Twitter adds an income stream

And it sounds both sensible and quite unobtrusive. Kudos to Twitter for looking for ways to create revenue without wrecking a unique web experience.

From the link:

You’re probably familiar with the “Groupons” of the world—social buying sites that offer deals on everything from oil changes to spa treatments, provided a certain number of people commit to purchasing it.

Today Twitter joined this trend with the launch of @earlybird Exclusive Offers, a Twitter account that will promote time-bound deals, sneak-peaks and events exclusively for its followers.

To receive alerts on these deals, Twitter users will need to follow the @earlybird account. @Earlybird will tweet the deals, which will appear in your stream, just like any other tweet from users you follow.

At first, Twitter will be partnering with with select advertisers—large international brands, it says—to develop offers solely for the Twitter community. These brands will determine the price, quantity for sale and the duration of the deal. Twitter, in turn, will earn a cut of the money that the brand brings in from sales.

From the department of “no duh”

The only thing the title of this release left out is it would also reduce both crime and the caseload of the California court system.

The release:

Legalizing marijuana in California would lower the price of the drug and increase use, study finds

Legalizing the production and distribution of marijuana in California could cut the price of the drug by as much as 80 percent and increase consumption, according to a new study by the nonprofit RAND Corporation that examines many issues raised by proposals to legalize marijuana in the state.

While the state Board of Equalization has estimated taxing legal marijuana could raise more than $1 billion in revenue, the RAND study cautions that any potential revenue could be dramatically higher or lower based on a number of factors, including the level of taxation, the amount of tax evasion and the response by the federal government.

Past research provides solid evidence that marijuana consumption goes up when prices go down, but the magnitude of the consumption increase cannot be predicted because prices will fall to levels below those ever studied, researchers say. Consumption also might rise because of non-price effects such as advertising or a reduction in stigma, researchers say.

In addition to uncertainty about the taxes levied and evaded, researchers do not know how users will respond to such a large drop in price. Even under a scenario with high taxes ($50 per ounce) and a moderate rate of tax evasion (25 percent), researchers cannot rule out consumption increases of 50 percent to 100 percent, and possibly even larger. If prevalence increased by 100 percent, marijuana use in California would be close to the prevalence levels recorded in the late 1970s.

The analysis, prepared by the RAND Drug Policy Research Center, was conducted in an effort to objectively outline the key issues that voters and legislators should consider as California weighs marijuana legalization.

“There is considerable uncertainty about the impact that legalizing marijuana in California will have on consumption and public budgets,” said Beau Kilmer, the study’s lead author and a policy researcher at RAND. “No government has legalized the production and distribution of marijuana for general use, so there is little evidence on which to base any predictions about how this might work in California,”

The analysis also suggests that the annual cost of enforcing current marijuana laws is smaller than suggested by others. The RAND study estimates that the cost of enforcing the current laws probably totals less than $300 million.

“It is critical that legislators and the public understand what is known and unknown as the state weighs this unprecedented step,” said Rosalie Liccardo Pacula, a study co-author and co-director with Kilmer of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center.

Two proposals are pending that would legalize the production and sale of marijuana in California. Assembly Bill 2254 authored by Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) would legalize marijuana for those aged 21 and older and task the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control with regulating its possession, sale and cultivation. The bill would create a $50 per ounce excise tax and these funds would be used to fund drug education, awareness, and rehabilitation programs under the jurisdiction of the State Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

In November, California voters will consider a ballot measure titled the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 that would make it legal for those aged 21 and older to cultivate marijuana on a 5-foot-by-5-foot plot, and possess, process, share or transport up to one ounce of marijuana. In addition, the initiative would authorize cities or counties to allow, regulate and tax the commercial cultivation and sales of marijuana. Such activities would remain illegal in jurisdictions that do not opt in.

In only two countries have there been changes in the criminal status of supplying marijuana. The Netherlands allows for sale of small amounts of marijuana (5 grams) in licensed coffee shops and in Australia four jurisdictions have reduced the penalties for cultivation of a small number of marijuana plants to confiscation and a fine. Neither has legalized larger-scale commercial cultivation of the sort California is considering.

In 1975, California was one of the first states to reduce the maximum penalty for possessing less than an ounce of marijuana from incarceration to a misdemeanor with a $100 fine. In 1996, California became the first state to allow marijuana to be grown and consumed for medical purposes.

RAND researchers say one effect of legalizing marijuana would be to dramatically drop the price as growers move from clandestine operations to legal production. Based on an analysis of known production costs and surveys of the current price of marijuana, researchers suggest the untaxed retail price of high-quality marijuana could drop to as low as $38 per ounce compared to about $375 per ounce today.

RAND researchers caution there are many factors that make it difficult to accurately estimate revenue that might be generated by any tax on legal marijuana. The higher the tax, the greater the incentives would be for a gray market in marijuana to develop, researchers say.

“A fixed excise tax per ounce may give producers and users an incentive to shift to smaller quantities of higher-potency forms of marijuana,” said study co-author Jonathan P. Caulkins, the H. Guyford Stever Professor of Operations Research at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College and Qatar campus. Such a shift is another factor that could lower revenues collected from marijuana taxes.

In addition, since the November ballot initiative leaves it to local governments to set tax rates, the size of any levy could vary broadly. A jurisdiction with a low tax rate might attract marijuana buyers from elsewhere in the state or even other states, further complicating efforts to predict government revenues from the sale of legal marijuana, according to researchers.

