September 23, 2011

Progress to a vaccine for acne

Sanofi-Pasteur, the world's biggest vaccine company, has signed a contract with the University of California, San Diego, to develop "an immunological approach to acne prevention and treatment".

Acne is no joke. "More than 85 per cent of teenagers and over 40 million people in the United States alone are suffering this disease" and many adults have it too, says Chun-Ming Huang, head of the lab at the centre of the deal.

A pre-clinical vaccine was developed by researchers at the University of California, San Diego.


Bimetallic nanoantenna separates colors of light

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have built a very simple nanoantenna that directs red and blue colors in opposite directions, even though the antenna is smaller than the wavelength of light.




Caption: The nanoantenna acts as a router for red and blue light, due to the nanoparticles of gold and silver having different optical properties. Credit: Timur Shegai

NASA will fly laser communication that is 100 times faster than todays space communication


NASA will fly the Laser Communications Relay demonstration mission within 4 years. They will fly and validate a reliable, capable, and cost-effective optical communications technology. Optical communications technology provides data rates up to 100 times higher than today's systems, which will be needed for future human and robotic space missions. The technology is directly applicable to the next generation of NASA's space communications network. After the demonstration, the developed space and ground assets will be qualified for use by near-Earth and deep space missions requiring high bandwidth and a small ground station reception area.



More Details on Holographic Radar

Here is a 20 page presentation Holographic radar brings a new dimension to sensing and instrumentation on T and E ranges Collision avoidance, wind farms and scoring

Holographic radar implements Skolnik’s vision of Ubiquitous Radar
* Holographic Radar looks continuously at a whole volume of space (rather than scanning).
* It acquires fully sampled amplitude and phase information from every object within the volume.
* It provides range, azimuth, elevation and Doppler information for every detected object.
* Tracking algorithms discriminate moving targets and clutter.
* Clutter is removed without loss of sensitivity.
* Practical holographic radar is possible in the modern day due to the availability of high-power processor devices at reasonable cost.

Wind farm infill radar

CH-InFill is a holographic radar located at or near a wind farm to generate local, high-resolution, 3D infill data

* Range up to 13km / 43,000ft
* Reporting rate 3-10Hz
* It sees through and around the turbines without disruption

Physicists Devise Perfect Magnetic Shield

Physicists and engineers had already demonstrated rudimentary invisibility cloaks that can hide objects from light, sound, and water waves. Now, they've devised an "antimagnet" cloak that can shield an object from a constant magnetic field without disturbing that field. If realized, such a cloak could have medical applications, researchers say.




Shutting out a static magnetic field to protect an object isn't that hard. All a researcher needs to do is to encase the object in a container made of a "superconductor," a material that will carry electrical current without any resistance when it is cooled sufficiently close to absolute zero. If the container encounters a magnetic field, currents within the conductor will flow to generate a field that counteracts the applied field. In an ordinary conductor, the resistance of the metal quickly snuffs out those currents. In a superconductor, however, those currents just keep flowing, creating a magnetic field that exactly cancels the applied field and zeroing out the total field within the container.


Hideaway. The magnetic cloak calls a truce on warring magnetic fields. On the left, the magnetic field of a lone cylinder-shaped magnet. In the middle, a second magnet, pointing the opposite way, disrupts its field. On the right, the second magnet's field is hidden in the cloak, which also allows the first magnet's field to extend as if the second weren't there at all.

New Journal of Physics - Antimagnets: controlling magnetic fields with superconductor–metamaterial hybrids

Scientists use brain imaging to reveal the movies in our mind and suggests a visual brain machine interface is feasible




Palestinian UN statehood bid

telegraph UK has detailed coverage of the Palestinian UN statehood bid.

This bit of analysis from foreign correspondent Alex Spillius at the UN:

Tony Blair et al are right to say that a resolution at the UN won’t deliver a state to the Palestinians, but that sort of misses the point. The PLO is gambling that a vote at the UN – either in the Security Council or the General Assembly – will increase the pressure on Israel to negotiate the borders of a future Palestine based on lines Israel held before the 1967 war. It is a risk that could back fire if the US

Holographic radar has tracked supersonic 5 inch shells

Groundbreaking holographic radar pinpoints impact of rapid shell fire for US Department of Defense. Following just 14 months of development, Cambridge Consultants unveiled the industry’s first holographic radar scoring system, the Land and Surface Target Scorer (LSTS).

Cambridge Consultants, a leading technology design and development firm, has successfully carried out trials tracking 5 inch shells travelling at over 1,000 miles per hour for the US Department of Defense (DoD). The groundbreaking radar developed specifically for this task was able to measure the trajectory and burst points of shells fired from a naval gun at a rate of one every three seconds - the first time radar has been used this way.

