The ethics of brain science: Open your mind
May 26, 2002
Advances in neurotechnology raise ethical and legal questions.
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In a Senate hearing Wednesday, scientists and officials advocated an increase in government investments in nanotechnology and doubling the National Science Foundation budget.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich called for an additional $1.1 billion for the National Nanotechnology Initiative and noted that areas such as health, the environment, and national security “will all be profoundly shaped by this emerging revolution in knowledge.”
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A Bot That Knows Where It’s Going
May 24, 2002
Evolution Robotics’ new ER1 mobile robot can learn on the fly, enabling it to roam around new environments entirely on its own.
Following simple commands, it can recognize an ever-changing environment by processing 30 still-frame photos a minute looking for a picture that matches its memory. It comes with a digital camera and speech recognition, and voice response systems.
Quantum wormholes could carry people
May 24, 2002
“Quantum wormholes offer a faster-than-light short cut to the rest of the cosmos — at least in principle. Now physicists believe they could open these doors wide enough to allow someone to travel through.”
But matter travelling through a wormhole adds positive energy to it, which collapses it into a black hole, so any would-be traveller would be crushed.
“Ghost radiation” could be used to offset the positive energy… read more
Bell, Torvalds usher next wave of supercomputing
May 23, 2002
A compact supercomputer based on a Beowolf cluster called Green Destiny was unveiled at Los Alamos National Laboratory.
Using compact, stripped-down server blades, Los Alamos scientists were able to build a system that is much smaller, consumes less power and is more cost-effective than typical supercomputers. It uses Crusoe processors from Transmeta, which require no active cooling.
Boffins develop ‘sociable’ robots
May 22, 2002
Irish scientists developing robots that are friendly and sociable so that people will be able to relate to them more naturally.
The first prototype, Anthropos, has cameras for eyes, a speaker as a mouth, voice recognition, and motors that control how it moves.
Myhrvold’s Exponential Economy
May 22, 2002
“The technological revolution for the 21st century is going to be based on which areas … exponential growth rates catch hold in, and which ones don’t…. Analyzing abstract data is one of the most important frontiers in biology and medicine.”
Thinking Big About Nanotechnology
May 21, 2002
The first commercial results of nanotech coming onto the market now are mostly coatings and materials that resist friction and wear, or shed dirt from clothing and household surfaces.
Consciousness Based on Wireless?
May 21, 2002
Prof. JohnJoe McFadden argues that human consciousness is the brain’s electromagnetic field interacting with its neural circuitry.
Newt Gingrich Gets Small
May 21, 2002
Nanotechnology is “the investment with the largest payoff over the next 50 years,” said Newt Gingrich, former speaker of the House of Representatives, in a keynote at NanoBusiness Spring 2002.
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Nano breakthrough charges science world
May 21, 2002
IBM researchers have created carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNFETs) that suggest that CNFETs may be competitive with Silicon MOSFETs for future nanoelectronic applications.
CNFETs deliver more than twice the amount of electrical current at a faster rate than silicon transistors. Increased current can lead to faster transistors and integrated circuits, so carbon may become a building block of computing in the future.
Agency signs on digital star Lara Croft
May 21, 2002
Beverly Hills talent agency Creative Artists Agency announced they will represent digitally animated Lara Croft for new products and promotional tie-ins.The Lara Croft character has been featured in six video games and the “Tomb Raider” movie. Eidos plans to release the new “Lara Croft: The Angel of Darkness” video game this coming winter.
Gingrich and Kurzweil: promise and peril of nanotech
May 20, 2002
NEW YORK, May 20 — Keynote speakers Newt Gingrich and Ray Kurzweil addressed the promises and peril of nanotechnology in a press conference at the NanoBusiness Spring 2002 conference here today.
“The only viable and responsible path is to set a careful course that can realize the promise while managing the peril,” said Kurzweil.
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of United States House of Representatives and Honorary… read more
Study ranks supercomputers of the world
May 20, 2002
IDC has released its IDC Balanced Rating of the top 50 computers and computing clusters in four categories.
The new rating system combines several performance metrics, including three benchmarks of processor performance, two measures of memory effectiveness, and an evaluation of the scaling capability of each system.
The Man Who Cracked The Code to Everything …
May 20, 2002
The inside story of how Stephen Wolfram went from boy genius to recluse to science renegade.
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