitarian state in Iran exposed its cravenness. And that Iran is no longer a democratic state by any definition.

Here is a great round-up from Sully and his under-bloggers at the Daily Dish with links to plenty of video and tweets from Iran.

Gold and nanotechnology

A release from the World Gold Council and Cientifica Ltd., smoking hot from the inbox this morning (the crazy formatting is from the original and I didn’t feel like fixing it, so apologies for reading difficulties):

Gold at Forefront of ‘Nanotechnology Revolution’

LONDON, February 11/PRNewswire/ –

- World Gold Council Research Paper Demonstrates Important Applications
in Development Using Gold Nanoparticles

World Gold Council (WGC) has today published ‘Gold for Good: Gold and
nanotechnology in the age of innovation’, a research paper detailing new
scientific and technological innovations using gold. The report, which was
produced in conjunction with Cientifica Ltd, the world’s leading source of
global business and investor intelligence about nanotechnologies,
demonstrates how gold nanoparticles offer the potential to overcome many of
the serious issues facing mankind over the coming decades.

Gold nanoparticles exhibit a variety of unique properties which, when
harnessed and manipulated effectively, lead to materials whose uses are both
far-ranging in their potential and cost effective. This report explores the
many different applications that are being developed across the fields of
health, environment and technology.

Trevor Keel, Nanotechnology Project Manager at World Gold Council said:

“The opportunities and possibilities identified in this report are just a
subset of the amazing scope to use gold in the era of nanotechnology. As a
readily available and well understood material, gold nanoparticles are ideal
for use in a vast array of applications that improve our lives. WGC is
looking to promote and invest in the development of gold-based innovations
through Innovations Partnerships, so that the full benefits of gold
nanotechnology can be realized.”

Tim Harper, founder of Cientifica Ltd, said:

“Over the last decade, almost $50 billion of government funding has been
invested into nanotechnologies, and this investment is now starting to bear
fruit with a steady stream of commercially viable nanotechnologies which are
positively impacting human health, the environment and technology. This paper
demonstrates the many varied applications in which gold nanotechnology can
improve society’s standard of living.”

Health: Gold has a long history in the biomedical field stretching back
almost five thousand years. However the dawn of the ‘nano-age’ has really
broadened the potential of gold in biomedical applications and today, gold
nanoparticles are being employed in entirely novel ways to achieve
therapeutic effects.

Tumor targeting technologies which exploit gold’s inherent
bio-compatibility are being developed to deliver drugs directly into
cancerous tumours. Additionally, simple, cost effective and sensitive
diagnostic tests are being developed for the early detection of prostate and
other cancers.

Environment: Environmental concerns have never been more prominent -
energy and clean water scarcity, global warming and pollution are all major
issues that need to be addressed. Gold nano-particle based technologies are
showing great promise in providing solutions to a number of environmentally
important issues from greener production methods of the chemical feedstocks,
to pollution control and water purification.

Gold-based catalysts are being developed that can effectively prevent the
release of highly toxic forms of mercury into the atmosphere, the reduction
of chemicals from green feedstock, and also for water purification and
contaminant detection. In addition, gold is being used in meeting the
challenge of constructing cost effective and efficient fuel cells, a key
‘clean-energy’ technology of the future.

Advanced technology: Gold is already a well established
material in the electronics industry and the use of gold can only increase as
the worlds of electronics and nanotechnology interact further in the future.
Gold is being developed for conductive nanoparticle inks for plastic
electronics because of its material compatibility, inherent durability and
proven track record of reliability. Gold nanotechnologies have also been
shown to offer functional benefits for visual display technologies like touch
sensitive screens and potentially for use in advanced data storage
technologies including advanced flash memory devices.

The full paper can be downloaded from:

http://www.gold.org/assets/file/rs_archive/gold_and_nanotechnology_in_the
_age_of_innovation.pdf

(Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste
this hyperlink into your Internet browser’s URL address field. Remove the
space if one exists.)

OR

http://cientifica.eu/blog/white-papers/gold/

Innovation Partnerships

World Gold Council works directly with partner companies via Innovation
Partnerships. These support research and development of new practical
applications for the metal, drawing on a genuine commercial market
requirement for innovation. Partner organisations include (but are not
limited to) precious metal, chemical, electronics, materials and biomedical
companies, ranging from small enterprises through to established
international businesses. Interested companies are invited to contact World
Gold Council for further details.