Installed on high-speed land or sea-surface target vehicles, the system uses receiver array panels combined with high-speed signal processing to detect and track small projectiles in the presence of very large radar clutter, such as that experienced on moving land and sea surface targets. During trials at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren VA, the system successfully detected, tracked and located the point of impact of inert 5 inch projectiles, and was also able to plot the burst point of a high explosive round. Observers were able to see the results in near real-time on a laptop.

Cities and Megacities of 2030, 2050 and 2100

In 1800, just 3% of the world lived in urban areas. Today that figure has passed 50% and by 2050 it will likely reach 70%, with cities like New York, Mexico City, Moscow and Shanghai growing exponentially.

The 2011 annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative had a topic of the rapidly urbanizing world population and the megacities

Year  Urban Pop   World Pop  World Urbanization
1800       3 million    978 million   3%
1900     220 million   1650 million  13%
1950     732 million   2520 million  29%
2005    3200 million   6500 million  49%
2030e   4900 million   8300 million  60%
2050e   6500 million   9200 million  70%
2100e   8000 million  10000 million  80%   

Rapid Urbanization and Mega Cities: The Need for Spatial Information Management (91 pages)

China now has 120 cities with a population of more than one million, seeing its urban population skyrocket from 18 percent to 50 percent of the country. With 660 million already living in cities, China expects another 240 million to join them within the next two decades.

China AP1000 construction progress and Raw Uranium in Libya



Possibilities around the faster than light CERN neutrino experiment

Scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) say they have measured tiny subatomic particles traveling faster than light (about 1.000025 times faster or 299,799,953 m/s. instead of 299,792,458 m/s).

Quantum Diaries has a live blog for the CERN EP Seminar “New results from OPERA on neutrino properties“, presented by Dario Autiero.

Arxiv - Measurement of the neutrino velocity with the OPERA detector in the CNGS beam (24 pages)

The OPERA neutrino experiment at the underground Gran Sasso Laboratory has measured the velocity of neutrinos from the CERN CNGS beam over a baseline of about 730 km with much higher accuracy than previous studies conducted with accelerator neutrinos. The measurement is based on high-statistics data taken by OPERA in the years 2009, 2010 and 2011. Dedicated upgrades of the CNGS timing system and of the OPERA detector, as well as a high precision geodesy campaign for the measurement of the neutrino baseline, allowed reaching comparable systematic and statistical accuracies. An early arrival time of CNGS muon neutrinos with respect to the one computed assuming the speed of light in vacuum of (60.7 plus or minus 6.9 (stat.) plus or minus 7.4 (sys.)) ns was measured. This anomaly corresponds to a relative difference of the muon neutrino velocity with respect to the speed of light (v-c)/c = (2.48 plus or minus 0.28 (stat.) plus or minus 0.30 (sys.)) X 10^-5.

If other labs can reproduce the effect (and no systemic error is found), physicists envision one of two far-reaching outcomes.





September 22, 2011

Upcoming Rossi Energy Catalyzer Tests and more product information

1. The 27 KW units that make up the 1 megawatt e-cat system have multiple core modules

Questions on the ecat discussion forum and Rossi's answers

The 27MW e-cats are single core or do they have multiple cores? Multiple



Stems cells are potential source of cancer-fighting T cells and a non-disease causing virus kills breast cancer cells






Singularity Summit in NYC to Explore Historic Watson Victory


Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light, According to One Experiment at CERN



Opera Collaboration website
Credit: OPERA collaboration



Science Now - Neutrinos Travel Faster Than Light, According to One Experiment



Texas will get a 10 petaflop supercomputer from Dell and Intel in 2013

A new supercomputer new system, called Stampede, will be built by TACC (Texas Advanced Computing Center) in partnership with Dell and Intel to support for four years the nation's scientists in addressing the most challenging scientific and engineering problems. NSF is providing $27.5 million immediately and Stampede is expected to be up and running in January 2013. The estimated investment will be more than $50 million over four years; the Stampede project may be renewed in 2017, which would enable four additional years of open science research on a successor system. Stampede will have a peak performance of 10 petaflops, 272 terabytes (272,000 gigabytes) of total memory, and 14 petabytes (14 million gigabytes) of disk storage. The machine is scheduled to boot up in late 2012 and be ready for production in January 2013.


