HUMODS: April 2009

4/29/2009 PERMALINK

Hundreds of roaming rogue black holes ripping planets from their stars

It sounds like the plot of a sci-fi movie, rogue black holes roaming our galaxy, destroying stellar systems. But it is probably fact, not fiction. New calculations by Ryan O'Leary and Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggest that hundreds of massive black holes are wandering the Milky Way.

These rogue black holes would have originally lurked at the centers of tiny, low-mass galaxies. Over billions of years, those dwarf galaxies smashed together to form full-sized galaxies like the Milky Way.

Each time two proto-galaxies with central black holes collided, their black holes merged to form a single, "relic" black hole. During the merger, directional emission of gravitational radiation would cause the black hole to recoil. A typical kick would send the black hole speeding outward fast enough to escape its host dwarf galaxy, but not fast enough to leave the galactic neighborhood completely. As a result, such black holes would still be around today in the outer reaches of the Milky Way halo.

Hundreds of rogue black holes should be traveling the Milky Way's outskirts, each containing the mass of 1,000 to 100,000 suns.... READ

4/29/2009 PERMALINK

Old short term memories never fade, they die suddenly

People who viewed colored squares for a tenth of a second could usually accurately match the color they had seen to a point on a color wheel after 1 and 4 second intervals. At 10 seconds, only a few still made accurate matches. Your short term memories, researchers found, don't fade. Instead, they remain quite accurately retrievable for a period of time typically between 4 and 10 seconds. Then, they winked out suddenly, like a streetlight at daybreak.... READ

4/29/2009 PERMALINK

Visible light cloaking device can conceal small objects

Two independent teams are claiming to have built invisibility cloaks that work over a wide range of optical wavelengths by channeling light around a small object to fool an observer who sees nothing but the background view. The bump is hidden by a pattern of tiny silicon nanopillars on the mirror surface that steers reflected light in a way that makes any bump look flat. So anything can be hidden beneath the bump without an observer realising it is there, like hiding a small object under a thick carpet.... READ

4/28/2009 PERMALINK

Tweeking a brain protein can treat depression

A University of Iowa research team has found that disrupting ASIC1a -- an ion channel protein found in the brain -- produces an antidepressant-like effect in mice. The effect was similar to that produced by some antidepressant drugs, but the team also showed that ASIC1a's effect arose through a unique biological mechanism.... READ

4/28/2009 PERMALINK

A tiny amphibious living pod that you can build for yourself from plans

Berkeley Engineering's Aqua Casa Houseboat is the result of years of boat design and building experience. These boats can be built by the amateur builder with little or no boat-building experience.

The Aqua Casa is fully trailerable and can double as a self-contained travel trailer, which you can use for any purpose.... READ

4/28/2009 PERMALINK

Is there any such thing as a practical quantum computer?

Creating a practical solid-state quantum computer is seriously hard. Getting such a computer to operate at room temperature is even more challenging. Is such a quantum computer possible at all? If so, which schemes might have a chance of success? .... READ .... READ

4/28/2009 PERMALINK

Accumulate real wealth not evaporative wealth

Evaporative wealth is wealth that is dependent on some outside factor, which can change in ways that would vaporize the wealth associated with it.

Examples of evaporative wealth include things like large houses in the more remote urban suburbs. If the economy is healthy and vehicle fuel is cheap, such a house can have considerable value. However, in a faltering economy with high vehicle fuel prices, the value of such a house can quickly evaporate. See Extreme home makeover -- depression edition.

Avoid investing in evaporative wealth. Having to much wealth keyed to the same exernal factor can not only bankrupt an individual, it can bankrupt a nation or even an entire civilization.

America is the king of evaporative wealth with far too much of its wealth keyed to the same external factor -- the price of vehicle fuel. Houses in the suburbs, factory farms, food distributors, aviation firms, fertilizer makers, the vacation industry, retailers, restaurants -- the percentage of the American economy tied to the price of oil is immense.

And when nations switch from money backed by something that has intrinsic wealth, like gold or silver, to fiat money that is backed only by the promises of politicos. Then all the assets associated with that country's currency, are converted to evaporative wealth, even the ones that would otherwise be more solid.

4/28/2009 PERMALINK

Women can extend their lives by pairing with conscientious and neurotic males

"Highly conscientious people are more organized and responsible and tend to follow through with their obligations, to be more impulse controlled and to follow rules," said University of Illinois psychology professor Brent Roberts, who led the study. Highly neurotic people tend to be more moody and anxious, and to worry, he said. This first large-scale analysis of what the authors call the "compensatory conscientiousness effect," in adults over age 50, found that women, but not men, get an added health benefit when paired with someone who is both conscientious and neurotic. Such males presumably both worry about their mates and take steps to care for them.... READ
(At last I understand why some women are attracted to me. -- Editor)

4/28/2009 PERMALINK

Nano-needle can inject single molecule into cell

Researchers at the University of Illinois have developed a membrane-penetrating nano-needle for the targeted delivery of one or more molecules into the cytoplasm or the nucleus of living cells. In addition to ferrying tiny amounts of cargo, the nano-needle can also be used as an electrochemical probe and as an optical bio-sensor.... READ

4/28/2009 PERMALINK

Android invasion coming your way

As more of our work gets done in the cloud, our computers can get smaller. Many more phones and net books will soon begin arriving running Google's Android operating system. Net books using Android and a processor from ARM, the top mobile phone processor maker, are expected to push net book prices under $200.... READ

4/28/2009 PERMALINK

Extreme home makeover -- depression edition

Just when you think the old order has become as insanely inflexible and over regulated as it is possible to be, they take yet another step down the rabbit hole. Now banks that had to repossessed brand new houses 95% complete from builders that went bust are being forced by heavy fines from California towns to tear them down. What a ridiculous waste of resources. It is just plain madness.... WATCH

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

Cloud swine flu tracking bot available

What a weird little bug this one is. Apparently, it has pig genetic material that has only been seen in swine flu strains in Asia, and pig genetic material that has only been seen in flu strains in the Americas, and bird genetic material, and some human genetic material all combining in a way that appears to make it transmit easily between humans. With the recent improvements in the state of the art, hacking together a bug like this one would probably not be difficult.

Unless I am mistaken, Homeland Security is still operating under a Bush administration order that nothing is to be called an attack, unless the experts are 100% sure. This standard is likely to be impossible to achieve for a virus of this type. The best that experts could probably do is give their bosses a percentage. And under Bush's rule even if that assessment was 5% natural vs 95% engineered, the public would still be told natural.

If this policy is still in effect it ought to be changed immediately. Because knowing the US gov is likely to call an attack a natural outbreak, seems like it would embolden potential adversaries to do just this kind of a low level pandemic attack.

It is probably natural, but the first major flu pandemic in 40 years that hits at the worst possible moment for the reeling US economy. If things shut down here like they have in Mexico City, our economy is likely to be toast. It does just get you wondering a bit about the origins of this organism. Especially since our government has previously told us that they might lie to us about an event like this.

Politicos may routinely deceive us, but at least the cloud can be counted on to come up with an effective swine flu tracking bot.... TRACK BOT

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

Progress on creating an immunity to tumors

Scientists have combined interleukin-7 (IL-7) -- a key component of the immune system -- with a viral vaccine to improve the ability of the cells of the immune system to attack tumors. The result was a boost in immunity to tumors.... READ

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

Blunting bacteria's needle could cure numerous diseases

Using a combination of scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scientists have mapped the details of a needle-like protein complex known as a "type III secretion system," or T3SS. Many species of bacteria rely on T3SS to attack human cells. This research could lead to the development of a molecular block for T3SS, which could disable bacterias causing deadly disease like dysentery, typhoid fever, some types of food poisoning, plague and many others.... READ

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

The end of history

Back in the 1990's, Francis Fukuyama wrote an essay and book called "The End of History?" Suggesting that with western capitalistic democracy having soundly beaten its only rival, communism. There would be only good news and smooth sailing ahead. The only remaining superpower would enforce a Pax American of peace and prosperity worldwide.