The RAND report also investigates some of the costs to the state and society in general, such as drug treatment and other health expenses, that may change if marijuana is legalized in California.

It’s unclear whether legalizing marijuana may increase or decrease drug treatment costs, according to the study. More than half of the 32,000 admissions for treatment of marijuana abuse in California during in 2009 resulted from criminal justice referrals, which could drop if legalization is approved. However, an increase in marijuana use could cause a spike in those who voluntarily seek treatment for marijuana abuse, researchers say.

###

The report, “Altered State? Assessing How Marijuana Legalization in California Could Influence Marijuana Consumption and Public Budgets,” can be found at www.rand.org. Funding for this study was provided by RAND’s Investment in People and Ideas program, which combines philanthropic contributions from individuals, foundations, and private-sector firms with earnings from RAND’s endowment and operations to support research on issues that reach beyond the scope of traditional client sponsorship.

Other authors of the study are Robert J. MacCoun of the University of California, Berkeley, and Peter H. Reuter of the University of Maryland.

The RAND Drug Policy Research Center is a joint project of RAND Health and the RAND Safety and Justice program within RAND Infrastructure, Safety, and Environment. The goal of the RAND Drug Policy Research Center is to provide a firm, empirical foundation upon which sound drug policies can be built.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world. To sign up for RAND e-mail alerts: http://www.rand.org/publications/email.html

Toward perfect 3D data storage

Via KurzweilAI.net — You can find the news below, and this is the first taste of the new KurzweilAI format after the site relaunch this past Monday.

A Step Closer to Perfect 3-D Data Storage

July 7, 2010

(ESRF)

The ultimate in holographic (three-dimensional) data storage–a chemically pure crystal composed solely of fluorescent proteins that can be read and reversibly switched between at least two different states using nothing but light from lasers–is being developed in preliminary research by an international group of scientists.

Such a crystal would represent something approaching the theoretical limit of data density in a storage medium: each bit would be represented by a single molecule.

Read original article

Topics: Computers/Infotech/UI | Physics/Cosmology

Source: Technology Review — July 6, 2010

Congratulations Farmers Branch, Texas

Your crazy anti-immigration renters law garnered you a published academic paper. Good job, there.

The release:

Study of Farmers Branch, Texas: Immigrants seen as threat to white, middle-class ‘American’ identity

Who belongs in America? Immigration has sparked a raging national debate about that question — including in the Dallas suburb of Farmers Branch, Texas, the first U.S. city to adopt an ordinance requiring renters to prove they are legal residents.

Contrary to what many believe, however, race isn’t the only driving reason that many white, middle-class people feel threatened by immigrants, according to a new analysis by anthropologists at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. White, middle-class people also perceive immigrants who are settling in their suburban communities as a threat to their class status and to their very identity as Americans, say anthropologists Caroline B. Brettell and Faith G. Nibbs.

Immigrants — with cultures and traditions different from white suburbanites — are viewed as an assault on long-standing symbols of American nationality, the researchers say. Those symbols include middle-class values and tastes, and the perception that Americans are patriotic and law-abiding, say the researchers, both in SMU’s Department of Anthropology.

“For many whites, American identity is wrapped up with being suburban and middle class, and when they see immigrants changing their communities and potentially threatening their class status, they react with anti-immigrant legislation,” says Brettell.

Class and culture

It’s true that for some whites, immigrants can represent competition for economic security and scarce resources, say Brettell and Nibbs — but in the suburbs they are also seen as a threat to the white, middle-class concept of “social position.” Because of that, Brettell and Nibbs argue for greater attention to class and culture in the study of contemporary immigration into the United States.

The anthropologists base their conclusion on a close analysis of Farmers Branch, a suburb of almost 28,000 people. Farmers Branch made news in 2006 as the first U.S. city to adopt an ordinance requiring that apartment managers document tenants as legal residents.

For their analysis, the researchers looked at newspaper articles and blogs, conducted a lengthy interview with a key City Council member, carried out background historical research and analyzed U.S. Census data.

The research has been accepted for publication in the journal International Migration in an article titled “Immigrant Suburban Settlement and the ‘Threat’ to Middle Class Status and Identity: The Case of Farmers Branch, Texas.” See www.smuresearch.com for links to more information.

Flooding into suburbia

New immigrants to the United States are settling in major gateway cities like Dallas and making their homes directly in middle-class suburbs, say Brettell and Nibbs.

These suburbs — once called the “bourgeois utopia” where middle-class values triumph — are populated by white people who decades before fled the central cities to escape poor housing, deteriorating schools, and racial and ethnic diversity, the researchers say.

But when immigrants and white suburbs mix, the result can be explosive — as in the case of Farmers Branch. Whites view their hometown changing. And the changes feel very foreign to them — new religious institutions, ethnic strip-shopping malls, signs in languages other than English, and bilingual programs for education, health care and law-enforcement programs.

“Free and white”

The historic roots of Farmers Branch lie in a land grant designed to draw “free and white” inhabitants to the area in the 1850s, say the researchers. Farmers Branch grew to 17,500 by 1970, and at that time there were 320 Hispanic surnames in the city. By 2000, however, the Hispanic population had grown to more than one-third of the total. By 2008, Hispanics were the largest demographic group, with 46.7 percent of the population.

Today, like many such cities, Farmers Branch sees its minority, elderly and low-income population growing faster than the national average, say Brettell and Nibbs.

The number of owner-occupied homes in Farmers Branch has fallen dramatically, from 87 percent in 1960 to 66 percent in 2000. Raw median income in 2000 was below what it was in 1970 dollars, adjusted against 2008 dollars, say the researchers.