Researcher Points to Suppression of Evidence that Low Dose Radiation is Benign by 1946 Nobel Laureate



Muller was awarded the 1946 Nobel Prize in medicine for his discovery that X-rays induce genetic mutations. This helped him call attention to his long-time concern over the dangers of atomic testing. Muller’s intentions were good, Calabrese points out, but his decision not to mention key scientific evidence against his position has had a far-reaching impact on our approach to regulating radiation and chemical exposure.

NOTE - The increase in cancer deaths for low level radiation is on the order of 0.001 to 0.1 percent (or slightly negative meaning cancer risk is reduced for the radiation hormesis theory), with a base rate of 27% (lifetime risk of cancer).

Men All invasive sites
Risk of developing cancer 44.29%
Risk of dying from cancer 23.20%

Women All invasive sites
Risk of developing cancer 37.76%
Risk of dying from cancer 19.58%

National Cancer Institute. SEER Cancer Statistics Review 1975-2007. Lifetime Risk (Percent) of Being Diagnosed with Cancer by Site and Race/Ethnicity: Males, 17 SEER Areas, 2005-2007 (Table 1.15) and Females, 17 SEER Areas, 2005-2007 (Table 1.16). 2010. Accessed at on July 29, 2010.

National Cancer Institute. SEER Cancer Statistics Review 1975-2007. Lifetime Risk (Percent) of Dying from Cancer by Site and Race/Ethnicity: Males, Total US, 2005-2007 (Table 1.18) and Females, Total US, 2005-2007 (Table 1.19). 2010. Accessed at on July 29, 2010.

Exoplanetsat and other things to do with Cubesats and Chipsats

Cubesats satellites are the size of one, two or three blocks (called U’s), each block being a 10cm x 10cm x 10cm cube [10 centimeters is 4 inches]. A satellite composed of three of these U’s in a row (a 3U CubeSat) is allowed to have a mass of at most 4 kg. At this scale, the satellites are just big enough to incorporate a relevant payload.

Exoplanetsats - Detecting transiting exoplanets using a low-cost CubeSat platform (15 pages)

Draper Laboratory and MIT have developed the Exoplanetsat satellite the size of a loaf of bread that will undertake one of the biggest tasks in astronomy: finding Earthlike planets beyond our solar system—or exoplanets—that could support life. It is scheduled to launch in 2012. Each nanosatellite will cost as little as $600,000 once in production—ExoPlanetSat cost approximately $5 million—and their estimated orbital lifetime is one to two years.

Nanosatellites, i.e. spacecraft that weigh between 1 and 10 kg, are drawing increasing interest as platforms for conducting on-orbit science. This trend is primarily driven by the ability to piggyback nanosatellites on the launch of large spacecraft and hence achieve orbit at greatly reduced cost. The CubeSat platform is a standardized nanosatellite configuration, consisting of one, two, or three 10 cm x 10 cm x 10 cm units (1, 2,or 3 “U”s) arranged in a row. We present a CubeSat-based concept for the discovery of transiting exoplanets around the nearest and brightest Sun-like stars. The spacecraft prototype—termed ExoplanetSat—is a 3U space telescope capable of monitoring a single target star from low Earth orbit. Given the volume limitations of the CubeSat form factor, designing a capable spacecraft requires overcoming significant challenges. This work presents the initial satellite configuration along with several subsystem-specific solutions to the aforementioned constraints. An optical design based on a modified commercial off-the-shelf camera lens is given. We also describe a novel two-stage attitude control architecture that combines 3-axis reaction wheels for coarse pointing with a piezoelectric translation stage at the focal plane for fine pointing. Modeling and simulation results are used to demonstrate feasibility by quantifying ExoplanetSat pointing precision, signal-to-noise ratio, guide star magnitude, and additional design parameters which determine system performance.
Baseline exoplanetsat. Not shown are the solar arrays, batteries, the light seal between the lens mount and focal plane array, and the CCD cooling strap.

CubeSats have been confined to low Earth orbit because no propulsion system available at this scale can give the satellite the energy needed to go beyond. This may soon change, and with that change will come new missions and applications for CubeSats. What follows is a list of what I consider to be the 5 most interesting CubeSat-based missions. While the list is by no means exhaustive, it gives a good idea of the possibilities open to private researchers with relatively little cost.

1. Earth Observation
2. Multi-body reconfiguration experiments
3. Astronomy
4. Orbit the Moon
5. Deliver ChipSats to cool places

Jim Rogers, commodities and finance guru, says world is worse off than in 2008

Jim Rogers gave his opinion about the current world financial problems

* Rogers noted he would own the U.S. dollar, or the Swiss Franc, or agriculture.