Now, as we approach the end of the first decade of the new millennium, we can see that the old order is in fact fatally flawed. Its power is anything but super. Its failed ideas have bogged us down in not one but two land wars in Asia. The terrorist responsible for the only large scale attack on the American homeland has never been punished, because America's centralized power systems have become too decrepit to catch him. The America economy seems to be folding up like the "house of cards" President Bush once called it. The old American political system can stay afloat, only by borrowing trillions from foreign nations. And with a pandemic possibly spreading towards us, we recall in horror the systemic failure of Katrina.

All the old order's rigid, arthritic and over centralized institutions seem completely unable to cope with the fast pace world of the new millennium. Allowing our financial system to become overly centralized and complex, allowed a small group of financial shysters to loot it of trillions, leaving the world banks stuck with an enormous pile of toxic assets. While the over centralization of our food distribution system, moving away from local farms towards giant centralized food processors, makes it easy for any foreign power or even a single gene-hacking miscreant, to kill tens of millions of Americans with a bio-engineered pathogen.

The old order has so highly centralized everything, that pulling out one piece of the puzzle from one system can bring down all their highly centralized systems, leaving us ripe for catastrophic failure. Were, for example, the long fuel deliver line from the volatile middle east ever to fail, not only would our cars grind to a halt, but so also would the trucks needed to deliver the necessities of life from far off factories, and so too would the tractors necessary to grow that food.

Unless enough of us start living by and spreading the more resilient, decentralized, multi-nucleated and cloud-coordinated paradigm of the Humods Memes to build Civilization 2.0 as fast as we can. We could well experience an 'end of history.' Not due to the Fukuyama dream of an idyllic superpower-ruled centralized world, but due to a systemic failure so extreme, that there is no one left alive to record any history after that failure.... READ

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

Nano-cantilever sensors, smaller than the wavelength of light

In nano-electromechanical systems (NEMS), cantilevers are the most fundamental mechanical sensors. These tiny structures -- fixed at one end and free at the other -- act like nano-scale diving boards that "bend" when molecules "jump" on them and register a change that can be measured and calibrated. As researchers push towards detection of single molecules, single electron spins and the smallest amounts of mass and movement, Yale researchers have demonstrated silicon-based nano-cantilevers, smaller than the wavelength of light, that operate on photonic principles eliminating the need for electric transducers and expensive laser setups.... READ

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

New wearable RES displays coming from several companies

Several companies are developing prototypes for digital devices that look like stylish eyewear. These devices are a necessary component for the development of smart bot driven RES (Reality Enhancement Systems), sure to be one of the top humods killer apps.... READ .... READ (warning: clueless old media site requiring registration)

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

The case for using neuro-enhancers

"If you're a fifty-five-year-old in Boston, you have to compete with a twenty-six-year-old from Mumbai now, and those kinds of pressures are only going to grow."... READ

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

Highly versatile nanotubes fabbed from DNA building blocks

A team of researchers led by Prof. Hanadi Sleiman of McGill University have succeeded in fabbing nanotubes in a variety of geometric shapes using DNA as their building blocks. Using DNA made it possible to accurately control geometry, stiffness and porosity.... READ

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

Beggar bots able to far outperform actual homeless humans

The beggar bot made from junkyard components was allowed access to places the rich frequent that are always off-limits to human beggars, like shopping malls, city centers and community events. In head-to-monitor human vs bot challenges, cops inevitably chased off the human beggar, while always showing tolerance to the bot by allowing it to continue begging. One cop even took out his personal camera and photographing the beggar bot before leaving. An upgrade that gave the bot the ability to detect a donation and say 'thank you', added during the Tokyo test, was found to greatly increasing contributions.... WATCH

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

Researchers use lasers to induce gamma brain waves in mice

Scientists have studied high-frequency brain waves, known as gamma oscillations, for more than 50 years, believing them crucial to consciousness, attention, learning and memory. Now, for the first time, MIT researchers and colleagues have found a way to induce these waves by shining laser light directly onto the brains of mice. The work takes advantage of a newly developed technology known as optogenetics, which combines genetic engineering with light to manipulate the activity of individual nerve cells.... READ

4/27/2009 PERMALINK

Self-aware smart bots may always be potentially dangerous

Steve Omohundro of Self-Aware Systems talks about his paper on "The Basic AI Drives." His premise is that self-aware smart bots coded to evolve by changing their own source code will inevitably converge on certain human-like drives that will tend to make them potentially dangerous.... WATCH

4/26/2009 PERMALINK

Research towards a potential stem cell blindness cure makes progress, gets backing

Pfizer Regenerative Medicine has entered into a collaboration and license agreement with University College London on research going on there that promises to cure blindness by getting human embryonic stem (hES) cells to differentiate into retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) with the goal of developing stem cell-based therapies primarily for wet and dry macular degeneration (AMD).... READ

4/26/2009 PERMALINK

Homeland Security declares public health emergency for swine flu

A public health emergency has been declared in the U.S. to deal with the swine flu, Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said at a White House briefing today.... READ .... READ

4/26/2009 PERMALINK

The economic effects of a pandemic

In Singapore, where only 33 infected people died, gross domestic product shrank 11.4 percent in the second quarter of 2003 during a pandemic there. If the Mexican swine flu becomes a pandemic in America, it can be expected to significantly lengthen and deepen the already serious economic downturn.... READ

4/25/2009 PERMALINK

Honda demos simpler, lower cost exoskeletons

Honda has developed two prototype walking assist bots that are intended to support walking for the elderly or people with weakened leg muscles. The devices are currently being tested in real-world conditions to evaluate their effectiveness. The company has applied for more than 130 patents for the devices.... WATCH .... READ

4/25/2009 PERMALINK

A cloned beagle named Ruppy is the world's first transgenic dog

A team led by Byeong-Chun Lee of Seoul National University in South Korea created Ruppy by cloning fibroblast cells that express a red fluorescent gene produced by sea anemones. Lee and stem cell researcher Woo Suk Hwang were part of a team that created the first cloned dog in 2005. Much of Hwang's work on human cells turned out to be fraudulent, but the dog was not, an investigation later concluded. This new proof-of-principle experiment should open the door for transgenic dog models of human disease... READ

4/25/2009 PERMALINK

Create your own smart bot with its own unique personality

The AIML Superbot is a convenient way to create your own unique bot personality. The Superbot contains the top 10K most activated AIML patterns in the ALICE brain, with blank templates. Organized in a spreadsheet, the Superbot allows you to sort the AIML data by pattern, template or activation count. The Superbot has now been upgraded to included the Safe AIML Reductions. These reductions can be used with any bot, and avoid the dreaded "infinite recursion in AIML" error message. The AIML Superbot is now available with the Safe AIML Reductions together as one package, for one price.... READ

4/25/2009 PERMALINK

A stacked shipping container living pod village in Amsterdam

Keetwonen, completed 3 years ago, continues to be the largest shipping container community in the world, with 1000 units as student housing.... READ .... WATCH .... READ

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

How long before an engineered virus is unleashed?

Reports about the nature of the virus hitting Mexico are troubling.

From the AP: "The worrisome new virus -- which combines genetic material from pigs, birds and humans in a way researchers have not seen before." READ

Experts on warfare in the 21st century regard a biological attack using a virus engineered using genetic material from multiple organisms to be their worst case scenario. A Homeland Security study put the potential death toll from a well engineered viral pathogen of this kind at 100 million Americans.

