|
|
|
|
|
With the latest advances in treatment, doctors have discovered that they can successfully neutralise the HIV virus. The so-called ‘combination therapy’ prevents the HIV virus from mutating and spreading, allowing patients to rebuild their immune system to the same levels as the rest of the population. To date, it represents the most significant treatment for patients suffering from HIV.
Professor Jens Lundgren from the University of Copenhagen, together with other members of the research group EuroSIDA, have conducted a study, which demonstrates that the immune system of all HIV-infected patients can be restored and normalised. The only stipulation is that patients begin and continue to follow their course of treatment.
|
|
Thomas Lewis, M.D. is an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, and a former associate director of the Affective Disorders Program there. Dr. Lewis currently divides his time between writing, private practice, and teaching at the UCSF medical school.
|
|
An international consortium of scientists published the largest existing survey comparing genetic and chemical traits of human embryonic stem cell lines from around the world.
"You could call this an encyclopedia of embryonic stem cells. "
The study compared 59 lines of stem cells from 17 laboratories around the world and assessed the similarities and differences in the expression of many common molecular markers.
Researchers also identified certain cell surface antigens and developmentally regulated genes that characterize all human embryonic stem cell lines isolated to date, despite the cell lines' variety of genetic backgrounds and growth conditions. The similarities identified in the study will help set benchmarks for future stem cell work.
|
|
This year, as every year, we present our list of the 10 technologies we find most exciting—and most likely to alter industries, fields of research, and even the way we live. The list comprises projects in a broad range of fields.
|
|
DARPA just announced the 36 teams that will advance to the next stage
of the competition. The next stage of the competition will be October
26-31, 2007.
The final competition will be November 3rd, in Victorville,
California at what used to be George Air Force Base.
The vehicles will have to
conduct military supply missions in a mock urban area filled with
traffic.
|
|
Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen.
A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums.
The artificial intelligence of CyberLover's automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the "bot" from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name, contact information, and photos.
|
|
Researchers reported on a way to design circuits that should work even when many of the nanotubes in them are twisted and misaligned.
Nanotubes tend to grow with unpredictable kinks and bends that can cause bad wiring connections. The resarchers came to the conclusion that engineers will have to design circuits that will work regardless of where and how the tubes lie.
They came up with a single circuit element—a NAND gate—that was immune from the vagaries of its underlying nanotube layout. From that single element, they abstracted and generalized the math to come up with an algorithm that they say can guarantee a working design for any circuit element, despite the presence of misaligned tubes.
|
|
DNA chips have revolutionised biological research. With the help of a microarray, researchers can query the whole genome at once, rather than just a few genes at a time. Experiments that used to be impossible are now being performed in days or hours. "By being able to see the big picture, all the genes, all the genetic variation, we can readily pick out answers—we can make discoveries that we could never make before," explains Eric Lander, one of the leaders of the human-genome project.
|
|
Click on photos to enlarge.
|
|
A Swedish HIV vaccine study has produced surprisingly good results. Over 90 per cent of the subjects in the phase 1 trials developed an immune response to HIV.
A vaccine developed by SMI scientists has now undergone the first clinical study on healthy individuals in Sweden in order to examine its safety and different methods of administration. The vaccine is what is known as a genetic vaccine, which uses parts of the virus DNA to stimulate the rapid endogenous production of the proteins for which the injected DNA codes.
The trial subjects were vaccinated on three occasions with this vaccine using a needle-free method of injection. In order to enhance the effect, the researchers also gave the subjects a fourth dose of a vaccine in which parts of the HIV virus DNA had been integrated into another virus (vaccinia = the cowpox virus).
|
 The tributes to Sanford I. Weill line the walls of the carpeted hallway that leads to his skyscraper office, with its panoramic view of Central Park. A dozen framed magazine covers, their colors as vivid as an Andy Warhol painting, are the most arresting. Each heralds Mr. Weill’s genius in assembling Citigroup into the most powerful financial institution since the House of Morgan a century ago.
His achievement required political clout, and that, too, is on display. Soon after he formed Citigroup, Congress repealed a Depression-era law that prohibited goliaths like the one Mr. Weill had just put together anyway, combining commercial and investment banking, insurance and stock brokerage operations. A trophy from the victory — a pen that President Bill Clinton used to sign the repeal — hangs, framed, near the magazine covers.
