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Caltech chemists develop simple technique to visualize atomic-scale structures

September 3, 2010 by Editor

(Heath group/Caltech)

Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have devised a new technique — using a sheet of carbon just one atom thick — to visualize the structure of molecules.

The technique, which was used to obtain the first direct images of how water coats surfaces at room temperature, can also be… more

High-speed graphene transistors achieve world-record 300 GHz

September 3, 2010 by Editor

UCLA researchers have fabricated the fastest graphene transistor to date, using a new fabrication process with a nanowire as a self-aligned gate.

Self-aligned gates are a key element in modern transistors, which are semiconductor devices used to amplify and switch electronic signals. Gates are used to switch the… more

New ’smart materials’ process promises to revolutionize manufacturing of products

September 3, 2010 by Editor

A new “smart materials” process — Multiple Memory Material Technology — developed by University of Waterloo engineering researchers promises to revolutionize the manufacture of diverse products such as medical devices, microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), printers, hard drives, automotive components, valves and actuators.

The breakthrough technology will provide engineers with much more freedom and creativity… more

Edible Nanostructures

September 3, 2010 by Editor

Sugar, salt, alcohol and a little serendipity led a Northwestern University research team to discover a new class of nanostructures that could be used for gas storage and food and medical technologies. And the compounds are edible. The porous crystals are the first known all-natural metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) that are simple to make.… more

Building large-scale quantum computers

September 3, 2010 by Editor

Dr. Suzanne Gildert will speak on “Building large-scale quantum computers: Fundamentals, technology and applications” at Teleplace, September 4, 10 a.m. PST.

“The talk will explain why quantum computers are useful, and also dispel some of the myths about what they can and cannot do,” she says. “It will address… more

God did not create the universe: Stephen Hawking

September 3, 2010 by Editor

God did not create the universe, says Stephen Hawking in a new book, The Grand Design, co-authored with U.S. physicist Leonard Mlodinow (to be released Sept. 7).

He said the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting another star other than the Sun helped deconstruct the view of the father of physics Isaac Newton that… more

New evidence that fat cells are not just dormant storage depots for calories

September 2, 2010 by Editor

Scientists are reporting new evidence that the fat tissue — far from being a dormant storage depot for surplus calories — is an active organ that sends chemical signals to other parts of the body, perhaps increasing the risk of heart attacks, cancer, and other diseases.

They are reporting discovery of 20 new hormones… more

Supercomputing on a cell phone

September 2, 2010 by Editor

Researchers in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering have developed software that can simulate complicated physical phenomena — how cracks form in building materials, for instance, or fluids flow through irregular channels — on an ordinary smartphone.

Although the current version of the software is for demonstration purposes, the work could lead to… more

Personalized energy systems for heating, cooling, and powering cars

September 2, 2010 by Editor

A new catalyst could help speed development of inexpensive home-brewed solar energy systems for powering homes and plug-in cars during the day (left) and for producing electricity from a fuel cell at night (right). (Patrick Gillooly/MIT)

MIT researchers have developed a new concept of personalized energy systems, in which individual homes and small businesses produce their own energy for heating, cooling and powering cars.

“Our goal is to make each home its own power station,” said study leader Daniel Nocera, Ph.D of MIT. “We’re working toward development of… more

Apple TV Is the One You Date, Google TV Is the One You Marry

September 2, 2010

(Apple Inc.)

Venture Beat, Sep 1, 2010 — Google TV and Apple TV, introduced Wednesday, both aim to redefine the home entertainment experience by creating a seamless system for viewing movies, videos, and music from various sources on a TV.

Google’s Earth

September 2, 2010

New York Times`, Aug 31, 2010 — “In Google, we are at once the surveilled and the individual retinal cells of the surveillant, however many millions of us, constantly if unconsciously participatory,” opines novelist William Gibson. ”We are part of a post-geographical, post-national super-state, one that handily says no to China. Ormore

Gmail Priority Inbox lets you get through your email faster

September 1, 2010 by Editor

“Gmail Priority Inbox” video on YouTube is self-explanatory.

Writer Neal Stephenson unveils his digital novel The Mongoliad

September 1, 2010

VentureBeat, Aug 31, 2010 — Author Neal Stephenson has launched Subutai, which has developed the “PULP platform” for creating digital novels, using a new model for publishing books in which authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video. There are also social features that allow readers to create… more

The Extraordinary Tale of Red Rain, Comets and Extraterrestrials

September 1, 2010

Optical microscope images of red cells: (A) red cells before autoclaving (400x): cells evenly dispersed in the rain water. (B) red cells after 1 hour incubation at 121oC (1000x).(C) after 2 hour incubation at 121oC (1000x).

the physics ArXiv blog, Sep 1, 2010 — For years, claims have circulated that red rain that fell in India in 2001 contained cells unlike any found on Earth. Now new evidence that these cells can reproduce is about to set the debate alive.

“The flourescence behaviour of the red… more

Living Data

September 1, 2010

Technology Review, Sep 1, 2010 — The AlloSphere, a three-story-high globe at the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara,  facilitates interactive 3-D visualizations to enables scientists to dive into data in unprecedented ways. Inside the sphere, they can get their hands on the atoms making up the crystal structure… more

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Ray Kurzweil Responds to “Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain”

August 20, 2010 by Ray Kurzweil

While most of PZ Myers’ comments (in his blog post entitled “Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain” posted on Pharyngula on August 17, 2010) do not deserve a response, I do want to set the record straight, as he completely mischaracterizes my thesis.