Due to the extremely fragile nature of America's economy right now, even releasing a less deadly engineered virus could collapse the American economy and eliminate America as a player on the global stage. Consider the many advantages to one of our adversaries of an attack vectored through Mexico using an engineering swine flu virus exactly like the Mexico City strain.

1. Such a virus could be natural and wouldn't kill millions, so the risk of American retaliation would be low.
2. Hitting in Mexico rather than directly at America first, would also serve to make the virus less suspect, while still spreading it through travelers headed north. Mexican farmers might also ship meat from sick hogs and chickens to stores all across America. Properly handled meat should be safe, but unfortunately many home cooks do not handle meat properly. Putting cooked meat back onto surfaces where uncooked meat has been is a common mistake.
3. The fear of infection would keep people home for weeks, quite possibly sending our already seriously weak economy into a death spiral.

Replacing tens of thousands of small family farms and small local banks with a few mega financial and agricultural corporations, may have created more efficiency, but only at the cost of making our civilization extremely vulnerable to a catastrophic failure due to attack or other malfeasance.

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

Is global unrest about to collapse the old order?

Food scarcity and the resulting higher food prices are rapidly pushing poor countries into chaos and turning them into hollow states.... READ

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

First "serious candidate" for ocean planet

Astronomers have unveiled the lightest exoplanet ever detected and, in the same distant solar system, the first "serious candidate" for a world with abundant liquid water, both conditions thought important for supporting life. "I would put the two discoveries on an equal footing," said Thierry Forveille, an astronomer at the Grenoble Observatory in France and co-author of the study.... READ .... READ

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

Natural gas power plants can be cheaply retrofitted to also make hydrogen

Natural gas power plants could be cheaply retrofitted to generate hydrogen as well as power with a catalyst that converts methane into hydrogen gas and combustible coke, allowing the power station to produce hydrogen alongside electricity. Discovered by Gadi Rothenberg and colleagues at the University of Amsterdam and at IRCE Lyon, this kind of technology could ease a transition to a hydrogen economy, reducing the need for heavy investment in large hydrogen-focused plants.... READ

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

China will be world's largest economy in only a decade, says Deutsche Bank

China will overtake the U.S. in terms of economic output within a decade, according to estimates released Thursday by Deutsche Bank, which said it had to accelerate its forecast for China due to the favorable growth dynamics in emerging markets.... READ

In recent weeks, China has begun diversifying away from the U.S. dollar and moving toward the establishment of an alternative world reserve currency.... READ

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

The Silver Fish floating living pod

The choice of materials makes the Silver Fish floating living pod the perfect balance between functional design and maritime romance.... READ

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

Direct brain wave device control hits the toy stores

You slip the NeuroSky wireless headset on. It looks like something a telemarketer would wear, except the earpieces are actually sensors, and what looks like a microphone is a brain wave detector. You place its tip against your forehead, above your left eyebrow.... READ .... WATCH

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

Autonomous mobile and aerial bots gone wild

Sparkfun's Autonomous Vehicle Competition -- very few things in life are as much fun as an amateur autonomous bot meet-up.... WATCH

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

Human trials of nanoparticles designed to stick only to cancer cells and deliver P53 tumor suppressor gene

Human trials are underway of the first systemic, non-viral, tumor-targeted, nanoparticle method designed to restore normal gene function to tumor cells while leaving normal tissue completely unaffected. Dr. Esther Chang, a molecular oncologist, and her colleagues at Georgetown University Medical Center's Lombardi Cancer Center, have developed a nanoparticle about one thousandth smaller than a printed period, which can travel through the blood stream. "Decorated" with a tumor-targeting antibody, the nanoparticle is able to locate primary and hidden metastatic tumor cells and deliver its payload: a fully functioning copy of the P53 tumor suppressor gene. Normal cells have two copies of the functioning P53 gene. The protein produced by the P53 gene is activated to either coordinate the repair process in cells or induce cell suicide. Loss of normal p53 function results in malignant cell growth and has been linked to resistance to radiotherapy and chemotherapy in a number of cancers.... READ

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

An eye opening look at institutionalized religion

The things William Lobdell saw while covering religion for the L.A. Times caused him to lose his faith. His recent talk about this at Google is something anyone who regards institutionalized religion as a positive or benign force should see.

Lobdell's experiences vividly illustrate that the problem is not just bad individuals within institutionalized religions, but the institutionalization of faith as a concept or meme. While a personal belief in a Creator can be a benign or even beneficial experience for an individual. The suspension of critical thinking and group think that appears to inevitably arise as a consequence of the institutionalization of this type of belief, represent an exceedingly dangerous phenomena. Something that America's founding fathers often worried about in their letters to each other while creating our nation. Most of them appear to have regarded institutionalized religion as one of the greatest potential threats to our nation and our freedoms.

Over and over, as this video shows, institutionalized religion has had the effect of causing both superiors and congregations of profoundly evil priests and preachers, doing horrible things to innocent victims, to attack and shun those victims, while continuing to honor and follow pedophiles and other reprehensible scum bags. Anything with this much power to suspend a normally sane person's powers of critical thinking is a potentially exceedingly dangerous and malevolent entity.... WATCH

4/24/2009 PERMALINK

Major breakthrough in generating safer, therapeutic stem cells from adult cells

A group of researchers at The Scripps Research Institute and other institutions have achieved a breakthrough in converting adult cells all the way back to the most primitive embryonic-like cells without using the dangerous genetic manipulations associated with previous methods. The new technique solves one of the most challenging safety hurdles associated with personalized stem cell-based medicine because for the first time it enables scientists to make stem cells in the laboratory from adult cells without genetically altering them. This discovery has the potential to spark the development of many new types of therapies for humans, for diseases that range from Type 1 diabetes to Parkinson's disease.... READ

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

Government ultimatum sealed Merrill deal and critically weaken BoA

Bush administration Treasury Secretary Paulson threatened to oust the Bank of America CEO if he pulled out of BoA acquisition of Merrill or revealed to the public the magnitude of Merrill's losses. Yes America, your leaders are now behaving like Mafia dons and lying to you wholesale to cover up their ineptitude that caused the destruction of America's economy. Forcing good banks to buy bad ones, only insures that there are only bad banks.... READ

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

Finally, a little good news from climate scientists

A large rise in atmospheric methane levels about 12,000 years ago, discovered in ice cores, has caused some climate scientists to worry that a catastrophic release of seafloor "hydrate deposits" might be to blame. This would mean that there is a temperature tipping point, which when reached could trigger a sudden and precipitous acceleration of global warming.

Fortunately, a just completed five-year National Science Foundation project lead by researchers at the University of Colorado, appears to show that, almost certainly, the methane release 12,000 years ago, near the end of the last Ice Age, was caused by the rapid growth of wetlands as that ice age receded, not from melting of deep, frozen, seafloor methane deposits.... READ

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

The next killer app - smart bot personal assistants

Theoretically, my compute infrastructure should learn, automate repeated tasks (automatically), figure out what information I actually want, and make sure I get it when I want it.... READ

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

Bots are already revolutionizing the battlefield and altering the course of history

When U.S. forces landed in Iraq and Afghanistan, not a single bot went in with the troops. Now however, an estimated 12,000 ground-based bots and 7,000 unmanned aerial bots are being used to maintain control over these restive populations. Bots are being given much of the credit by a number of military experts for allowing America to have avoided an ignominious defeat in Iraq.... READ

Bots are already reshaping history by drastically lowering human casualty counts among occupying troops. This will allow a country to invade and occupy another country at far less cost than ever before. Bots could make world empire possible for the first time in human history.