These days, Mr. Weill and many of the nation’s very wealthy chief executives, entrepreneurs and financiers echo an earlier era — the Gilded Age before World War I — when powerful enterprises, dominated by men who grew immensely rich, ushered in the industrialization of the United States.
|
|
Google Health, codename "Weaver", is Google’s planned health information storage program.
|
|
Mythbusters test a bull in a china shop
Video, 3:45
|
 The Body: Flying ambulances? Intelligent clothing? Custom-built organs from scratch? Robotic surgery? Learn about today's medical breakthroughs that will extend our lives in 50 years.
What would you see and experience if the clocks rolled forward 50 years? In a unique blend of drama and science, this three-part series shows you the world of tomorrow. Will we have flying cars? Will advances in medicine help us stay young forever? What about "printing" custom-made vital organs? What will our cities look like? What will tomorrow's wars be about? Will we have robots helping around the house? Will solar power be the new oil?
Supported by the world's leading scientists and research institutes, we embark on a quest to answer some of society's most fundamental questions and reveal the dramas of tomorrow's world along the way. State-of-the-art computer graphics in combination with a dynamic story line will create a world usually only seen in feature films, but with the accuracy and relevance of a documentary. This series is all about opening the window of our future based on science fact, not science fiction.
Hosted by Michio Kaku
Video, 43:00
|
|
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? For most, it's an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel peace prize and ranked in a US poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip, has been decapitated in effigy on "I Hate Gates" websites. As for Norman Borlaug … who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the "Green Revolution" that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world such as malaria, diarrhoea and parasites.
|
|
Officials confirm that all online data has been lost after the Internet crashed and was forced to restart.
Video, 3:00
|
 Photons rarely interact—which makes it challenging to build all-optical devices in which one light signal controls another. Even in nonlinear optical media, in which two beams can interact because of their influence on the medium's refractive index, this interaction is weak at low light levels. Here, we propose a novel approach to realizing strong nonlinear interactions at the single-photon level, by exploiting the strong coupling between individual optical emitters and propagating surface plasmons confined to a conducting nanowire. We show that this system can act as a nonlinear two-photon switch for incident photons propagating along the nanowire, which can be coherently controlled using conventional quantum-optical techniques. Furthermore, we discuss how the interaction can be tailored to create a single-photon transistor, where the presence (or absence) of a single incident photon in a 'gate' field is sufficient to allow (or prevent) the propagation of subsequent 'signal' photons along the wire.
|
|
Scientists are incorporating the physics of black holes into a highly sophisticated model running on a powerful supercomputing system. The team has produced an unprecedented simulation of cosmic evolution that verifies and deepens our understanding of relationships between black holes and the galaxies in which they reside. Called BHCosmo, the simulation shows that black holes are integral to the structure of the cosmos and may help guide users of future telescopes, showing them what to look for as they aim to locate the earliest cosmic events and untangle the history of the universe.
"Ours is the first simulation to incorporate black hole physics. It is very computationally challenging, involving more calculations than any prior similar modeling of the cosmos, and the result offers us the best picture to date of how the cosmos formed."
|
|
On Nov. 3, when robot vehicles raced through Darpatown, a simulated suburbia created in an abandoned Air Force Base in Victorville, Calif., each machine appeared to show its own distinct personality.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, robot personality quirks can mirror the individual styles of their human designers. And in this third annual race, sponsored by the Pentagon and now called the Darpa Urban Challenge, the leading machines also reflected a very human rivalry between two leading computer science and engineering schools.
|
|
Berkeley Courses With Video Lectures. Sites Offering Free Courses. Free Online Documentaries. Learn Languages on iTunes. Online Degree Plans Near You. Educational Videos. Education With Podcasting. Useful Free Software For Students. Reference Sites. Web 2.0 For Students. Ask Questions. Free Ebooks. Tiny Flash Freeware. Free Ear Training Software. Learn Languages.
|
|
Banks are failing to provide consumers with information about fees on savings and checking accounts even though federal rules require such disclosures.
Some of the invisible fees have climbed substantially in recent years. The average overdraft fee, for instance, increased 11 percent from 2000 to 2007.
Staff made undercover visits to 185 branches of 154 depository institutions throughout the country and were unable to get comprehensive lists of checking and savings account fees at more than a one-fifth of the locations. The information was not available on the Web sites of half of the institutions.
|
|
Computers outperform humans at recognizing faces in recent tests.