During 2009-2010 World Gold Council is particularly interested in
receiving proposals relating to the following areas:

Industrial catalysts (including catalysts for pollution control and
chemical processing)

Biomedical applications (including medical diagnostics, therapeutics and
materials)

Advanced electronics (including any technology or component likely to be
used in next-generation devices)

Fuel cell systems (including applications both within the fuel cell
structure and hydrogen processing infrastructure)

Optical materials (including nanotechnology, chemicals and coatings)

Companies interested in collaborating with World Gold Council
are invited to make contact.

Notes to Editors:

World Gold Council

World Gold Council’s mission is to stimulate and sustain the demand for
gold and to create enduring value for its stakeholders. It is funded by the
world’s leading gold mining companies. For further information please visit
http://www.gold.org.

Cientifica

Cientifica Ltd, based in London, is one of the world’s best-respected
consultancy companies in the field of emerging technologies and technology
commercialization. It provides global business intelligence and strategic
consulting services to industry, governments and investors worldwide.

http://www.cientifica.eu

ARPA-E funding future still cloudy

DARPA’s energy innovation cousin finally received funding last year and by all accounts has been a success. The current economy and the White House’s recent stance on holding the line on domestic spending could cut the legs out from under ARPA-E before it can ever start to hit its stride.

From the link:

A year after it first received funding, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) got high marks from the congressional committee that spearheaded its creation in its “first annual checkup.” In a hearing of the House committee on Science and Technology, the new agency, which is designed to promote the research, development and commercialization off “game-changing” energy technologies, received praise for quickly sorting through 3,700 applications to make 37 awards in its first round of funding. It also fine-tuned its awards process, with the second round of funding going into specific areas of research identified in a series of workshops. Some of the projects that ARPA-E funded have since attracted private support.

The agency’s fate, however, remains unclear. It’s funding so far has come from last year’s stimulus package, not the regular budget, and Congress denied its request for funds for the current fiscal year. The President’s 2011 budget includes nearly $300 million for the agency, but at a time when Congress is facing pressure to cut spending, that money might not make to the final budget.

IBM comes up with solar breakthrough

There’s been a lot of solar energy news to blog about lately. Nestled in this spate of announcements is a breakthrough at IBM — solar cells created from abundant materials, well a higher proportion of abundant elements, than previous cells. The practical result? Cheaper to produce cells that don’t lose anything in the efficiency department, and cost and efficiency are the two issues that will determine when solar power becomes a viable alternative energy source.

From the second link:

Researchers at IBM have increased the efficiency of a novel type of solar cell made largely from cheap and abundant materials by over 40 percent. According to an article published this week in the journal Advanced Materials, the new efficiency is 9.6 percent, up from the previous record of 6.7 percent for this type of solar cell, and near the level needed for commercial solar panels. The IBM solar cells also have the advantage of being made with an inexpensive ink-based process.

The new solar cells convert light into electricity using a semiconductor material made of copper, zinc, tin, and sulfur–all abundant elements–as well as the relatively rare element selenium (CZTS). Reaching near-commercial efficiency levels is a “breakthrough for this technology,” says Matthew Beard, a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, who was not involved with the work.

Copper power: This prototype solar cell uses a copper-based material and has achieved record efficiencies for a cell of its kind.

Credit: IBM Research

Update — head below the fold for IBM’s release on the new solar cell.

Artificial intelligence at the human level

KurzweilAI.net — Maybe by 2050?

How Long Till Human-Level AI?

H+, Feb. 5, 2010 A significant numbers of individuals informed about AI believe it is likely that artificial general intelligence (AGI) at the human level or beyond will occur around the middle of this century, and plausibly even sooner, probably integrating a wide range of approaches, according to a survey of 21 AGI-09 conference participants. The experts were asked when they estimated AI would reach each of four milestones: passing the Turing test by carrying on a conversationwell enough to pass as a human solving problems as well as a third grade elementary school student performing Nobel-quality scientific work going beyond the human level to superhuman intelligence Read Original Article>>

The Drake equation and the multiverse

The well-known Drake equation, created by Dr. Frank Drake in 1960 to predict the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way, gets an upgrade to take into account the concept of multiple universes. Turns out our knowledge is so limited as to make the exercise essentially impossible.

From the second link:

But there’s a problem: this is not an equation. To form a true Drake-like argument, Gleiser would need to assign probabilities to each of these sets allowing him to write an equation in which the assigned probabilities multiplied together, on one side of the equation, equal the fraction of universes where complex life emerges on the other side.