Probably a combination of smart spy-bots and armed military-bots could allow a corrupt and inept elite to maintain their control over their nation's angry urban populations indefinitely. Normally, after an elite does something especially stupid, like running their nation's economy into the ground, the people rise up and oust them, but bots can provide inept elites the perfect tools for preventing this. With just a little bad luck, we should get to see the first test of this possibility very soon.

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

Nanostrings used to fab an "artificial nose"

Scientists at LMU Munich have developed a new kind of nanostrings, thousands of which can be produced on a single chip to make possible the creation of an "artificial nose."... READ

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

Simpler bot designs can actually give more capability by making control easier

Many researchers strive to give bots gripping systems that emulate the human hand as closely as possible, the logic being that the closer a robot's hand is to a human hand, the easier it will be to control. But Willow Garage's PR2 robot takes the simpler two prong gripper approach, but still manages to achieve an enviable amount of precision dexterity.... WATCH .... READ

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

Centralization of the net has made it highly vulnerable to attack

The original DARPA research that lead to the creation of the Internet wanted to design a multi-nucleated communication system that was so resilient, it could continue to function even after a nuclear attack wiped out most of America's cities. Nodes on the net would operate independently, so any number of nodes could be taken out without destroying the system's ability to forward messages. But having been taken over by phone and cable companies in recent years, this ability has been lost, leaving the net vulnerable to attacks like the recent one in Morgan Hill, where several fiber optic cables were cut.... READ .... READ

If every WiFi router had code inside it to make it function as a node of a mesh network, the original resilience of the net's design could exist into every home. If fiber optic cables were cut to a section of a city, the net would continue to function by using the mesh net of WiFi routers to passed along packets one to the next until they reached an area that was still connected to fiber.

Mesh networks eliminate all the choke points, making the net impervious to vandalism and terrorism and making it harder for a local cable monopoly to overcharge you for net access.

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

Breakthrough in making practical quantum computers

Quantum computing holds the promise of vastly more powerful computers, but since quantum computers rely on particles and molecules that are extremely sensitive to the environment, such systems have only worked for milliseconds, and the more particles and ions are added to a system, the quicker its ability to work fades. But now researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have proved, for the first time, that the lifetime of quantum-computing bits, known as qubits, can be extended. In their experiment, they showed that by applying specially timed magnetic pulses to qubits, made of beryllium ions, they could prolong the life of the quantum bits from about one millisecond to hundreds of milliseconds.... READ

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

Learning how to do effective climate-engineering is a necessity

Politicos are always looking for ways to frighten and manipulate the public into giving them more power. One gang of politicos might use terrorism, another might use global warming to instill fear. Always be skeptical about scientific proposals from politicos. They are almost never about science. They are about transferring power from you to them.
Already we have seen fear of global warming manipulated into the ridiculously wasteful corn ethanol program, design to buy votes from farmers in key states, while providing zero real benefit to the climate problem.
Having said that, research clearly shows us that the climate on our planet has radically shifted in the past through periods when it was both much colder and much warmer than today. Sufficiently so to put much of the world's land mass under miles of ice and alter sea levels by 100 meters, higher and lower than today.
We must either learn how to predict and control this using, geo-engineering or find a way to make our civilization flexible enough to withstand events like this, perhaps by making our cities portable. Because research shows that ice ages in the past may have wipped out 90% of the world's human population, and that will happen again, unless we gain the knowledge to necessary to prevent it.... READ

4/23/2009 PERMALINK

A magic fix for our broken economy the "king has no clothes perception deception"

Is the theory that a sustainable prosperity can be built on a fiat money/credit expansion paradigm humanity's second most colossal economic mistake after communism? Of course it is, every sane person knows that, but how do we get out of the mess adoption of this system has created.

There is only one thing that has the power to save us from the looming disaster of the pseudo-economic system imposed on us by our politicos, the king has no clothes perception deception.

The first step is making sure that everyone realize that there will only be losers when the dollar collapses. Thus, every single one of us must never allow ourselves to notice that our sovereign's fancy robes and huge pockets full of money are in fact only a consensual delusion. Even the slightest perception of this truth will destroy us all.

You are probably screaming at your computer right now, "what is this fool on about, doesn't he realize that our politicos' pockets aren't just empty -- THEY DON'T EVEN HAVE ANY POCKETS, THEY'VE ALL BEEN WALKING AROUND ECONOMICALLY STARK NAKED FOR YEARS -- just like the king in the old fairy tale!

Believe me, I understand your frustration, but just calm down, take a few deep breaths, and you'll see why maintaining the perception deception is our only way out of this mess.

There is no way to hedge against the disaster that will befall us if any one of us blows the whistle on our naked king!

Even if you sold out of all the markets before the collapse such a realization woudl bring, turned it all into gold and buried it in your back yard. When the dollar goes down, you'll still be screwed, right along with the rest of us.

Your favorite restaurants will all close. Your favorite shops will all close. Your favorite golf course will close. You favorite sports team will go out of business. The army will seize all the food distribution centers, causing your favorite supermarkets to have empty shelves. There will be no dollars to buy oil, no fuel for farm tractors, no way to drive anywhere, no way to make a living. Your freeze dried food will run out one day. Then you will be hiking out of the suburbs down into the central city to cue up in the bread lines right along with the rest of us.

What about all that gold in your backyard that Rush Limbaugh told you to buy? No help at all, I'm afraid!

Understand that if the cat gets out the bag that the king has no clothes, a dollar collapse is sure to follow, and this will pull down most of the other fiat monies around the world. Creating a worldwide crisis so extreme that the world's governments will make private gold ownership illegal and begin seizing private gold for "the public good." They did that back in the last depression in the 1930's, so there is already precedent, making them sure to do it again.

Just try to trade a single Gold Eagle for some decent food on the black market, and the next thing you will know. You'll be getting water-boarded by some very fit, very intense, well fed and exercised young men and women with short haircuts. Until you give up the location of the rest of your gold stash. Then you'll have a nice televised show trial followed by a public execution for the crime against the people of "hording and speculating."

You plan to fight them off with your AR, AK and 5,000 rounds of ammo? Then the public gets to enjoy an even better televised spectacle, as one of those thousands of sophisticate hunter-killer bots that the military used to turn the tide in Iraq, rolls up to your house and blows you and your family away. Nothing better for taking the peoples' minds off an economic collapse than seeing a shinny military droid take out another bunch of hoarders and speculators.

Beginning to see the full picture now? Good! So let's sum up.

EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, including YOU will be so totally shafted by a dollar collapse, that we simply have no choice but to use the power of the "king has no clothes perception deception" to kick the ball down the road to our kids. Sorry kids, but dad and mom had no choice.

When ever reality intrudes, just repeat this mantra:

"Don't the king's robes look especially nice today! Gee, and look at all the money in the king's bulging pockets! Good time to buy some more of the king's Treasury Notes. All the king's horse and all the king's men..." -- wait, strike that last bit, wrong fairy tale.