For scientists and engineers involved with face-recognition technology, the recently released results of the Face Recognition Grand Challenge have been a quiet triumph. The match up of face-recognition algorithms showed that machine recognition of human individuals has improved tenfold since 2002 and a hundredfold since 1995. Indeed, the best face-recognition algorithms now perform more accurately than most humans can manage.
The necessary in error rate was due in large measure to the development of high-resolution still-images and 3-D face-recognition algorithms. "For the FRVT 2006 and the ICE 2006, sets of high-resolution face images, 3-D face scans, and iris images were collected of the same people." 3-D face recognition has come into its own in the last few years because 3-D sensors for face recognition have become available only recently."
|
|
Geeks at GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters), the UK's spook-infested listening station, are using the infamous Enron email trail to develop software that will monitor people's emails and stop them sending incriminating or confidential messages.
The team would be processing the 500,000 emails in corpus Enron.
"We've got the capability to leak out all our organisation's secrets through email. So how can you stop that happening?"
|
|
The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage – a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable.
"We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3 million sq km which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006. There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100 000 sq km per year on average, so a drop of 1 million sq km in just one year is extreme.
Mosaics of Arctic Ocean for 2005, 2006, 2007
"The strong reduction in just one year certainly raises flags that the ice (in summer) may disappear much sooner than expected and that we urgently need to understand better the processes involved."
|
|
The increasing deployment of gun-toting robots by the U.S. military and other armed forces around the world could end up endangering civilian lives and giving terrorists new ideas.
The prospect of armed, autonomous robots is enough to rattle Noel Sharkey, professor of computer science at the University of Sheffield, England. "One of the fundamental laws of war is being able to discriminate real combatants and noncombatants," he says. "I can see no way that autonomous robots can deliver this for us."
|
|
Multicore chips could bring about the biggest change in computing since the microprocessor. By Brian Hayes.
The pace of change in computer technology can be breathtaking—and sometimes infuriating. You bring home a new computer, and before you can get it plugged in you're hearing rumors of a faster and cheaper model. In the 30 years since the microprocessor first came on the scene, computer clock speeds have increased by a factor of a thousand (from a few megahertz to a few gigahertz) and memory capacity has grown even more (from kilobytes to gigabytes).
Through all this frenzy of upgrades and speed bumps, one aspect of computer hardware has remained stubbornly resistant to change. Until recently, that new computer you brought home surely had only one CPU, or central processing unit—the computer-within-the-computer where programs are executed and calculations are performed.
|
|
Scientists say they have found the part of the brain that predicts whether a person will be selfish or an altruist.
Altruism - the tendency to help others without obvious benefit to oneself - appears to be linked to an area called the posterior superior temporal sulcus. Using brain scans, the US investigators found this region related to a person's real-life unselfish behaviour.
|
|
A team of researchers has created the largest man-made DNA structure by synthesizing and assembling the 582,970 base pair genome of a bacterium. This work is the second of three key steps toward the team’s goal of creating a fully synthetic organism. In the next step, the team will attempt to create a living bacterial cell based entirely on the synthetically made genome.
The team achieved this technical feat by chemically making DNA fragments in the lab and developing new methods for the assembly and reproduction of the DNA segments.
|
|
The World Wide Web will soon be absorbed into the World Wide Sim: an environment combining elements of Second Life and Google Earth. (Requires registration).
|
|
Perhaps your real life is so rich you don't have time for another.
Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.
By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.
Yank a country's water supply. Stage a military coup. the Sentient World Simulation (SWS) will tell you what happens next.
|
|
Harnessing quantum interference enables single aromatic annulene molecules to function as transistors.
|
|
New research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye colour of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today.
"Originally, we all had brown eyes. But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a 'switch', which literally 'turned off' the ability to produce brown eyes". The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives colour to our hair, eyes and skin. The "switch", which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2 does not, however, turn off the gene entirely, but rather limits its action to reducing the production of melanin in the iris – effectively "diluting" brown eyes to blue.
|
|
A special technique that uses laser light to sample a person's breath can detect molecules that may be markers for a number of diseases.
This approach, called cavity-enhanced direct optical frequency comb spectroscopy, may one day help doctors screen patients for diseases such as asthma, cancer, kidney failure and diabetes, according to the team of scientists at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
"This technique can give a broad picture of many different molecules in the breath all at once," lead researcher Jun Ye said in a prepared statement.
|
 The World:
An invisible soldier? A space elevator to the stars? Transmit the inventory of the Library of Congress via laser beam in seconds? What are the real fuel sources of the future? Learn about technological quantum leaps that will shape our planet in 50 years.