* “At least in 2008 there was the possibility that the governments could bail us out. Now, of course, the governments have gotten deep, deep, deep into debt themselves,” he added. “Everybody is in much worse shape.”




Non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia says Greece will default

Business Week - Contagion from a potential Greek default isn't priced into financial markets, said Stephen Roach, non-executive chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia.

“Greece will default,” Roach said in an interview on CNBC today. While the risk of such an event is “pretty close” to being priced in by investors, he said the potential knock-on effects are “definitely not baked in.”

Great Convergence and IMF growth forecasts

1. The shift in economic power from West to East is accelerating, says John O’Sullivan. The “great divergence” (industrialization and mass production) between the West and the rest lasted for two centuries.



According to the University of Pennsylvania, China's per capita PPP GDP in 2009 was $8500 to $9200. If Pennworld tables are correct then per capita GDP in 2011 is $10400 to $11300 in 2011 in China and will be $11300 to $12300 in 2012.


Could laser propulsion open up space?

The concept of using laser propulsion to accelerate payloads into orbit has been around since the 1970s. Since the 1970s lasers have become substantially more efficient, and the concept has been refined. Now a company called LaserMotive is focused on using large numbers of diode lasers both to keep UAVs aloft and to propel spacecraft to orbit. LaserMotive recently won the NASA sponsored Power Beaming competition, which was one component of the space elevator games. In an interview with Sander Olson, LaserMotive cofounder and Chief Scientist Jordin Kare discusses how laser propulsion could not only transform the UAV industry but could eventually put payloads into orbit for as little a $20 per pound.

Jordin Kare

Question: The concept of laser propulsion has been around for decades. How has the concept changed since it was first proposed in the 1970s?

The idea originated in the early 1970s, when a pioneer named Arthur Kantrowitz proposed the idea of sending objects into orbit using laser beams. These early designs revolved around using ablative propellants and large single lasers. Since then, several things changed. In the late 1980’s, Arthur Kantrowitz and I came up with the "4 p" vehicle - payload, propellant, photons, period. The idea was to have payload on a block of propellant, with no tanks or nozzles.

September 21, 2011

Faster, smaller and more economical gallium nitride transistor technology

Researchers under ETH-Zurich professor Colombo Bolognesi are working on a new gallium nitride transistor technology using silicon(110) as a substrate. As the new combination of materials has many advantages, gallium nitride is poised to conquer the electronics market and help power the green revolution.

For the first time, researchers from CNRS France and ETH Zurich have succeeded in producing high-performance high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) made of gallium nitride (GaN) on a silicon(110) wafer. This makes these transistors compatible with current complementary metal oxide semi-conductor (CMOS) chips based on silicon of the same crystal orientation. CMOS chips are generally produced on silicon wafers with the so-called (100) or (110) crystal orientation. GaN, on the other hand, could previously only be used on (111)-silicon until now. This new development makes it possible to construct hybrid electronic components that combine the computational power of the CMOS chip and the power handling capability of GaN transistors, which means power electronics can be made even more compact.

For the first time, researchers from CNRS France and ETH Zurich have succeeded in producing high-performance high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) made of gallium nitride (GaN) on a silicon(110) wafer. (Photo: courtesy of C. Bolognesi / ETH Zürich)

Applied Physics Express - RF Performance of AlGaN/GaN High-Electron-Mobility Transistors Grown on Silicon (110)

We report the first microwave performance for AlGaN/GaN HEMT structures grown by molecular beam epitaxy on Si(110) high-resistivity substrates. Transistors were fabricated with gate lengths of 50, 75, and 100 nm, achieving short-circuit current cutoff frequencies as high as fT = 70 GHz and maximum oscillation frequencies of fMAX(U) = 93 GHz. Because complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology is compatible with (110) substrates, this demonstration establishes a foundation for the future integration of GaN devices into mainstream CMOS on a common Si(110) platform

Bionic bacteria with unnatural amino acids may help fight disease and global warming

Salk Institute researchers have built artificially enhanced bacteria capable of producing new kinds of synthetic chemicals.



Research towards superconducting direct-drive generator for wind turbines




Greece labour unions representing half the workforce vow to oppose austerity measures

Greece's two biggest labour unions will jointly stage 24-hour strikes on Oct. 5 and Oct. 19 to protest new austerity measures which the government is expected to agree with its international lenders to meet its fiscal targets.

"We will fight to the end, to topple this policy," Ilias Iliopoulos, general Secretary of public sector union ADEDY, told Reuters on Wednesday. "The troika (EU and IMF) and the government must go."