4/22/2009 PERMALINK

More on CLK-1's ability to extend lifespans

CLK-1 - or clock-1 - is a gene that affects lifespan, most likely through its influence on mitochondrial activity. It's the standard story, or at least appears to be: anything that can lower the rate at which mitochondria damage themselves will extend life... READ
See also: 80-year old diarrhea drug appears to slow aging

4/22/2009 PERMALINK

"Using EEG to send tweet"

"USUsing EEG to send tweet"," Adam Wilson posted to Twitter recently using a direct mind-twitter connection.... WATCH .... READ

4/22/2009 PERMALINK

Ultrasound imaging now possible with a smartphone

Computer engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are bringing the minimalist approach to medical care and computing by coupling USB-based ultrasound probe technology with a smartphone, enabling a compact, mobile computational platform and a medical imaging device that fits in the palm of a hand.... READ

4/21/2009 PERMALINK

Modding yeast and bacteria into a cheaper than oil fuel factory

Take brewer's yeast, add a gene from a salt marsh plant, grow it with an obscure bacterium found in a French landfill, and what have you got? A cheap, renewable way to fuel our cars, claims Christopher Voigt, a synthetic biologist at the University of California, San Francisco.... READ

4/21/2009 PERMALINK

Gene therapy provides cure for yet another desease

The Huntington gene, which makes the normal Huntington protein, is an essential component to healthy nerve cells, the mutant Huntington gene makes a toxic mutant Huntington protein. Mutant Huntington contains increased levels of the amino acid glutamine, which is generated by a repetition of the DNA triplet CAG. Investigators have now shown that gene therapy to increase levels of RCAN1-1L can rescue cells from these toxic effects.... READ

4/21/2009 PERMALINK

Blood cells reprogrammed to act as embryonic stem cells

U.S. researchers have reprogrammed cells found in circulating blood into cells that are molecularly and functionally indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells, a revolutionary achievement that provides a readily accessible source of stem cells and an alternative to harvesting embryonic stem cells. "Our findings provide the first proof that cells from human blood can morph into stem cells," said senior study author George Q. Daley, MD, PhD, an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Children's Hospital, Boston.... READ

4/21/2009 PERMALINK

Using the cloud to fight government oppression & atrocities

Tor is an open-source Internet anonymity system--one of several systems that encrypt data or hide the accompanying Internet address, and route the data to its final destination through intermediate computers called proxies. It is used by those living under oppressive regimes, like that of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, to published accounts and photographic evidence of government atrocities and oppression.... READ

4/21/2009 PERMALINK

Small wearable sensor patch monitors your heart

A 15-centimeter wireless waterproof sensor patch, recently approved by the FDA, holds the promise of reducing hospitalizations by allowing automated early detection of heart failure. The noninvasive device, which is taped to a patient's chest, monitors indicators of heart health--including heart and respiration rates, levels of patient activity, and even the accumulation of body fluid--as patients go about their daily lives.... READ .... READ

4/20/2009 PERMALINK

Self-assembled nanowires can make chips smaller and faster

Researchers at the University of Illinois have found a new way to make transistors smaller and faster. The technique uses self-assembled, self-aligned, and defect-free nanowire channels made of gallium arsenide. The scanning electron microscope image shows the self-assembled and self-aligned of planar gallium arsenide nanowires. The inset shows a field effect transistor fabricated with one of the nanowires.... READ

4/20/2009 PERMALINK

Embryonic stem cells used to regenerate hair on mice

Taking skin cells and combining them with mesenchymal stem cells -- multipotent stem cells that develop into various organs of the body -- can regenerate lost hair.... READ

4/20/2009 PERMALINK

Are spammers the state-of-the-art in human-level artificial intelligence?

Spammers working to break CAPTCHAs -- scrambled letters that only a human can read designed to deny software bots access to web sites -- appear to be evolving bots with human-level intelligence much faster than all the research going on in the world's Artificial Intelligence labs.... READ

4/20/2009 PERMALINK

Cancer patients survive longer if treatments are genetically personalized

All of the patients had previously experienced growth of their tumors while undergoing as many as two to six prior cancer treatments, including conventional chemotherapy. However, after molecular profiling identified precise targets, new treatments were administered that resulted in patients experiencing significant periods of time when there was no progression of their cancer.... READ

4/20/2009 PERMALINK

How should we deal with cognitive-enhancing drugs?

I'm not only teaching my students facts that are important to them, but ways of manipulating those facts, ways of dealing with them. That's cognitive enhancement. And it only works if I actually change their brains. If you remember tomorrow anything I've said today, it will be because I've made physical or electro-chemical changes in the cells of your brain. It's kind of a weird thought, but true. So why is it that we do enhancement by so many other ways, but if you start talking about doing it through drugs, suddenly it becomes evil? ... READ

4/19/2009 PERMALINK

Singapore researchers first to transform carbon dioxide into methanol

Scientists at Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) have found a new non-toxic process to produce the clean-burning fuel methanol directly from carbon dioxide.... READ

4/19/2009 PERMALINK

Amazing little bots patterned after bacteria

For the first time, ETH Zurich researchers have built micro-bots as small as bacteria. Artificial bacterial flagella are about half as long as the thickness of a human hair but can swim at a speed of up to one body length per second.... READ ... WATCH

4/19/2009 PERMALINK

Which are we -- organisms or ecosystems?

Our bodies harbor 100 trillion bacterial cells, outnumbering our human cells 10 to one. It’s easy to ignore this astonishing fact. Bacteria are tiny in comparison to human cells; they contribute just a few pounds to our weight and remain invisible to us. However, they appear to effect every aspect of our health.... READ

4/19/2009 PERMALINK

Watching the watchers -- as Orwellian as it gets

Now they have developed a gaze-tracking camera system that watches the eyeballs of CCTV surveillance operators as they work. It then automatically produces a summary of the CCTV video sequences they have missed during their shift.... READ

4/18/2009 PERMALINK

Complex systems like civilizations collapse if they lack scale invariance

Scale invariance means that across all scaling factors (large, medium, small, tiny, etc.), the properties that define the whole are conserved (intelligence, mobility, form, productivity, etc.). Resilient communities that are able to operate autonomously for extended periods of time, regardless of external goods/services availability, are essential for the avoidance of societal collapse.... READ

4/18/2009 PERMALINK

Japanese robot communicates using eye movements alone

Eye-bot learning secrets of nonverbal communication... READ

4/18/2009 PERMALINK

Growing unlimited blood stem cells from bone marrow

A team from the Institute for Research in Immunology and Cancer (IRIC) at Universite de Montreal has succeeded in producing a large quantity of laboratory stem cells from a small number of blood stem cells obtained from bone marrow. Using this technique, "it could be possible to envision transplants for all adults from existing umbilical cord blood banks," say the researchers.... READ

4/18/2009 PERMALINK

Precision Weapons Platform for Vigilante aerial bot

The Precision Weapons Platform (PWP) is a lightweight turret that SDL is creating for the U.S. Army's Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) as part of the Autonomous Rotorcraft Sniper System (ARSS).... READ
The Vigilante 496 OPV is either optionally piloted or an autonomously UAV. It is capable of a maximum true air speed of 75 knots and ceiling of 12,000 feet. It has 12 cu ft interior volume and a 300-lb. payload capacity with its full fuel capacity of 18 gallons. With its Hirth engine it has about 5 hours of endurance..... READ

4/18/2009 PERMALINK

Our favorite military bot goes on R&R at the beach

Big Dog hits the beach.... WATCH

4/17/2009 PERMALINK

Giving nanoparticles scorpion venom to fight cancer

By giving nanoparticles scorpion venom, University of Washington researchers found they could cut the spread of cancerous cells by 98 percent, compared to 45 percent for the scorpion venom alone.... READ

4/17/2009 PERMALINK

Survival mode that protects cells when oxygen is low also slows aging

A biochemical pathway that helps keep cells alive when oxygen is low also plays a role in longevity and resistance against some diseases of old age, according to a researchers at the University of Washington. Worms given the ability to turn on the low oxygen response in a normal oxygen environment live longer and their cells are relatively free from the toxic proteins that accumulate and clump together as an animal ages.... READ

4/17/2009 PERMALINK

An easy way to prevent an asteroid from destroying our planet

David French, a doctoral candidate in aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University, has determined an easy way to effectively divert asteroids and other threatening objects from impacting on Earth. By simply attaching a long tether and ballast to the incoming object, French explained, "you change the object's center of mass, effectively changing the object's orbit and allowing it to pass by the Earth, rather than impacting it.".... READ
Forget the moon, let's go to an asteroid.... READ