What would you see and experience if the clocks rolled forward 50 years? In a unique blend of drama and science, this three-part series shows you the world of tomorrow. Will we have flying cars? Will advances in medicine help us stay young forever? What about "printing" custom-made vital organs? What will our cities look like? What will tomorrow's wars be about? Will we have robots helping around the house? Will solar power be the new oil?
Supported by the world's leading scientists and research institutes, we embark on a quest to answer some of society's most fundamental questions and reveal the dramas of tomorrow's world along the way. State-of-the-art computer graphics in combination with a dynamic story line will create a world usually only seen in feature films, but with the accuracy and relevance of a documentary. This series is all about opening the window of our future based on science fact, not science fiction.
Hosted by Michio Kaku
Video, 43:00
|
|
Like my Grandpa always said, there were no naked human pyramids in Starcraft.
There were no whiny anti-war Hollywood types or questionable war motives or granola-munching protesters. I'm starting to think that even World in Conflict, a real time strategy game so "realistic" it takes a NASA-built Quantum supercomputer to run it, has left me woefully unprepared to fight an actual war.
Well, below is my open letter to the real time strategy gaming cartel. I want a war simulation. A real one.
|
|
A probe of the upper echelons of the human brain's chain-of-command has found strong evidence that there are not one but two complementary commanders in charge of the brain. It's as if Captains James T. Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard were both on the bridge and in command of the same starship Enterprise. In reality, these two captains are networks of brain regions that do not consult each other but still work toward a common purpose -- control of voluntary, goal-oriented behavior. "This was a big surprise. We knew several brain regions contribute to top-down control, but most of us thought we'd eventually show all those regions linking together in one system, one little guy up top telling everyone else what to do."
|
|
"The Planet"
is a Swedish
campaign to enhance public awareness of the planet Earth; to show its limits, wonders, possibilities.
It is produced by Swedish public service television.
This is a Flash app -- when you use it, make sure you hit the back arrow inside the app, otherwise if you use the browser's back arrow, you will get popped outside of the app completely.
To get started, I suggest you click on "The Big Picture", then "The Current State", then "Great Acceleration". You can see many of the trends we talk about at the future salon there.
|
|
Author and Carnegie Mellon alum Scott Berkun shows that much of what we know about innovation is wrong as he explores the history of innovation and creative thinking.
Video, 51:10
|
|
Pundits are eager to provide their predictions for the new year. Here's something a little different.
1. The writers won't win the current strike.
2. DreamWorks isn't going to leave Paramount after all.
3. Apple won't reinvent TV viewing.
4. Juno won't win an Academy Award. Anyone
|
|
Checkers computer becomes invincible. An invincible checkers-playing program named Chinook has solved a game whose origins date back several millennia, scientists reported Thursday on the journal Science's Web site. By playing out every possible move — about 500 billion billion in all — the computer proved it can never be beaten. Even if its opponent also played flawlessly, the outcome would be a draw.
|
|
As the U.S. banking system continues to get into more trouble, the government has responded by buying up stake in the failing companies. But Robert Reich reports the governments doing the owning are overseas.
|
|
The Bank for International Settlements has warned that years of loose monetary policy has fuelled a dangerous credit bubble, leaving the global economy vulnerable to another 1930s-style slump.
"Virtually nobody foresaw the Great Depression of the 1930s, or the crises which affected Japan and southeast Asia in the early and late 1990s. In fact, each downturn was preceded by a period of non-inflationary growth exuberant enough to lead many commentators to suggest that a 'new era' had arrived", said the bank.
The BIS pointed to a confluence a worrying signs, citing mass issuance of new-fangled credit instruments, soaring levels of household debt, extreme appetite for risk shown by investors, and entrenched imbalances in the world currency system.
It said China's growth was "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable", borrowing a line from Chinese premier Wen Jiabao
|
|
BBC program where they interview Gordon Moore and various other
people from the silicon valley semiconductor industry. This is a very
introductory program. For those of you who are deeply familiar with
Moore's Law, you won't find much new here. But for those of you not
so familiar, this program will explain some of the issues involved,
and give you some sense of the chaos and craziness that creates our
smooth growth in computer power.