ADEDY and GSEE represent about 2.5 million workers or half the country's workforce. They have staged repeated strikes since the country obtained last year a EU/IMF 110-billion euro bailout to avoid bankruptcy.

The new Greece austerity measures -

Greece decided Wednesday to slash pensions, tax low-income earners and place thousands of public workers in a special labor reserve this year.






Technology within 5 years for faster wireless, energy harvesting and wireless power transmission

Computerworld has the second half of a two-part series on technology breakthroughs that have the potential to change computing.

Leaps in access, power, control

1. Multi-gigabit Wi-Fi

New wireless communication standard WiGig can operate at up to 7Gbps. This is more than an order of magnitude faster than today's 802.11n Wi-Fi, which can operate at up to 600Mbps. WiGig's top speed has a range of only 45 feet. WiGig uses beam forming to create a focused beam of data for a direct link that has minimal interference. By 2013, WiGig devices could be in TVs, computers, phones, tablets and other electronics.

2. Self-powered electronics

Georgia Tech has designed tiny generators that can produce enough energy to power very small devices by harvesting vibration and motion energy. These high-output nanogenerators, HONGs for short, can produce between 2 and 10 volts from a flexible chip smaller than a fingernail. By 2013, Wang sees self-powered phones, digital music players and even a wireless keyboard powered by nothing more than the musician's keystrokes.

Purdue works to make skyscraper construction 10% faster

Purdue researchers are perfecting a new technique that could speed construction of skyscrapers while also providing enough stiffness and strength to withstand earthquakes and forces from high winds. The project aims to develop a new kind of "core wall," a vertical spine that runs through the center of skyscrapers.


The normal construction time in the United States for a 50 story building is aboutabout 4 years. So 3-4 months cuts that down by about 10%.

China's Broad Group is working to develop factory mass produced skyscrapers that can be assembled on site in 6 days for 15 stories, two weeks for 30 stories and 30 days for 60 stories and 60 days for 120 stories and 120 days for 200 stories

Graphene-Based Supercapacitors with energy density of nickel hydride batteries

Professor Jie Tang, Group Leader of the 1D Nanomaterials Research Group of the Materials Processing Unit, Japan National Institute for Materials Science, and Mr. Qian Cheng, a doctoral student and NIMS Junior Researcher in the same Group, have succeeded in dramatically increasing the energy density of supercapacitors, which are used to store electrical energy. Supercapacitors can charge and discharge hundreds of times faster than batteries but have had lower energy densities. Supercapacitors with high energy densities would enable batteries to be replaced in many applications.

In order to achieve a revolutionary increase in density of energy storage, Professor Tang and her team, in collaboration with Professor Lu-Chang Qin of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States, have designed and developed a graphene-based composite structure, in which graphene is used as the base material of the capacitor electrodes and carbon nanotubes (CNT) are inserted between the graphene sheets. In this structure graphene offers a far larger specific surface area (2630 m2/g) than the conventional materials and the CNTs function as spacers as well as conducting paths to enable adsorption of a larger quantity of electrolyte ions on the graphene surface. With this graphene-CNT composite as the capacitor electrodes, Professor Tang has obtained a high energy density of 62.8 Wh/kg and output power density of 58.5 kW/kg using organic electrolyte. By using an ionic liquid as the electrolyte, they have achieved an energy density of 155.6 Wh/kg, which is comparable to that of nickel metal hydride batteries.

Will Cognitive enhancement increase or decrease dangers ?

Oxford University philosophers Julian Savulescu and Ingmar Persson worry that enabling people to become smarter via drugs, implants, and other biological (or genetic) interventions will speed up scientific and technological progress which in turn will increase the ability of smart evil people to make and deploy novel weapons of mass destruction.

The issue of advancing technology and the possibility of more powerful and dangerous weapons that can be developed and controlled by smaller groups of people has been discussed for decades.

The Oxford guys biggest fear is biological weapons.

They fear -
Genetic engineering of small pox could create a new strain which would wipe out all or most of humanity.

However, this is not a trend or technical development that would be greatly effected by near term cognitive enhancement.

Enhancement of intelligence with drugs or mind computer interfaces will have a limited impact on innovation and intellectual productivity.

Reason's Ronald Bailey makes the case that technological and economic progress has reduced murders and violent deaths

Implementing the Quantum von Neumann Architecture with Superconducting Circuits

Arxiv - Implementing the Quantum von Neumann Architecture with Superconducting Circuits (43 pages)

This paper is more detail for an article from September 1st about the connection of a quantum processor with quantum memory.