4/17/2009 PERMALINK

Turning an old truck into a rolling urban studio apartment

San Francisco couple turn old van into a rolling living pod for traveling the state to sell their art.... READ

4/17/2009 PERMALINK

The SuperWave fusion device

This animation shows what scientist think is going on in Energetics Technologies SuperWave Fusion device that may prove to be a revolutionary approach to the generation of clean, abundant energy. The company's experiments, which have been reproduced in other labs, appear to produce 25 times more energy output than the energy required to produce it.... WATCH .... READ

4/16/2009 PERMALINK

Gene hack could let you see in the dark like a cat

Researchers have discovered an important element for making night vision possible in nocturnal mammals: the DNA within the photoreceptor rod cells responsible for low light vision is packaged in a very unconventional way. This special DNA architecture turns the rod cell nuclei themselves into tiny light-collecting lenses, with millions of them in every nocturnal eye. "The conventional architecture seen in almost all nuclei is invariably present in the rod cells of diurnal mammals, including primates, pigs and squirrels," said Boris Joffe of Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich. "On the other hand, the unique inverted architecture is universally present in nocturnal mammals," for instance, mice, cats and deer.... READ

4/16/2009 PERMALINK

UBC researchers put a new spin on electrons

In the first demonstration of its kind, researchers at the University of British Columbia have controlled the spin of electrons using a ballistic technique--bouncing electrons through a microscopic channel of precisely constructed, two-dimensional layer of semiconductor.... READ

4/16/2009 PERMALINK

New computer model can design specific protein interactions

Interactions between proteins underlie nearly everything that happens inside a cell -- from reading DNA to communicating with the outside world. Many of those proteins have very similar structures, yet somehow they locate and interact with only their specific partner. For years, scientists have been trying to model and design such interactions, with limited success.
Now, MIT researchers have developed a model that can be used to design new protein interactions.... READ

4/15/2009 PERMALINK

Researchers create new way to sequence human genome

Brown University researchers have used magnets -- they call them magnetic tweezers -- to draw DNA strands through a pore slowly enough so that the base pairs can be read. The scientists named their process reverse DNA translocation because, as Professor Xinsheng Sean Ling explained, "the DNA is essentially caught in a tug-of-war. And the speed of translocation will be controlled not solely by the electric field but by striking some balance between the magnetic and the electric fields. From there, we can tune it to dictate the speed."... READ

4/15/2009 PERMALINK

Simple process unzips nanotubes to make thin, conductive incredibly useful nanoribbons

Research by the Rice University lab of Professor James Tour has uncovered a room-temperature chemical process that splits, or unzips, carbon nanotubes to make flat nanoribbons. The technique makes it possible to produce the ultrathin ribbons in bulk quantities.... READ

4/15/2009 PERMALINK

Parasite breaks its own DNA to avoid detection

The parasite Trypanosoma brucei, which causes African sleeping sickness, is like a thief donning a disguise. Every time the host's immune cells get close to destroying the parasite, it escapes detection by rearranging its DNA and changing its appearance by cleaving both strands of its DNA.... READ

4/15/2009 PERMALINK

Why it takes a supercomputer to equal an insect's brain

Kwabena Boahen is using the human brain as the blueprint for designing radically more powerful and energy-efficient computers. In this short demo, Boahen describes how his Brains in Silicon lab at Stanford University has created computer chips with "synapses" and "neurons" -- and how these chips might revolutionize computing.... WATCH

4/15/2009 PERMALINK

Bit of reality slips into financial media's fantasy show

If the government wanted transparency, it would force financial institutions to write down their bad assets now, and figure out afterward which companies deserve taxpayer support. Instead, the Treasury plans to recapitalize them first, keep their current financial condition hidden, and let their failed managers stay in their jobs.
Whatever the case, as long as the government refuses to remove the cancer of zombie banks from our financial system, there's little hope the U.S. will return to robust economic growth anytime soon. And the longer our wounded banks are allowed to stagger along with no end-game in sight, the greater the risk for Obama that voters will conclude he's as responsible for blowing the cleanup as others were for causing the crisis. .... READ

4/14/2009 PERMALINK

The inevitability of Humods technologies

Dr. Gregory Stock (author of Redesigning Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future) extraordinary talk to TED from several years ago is a must see. It puts the inevitability of the humods-driven future in perfect perspective.... WATCH

4/14/2009 PERMALINK

Maglev microbot work force for desktop factories

A University of Waterloo engineering research team has developed a Maglev microbot for manipulating microscale objects. The microbot allows tiny objects to be moved and place with far greater precision. The microrobot levitates using a magnetic field and dexterously manipulates objects with magnets attached to microgrippers, remotely controlled by a laser-focusing beam. It can be used for micro-assembly of mechanical components, handling of biological samples or even microsurgery.... READ

4/13/2009 PERMALINK

Fiber eating bacteria do double wammy on colon cancer

Though a high-fiber diet has long been considered good for you and beneficial in staving off colon cancer, Medical College of Georgia researchers have discovered a reason why: roughage activates a receptor with cancer-killing potential. The GPR109A receptor is activated by butyrate, a metabolite produced by fiber-eating bacteria in the colon. The receptor puts a double-whammy on cancer by sending signals that trigger cell death, or apoptosis, and shutting down a protein that causes inflammation, a precursor to cancer.... READ

4/13/2009 PERMALINK

another anti-cancer effect of the "longevity" protein SIRT1

Study identifies finds that by speeding the destruction of the tumor promoter c-Myc, SIRT1 curbs cell division. c-Myc proliferates in culture (on left in image), but not when SIRT1 is present (right).... READ

4/13/2009 PERMALINK

Trapping light inside the nanoscale pores can triple solar cell efficiency

By trapping light inside the nanoscale pores of thin-film solar cells coated with diatoms, the engineers claim that more incident photons are captured to boost electricity generation, thereby greatly increasing efficiency. "In our system, photons bounce around inside pores formed from diatom shells," said OSU professor Greg Rorrer, "making them three times more efficient.".... READ

4/13/2009 PERMALINK

The Loftcube rooftop living pod

The slickly designed Loftcube 420 square feet living pod from Werner Aisslinger can be dropped in place by a helicopter on a rooftop or anywhere.... READ

4/13/2009 PERMALINK

Creating safe embryonic-like stem cells

A team of UCSF researchers has for the first time used tiny molecules called microRNAs to help turn adult mouse cells back to their embryonic state. These reprogrammed cells are pluripotent, meaning that, like embryonic stem cells, they have the capacity to become any cell type in the body.... READ

4/11/2009 PERMALINK

Molecule can prompt damaged heart cells to repair themselves

A protein, Thymosin beta-4 (TB4), is expressed by embryos during the heart's development and encourages migration of heart cells. The new findings in mice suggest that introducing TB4 systemically after a heart attack encourages new growth and repair of heart cells. The research findings indicate that the molecule affects developmental gene expression as early as 24 hours after systemic injection.... READ

4/11/2009 PERMALINK

The cloud makes protein research cheap & accessible to scientists worldwide

Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin Biotechnology and Bioengineering Center in Milwaukee have developed a set of free tools called ViPDAC (virtual proteomics data analysis cluster), to be used in combination with Amazon's inexpensive "cloud computing" service, which provides the option to rent processing time on its powerful servers; and free open-source software from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the University of Manitoba. The cloud system mades the very expensive and promising area of protein research more accessible to scientists worldwide.... READ