Audio, 27 minutes
|
|
Western U.S. wildfires are likely to increase in the coming decades, according to a new tree-ring study that links episodic fire outbreaks in the past five centuries with periods of warming sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic. States like Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and South Dakota all had an increased prevalence of wildfires in recent centuries when a phenomenon known as the Atlantic Multi-Decadal Oscillation -- similar but longer in duration than the better known El Nino-Southern Oscillation -- periodically shifted from a cool to a warm mode that lasted roughly 60 years each time. Warmer waters in the North Atlantic correspond with episodes of drought and subsequent fires in the West as shown by fire scars in annual tree rings studied by the researchers.
|
|
Where are you from? "Dobbs Ferry." What’s your major? “Mostly computer science but also psychology." Where did you live? "Kirkland House at Harvard."
Mr. Zuckerberg’s creation, an Internet service that allows students to post personal information and photos, is nothing short of a twister sweeping college campuses, keeping millions up to date on their friends’ lives and dating status. There was a reputed $1 billion plus offer from Yahoo!, turned down, natch.
Even more remarkable is that Mr. Zuckerberg is all of 22 years old. What is it that made Facebook become so valuable in less than three years? And will 22-year-olds with 200 employees come up with all the good ideas from now on?
|
|
For a majority of likely voters, meaningless bullshit will be the most important factor in deciding who they will vote for in 2008.
Video, 2:20
|
|
According to the meeting, China has poured about 1.5 billion yuan (about $197 million) into the research and development of nanoscience and nanotechnology over the past 15 years, achieving encouraging advances in this regard. For instance, the number of research papers published by Chinese scientists at the international journals in 2006 were on a par with those contributed by their US or Japanese colleagues. The number of patents they have filed for has increased from less than 1,000 in 2001 to more than 4,600 in March 2005.
Under the guidance of the national framework for nanoscience and technology development during the 10th five-year planning period (2001-2005), China made an overall deployment in the fields concerning nanoscience and nanotechnology, such as materials, information, energy sources, medicine and manufacturing. A flagship nanoscience research program has also been launched.
|
 Nature photographers now use high-definition photography to bring unparalleled images of wildlife and a "you-are-there" experience approaching virtual reality to the viewer. It can be at once informative, thrilling and terrifying -- and all from the comfort of your easy-chair or sofa.
While such video gives the public a view of nature never before seen, two biologists warn this technological wonder represents a proverbial double-edge sword.
"Virtual nature, defined as nature experienced vicariously through electronic means, has potential benefits particularly for children dependent on adults for access to many natural areas ... yet virtual nature appears to directly compete with time previously allocated to more beneficial, direct contact with the outdoors."
They call this phenomena "videophilia," which they define as "the new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media."
Their concern is that such activities not only can contribute to a more isolated, sedentary and unhealthy lifestyle, but also may discourage people, especially children, from visiting parks or nature preserves and experiencing nature first-hand. And that, they argue, could affect environmental consciousness, which may hinder long-term efforts to conserve earth's dwindling tracts of wilderness.
|
|
Most countries seem to have finally whipped inflation—at least for now. But not everyone is celebrating the world’s impressive economic stability. In today’s List, FP takes a hard look at the soft currencies of some of the most unstable economies on the planet. Somalia. Iraq. North Korea. Venezuela. Zimbabwe.
|
|
Answering Questions About Google’s Effort at Standardizing Social Network Widgets, and the Creation of Your First OpenSocial Widget.
Table of Contents:
Background.
Questions About OpenSocial...Answered.
Building Your First OpenSocial Widget.
Limitations of OpenSocial.
Conclusions.
|
|
The human gut teems with bacteria. There are 10 microbes in the body for every human cell thanks mainly to the profusion of colonies in the intestines. Yet babies are born without any such germ populations; rather they develop them in fits and starts over time. Now researchers have mapped this development for the first time in 14 California babies, including a set of fraternal twins.
|
|
Of course, science fiction is a literature of the present. Many's the science fiction writer who uses the future as a warped mirror for reflecting back the present day, angled to illustrate the hidden strangeness buried by our invisible assumptions. Even when the fictional future isn't a parable about the present day, it is necessarily a creation of the present day.