“If you are a family with options, would you move into this neighborhood if presented with these figures?” asks Mayor Tim O’Hare in the journal article. O’Hare led the fight for the renter’s ordinance.

“Rule of Law”

Brettell and Nibbs say that white suburbanites have also invoked the “Rule of Law” in Farmers Branch and elsewhere.

“As the formulation of laws and their enforcement are disproportionately unavailable to ethnic minorities, and completely inaccessible to undocumented immigrants, the principle of Rule of Law has become a convenient weapon for the Farmers Branch middle class in their fight for status and the status quo,” say Brettell and Nibbs in the article. “Add to this a bit of the legacy of Texas frontier mentality and patriotism and you have a line drawn in the sand by those who stand for the Rule of Law as something absolutely fundamental to American identity and hence perceive illegal immigrants as a threat to that identity.”

In that way, the “Rule of Law” is a tool to exclude unauthorized immigrants and attempt to legislate a certain quality of life, such as English-only communication, as well as proof of citizenship to rent a dwelling, apply for food stamps or get school financial aid, say the researchers.

“Everyone is looking at race but not at class in the study of immigrants, and particularly in anti-immigrant backlash,” Brettell says. “We add to this literature the analysis of ‘Rule of Law’ as a newly rhetorical device that excludes illegal immigrants. Our article offers a new way of looking at this issue.”

###

Caroline B. Brettell is University Distinguished Professor in the SMU Department of Anthropology and Faith G. Nibbs is a doctoral candidate at SMU.

Beautiful space image — NGC 3603

Enjoy …

Credit: NASA, ESA, R. O’Connell (University of Virginia), F. Paresce (National Institute for Astrophysics, Bologna, Italy), E. Young (Universities Space Research Association/Ames Research Center), the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

From the link:

Most of the stars in the cluster were born around the same time but differ in size, mass, temperature, and color. The course of a star’s life is determined by its mass, so a cluster of a given age will contain stars in various stages of their lives, giving an opportunity for detailed analyses of stellar life cycles. NGC 3603 also contains some of the most massive stars known. These huge stars live fast and die young, burning through their hydrogen fuel quickly and ultimately ending their lives in supernova explosions.

And here’s one more from the same group:

Caption: The core of the star cluster in NGC 3603 is shown in great detail in an image from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) camera on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The image is a color composite of observations in the WFPC2 filters F555W (blue), F675W (green) and F814W (red). This view shows the second of two images taken ten years apart that were used to detect the motions of individual stars within the cluster for the first time. The field of view is about 20 arc seconds across.

Credit: NASA, ESA and Wolfgang Brandner (MPIA), Boyke Rochau (MPIA) and Andrea Stolte (University of Cologne)

Usage Restrictions: None

Related news release: Hubble catches stars on the move

Eligible homebuyer credit closing deadline pushed to September 30

News from the IRS:

Closing Deadline Extended to Sept. 30 for Eligible Homebuyer Credit Purchases

IR-2010-80, July 2, 2010 WASHINGTON — Eligible taxpayers who contracted to buy a home, qualifying for the first-time homebuyer credit, before the end of April now have until Sept. 30, 2010 to close the deal, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The Homebuyer Assistance and Improvement Act of 2010, signed by the President today, extended the closing deadline from June 30 to Sept. 30 for any eligible homebuyer who entered into a binding purchase contract on or before April 30 to close on the purchase of the home on or before June 30, 2010. The new law addresses concerns that many homebuyers might be unable to meet the original June 30 closing deadline. The IRS reminds taxpayers that special filing and documentation requirements apply to anyone claiming the homebuyer credit. To avoid refund delays, those who entered into a purchase contract on or before April 30, but closed after that date, should attach to their return a copy of the pages from the signed contract showing all parties’ names and signatures if required by local law, the property address, the purchase price, and the date of the contract. Besides filling out Form 5405, First-Time Homebuyer Credit and Repayment of the Credit, all eligible homebuyers must also include with their return one of the following documents: A copy of the settlement statement showing all parties’ names and signatures if required by local law, property address, sales price, and date of purchase. Normally, this is the properly executed Form HUD-1, Settlement Statement. For mobile home purchasers who are unable to get a settlement statement, a copy of the executed retail sales contract showing all parties’ names and signatures, property address, purchase price and date of purchase. For a newly constructed home where a settlement statement is not available, a copy of the certificate of occupancy showing the owner’s name, property address and date of the certificate. Besides providing a tax benefit to first-time homebuyers and purchasers who haven’t owned homes in recent years, the law allows a long-time resident of the same main home to claim the credit if they purchase a new principal residence. To qualify, eligible taxpayers must show that they lived in their old homes for a five-consecutive-year period during the eight-year period ending on the purchase date of the new home. Homebuyers claiming this credit can avoid refund delays by attaching documentation covering the five-consecutive-year period: Form 1098, Mortgage Interest Statement, or substitute mortgage interest statements, Property tax records or Homeowner’s insurance records. There are three options for claiming the credit on a qualifying 2010 purchase: If a 2009 return has not yet been filed, claim it on Form 1040 for tax-year 2009. Though these returns cannot be filed electronically, taxpayers can still use IRS Free File to prepare their return. The returns must be printed out and sent to the IRS, along with all required documentation. The IRS urges taxpayers claiming refunds to choose direct deposit. If a 2009 return has already been filed, claim it on an amended return using Form 1040X. Whether or not a 2009 return has been filed, wait until next year and claim it on a 2010 Form 1040. More details on claiming the credit can be found in the instructions to Form 5405, as well as on the First-Time Homebuyer Credit page on IRS.gov.