September 20, 2011

First controlled vertical flight of a biologically inspired microrobot

Bioinspiration and Biomimetics - First controlled vertical flight of a biologically inspired microrobot

In this paper, we present experimental results on altitude control of a flying microrobot. The problem is approached in two stages. In the first stage, system identification of two relevant subsystems composing the microrobot is performed, using a static flapping experimental setup. In the second stage, the information gathered through the static flapping experiments is employed to design the controller used in vertical flight. The design of the proposed controller relies on the idea of treating an exciting signal as a subsystem of the microrobot. The methods and results presented here are a key step toward achieving total autonomy of bio-inspired flying microrobots.

Harvard Harvard Micro Air Vehicles web page

Proton-based transistor could let machines communicate with living things and in the future could enable better cybernetics and implants




Nature Communications - A polysaccharide bioprotonic field-effect transistor

In nature, electrical signalling occurs with ions and protons, rather than electrons. Artificial devices that can control and monitor ionic and protonic currents are thus an ideal means for interfacing with biological systems. Here we report the first demonstration of a biopolymer protonic field-effect transistor with proton-transparent PdHx contacts. In maleic-chitosan nanofibres, the flow of protonic current is turned on or off by an electrostatic potential applied to a gate electrode. The protons move along the hydrated maleic–chitosan hydrogen-bond network with a mobility of ~4.9×10^−3 cm2 V^−1 s^−1. This study introduces a new class of biocompatible solid-state devices, which can control and monitor the flow of protonic current. This represents a step towards bionanoprotonics.

Thermoelectric materials produced via microwave in minutes instead of days


Filled skutterudites are promising thermoelectric materials due to reduced thermal conductivity upon inserting a guest atom or 'rattler' into the CoSb₃ structure. By using an indium rattler dimensionless Figure of Merit (ZT) values over 1 at 650 K have been reported. The conventional synthesis of these compounds typically takes several days (~ 3 days) to obtain the final well-sintered material for property measurements. We report here a microwave-assisted synthesis method that reduces the initial calcination time from two days to two minutes. This route significantly reduces the time needed to produce materials suitable for property and device testing.







Scott Aaronson on free will, quantum mechanics and retrocausality

Retrocausality has been a topic of interest for James Woodward (one of the main people working on Mach effect propulsion) and Jack Sarfatti

Wikipedia -Retrocausality (also called retro-causation, retro-chronal causation, backward causation, and similar terms) is any of several hypothetical phenomena or processes that reverse causality, allowing an effect to occur before its cause.

Retrocausality is primarily a thought experiment in philosophy of science based on elements of physics, addressing the question: Can the future affect the present, and can the present affect the past? Philosophical considerations of time travel often address the same issues as retrocausality, as do treatments of the subject in fiction, although the two terms are not universally synonymous.

A few legitimate physical theories have sometimes been interpreted as leading to retrocausality. This is not considered part of science, since the distinction between cause and effect in physics is not made at the most fundamental level

Scott Aaronson (noted critic of superconducting quantum computer company Dwave Systems) has some new articles about free will, retrocausaliity and quantum effects

Scott Aaronson's free will powerpoint slides are here. A Scientifically-Supportable Notion of Free Will In ONLY SIX Controversial Steps: The Looniest Talk I’ve Ever Given In My Life (26 pages)

Grafold - folded graphene can take 5 to 12 times more compression





Inexpensive way to obtain graphene in large quantities using edge-functionalized graphite

ACS Nano - Large-Area Graphene Films by Simple Solution Casting of Edge-Selectively Functionalized Graphite Researchers have demonstrated an inexpensive way to obtain graphene in large quantities using edge-functionalized graphite.

Besides being a very convenient way to produce graphene from pristine graphite, the technique could be tailored to specific applications. For example, Baek and his co-workers have already created nitrogen-doped graphene films that display excellent electrocatalytic activity for the oxygen reduction reaction in hydrogen fuel cells. "The EFG approach could be extended to application-specific purposes such as energy conversion and storage as well as nanoscale reinforcing materials," says Baek.

We report edge-selective functionalization of graphite (EFG) for the production of large-area uniform graphene films by simply solution-casting EFG dispersions in dichloromethane on silicon oxide substrates, followed by annealing. The resultant graphene films show ambipolar transport properties with sheet resistances of 0.52–3.11 kΩ/sq at 63–90% optical transmittance. EFG allows solution processing methods for the scalable production of electrically conductive, optically transparent, and mechanically robust flexible graphene films for use in practice.