Science fiction writers aren't the only people in the business of predicting the future. Futurists spill a lot of ink, phosphors, and caffeinated hot air in describing a vision for a future where we'll get more and more of whatever it is they want to sell us or warn us away from. Tomorrow will feature faster, cheaper processors, more Internet users, ubiquitous RFID tags, radically democratic political processes dominated by bloggers, massively multiplayer games whose virtual economies dwarf the physical economy. There's a lovely neologism to describe these visions: "futurismic."
|
|
It’S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 mi. away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.
The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city’s suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road.
|
|
Transistors are the basic building blocks of integrated circuits. To use nanotubes in future circuits it is essential to be able to make transistors from them. We have successfully fabricated and tested nanotube transistors using individual multi-wall or single-wall nanotubes as the channel of a field-effect transistor (FET).
|
|
MIT professor Neil Gershenfeld offers a glimpse at life after the digital revolution by sharing some of the projects created in Fab Labs - low-cost fabrication labs that encourage invention and production on a local level. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 18:04)
Video, 18:04
|
|
Room-temperature single-electron transistors are realized within individual metallic single-wall carbon nanotube molecules. The devices feature a short (down to ~20 nanometers) nanotube section that is created by inducing local barriers into the tube with an atomic force microscope. Coulomb charging is observed at room temperature, with an addition energy of 120 millielectron volts, which substantially exceeds the thermal energy. At low temperatures, we resolve the quantum energy levels corresponding to the small island. We observe unconventional power-law dependencies in the measured transport properties for which we suggest a resonant tunneling Luttinger-liquid mechanism.
|
|
America's elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
|
|
We give a detailed discussion of the Quantum Interference Effect Transistor (QuIET), a proposed device which exploits interference between electron paths through aromatic molecules to modulate current flow. In the off state, perfect destructive interference stemming from the molecular symmetry blocks current, while in the on state, current is allowed to flow by locally introducing either decoherence or elastic scattering. Details of a model calculation demonstrating the efficacy of the QuIET are presented, and various fabrication scenarios are proposed, including the possibility of using conducting polymers to connect the QuIET with multiple leads.
PDF, 12 pages
|
|
Antique store owners in lower Manhattan, ticket vendors at India's Taj Mahal and Brazilian business executives heading to China all have one thing in common these days: They don't want U.S. dollars. At the Taj Mahal, dollars were always legal tender, alongside rupees, for entry into the palace. But because of the falling value of the dollar, the government implemented a rupees-only policy a month ago. Indian merchants catering to tourists have also turned bearish on the dollar. In Bolivia, billboards feature George Washington's image on a $1 bill alongside a bright pink 500 euro note. "If the dollar's going down ... save it in Euros!!!"
|
|
Scientists at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology have harnessed the power of DNA to create a self-assembling nanoscale transistor, the building block of electronics. The research is a crucial step in the development of nanoscale devices.
|
|
Cellphones, microchips, cars, even iPhones—there's virtually no high-tech Western product that China's cloners can't copy. Pretty soon, you might even prefer their work.
The little gadget was bootleg gold, a secret treasure I'd spent months tracking down. The miniOne looked just like Apple's iPhone, down to the slick no-button interface. But it was more. It ran popular mobile software that the iPhone wouldn't. It worked with nearly every worldwide cellphone carrier, not just AT&T, and not only in the U.S. It promised to cost half as much as the iPhone and be available to 10 times as many consumers. The miniOne's first news teases—a forum posting, a few spy shots, a product announcement that vanished after a day—generated a frenzy of interest online. Was it real? When would it go on sale? And most intriguing, could it really be even better than the iPhone?
|
 The City:
Cars without drivers? Humanoid robots in every household? Cyber-hacking? Intelligent camera surveillance systems? Learn about today's scientific advances that will shape our networked cities of tomorrow.
What would you see and experience if the clocks rolled forward 50 years? In a unique blend of drama and science, this three-part series shows you the world of tomorrow. Will we have flying cars? Will advances in medicine help us stay young forever? What about "printing" custom-made vital organs? What will our cities look like? What will tomorrow's wars be about? Will we have robots helping around the house? Will solar power be the new oil?
Supported by the world's leading scientists and research institutes, we embark on a quest to answer some of society's most fundamental questions and reveal the dramas of tomorrow's world along the way. State-of-the-art computer graphics in combination with a dynamic story line will create a world usually only seen in feature films, but with the accuracy and relevance of a documentary. This series is all about opening the window of our future based on science fact, not science fiction.
Video, 43 min
|
|
|
|