Beautiful space image — primordial cosmic microwave background radiation

Here is the first full-sky image from Europe’s Planck telescope released by the European Space Agency:

From the link:

Dominating the foreground are large segments of our Milky Way Galaxy (the bright horizontal line running the full length of the image is the galaxy’s main disc, the plane in which the Sun and the Earth also reside). Behind that is the primordial cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, a key target of the Planck mission. A formal release of fully prepared CMB images and scientific papers is expected by the end of 2012.

Social media, mobile devices and GPS

A pretty nasty privacy combination.

Sure many people willingly broadcast their whereabouts at all times via all sorts of social media, but I’m betting most people really don’t want their location tracked at all times. This is where the privacy issue comes into play and why the linked story should give everyone more than a little pause — even those who are giving the milk away for free so to speak.

From the link:

A study out this week from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) shows that mobile social networks are giving data about users’ physical locations to tracking sites and other social networking services. Researchers reported that all 20 sites that were studied leaked some kind of private information to third-party tracking sites.

“This initial look at mobile online social networks raises some serious concerns, but there is more work to be done,” said Craig Wills, professor of computer science at WPI and co-author of the study. “The fact that third-party sites now seem to have the capacity to build a comprehensive and dynamic portrait of mobile online social network users argues for a comprehensive way to capture the entire gamut of privacy controls into a single, unified, simple, easy-to-understand framework, so that users can make informed choices about their online privacy and feel confident that they are sharing their personal, private information only with those they choose to share it with.”

Think this issue is something of a nonstarter? Chew on this for a little while:

he researchers found that all 20 sites leaked some kind of private information to third-party tracking sites. In many cases, the data given out contained the user’s unique social networking identifier, which could allow third-party sites to connect the records they keeps of users’ browsing behavior with the their profiles on the social networking sites, the study said.

Mobile social networks track users’ geographic location by tapping into the data on the mobile devices.

The study noted that only two social networks directly gave location information to the third-party tracking sites, but several use a third-party map service to show the user’s location on a map. The study also reported that six different sites transmit a unique identifier to the user’s mobile phone, enabling third-party sites to continue to track a user’s location even as the phone is used for other applications.

Moonbase Alpha, a free online game from NASA

News very hot from the inbox:

NASA Takes Gamers on a Lunar Adventure With New Online Video Game

WASHINGTON, July 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — NASA has given gamers a taste of lunar adventure with release of Moonbase Alpha, an exciting new, free online video game.

(Logo:  http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)
(Logo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO)

The game has single and multiplayer options that allow participants to step into the role of an exploration team member in a futuristic 3-D lunar settlement. Players must work to restore critical systems and oxygen flow after a meteor strike cripples a solar array and life support equipment. Available resources include an interactive command center, lunar rover, mobile robotic repair units and a fully-stocked equipment shed.

The game is a proof of concept to show how NASA content can be combined with a cutting-edge game engine to inspire, engage and educate students about agency technologies, job opportunities and the future of space exploration. Moonbase Alpha is rated “E” for everyone.

It is the first game in NASA’s Learning Technologies project. The project supports the delivery of NASA content through interactive technologies such as virtual worlds, games and software applications to enhance science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, education.

Moonbase Alpha is a precursor to a planned NASA-based massively, multiplayer online game project. The project is being designed to have content and missions that require players to gain and demonstrate STEM knowledge to succeed.

NASA released the game on Valve’s Steam network. The agency will use the Steamworks suite of services for server browsing, leaderboards, statistics and more. Steam has more than 25 million accounts and has released more than 1,100 games. It was built on Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3. The Army Game Studio developed the game with support from Virtual Heroes, a division of Applied Research Associates in Research Triangle Park, N.C. This collaboration between NASA and the Army’s Aviation Missile Research Development and Engineering Center is an example of government agencies working together to improve education in the STEM fields.

For more information about Moonbase Alpha, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/moonbasealpha

For information about NASA’s education programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/education

For information about NASA and agency projects, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/

Photo:  http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO
PRN Photo Desk photodesk@prnewswire.com
http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO
Source: NASA

Web Site:  http://www.nasa.gov/

Robots on the moon in less than three years?

Maybe so if you believe in the stated goals of NASA’s Project M.

From the link:

Despite President Obama’s new budget proposal to scrap moon-landing plans NASA is pushing forward with a new lunar-based mission, dubbed Project M.

According to the agency, “the proposition is simple: land an operational humanoid robot on the moon in 1,000 days.”

NASA made a big splash earlier this year when it unveiled a humanoid robot called Robonaut2 in partnership with GM.

Credit: NASA/GM

Nano-scale light mills now a reality

I’ll just say, wow! The NEMS applications are particularly interesting.

From the link:

While those wonderful light sabers in the Star Wars films remain the figment of George Lucas’ fertile imagination, light mills – rotary motors driven by light – that can power objects thousands of times greater in size are now fact. Researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California Berkeley have created the first nano-sized light mill motor whose rotational speed and direction can be controlled by tuning the frequency of the incident light waves. It may not help conquer the Dark Side, but this new light mill does open the door to a broad range of valuable applications, including a new generation of nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), nanoscale solar light harvesters, and bots that can perform in vivo manipulations of DNA and other biological molecules.

This STM image shows a gammadion gold light mill nanomotor embedded in a silica microdisk. Inset is a magnified top view of the light mill.