For starters, I said that we would be… more

A new blueprint for artificial general intelligence

August 12, 2010 by Amara D. Angelica

Demis Hassabis, a research fellow at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience UnitUniversity College London, is out to create a radical new kind of artficial brain.

A former well-known UK videogame designer and programmer, he has produced a number of amazing games, including the legendary Evil Genius — which he denies selling to Microsoft, thus… more

‘Artificial Biology’ at Singularity Summit 2010

August 12, 2010 by David Despain

Humans will one day defeat aging with AI, make death and disease relics of the past, regrow lost tissues and body parts as needed, control robot arms on another continent, unravel the complexities of cells, and in their spare time, save the world. At least that’s the hope of six speakers at Singularitymore

The Mind and How To Build One

August 12, 2010 by Ray Kurzweil

At the Singularity Summit in San Francisco at 11 AM on Saturday August 14, Ray Kurzweil will present an overview of “arguably the most important project in the history of the human-machine civilization”: to model and reverse-engineer the brain, with the goal of creating intelligent machines to address the grand challenges of humanity. Hemore

Why SIRT1 in your brain may keep you smart

August 10, 2010 by David Despain

Can a protein called SIRT1 in your head boost brain power, learning and memory? (iStockphoto)

Picture a scene in the ancient wild: a time when drought and famine have taken the land, food is scant and predators are near, and staying alive depends on being active, alert, and quick-witted — and asking, “Where did I find those nuts last year, and where was that water hole?

A… more

Carboncopies–Realistic Routes to Substrate-Independent Minds

August 9, 2010 by Randal Koene

What might brains and minds look like in the future? It can be difficult to manage and organize ideas from many highly specialized fields of expertise that must necessarily converge to answer this intriguing question. Not only must one consider the areas of brain imaging, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology, but also artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, biotechnology,… more

Singularity and Rationality: Eliezer Yudkowsky speaks out

August 5, 2010 by Thomas McCabe

Eliezer Yudkowsky is a Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and founder of the community blog Less Wrong. We discussed his coming talk at the Singularity Summit on August 15, his forthcoming book on human rationality, his theory of “friendly AI,” and the likelihood of themore

IBM scientists create most comprehensive map of the brain’s network

July 28, 2010 by Amara D. Angelica

"The Mandala of the Mind" (Professor Kenneth Kreutz Delgado). The long-distance network of the Macaque monkey brain, spanning the cortex, thalamus, and basal ganglia, showing 6,602 long-distance connections between 383 brain regions. A high-resolution version of this figure is here. (PNAS)

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published Tuesday a landmark paper entitled “Network architecture of the long-distance pathways in the macaque brain” (an open-access paper) by Dharmendra S. Modha (IBM Almaden) and Raghavendra Singh (IBM Research-India) with major implications for reverse-engineering the brain and developing a network… more

From DIY to DIWO: biohackers, synthetic biologists, and FBI to dialogue at Open Science Summit

July 26, 2010 by Amara D. Angelica

A new generation of biohackers is literally taking the future of biology into their own hands, and it’s raising some red flags with the government. The basic concern: how can we avoid proliferation of dangerous bioagents?

The situation will come to a head on Friday night July 30 at the… more

How to Prevent a Global Aging Crisis

July 17, 2010 by David Despain

Chronic diseases and aging. The incidence of major chronic diseases rises exponentially with age, as shown: cardiovascular disease (blue squares) [data from (32) , cancer (red diamonds) [data from (32) , AD (gray squares) [data from (33) , and influenza-associated hospitalization (green triangles)"]. Incidence rates are normalized to the first data point. (Illustration: AAAS)

A handful of forward-thinking biogerontologists has joined together to offer a new direction for aging intervention. Their commentary, published July 14 in Science Translational Medicine, presents the case for preventing what the scientists call an “unprecedented global aging crisis”—a sharp rise in the numbers of retired elderly in developing and industrialized nations across the… more

The state of the future

July 14, 2010 by Jerome C. Glenn

As noted in our 2010 State of the Future (the 14th annual report from the Millennium Project, just published), the world is in a race between implementing ever-increasing ways to improve the human condition and the seemingly ever-increasing complexity and scale of global problems.

If current trends in population growth,… more

H+ Summit @ Harvard: The Rise of the Citizen Scientist

July 4, 2010 by Ben Goertzel

Shoshin character

On June 12-13 of this year, Harvard University hosted the H+ Summit, organized by the nonprofit Humanity+ and loosely focused on the theme, Rise of the Citizen Scientist.

I attended and spoke at the Summit and enjoyed it very much; nearly every speaker had something interesting to say, and one came away… more

Is the iPad the New Guillotine?

July 4, 2010 by Howard Bloom

Follow Osama’s Example–Shred Red Tape With Personal Tech

What Do Brooklyn’s Tea Lounge and Al Qaeda Have In Common? It’s time to kill bureaucracy. What do I mean? And what does this call for revolution have to do with the next generation of netbooks, Apple tablets and Google Phones? Not to mention with themore

Jabberwocky, AI, and aging

July 4, 2010 by L. Stephen Coles

Seeing Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3-D (which continues as No. 1 in box office sales for the second weekend in a row), I thought that the Jabberwocky poem came from the original Alice in Wonderland, but it didn’t. It came from the sequel, Through the Looking Glass.

Recall that Lewis Carroll… more

The Planetary Mood Ring

July 4, 2010 by Bruce Damer

What if there was a central place for all of humanity to text, tweet, email, blog and click in the essence of their mood in the moment? This gigantic feelings aggregator would provide a massive emotional pulse check on the planet that runs continually. Represented as a color wheel inspired by the… more

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