Here he comes up against one of the great problems of modern cosmology–that without evidence to back up their veracity, many ideas in modern cosmology are little more than philosophy. So assigning a probability to the fraction of universes in the multiverse in which the fundamental constants and laws satisfy the anthropic principle is not just hard, but almost impossible to formulate at all.

Also:

Gleiser’s take on the Drake equation for the Multiverse is an interesting approach. What it tells us, however, is that our limited understanding of the universe today does not allow us to make any reasonable estimate of the number of intelligent lifeforms in the multiverse (more than one). And given the limits on what we can ever know about other universes, it’s likely that we’ll never be able to do much better than that.

The SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project

Received mail from Nancy Hairston recently about a very exciting project combining fine art with 3D modeling, rapid prototyping and digital sculpture. Nancy is the founder and president of VanDuzen Inc., parent company of MedCAD, SculptCAD and Vouch Software, and even though she’s currently a leader in the 3D modeling and prototyping world, her background is in the arts.

She regularly presents at the SME Rapid show each year — a couple of years ago even discussing a VanDuzen project involving fine art when uncovering a forged Picasso sculpture — and this year was approached about giving working artists the opportunity to play around with the cutting edge of 3D digital technology and see what resulted. Nancy jumped at the opportunity and out of the initial conversation grew the SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project. Nancy has assembled 14 artists, including herself, and the resulting artwork will be shown in conjunction with the SME Rapid show coming this May in Anaheim.

From the final link:

SculptCAD, a front runner in blending sculpture and CAD for manufacturing and reverse engineering, is inviting artists to hang a left from the utilitarian use of this technology and do what they do when they do art. “Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what these artists would come up with, if they had access to 3D tools.” mused Nancy Hairston, Founder of SculptCAD. An idea was born : SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project.

The experience is apt to be transformative, expanding the creative process and arousing a shift in thinking about how art comes to take it’s place in the physical realm. A very, very contemporary approach to art. Why “Rapid”? Rapid Prototype Printing, 3D Scanning and Digital Sculpture. New approaches to art making and art output. High speed. On Demand. It allows the impossible to be possible. The SculptCAD Rapid Artists will show the possibilities they discover.

And here’s a list of participating artists:

RAPID ARTISTS

• Brad Ford Smith
• Dave VanNess
• Jay Sullivan
• Erica Larkin
• Heather Ezell
• Ginger Fox
• Heather Gorham
• Katherine Batiste
• Mark Grote
• Shawn Smith
• Tom Lauerman
• Bert Scherbarth
• Nancy Hairston
• Shane Pennington

Expect much more on this project here in the coming months.

Pervasive games — gaming’s future?

Maybe so. Between the revolutionary Wii system, the coming-soon no controller gestural game control and crazy proliferation of smartphone gaming apps, the gaming industry is just massive.

Looks like pervasive games may be the next big thing.

From the link:

Instead, the most exciting developments are coming from the world of mobile phones or other sensor networks where engineers are testing a new generation of games that can be played anywhere there is a mobile phone or wireless network. These games are location aware, involve multiple players, rapid physical activity and Wii-like gesturing.

So-called pervasive games generate an entirely new set of challenges–and not just for the people who play them. They must work with multiple types of input-an iPhone must be able to play against a Nexus One. They involve many players communicating rapidly, so these devices need to synchronise with each other.

Gmail 2.0

As in it looks like Gmail is about to go web 2.0 on us. To me this just seems like blurring the role of Gmail. Sometimes there is such a thing as too much functionality.

Via KurzweilAI.net:

Google’s ‘Social’ Gmail: Could It Really Work?

PC World, Feb. 8, 2010 Google‘s social networking component for Gmail will reportedly aggregate updates from friends into single tweet-like status updates. Read Original Article>>

A solar power game-changer?

I couldn’t say with certainty, but this sure seems like it could be. This is obviously not ready for prime time (three years from serious production), but it is on the short horizon and if the claims bear out this tech completely alters the solar energy playing field.

From the link:

A startup company hopes to bring down the cost of generating power with concentrated sunlight by using microscale solar cells that can utilize twice as much light as other panels, without the need for expensive optics or cooling systems. Panels made from the tiny cells, which the Durham, NC-based company Semprius developed using a novel microprinting technology, also offer significant savings on materials costs. In late January, the company announced a joint agreement with Siemens to develop demonstration systems based on its technology. Semprius plans to begin volume production of the modules in 2013.

Microcell: The solar cells made by Semprius are 600 micrometers on each side and can be combined with high-power optics. The cell itself (the black square at center) is mounted atop a ceramic base with electrical contacts on each side.