4/10/2009 PERMALINK

Economic news in mainstream media can no longer be trusted

I've been just amazed at how easily the government has been able to manipulate the press into reporting bogus good economic news. On unemployment numbers, for example, month after month the revisions are consistently taking them up 100,000 or more. How can they always be low by that much, on a number like state unemployment claims, a number the states should know. Minor changes sure, but consistently low balling the number by over 100,000 certainly makes you wonder if this isn't about news manipulation.
Here is the pattern of how it plays out:
If the actual numbers (after final adjustment) were: 600,000 for one month and 650,000 for the next. The government first low balls the first month at 500,000, then adjusts it upward to 600,000 just before the next month's number is announced. Then the government low balls the second month's number at 550,000.
The mainstream media gleefully headlines a drop from the previous month, when there was actually a 50,000 increase.
This pattern hasn't happened just a once, it has happened over and over, with the mainstream media, somehow, either being too stupid to catch on willing going along with the government's effort to transform bad news into good.
Another example of false positive economic news is the government letting banks keep bad loans on their books at full value. This allows banks, which actually have experienced big quarterly losses using normal accounting practices, to report false quarterly profits instead. Regulators are allowing this in the hope that unsophisticated investors can be tricked into investing more money into banks by these fake profits.... READ

4/10/2009 PERMALINK

Printable thin film supercapacitors using single-walled carbon nanotubes

Thin film supercapacitors were fabricated using printable materials to make flexible devices on plastic. The active electrodes were made from sprayed networks of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) serving as both electrodes and charge collectors. Using a printable aqueous gel electrolyte as well as an organic liquid electrolyte, the performances of the devices show very high energy and power densities.... READ

4/10/2009 PERMALINK

Adjusting the immune system so transplants take permanently

Professor Jonathan Sprent and Dr Kylie Webster from Sydney's Garvan Institute of Medical Research, in collaboration with colleagues, Dr Shane Grey and Stacey Walters, have successfully tested a method, in experimental mice, of adjusting the immune system for just long enough to receive a tissue transplant and accept it as 'self'. At no stage, during or after the procedure, is there any need for immunosuppressive drugs.... READ

4/10/2009 PERMALINK

Protein that concentrates CO2 in algae found

An Iowa State University researcher has identified the key proteins in microalgae responsible for concentrating and moving CO2 into cells. "This is a real breakthrough," said Martin Spalding, professor and chair of the department of genetics, development and cell biology. "No one had previously identified any of the proteins that are involved in transporting CO2 in microalgae." The protein that Spalding and his team have identified as responsible for transporting CO2 is called HLA3.... READ

4/10/2009 PERMALINK

Learn without the debt burn -- watch cloud lectures from world's best professors

Over 100 universities have signed up to put lectures on the YouTubeEDU channel and many, like the MIT OpenCourseWare Project, are making course material available free on their own web sites. Expect the huge ripoff of the young that is campus-based education to fade rapidly as Civilization 2.0 arrives. Why take on a huge debt burden to support an obsolete campus system, when with a little self discipline you can get a marvelous MIT education for free in the cloud.

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

A new heater cable lowers the cost of getting oil out of shale

A new ceramic-composite material that can withstand high temperatures and constant exposure to moisture could provide an economical way to unlock America's vast oil-shale deposits. U.S. oil-shale resources hold three times as much crude oil as the whole of Saudi Arabia. But unlike with the gushing fields of the Middle East, extracting oil from shale is like trying to squeeze juice out of frozen lemons.... READ

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

Data-mining techniques could make it easier to locate expertise

Computer scientists have demonstrated techniques for finding experts more accurately using data-mining bots able to determine what skills a person practices regularly and how likely she or he is to respond to requests for help.... READ

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

Nanoscale generator harnesses both sunlight and mechanical energy

Nanoscale generators can turn ambient mechanical energy--vibrations, fluid flow, and even biological movement--into a power source. Now researchers have combined a nanogenerator with a solar cell to create an integrated mechanical- and solar-energy-harvesting device.... READ

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

Stem cell therapy makes cloudy corneas clear

Stem cells collected from human corneas restore transparency and don't trigger a rejection response when injected into eyes that are scarred and hazy, according to experiments conducted in mice by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.... READ

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

Every cop with cop's eye video rolling

The AXON is a tactical computer that brings the power of incident video to every law enforcement officer. The AXON system is designed to integrate seamlessly into your existing radio communications through a standard 3.5 mm headphone connection, providing two way communication in addition to full audio-video recording from a head camera the size and weight of a standard bluetooth headset.... READ

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

While real worlds collapse, virtual worlds continue to thrive

Showing the fate that may be ahead for all of the old order nation states as Civilization 2.0 unfolds, Iceland has collapsed so thoroughly that at this point its currency is virtually worthless. The people there owe ten times the value of everything they own. But the currency used in the EVE Online multi-player spaceship game created by the Icelandic company, CCP hf is still thriving. The game's money is more real and valid and valuable currency than the actual country's fiat money and the same thing is ahead for the dollar, the euro and all other fiat monies. Fiat money is a failed concept that should never have been tried.... READ .... READ

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

A Declaration on the Independence of Cyberspace

"We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence of conformity. In our world, whatever human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts. We will create a civilization of the Mind in cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before."
-- John Perry Barlow, the Grateful Dead lyricist and one of the founders of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The EFF is a powerful force against the cloud being turned to evil by elites seeking to hold back the arrival of Civilization 2.0 -- support them.

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

The wisdom of Bucky Fuller

"Our beds are empty two-thirds of the time. Our living rooms are empty seven-eighths of the time. Our office buildings are empty one-half of the time. It’s time we gave this some thought." -- Bucky Fuller.
Working over the cloud from a smart living pod is where we are going as the old order collapses and Civilization 2.0 arrives. The sooner you get there, the better you will do in Civilization 2.0.

The central question Bucky Fuller devoted his life to solving was: "Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?"

We have learned since Fuller's death that it simply can't be done without moving off world, so the question for us is: "Can humanity survive lastingly and successfully in our cosmos, and if so, how?"

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

Coding DNA "origami seeds" to assemble nano-scale objects

Man-made objects typically are built "top-down", with the structure of the thing imposed from outside. Biological objects instead use a "bottom-up" approach, with order imposed from within the object being made, so it "grows" according to a encoded design. Caltech researchers are now combining bottom-up approaches with molecular fabrication processes to construct nanometer-scale objects from DNA "origami seeds" that essentially assemble themselves.... READ

4/09/2009 PERMALINK

Microsoft project lets a touch screen control other hardware

Dan Morris, a researcher at Microsoft, and his colleagues have developed software for touch-screen surfaces that allows physical controls to be added to them. In addition, the software lets people define the functions that each knob, button, and slider on a controller will perform.... READ

4/08/2009 PERMALINK

Breakthrough research listens to bacteria 'talking'

Bonnie Bassler, who discovered that bacteria talk to each other using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks, speaks at TED about the stunning implications of her findings. Bacteria actually have two communication systems, one for their own species and one that works with any bacteria, regardless of species. Breakthrough research that could prevent the development of drug resistant bacteria and allow us to domesticate bacteria into tiny, extremely useful workers.... READ

4/08/2009 PERMALINK

Watching RNA function inside a living cell

Biomedical engineers have developed a new type of probe for seeing a single ribonucleic acid (RNA) molecule within a living cells. The tool will help scientists determine how RNA operates within cells.... READ

4/08/2009 PERMALINK

Breakthrough living pod that can be built anywhere in 3 days

Says the designer:

Imagine a home that can be built in three days, that will suit any landscape and adapt to virtually any architectural style. Picture a design so sophisticated and fabulous that it seems futuristic, yet so simple and uncomplicated that you wonder why no one has thought of it before.... READ

4/08/2009 PERMALINK

Letting the buggy whip companies build our highways?