Karl Rove, fiscal hypocrite

Of course that should surprise absolutely no one who paid any fiscal attention from 2001 to January 2009.

Daniel Mitchell blogging at Cato@Liberty rips Rove a new one for essentially doing what he always does — pretending the unfathomable fiscal recklessness of the Bush 43 years never happened.

From the link:

Rove has zero credibility on these issues. In the excerpt below, Rove attacks Obama for earmarks, but this corrupt form of pork-barrel spending skyrocketed during the Bush years. Rove rips Obama for government-run healthcare, but Rove helped push through Congress a reckless new entitlement for prescription drugs. He attacks Obama for misusing TARP, but the Bush administration created that no-strings-attached bailout program.

The latest in smart textiles

The entire piece is a nice very short primer on the concept of smart textiles, but real news is a breakthrough in the very fibers smart textiles are woven from.

From the link:

But that’s a fiddly, time-consuming process. One thing that could help is more useful fibres. And today Jian Feng Gu from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China and couple of buddies reveal one that could help.

Their idea is to create a simple rolled capacitor from a sheet of conducting polymer sandwiched between two insulating sheets of low density polyethylene. They then roll this sandwich into a cylinder and encase it in high density polyethylene.

There’s nothing unusual about this kind of rolled capacitor. But what Gu and co do next is. They heat it and then extrude it through a tiny hole to form a fibre with a diameter of less than a millimetre.

If the conditions are just right, the plastics all stretch in exactly the same way so that the internal structure of the fibre is just a smaller version of the original.

And that’s exactly what happens. Gu and co say their fibre is soft and flexible and has a capacitance some 1000 times greater than an equivalent co-axial cable.

Obama gives $2B to two solar companies

As a nation we must find energy sources beyond petroleum. Chiefly because it’s a finite resource and will eventually — and that eventually may be a long ways off — run out. And it is the root of almost every vexing military and statecraft problem the United States faces. The problem is oil, gas and coal are so incredibly cheap and efficient compared to any feasible alternative.

Solar power has seen breakthrough after breakthrough (see the link in the sidebar under “interesting blog topics”) over the last several years, and many of these breakthroughs affect the current solar marketplace so it’s not all pie-in-the-sky activity. One way to ramp up improvements in solar efficiency and lower practical costs is to infuse the R&D process with enough money to not have to pick and choose among untested ideas. This investment from the government will allow Abengoa Solar and Abound Solar Manufacturing to implement large solar installations, create some jobs along the way, and, yes, continue to improve solar energy as a viable alternative to petroleum.

This is good news to blog about on Independence Day. Kudos to President Obama.

From the link:

US President Barack Obama announced on Saturday the awarding of nearly two billion dollars to two solar energy companies that have agreed to build new power plants in the United States, creating thousands of new jobs.

“We’re going to keep fighting to advance our recovery,” Obama said in his weekly radio address. “And we’re going to keep competing aggressively to make sure the jobs and industries of the future are taking root right here in America.”

One of the companies, Abengoa Solar, has agreed to build one of the largest solar plants in the world in Arizona, which will create about 1,600 construction jobs. When completed, this plant will provide enough clean energy to power 70,000 homes.

The other company, Abound Solar Manufacturing, is building two new plants, one in Colorado and one in Indiana.

US President Barack Obama (R) tours a solar energy centre in Arcadia, Florida in 2009. Obama has announced the awarding of nearly $2 bln to two solar energy companies that have agreed to build new power plants in the US, creating thousands of new jobs

Happy Fourth of July!

Celebrating the independence of the United States of America.

Enjoy …

Toward quantum computing

This news comes from the University of Maryland offering another advancement toward a quantum computer — something that is ways off yet — that involves nanotechnology.

The release:

UM Scientists Advance Quantum Computing & Energy Conversion Tech

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Using a unique hybrid nanostructure, University of Maryland researchers have shown a new type of light-matter interaction and also demonstrated the first full quantum control of qubit spin within very tiny colloidal nanostructures (a few nanometers), thus taking a key step forward in efforts to create a quantum computer.

Published in the July 1 issue of Nature, their research builds on work by the same Maryland research team published in March in the journal Science (3-26-10). According to the authors and outside experts, the new findings further advance the promise these new nanostructures hold for quantum computing and for new, more efficient, energy generation technologies (such as photovoltaic cells), as well as for other technologies that are based on light-matter interactions like biomarkers.

“The real breakthrough is that we use a new technology from materials science to ‘shed light’ on light-matter interactions and related quantum science in ways that we believe will have important applications in many areas, particularly energy conversion and storage and quantum computing,” said lead researcher Min Ouyang, an assistant professor in the department of physics and in the university’s Maryland NanoCenter. “In fact, our team already is applying our new understanding of nanoscale light-matter interactions and advancement of precise control of nanostructures to the development of a new type of photovoltaic cell that we expect to be significantly more efficient at converting light to electricity than are current cells.”

Ouyang and the other members of the University of Maryland team — research scientist Jiatao Zhang, and students Kwan Lee and Yun Tang — have created a patent-pending process that uses chemical thermodynamics to produce, in solution, a broad range of different combination materials, each with a shell of structurally perfect mono-crystal semiconductor around a metal core. In the research published in this week’s Nature, the researchers used hybrid metal/semiconductor nanostructures developed through this process to experimentally demonstrate “tunable resonant coupling” between a plasmon (from metal core) and an exciton (from semiconductor shell), with a resulting enhancement of the Optical Stark Effect. This effect was discovered some 60 years ago in studies of the interaction between light and atoms that showed light can be applied to modify atomic quantum states.