J B Baek publications web page

EIA projects world energy use to increase 53 percent by 2035; China and India account for half of the total growth

The International Energy Outlook 2011 (IEO2011) was released today by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) presents updated projections for world energy markets through 2035.



Carnival of Space 215

The Carnival of Space 215 is up at cheapastro

Cheap astro also has a podcast version

Doc Madhattan reports on the Kepler Space Telescope discovery of a planet around a binary star which matches the profile of the fictional Star Wars planet Tatooine.

September 19, 2011





Graphene bubbles could make better lenses

Physics World - A tiny bubble of graphene could be used to make an optical lens with an adjustable focal length. That is the claim of physicists in the UK, who have shown that the curvature of such bubbles can be controlled by applying an external voltage. Devices based on the discovery could find use in adaptive-focus systems that try to mimic how the human eye works.

Graphene is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick and has a host of unique mechanical and electronic properties. It is extremely elastic and can be stretched by up to 20%, which means that bubbles of various shapes can be "blown" from the material. This, combined with the fact that graphene is transparent to light yet impermeable to most liquids and gases, could make the material ideal for creating adaptive-focus optical lenses.

An atomic-force-microscope image of a graphene bubble. The bubble is about 3 µm in diameter. (Courtesy: Applied Physics Letters)

Applied Physics Letters - Graphene bubbles with controllable curvature

Raised above the substrate and elastically deformed areas of graphene in the form of bubbles are found on different substrates. They come in a variety of shapes, including those which allow strong modification of the electronic properties of graphene. We show that the shape of the bubble can be controlled by an external electric field. This effect can be used to make graphene-based adaptive focus lenses.

Scaling up action against noncommunicable diseases will cost about $1.20 per person per year


The WHO's list of recommendations includes measures that target whole populations, such as excise taxes on tobacco and alcohol, legislating for smoke-free indoor workplaces and public places, as well as campaigns to reduce levels of salt and trans fats in foods, and public awareness programs about improving diets and increasing physical activity.

Other steps include screening, counseling and drugs for people at risk of heart disease, cervical cancer screening and hepatitis B immunization to prevent liver cancer.

Implementing them would save literally millions of lives over the next 15 year.

Scaling up action against noncommunicable diseases: How much will it cost? (51 pages)

New ceramic chip antennas offer better performance and reliability for wireless applications using unlicensed spectrum

Wireless devices such as mobile phones rely on the radio spectrum to send and receive data. There is growing interest in using a worldwide unlicensed spectrum around 60 gigahertz for future wireless applications, but conventional ceramic chip antennas have limited performance at this frequency. Junfeng Xu and Xianming Qing at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research and co-workers1 have now developed a ceramic chip antenna that exhibits stable performance in this spectrum. The antenna has a relatively wide bandwidth of 17.1% and a gain of up to 22.1 decibels.

IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation - Bandwidth Enhancement for a 60 GHz Substrate Integrated Waveguide Fed Cavity Array Antenna on LTCC

Airbus sees demand for over 27,800 aircraft in the next 20 years

In the midst of troubled financial markets, Airbus foresees strong ongoing demand for commercial aircraft. According to its latest Global Market Forecast (GMF), by 2030 some 27,800 new aircraft will be required to satisfy future robust market demand. The combined value of the over 26,900 passenger aircraft (above 100 seats) and more than 900 new factory built freighters forecast by the GMF is US$3.5 trillion.

As a result, by 2030 the global passenger fleet will more than double from today’s 15,000 aircraft to 31,500. This will include some 27,800 new aircraft deliveries of which 10,500 will be needed for replacing older less fuel efficient aircraft. The trend towards larger aircraft will continue, in order for the aviation sector to keep pace with future growth in demand.

IBM to report 2-GHz graphene IC

EETimes - Researchers from IBM are due to report on the fabrication of a 2-GHz frequency doubler

IBM document - 2.2, 2-GHz Graphene Integrated Circuit--IBM from the International Electron Device Meeting, due to be held in Washington DC, Dec. 5 to 7.

IBM's paper is set to move that on towards a manufacturable technology based on CMOS-compatible fabrication on 200-mm diameter wafers, according the abstract released by the organizers.

Cross-sectional scanning electron microscope micrograph of the post-CMP wafer showing the inverted-T gate structure described in the paper.

Robots are coming to aircraft assembly


Aircraft parts are simply enormous. Individual fuselage segments alone can measure ten meters or more. But they need to be fitted together with the utmost precision. The maximum deviation from plan that aircraft manufacturers can tolerate is 0.2 millimeters – on components that weigh several metric tons. To position the giant parts accurately, manufacturers rely on massive production facilities known as assembly cells. These are huge gantries that move along the fuselage like container cranes on steel rails and massive concrete foundations, for instance bolting aluminum parts together. It takes a lot of money and effort to build this kind of assembly cell – and they need to be built from scratch for each new kind of aircraft, which pushes their production and construction costs even higher.