If 100 years ago, we had put the nation's buggy whip companies in charge of building out the America's roads systems, probably horses would still be pulling us through roads too muddy for cars to pass.
Cable companies in places like Japan have already put in next generation 160-megabit-per-second service over cable systems just like ours, and the upgrade cost was considerably less than $100 per household.
While in America, until the much more expensive to install FiOS system from Verizon makes it to your neighborhood, your cable monopoly instead of upgrading you, will try to limit your bandwidth to prevent you from getting any HD entertainment over the net. They want your bandwidth hobbled, so you'll be forced to get your entertainment from their obsolete (horse and buggy on muddy roads) channel-based system.
It is going to be very hard to do anything this monopolistic rip off that is putting our nation's competitive future at risk, because by an amazing coincidence, many serving in CONgress have a spouse, son or daughter in a cushy cable industry job.... READ (reg req)

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

The dark side of Dubai

Not sure if the excesses of a feudalistic form of government tells us anything about a globalized world, as the author of this article maintains, but it certainly shows us the advantage of open cloud-democratic rule over centralized control, when it comes to creating a civilization that works. Wherever transparency is lacking trouble is brewing.

"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is - nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing - a modern kind of place - but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship." .... READ

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

Watch the interesting very life-like motion of this ant inspired hexabot

A-Pod is an ant inspired hexapod robot with a 2 DOF abdomen (tail), a 3 DOF head with large mandibles. 6 legs with 3 DOF each. Total 25 servos. This video demonstrates body movement and mandible control. I still have to do some mechanical improvements to the legs (therefore little walking). The robot are remotely controlled with a custom 2,4 GHz RC transmitter.... WATCH

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

Stephen Wolfram talks with Rudy Rucker about his Alpha cloud smart bot

Alpha is a smart cloud bot you will be able to ask about anything. If it works as claimed, it will be the first cloud bot to show the full potential of cloud bots to radically enhance human cognitive abilities.

Kicking off our conversation, Stephen remarks that, "Wolfram|Alpha isn't really a search engine, because we compute the answers, and we discover new truths. If anything, you might call it a platonic search engine, unearthing eternal truths that may never have been written down before."

As Wolfram|Alpha comes into widespread use, Stephen believes "It will raise the level of scientific things that the average person can do. People will find that the world is more predictable than they might have expected. Just as running Google is like having a reference librarian to help you, running Wolfram|Alpha will be like having a house scientist to consult for you.".... Alpha Home .... READ ....LISTEN

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

Breakthrough smart bot was able to rediscover basic laws of nature

We have developed a technique for extracting the laws of nature from experimental data by identifying invariant and conservation equations. We demonstrated this approach by automatically searching motion-tracking data captured from various physical systems, ranging from simple harmonic oscillators to chaotic double-pendula. Without any prior knowledge about physics, kinematics or geometry, the algorithm discovered Hamiltonians, Lagrangians, and other laws of geometric and momentum conservation.... READ ....WATCH

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

Gene therapy can be safely used to regenerate gum tissue

The image show microcomputed tomographic images of regenerated periodontium (tooth supporting structures) following delivery of PDGF genes. The new research used an adenovirus, which in the past has caused problems in other parts of the body, but with local application and a much lower dose this appears to be avoidable. Instead of injecting the genes into the blood vessels, where they can then travel through the bloodstream and result in unexpected and sometimes fatal reactions, U-M scientists put the genes on a localized area, directly on the tissue during surgery much like a paste.... READ

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

Discovering the secrets for a long healthy happy life

The New England Centenarian Study is the largest and most comprehensive study of centenarians and their families in the world. Designed to discover what makes them able to live for so long.... READ

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

Building your own mini mobile living pod

Blog covers adventures of city couple building their own mini mobile living pod.

We have a foundation. Our foundation is a $3124.70, Iron Eagle, 7000 Series trailer. It's gross (trailer and load) vehicle weight is 7000 lbs. It has a tubular frame, electric breaks and a longer tongue than many others in its class..... READ

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

Using math to accurate predict wars and power shifts

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita uses mathematical analysis to predict (usually correctly) such messy human events as war, political power shifts, Intifada. In this talk at the TED conference he explains his techniques and offers three predictions on the future of Iran obtained by using them.... WATCH

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

Obama rubber stamps Bush's shredding of our Bill of Rights

The Obama administration formally adopted the Bush administration's position that the courts cannot judge the legality of the National Security Agency's (NSA's) warrantless wiretapping program, filing a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA late Friday.... READ

4/07/2009 PERMALINK

Segway and GM demo P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility)

Segway and GM demo joint venture Project P.U.M.A. (Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility) prototype is being shown at the New York Auto Show. PUMA is a working concept for the future of urban transportation using the proven reliable and safe technology you find in Segway Personal Transporters (PTs). The PUMA increases capacity to two passengers in a seated position; capable of carrying them between 25 and 35 mph (40 - 56 kph) for from 25 and 35 miles (40 - 56 km) on a single charge.... READ

4/06/2009 PERMALINK

Researchers squeeze light out of quantum dots

Researchers have successfully amplified light with so-called "colloidal quantum dots." Over the last 15 years, repeated quantum dot research efforts failed to deliver on expected improvements in amplification, and many researchers started to believe that an unknown but insurmountable law of physics was blocking their path. However, after extensive research, Professor Patanjali (Pat) Kambhampati and colleagues at McGill University's Department of Chemistry determined that colloidal quantum dots do indeed amplify light as promised. The earlier disappointments were due to accidental roadblocks, not by any fundamental law of physics, the researchers said.... READ

4/06/2009 PERMALINK

Stem cell therapy grows new blood vessels

Research led by David Hess of the Robarts Research Institute at The University of Western Ontario has identified how to use selected stem cells from bone marrow to grow new blood vessels.... READ

4/06/2009 PERMALINK

Long term study proves that more exercise = life extension

PARTICIPANTS: 2205 men aged 50 in 1970-3 who were re-examined at ages 60, 70, 77, and 82 years.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Total (all cause) mortality.
RESULTS: The absolute mortality rate was 27.1, 23.6, and 18.4 per 1000 person years in the groups with low, medium, and high physical activity, respectively.... READ

4/06/2009 PERMALINK

Analysis finds that life must be common throughout our universe

A new thermodynamic analysis suggests that 10 of life's 20 amino acids must be common throughout the cosmos.... READ

4/06/2009 PERMALINK

Human embryonic stem cells (hESC) to revolutionize the treatment of oral diseases

Researchers have discovered how to generate unlimited amounts of the complex, multilayer oral tissues that line the gums, cheeks, lips, and other intra-oral sites from embryonic stem cells. The new technique promises to revolutionize the treatment of diseases of the mouth, including those caused by aging.... READ

4/06/2009 PERMALINK

American bankers get to value loans on the honor system, huge actual loses to magically become bogus profits

People that become accountants tend toward honesty, so they wanted bankers to mark their severely depreciated toxic waste assets down to their actual market value. Since otherwise, pointed out the accountants, investors and depositors would be fooled by banks that actually had large loses, showing bogus profits.

But America's bankers don't have an accountant's tendency towards honesty.

To the contrary, our bankers know they have been Madoffing their investors and depositors for years, so in case they get caught, they have been putting the wives, sons and daughters of numerous politicos into cushy, high paying jobs. They have been funding the re-election campaigns and trips to golf resorts of politicos in order to have enough politicos in their otherwise empty pockets to threaten and intimidate the accountants into letting America's banks continue their multi-trillion dollar heist.

So a bad $1,000,000 mortgage that today is worth only $300,000, gets to stay on the bank's books at something close to the full $1 million, allowing the bank to avoid $700,000 in losses and post an equal amount of bogus profits with the full blessing of America's now fully corrupted political gang.

The regulators that once tried to protect depositors or investors are now part of the criminal conspiracy to defraud them. Spray painting the dead crops green and telling the public that despite the drought we're having a record harvest this year has become the new American way life.... READ