Nanostructures, Large Advances
“Metal-semiconductor heteronanostructures have been investigated intensely in the last few years with the metallic components used as nanoscale antennas to couple light much more effectively into and out of semiconductor nanoscale, light-emitters,” said Garnett W. Bryant, leader of the Quantum Processes and Metrology Group in the Atomic Physics Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). “The research led Min Ouyang shows that a novel heteronanostructure with the semiconductor surrounding the metallic nanoantenna can achieve the same goals. Such structures are very simple and much easier to make than previously attempted, greatly opening up possibilities for application. Most importantly, they have demonstrated that the light/matter coupling can be manipulated to achieve coherent quantum control of the semiconductor nanoemitters, a key requirement for quantum information processing,” said Bryant, who is not involved with this research. Bryant also is a scientist in the Joint Quantum Institute, a leading center of quantum science research that is a partnership between NIST and the University of Maryland.

Ouyang and his colleagues agree that their new findings were made possible by their crystal-metal hybrid nanostructures, which offer a number of benefits over the epitaxial structures used for previous work. Epitaxy has been the principle way to create single crystal semiconductors and related devices. The new research highlights the new capabilities of these UM nanostructures, made with a process that avoids two key constraints of epitaxy — a limit on deposition semiconductor layer thickness and a rigid requirement for “lattice matching.”

The Maryland scientists note that, in addition to the enhanced capabilities of their hybrid nanostructures, the method for producing them doesn’t require a clean room facility and the materials don’t have to be formed in a vacuum, the way those made by conventional epitaxy do. “Thus it also would be much simpler and cheaper for companies to mass produce products based on our hybrid nanostructures,” Ouyang said.

UM: Addressing Big Issues, Exploring Big Ideas
Every day University of Maryland faculty and student researchers are making a deep impact on the scientific, technological, political, social, security and environmental challenges facing our nation and world. Working in partnership with federal agencies, and international and industry collaborators, they are advancing knowledge and solutions in a areas such as climate change, global security, energy, public health, information technology, food safety and security, and space exploration.

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Schematic of hybrid core-shell growth process

“Tailoring light-matter-spin interactions in colloidal hetero-nanostructures” Jiatao Zhang, Yun Tang, Kwan Lee, Min Ouyang, Nature, July 1, 2010.

This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and Beckman Foundation. Facility support was from Maryland Nanocenter and its Nanoscale Imaging, Spectroscopy, and Properties Laboratory, which is supported in part by the NSF as a Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers shared experiment facility.

KurzweilAI.net 2.0 launching July 5

Via KurzweilAI — Anyone who reads this blog even casually probably knows I use KurzweilAI as a source fairly often for futurism, and related, news items. This time it’s about KurzweilAI itself — a relaunched website next Monday.

KurzweilAI.net 2.0 launches July 5

KurzweilAI.net, July 1, 2010 KurzweilAI.net will launch a redesigned version of its Kurzweil Accelerating Intelligence (KurzweilAI) website on Monday, July 5 at http://kurzweilai.net. KurzweilAI 2.0 adds a blog and new sections for books, videos, films, TV shows, podcast directory, humor, free e-books, and news on Ray Kurzweil projects and affiliates, along with links to RSS feeds and the @kurzweilainews Twitter feed. Articles, authors, events, and forums sections have also been redesigned for easy browsing by topics, dates, and other methods. The new website is based on WordPress, allowing for easier access to information, commenting on posts, and fast updating for breaking news and blog items. A new site-wide faceted search feature allows users to instantly find content in any of the more than 13,000 posts since 2001, based on topics and content types, in addition to “Google advanced search” style word and phrase searching. Also included in KurzweilAI 2.0 is a completely redesigned and more powerful Ramona 4.0 chatbot, featuring multiple voice accents, variable personality (whimsical vs. nerdy), smarter chat engine, and natural-language front end to Powerset, providing access to Wikipedia and other information. Newsletter subscribers will automatically receive a redesigned HTML newsletter offering fast access to original sources.

Nanotechnology and dentistry

Okay, for many, many years I’ve been reading about all sorts of breakthroughs, innovations and miraculous-sounding dental treatments that never really seem to pan out (remember that cavity removing painless gel anyone?), but I couldn’t resist throwing this bit of nanotech out there.

The release:

Nano-sized advance toward next big treatment era in dentistry

		IMAGE: Dentists may use a special nano-sized film in the future to bring diseased teeth back to life rather than remove them. Click here for more information.

Scientists are reporting an advance toward the next big treatment revolution in dentistry — the era in which root canal therapy brings diseased teeth back to life, rather than leaving a “non-vital” or dead tooth in the mouth. In a report in the monthly journal ACS Nano, they describe a first-of-its-kind, nano-sized dental film that shows early promise for achieving this long-sought goal.

Nadia Benkirane-Jessel and colleagues note that root canal procedures help prevent tooth loss in millions of people each year. During the procedure, a dentist removes the painful, inflamed pulp, the soft tissue inside the diseased or injured tooth that contains nerves and blood vessels. Regenerative endodontics, the development and delivery of tissues to replace diseased or damaged dental pulp, has the potential to provide a revolutionary alternative to pulp removal.