This modular, lightweight, carbon fiber reinforced plastic gripper is able to flexibly grasp and handle aircraft components. It was developed by the Fraunhofer Project Group Joining and Assembly FFM. (© Fraunhofer IFAM)

Is Strontium Valley the follow up to Silicon Valley ?

Researchers have invented a tiny Etch-A-Sketch® that draws infinitesimally small “wires” on a surface, then erases them. The device works by switching an oxide crystal between insulating and conducting states. The interface between these two materials can be switched between an insulating and metallic state using a sharp conducting probe. Electronic circuits can be “written” and “erased” at scales approaching the distance between atoms (two nanometers). The device, less than four nanometers wide, enables photonic interaction with objects as small as single molecules or quantum dots.

Beyond being just plain cool, this device could be the basis of an entirely new kind of transistor.

Transistors in a computer are the on/off switches that enable the efficient implementation of complex computational systems. And for the last half century, they’ve been getting smaller and smaller, according to (Intel founder Gordon) “Moore’s law”: The number of transistors that can be placed inexpensively on an integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. At some point, though, this trend has to stop. Materials start acting “weird” when they are made too small. The useful properties of silicon, for example, are believed to break down at distances smaller than 10 nanometers.

“The question is, once you’ve pushed silicon to its limit, is there going to be another system to do computation?” asks Levy. That’s really what we’ve been granted funding to explore. We’re trying to break down the major barriers that are potential show-stoppers that would otherwise make it difficult to turn these new types of devices into real, useful things.”

Nature Nanotechnology - Sketched oxide single-electron transistor

SketchSET schematic and transport characteristics.

Nanowires are a step towards photonic chip

Australian researchers have engineered one of the world’s smallest ever nanowires for the next generation of telecommunication technology, bringing them one step closer to the holy grail of optics – the creation of a ‘photonic chip’ which would lead to a faster, more sustainable internet.

This is a significant step towards the realisation of the photonic chip.

Nano Letters - Generation of λ/12 Nanowires in Chalcogenide Glasses

September 18, 2011

Altered T cells reduces the amount of HIV virus in infected people



Previous evidence existed showing that CCR5-negative cells could help AIDS patients. In 2007, an American man with AIDS and lymphoma received, as treatment for the cancer, a bone-marrow transplant from a person with the CCR5 mutation. The marrow recipient has been free of both AIDS and cancer since then. Sangamo's method treats a patient's own cells, with less risk than a marrow transplant.

Molecule-based memory devices edge closer with the development of supramolecular structures that act as tiny magnets

In a step towards realizing ultrahigh-density storage devices based on individual molecules behaving as magnets, researchers in Japan have developed a candidate building block1—a supramolecular ferromagnet, which is a caged molecule with magnetic properties. The research team was led by Takuzo Aida at the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute, Wako, and Kentaro Tashiro at the National Institute for Materials Science, Tsukuba.

The researchers’ supramolecular magnet is based on a metallofullerene dubbed La@C82—a lanthanum ion trapped within an 82-carbon spherical cage. La@C82 has well-known paramagnetic properties: it becomes magnetized in the presence of an external magnetic field. However, like all paramagnets, La@C82 loses its magnetization once the external field is removed, rendering it useless for data storage.

Journal of the American Chemical Society - Ferromagnetic Spin Coupling between Endohedral Metallofullerene La@C82 and a Cyclodimeric Copper Porphyrin upon Inclusion

Forces Within Molecules Can Strengthen Extra-long Carbon-carbon Bonds










Researcher Mark Schnitzer demonstrates the microscope's tiny size and weight.

Fujitsu Laboratories Develops Compact Silicon Photonics Light Source for High-Bandwidth CPU Interconnects

Fujitsu Laboratories Limited today announced the development of a compact silicon photonics light source for use in optical transceivers required for optical interconnects capable of carrying large volumes of data at high speeds between CPUs. This will ermits smaller transmitters in optical transceivers, obviates need for thermal control mechanism, marking a step towards high-bandwidth optical interconnects. This technology enables compact, low-power optical transceivers to be mounted directly in CPU packaging. Through its application to optical interconnects between CPUs for exaflops-class supercomputers and high-end servers, the technology paves the way for super-high-speed computers.

Figure 1. High-capacity interconnect technologies