Credit: Semprius

A note from the IRS

Don’t waste our time.

The release:

IRS Debunks Frivolous Tax Arguments

IR-2010-18, Feb. 5, 2010 WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today released the 2010 version of its discussion and rebuttal of many of the more common frivolous arguments made by individuals and groups that oppose compliance with federal tax laws. Anyone who contemplates arguing on legal grounds against paying their fair share of taxes should first read the 80-page document, The Truth about Frivolous Tax Arguments. The document explains many of the common frivolous arguments made in recent years and it describes the legal responses that refute these claims. It will help taxpayers avoid wasting their time and money with frivolous arguments and incurring penalties. Congress in 2006 increased the amount of the penalty for frivolous tax returns from $500 to $5,000. The increased penalty amount applies when a person submits a tax return or other specified submission, and any portion of the submission is based on a position the IRS identifies as frivolous. IRS highlighted in the document about 40 new cases adjudicated in 2009. Highlights include cases involving injunctions against preparers and promoters of Form 1099-Original Issue Discount schemes and injunctions against preparers and promoters of false fuel tax credit schemes.

Laptops and air travel …

… aren’t good partners, and will soon be even more at odds. Thanks Department of Transportation.

From the link:

Buying your next laptop computer or smartphone online could suddenly get a lot more expensive if a little-known U.S. Department of Transportation proposal to tighten rules around the shipment of small, battery-powered devices by air goes through, says an industry group opposing the move.

Airline passengers would be affected too, as rules banning spare lithium-ion batteries in checked-in luggage would also be extended to alkaline and nickel metal-hydride batteries, argues George Kerchner, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Portable Rechargeable Battery Association.

“It will be a nightmare for passengers,” Kerchner said.

On January 8, the department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) announced plans to eliminate exceptions on small lithium cells and batteries, defined as less than 100-watt hours in capacity (typical laptop batteries hold 60-80 watt-hours). Small lithium batteries are considered a class 9 hazardous material, a miscellaneous category which includes dry ice and magnetized goods. Batteries under the 100 watt-hour limit had long been exempted from the rules.

No estate tax this year

Well, so far at least. Congress let the estate tax lapse for 2010 meaning anyone lucky (unlucky? since you’re dead) enough to leave an estate this year will leave a larger estate since the Federal government isn’t taking its cut. Of course that might change in the future with some sort of retroactive tax. All in all it’s a confusing situation all around.

From the link:

More than a month into 2010, the Internal Revenue Service is not collecting estate tax on the money that wealthy people, including small business owners, leave to their heirs after they die. The unusual situation results because the U.S.Senate did not pass legislation late last year to remedy the scheduled expiration of the estate tax.The situation is confusing and unfair, and particularly hurts entrepreneurs doing succession planning, says Jonathan M.Bergman, a certified financial planner and vice-president of Palisades Hudson Financial Group, a fee-only financial planning firm in Scarsdale, N.Y. He spoke recently to Smart Answers columnist Karen E. Klein. Edited excerpts of their conversation follow.

Also from the link, here’s the bottom-line impact of this Congressional blunder:

How much tax revenue is lost when there’s no estate tax?

Around 1% of total Internal Revenue Service collections come from estate taxes.

U.S. solar market about to explode

As solar technology continues to improve and costs continue to go down, predicting solar power in the United States is on the edge of a major boom is an easy call to make. A few of the major barriers to more widespread solar installations – particularly the efficiency of the solar panels and the physical difficulty of getting the panels installed and operating — are not the impediment they were just a couple of years ago.

From the first link:

In a few years, the United States is likely to be the world’s largest market for solar power, eclipsing Germany, which has taken the lead as a result of strong government incentives in spite of the relative paucity of sunlight in that country. A number of factors could make growth possible in the United States–especially changes in legislation that give utilities incentives to create large solar farms.

Last year, the U.S. solar industry got off to a slow start, but sales rebounded in the second half of the year, largely because of a drop in the prices of solar panels of up to 40 percent, partly caused by an oversupply due to the recession. Revenues for many solar companies were likely flat, but the megawatts of solar installed in the United States overall grew by 25 to 40 percent last year, says Roger Efird, the chairman of the Solar Energy Industry Association and the managing director of Suntech America, a branch of Suntech Power, the largest maker of crystalline silicon solar panels in the world.

This year, Efird says, solar installations could double, reaching a gigawatt of capacity. “That’s a big number,” he says. “If you are in the solar business, you were talking watts 15 years ago, you were talking kilowatts 10 years ago, and you have trouble even talking megawatts today.”