The scientists are reporting development of a multilayered, nano-sized film — only 1/50,000th the thickness of a human hair — containing a substance that could help regenerate dental pulp. Previous studies show that the substance, called alpha melanocyte stimulating hormone, or alpha-MSH, has anti-inflammatory properties. The scientists showed in laboratory tests alpha-MSH combined with a widely-used polymer produced a material that fights inflammation in dental pulp fibroblasts. Fibroblasts are the main type of cell found in dental pulp. Nano-films containing alpha-MSH also increased the number of these cells. This could help revitalize damaged teeth and reduce the need for a root canal procedure, the scientists suggest.

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ARTICLE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“Nanostructured Assemblies for Dental Application”

DOWNLOAD FULL TEXT ARTICLE
http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/nn100713m

Graphene 2.0

Yep, I’m going to be lazy just cop part of the title of this release, well really more of an article than an out-and-out press release. Sounds like a pretty cool graphene transistor with potential real world applications.

The release:

Graphene 2.0: a new approach to making a unique material

June 30, 2010

Since its discovery, graphene—an unusual and versatile substance composed of a single-layer crystal lattice of carbon atoms—has caused much excitement in the scientific community. Now, Nongjian (NJ) Tao, a researcher at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University has hit on a new way of making graphene, maximizing the material’s enormous potential, particularly for use in high-speed electronic devices.

Along with collaborators from Germany’s Max Planck Institute, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Utah, and Tsinghua University, Beijing, Tao created a graphene transistor composed of 13 benzene rings.

The molecule, known as a coronene, shows an improved electronic band gap, a property which may help to overcome one of the central obstacles to applying graphene technology for electronics. Tao is the director of the Biodesign Institute’s Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors and electrical engineering professor in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. The group’s work appears in the June 29 advanced online issue of Nature Communications.

Eventually, graphene components may find their way into a broad array of products, from lasers to ultra-fast computer chips; ultracapacitors with unprecedented storage capabilities; tools for microbial detection and diagnosis; photovoltaic cells; quantum computing applications and many others.

As the name suggests, graphene is closely related to graphite. Each time a pencil is drawn across a page, tiny fragments of graphene are shed. When properly magnified, the substance resembles an atomic-scale chicken wire. Sheets of the material possess exceptional electronic and optical properties, making it highly attractive for varied applications.

“Graphene is an amazing material, made of carbon atoms connected in a honeycomb structure,” Tao says, pointing to graphene’s huge electrical mobility—the ease with which electrons can flow through the material. Such high mobility is a critical parameter in determining the speed of components like transistors.

Producing usable amounts of graphene however, can be tricky. Until now, two methods have been favored, one in which single layer graphene is peeled from a multilayer sheet of graphite, using adhesive tape and the other, in which crystals of graphene are grown on a substrate, such as silicon carbide.

In each case, an intrinsic property of graphene must be overcome for the material to be suitable for a transistor. As Tao explains, “a transistor is basically a switch—you turn it on or off. A graphene transistor is very fast but the on/off ratio is very tiny. ” This is due to the fact that the space between the valence and conduction bands of the material—or band gap as it is known—is zero for graphene.

In order to enlarge the band gap and improve the on/off ratio of the material, larger sheets of graphene may be cut down to nanoscale sizes. This has the effect of opening the gap between valence and conductance bands and improving the on/off ratio, though such size reduction comes at a cost. The process is laborious and tends to introduce irregularities in shape and impurities in chemical composition, which somewhat degrade the electrical properties of the graphene.  “This may not really be a viable solution for mass production,” Tao observes.

Rather than a top down approach in which sheets of graphene are reduced to a suitable size to act as transistors, Tao’s approach is bottom up—building up the graphene, molecular piece by piece. To do this, Tao relies on the chemical synthesis of benzene rings, hexagonal structures, each formed from 6 carbon atoms. “Benzene is usually an insulating material, ” Tao says. But as more such rings are joined together, the material’s behavior becomes more like a semiconductor.

Using this process, the group was able to synthesize a coronene molecule, consisting of 13 benzene rings arranged in a well defined shape. The molecule was then fitted on either side with linker groups—chemical binders that allow the molecule to be attached to electrodes, forming a nanoscale circuit. An electrical potential was then passed through the molecule and the behavior, observed. The new structure displayed transistor properties, showing reversible on and off switches.

Tao points out that the process of chemical synthesis permits the fine-tuning of structures in terms of ideal size, shape and geometric structure, making it advantageous for commercial mass production. Graphene can also be made free of defects and impurities, thereby reducing electrical scattering and providing material with maximum mobility and carrier velocity, ideal for high-speed electronics.

In conventional devices, resistance is proportional to temperature, but in the graphene transistors by Tao et al., electron mobility is due to quantum tunneling, and remains temperature independent—a signature of coherent process.

The group believes they will be able to enlarge the graphene structures through chemical synthesis to perhaps hundreds of rings, while still maintaining a sufficient band gap to enable switching behavior. The research opens many possibilities for the future commercialization of this uncommon material, and its use in a new generation of ultra high-speed electronics.

Written by Richard Harth
Biodesign Institute Science Writer

Soccer — here comes the science

I’ve already done a blog post on scientific research behind this year’s World Cup ball, the Jabulani — now here’s news on a Physics Today article on the science behind soccer. (Hint: hit the link in the release for the article.)

The release:

Study explains science of soccer

College Park, MD (July 1, 2010) — With the attention of sports fans worldwide focused on South Africa and the 2010 FIFA World Cup, U.S. scientist John Eric Goff has made the aerodynamics of the soccer ball a focus of his research.

