This is brilliant! I strongly advise you to watch the video on 60 Minutes. Amazing. | Over the past several years, there’s been no shortage of talk about alternative energy, and its potential to change the world. The problem is that most of it is just that — talk. But tonight, a report that aired on 60 Minutes showed one alternative that is not only real, it’s already being tested by companies such as Google and eBay. You simply have to watch this. |
Bloom Energy are producing tiny fuel cell boxes they call “Bloom Boxes.” Two of these can apparently power a U.S. home (and only one for homes in countries that use less power). So how small are they? Look at the picture above, each device isn’t much bigger than a standard brick. Of course, they need to be surrounded by a larger unit that takes in an energy source (such as natural gas). But still, these units look to be about the size of a refrigerator and can easily fit outside of a home, providing it with clean, cheap energy. Read more at techcrunch.com |
| When people have their feelings hurt, what is actually happening inside the body to cause the physical pain in the chest? |
Robert Emery and Jim Coan, professors of psychology at the University of Virginia, reply: |
terms such as “heartache” and “gut wrenching” are more than mere metaphors: they describe the experience of both physical and emotional pain. When we feel heartache, for example, we are experiencing a blend of emotional stress and the stress-induced sensations in our chest—muscle tightness, increased heart rate, abnormal stomach activity and shortness of breath. In fact, emotional pain involves the same brain regions as physical pain, suggesting the two are inextricably connected. Read more at www.scientificamerican.com |
| Good science education at the earliest grades is supremely important, but in most classrooms it gets short shrift. Studies have found that children in kindergarten are already forming negative views about science that could cast a shadow across their entire educational careers |
| One report noted that science instruction in the early grades “occurs sporadically and rarely engages children in practices that encourage rigorous and reflective science learning.” |
| The Purdue approach, the Scientific Literacy Project |
| introduces children to the most fundamental idea—that science is about carefully conducted inquiry to learn about the world—and shows them that everyone can do science. |
| The researchers found that students participating in their project showed significant gains relative to those taking traditional classes. The kindergartners readily developed skills related to asking questions, conducting observations and experiments, drawing conclusions and sharing their findings—and had tremendous funRead more at www.scientificamerican.com |
| Fast and accurate sorting capability is a must, and not just for Internet browsers. Think about the jobs of radiologists, for example, looking for a diseased cell or two in a mass of tissue. Or a baggage screener looking for a gun, a knife, or a bomb in someone’s carry-on bag |
| Harvard professor Jeremy Wolfe, demonstrates that the more we [humans!] look for that “needle in a haystack,” the less likely it is that we will find it. Now, how does that make you feel when you take a mammogram or get on an airplane? |
But what if a quantum computer could detect the diseased cell? And not only that. What if that super computer could determine which antibody might kill that cell without harming the surrounding cells? Think about how much time that would save researchers in testing various drugs, and how much time it would save in getting approval for potential life-saving drugs. Read more at www.physorg.com |
Again we have a great breakthrough that may lead technology to a new era.
It’s nice to wonder how it’s going to be 7, 9 yeras from now by taking in consideration scientific developments like this. | A team at the University of Calgary has accomplished exactly that: by manipulating a mysterious quantum property of light known as entanglement, they are able to mount up to two photons on top of one another to construct a variety of quantum states of light – that is, build two-story quantum toy houses of any style and architecture |
| “This ability to prepare or control complex quantum objects is considered the holy grail of quantum science” |
| “It brings us closer to the onset of the new era of quantum information technology.”
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| This new generation of technology is expected to endow us with qualitatively new capabilities. This includes measurement instruments of extraordinary sensitivity, dramatically faster computers, secure communication systems and enhanced control over chemical reactions.
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| Light is a particularly interesting quantum object |
| because it’s an excellent communication tool. No matter what future quantum computers will be made of, they’ll talk to each other using photonsRead more at www.labspaces.net |
ScienceDaily (Feb. 11, 2010) — At this very moment, tens of thousands of home computers around the world are quietly working together to solve the largest and most basic mysteries of our galaxy. |
Enthusiastic and inquisitive volunteers from Africa to Australia are donating the computing power of everything from decade-old desktops to sleek new netbooks to help computer scientists and astronomers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute map the shape of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, just this month, the collected computing power of these humble home computers has surpassed one petaflop, a computing speed that surpasses the world’s second fastest supercomputer. |
| The project, MilkyWay@Home, uses the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC) platform, which is widely known for the SETI@home project used to search for signs of extraterrestrial life. Read more at www.sciencedaily.com |
Makes me wonder what our friends from the 1800’s would say about this…
Still, with all the controversy behind subjects like this, I’d like to see if - and if - they manage to make it work on Earth, how they would actually implement this technology if not on our daily basis, then on industrial or military areas.
Seems like we’re going to live a 70’s movie story very soon. | Researchers may have figured out a way to dislodge dust particles from sensitive equipment on the Moon or Mars using sound waves. |
| Here’s how it works: by playing back a high-pitched (13.8 KHz, 128 dB) standing wave of sound from a 1.25-inch tweeter, and focusing it on a reflector several inches away, researchers from the Department of Physics and Materials Science Program found it was enough to dislodge dust particles on the reflector’s surface |
| Later, the researchers tested this acoustic levitation process, as it is called, on a solar panel that was reduced to just 10 percent of its original power output after being coated with fine dust. The process boosted output back to 98.4 percent of maximum |
| This is especially important since dust particles on the Moon and on Mars are sharper and more abrasive than on Earth, thanks to the thinner atmosphere. The next step: figuring out how to make the process work when actually out in the thin atmosphere |
| The ability to speak a second language isn’t the only thing that distinguishes bilingual people from their monolingual counterparts—their brains work differently, too. Research has shown, for instance, that children who know two languages more easily solve problems that involve misleading cues. A new study published in Psychological Science reveals that knowledge of a second language—even one learned in adolescence—affects how people read in their native tongue. The findings suggest that after learning a second language, people never look at words the same way again. |
| “The most important implication of the study is that even when a person is reading in his or her native language, there is an influence of knowledge of the nondominant second language,” Van Assche notes. “Becoming a bilingual changes one of people’s most automatic skills.” |
| psychologists at Washington University are finding that your ability to envision the future does in fact goes hand-in-hand with remembering the past. Both processes spark similar neural activity in the brain. |
| The study clearly demonstrates that the neural network underlying future thoughts is not only happening in the brain’s frontal cortex. Although the frontal lobes play an important role in carrying out future-oriented operations — such as anticipation, planning and monitoring — the spark for these activities may be the process of envisioning yourself in a specific future event. And that’s an activity based on the same brain network used to remember memories about our own lives. Also, patterns of activity suggest that the visual and spatial context for our imagined future is often pieced together using our past experiences, including memories of specific body movements: data our brain has stored as we navigated through similar settings in the past.Read more at www.sciencedaily.com |
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