In an article appearing in the magazine Physics Today this month, Goff examines the science of soccer and explains how the world’s greatest players are able to make a soccer ball do things that would seem to defy the forces of nature.

Goff’s article looks at the ball’s changing design and how its surface roughness and asymmetric air forces contribute to its path once it leaves a player’s foot. His analysis leads to an understanding of how reduced air density in games played at higher altitudes — like those in South Africa — can contribute to some of the jaw-dropping ball trajectories already seen in some of this year’s matches.

“The ball is moving a little faster than what some of the players are used to,” says Goff, who is a professor of physics at Lynchburg College in Virginia and an expert in sports science.

For Goff, soccer is a sport that offers more than non-stop action — it is a living laboratory where physics equations are continuously expressed. On the fields of worldwide competition, the balls maneuver according to complicated formulae, he says, but these can be explained in terms the average viewer can easily understand. And the outcomes of miraculous plays can be explained simply in terms of the underlying physics.

Goff also is the author of the recently published book, “Gold Medal Physics: The Science of Sports,” which uncovers the mechanisms behind some of the greatest moments in sports history, including:

• How did Cal beat Stanford in the last seconds with five lateral passes as the Stanford marching band was coming on to the field?
• How did Doug Flutie complete his “Hail Mary” touchdown pass that enabled Boston College to beat Miami?
• How did Lance Armstrong cycle to a world-beating seven Tour de France victories?
• How did Olympic greats Bob Beamon (long jump), Greg Louganis (diving) and Katarina Witt (figure skating) achieve their record-setting Olympic gold?

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The article “Power and spin in the beautiful game” appears in the July, 2010 issue of Physics Today and is available at http://www.physicstoday.org/beautiful_game.html

ABOUT PHYSICS TODAY

Published by the American Institute of Physics, Physics Today is the most influential and closely followed physics magazine in the world, informing readers about science and its place in the world with authoritative features, news coverage and analysis, and fresh perspectives on technological advances and ground-breaking research. Physics Today Online (www.physicstoday.org) serves as the magazine’s home on the Internet, with all of its content available to subscribers and continually building a valuable online archive.

ABOUT AIP

The American Institute of Physics is a federation of 10 physical science societies representing more than 135,000 scientists, engineers, and educators and is one of the world’s largest publishers of scientific information in the physical sciences. Offering partnership solutions for scientific societies and for similar organizations in science and engineering, AIP is a leader in the field of electronic publishing of scholarly journals. AIP publishes 12 journals (some of which are the most highly cited in their respective fields), two magazines, including its flagship publication Physics Today; and the AIP Conference Proceedings series. Its online publishing platform Scitation hosts nearly two million articles from more than 185 scholarly journals and other publications of 28 learned society publishers.

Andrew v. Andrew

Sullivan versus Breitbart, that is. One is an actual principled journalist with a deep appreciation, and training, for the art bloodless war that is debate. The other is a hack rabble-rouser with an agenda. You decide.

In this much they are both entirely correct — you can’t expect any electronic communication to be “off the record.” Where they differ is whether to respect the journalistic principle of an “off the record” conversation whether it be oral, written or electronic.

(And yes, that opening graf was meant to provocate. I enjoy the work of both men, albeit in different ways at times. For the record they are both a little bit right in this conversation.)

Microsoft Kin phone, RIP

Given the current huge ad campaign in action, this is just truly epic failure (yes, the phrase is way overused and becoming quite trite, but maybe the only way to truly express this level of corporate idiocy.)

From the link:

The company halted the rollout of Kin One and Kin Two phones after less than two months.

And:

But the timing of Kin’s arrival was off. Microsoft Corp. had just announced a new Windows Phone system. And during the years Kin was said to be in development, smart phones grew more sophisticated. Kin doesn’t have extra “apps” for download or a GPS mapping function.

One more privacy issue to ponder

What you drink could be used to trace your movements.

From the link:

The bottled water, soda pop, or micro brew-beer that you drank in Pittsburgh, Dallas, Denver or 30 other American cities contains a natural chemical imprint related to geographic location. When you consume these beverage you may leave a chemical imprint in your hair that could be used to track your travels over time, a new study suggests. The findings, believed to be the first concerted effort to describe the use of beverages as a potential tool to investigate the geographic location of people, appears in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

And:

A person who drinks a beer or soda in Denver, Des Moines, or Dallas, for instance, consumes a different isotope signature than a person in Las Cruces, Las Vegas, or Laramie. The finding may help trace the origin of drinks or help criminal investigators identify the geographic travels of crime suspects and other individuals through analysis of hair strands, the study suggests.

It’s almost 2011 and we may finally get our flying car

I’ve done plenty of blogging (and joking) about flying cars, but this news is pretty fascinating. Jumping the fed approval hurdle is huge.

From the link:

The Federal Aviation Administration in the US has given approval to the Transition, a two-seater flying car developed over the last four years by Massachusetts Company, Terrafugia.

The flying car, or “roadable aircraft” as the company calls it, was designed by a team of engineers trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It can drive like a car at normal highway speeds but can also unfold its wings and fly.

The vehicle runs on normal unleaded gasoline and has a cruising speed in the air of around 185 kph (115 mph). Its flying range is 740 kilometers (460 miles). When driven like a car with its wings folded the fuel consumption is around 7.85 liters per 100 km (30 mpg). The use of normal fuel instead of a reliance on aviation fuel will make the Transition the most environmentally friendly plane in the air. The vehicle will have features of regular road vehicles, such as crumple zones and airbags.

On the ground …

… and in the air.