ScienTech 2.0

Scientists Progress Towards Quantum Theory of Gravity

2006-03-23T20:53:00.000-05:00

Scientists have measured the gravitational equivalent of a magnetic field for the first time in a laboratory. Under certain special conditions the effect is much larger than expected from general relativity and could help physicists to make a significant step towards the long-sought-after quantum theory of gravity.

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New Study Declares Atheists the Most Distrusted Minority

2006-03-23T13:34:00.000-05:00

A new study conducted at the University of Minnesota states that atheists are the most distrusted minority group, rating lower in the survey of over 2,000 homes than Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians and other commonly discriminated minority groups. Atheists are also the most likely group that parents forbid their children to marry the study says.

Penny Edgell, associate sociology professor and the study's lead researcher states, "Atheists, who account for about 3 percent of the U.S. population, offer a glaring exception to the rule of increasing social tolerance over the last 30 years."

It seems that most people now believe that freedom of religion does not include freedom from religion. After years of social tolerance coming in to the fold of the majority, the usual targets for discrimination are no longer acceptable to Americans. The majority it seems must always target a group of people to discriminate against, so they decide what core values it takes to become an American, and they decide that belief in God is one of those core values.

At any given point in American history there has been a minority group who was discriminated against with "permission" from the majority. This sort of 'Us-verse-them' mentality has led to horrible acts agianst all minorities, but as time progressed it focused more on single groups such as blacks, Jews, Mexicans, Muslims, and gay and lesbians. Now it atheistsstsAtheistssts are not a racial group, and they are enough of the outsider that the majority doesn't care if they are discriminated against.

The core values of the average American person say that an atheist is a criminal, a vagrant with no sense of morality. These are just stereotypes, the non-belief in a being does not evoke any specific way of living.

Google Wins!

2006-03-18T02:49:00.000-05:00

Google will not have to hand over any user's search queries to the government. That's what a federal judge ruled today when he decided to drastically limit a subpoena issued to Google by the Department of Justice. (You can read the entire ruling here and the government's original subpoena here.)

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Senate Approves Patriot Act Renewal

2006-03-02T18:29:00.000-05:00

"The Senate on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to renew the USA Patriot Act, after months of pitched debate over legislation that supporters said struck a better balance between privacy rights and the government's power to hunt down terrorists."

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51 Year Old Hobbyist, from Mexico, Builds His Own Jetpack, from Scratch

2006-03-01T01:04:00.000-05:00

Lozano is not a rocket scientist. He is not a stuntman. He is an animated, often goofy granddad who is afraid of the sight of blood. And he made his own jetpack.

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Gifting Ubuntu, one McDonalds at a time

2006-02-28T02:39:00.000-05:00

This guy burns 20 copies of Ubuntu and heads to his local McDonalds. After convincing the manager to let him pass them out there by demonstrating Ubuntu with a live CD, he leaves 20 copies. The next day, they're all gone. Next step? Burn 30 more for 'ol Mickey Dee's.

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Florida Voting Machine Logs Reveal Anomalies

2006-02-26T19:50:00.000-05:00

The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.

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Hitching a Ride Out of a Gluttonous Black Hole

2006-02-26T19:23:00.000-05:00

"With his piece published in Physical Review Letters on February 14, Lloyd attempts to show that quantum information does escape black holes, and that this information is useful and can have lasting impacts on how we understand our universe."

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Scientists can now predict memory of an event before it even happens.

2006-02-26T17:59:00.000-05:00

Scans of brain activity, published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience, indicate that the brain can actually get into the 'right frame of mind' to store new information and that we perform at our best if the brain is active not only at the moment we get new information but also in the seconds before.

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What Are Quantum Dots?

2006-02-24T00:41:00.000-05:00

There has been quite a bit of news concerning quantum dots recently (and I expect even more in the future) so I wanted to write about exactly what they are. Quantum dots could lead to many exciting breakthroughs, including programmable matter, quantum computers, lasers, solar cells, and biological sensors.

Most of the lasers are made by quantum wells and wires. The quantum well is built by placing a circuit in a negative, or "N," layer of metal. You sandwich this layer between two positive, "P," layers. In a PNP sandwich the electrons become trapped in the N layer and groups of electrons and "holes" form above the PNP sandwich. The causes photons to emitted directly from the surface, producing a laser.

A quantum dot is basically a very tiny structure (think nano scale) that traps electrons. If you also put a small layer of N and surround it completely by P you get a quantum dot. When you add current to the circuit, the electrons have no place to go, the positive layers keep them trapped, and they begin to act like waves. There is another place that electrons act this way, in atoms. A quantum dot could allow you to add electrons one at a time, and produce phenomena that are quite like atoms, only larger.

The most intriguing application of quantum dots currently being researched is programmable matter. If large amounts of artificial atoms could be made and the amount of electrons controlled in each dot, then you could create matter that you could program have the characteristics of any element. Another application is in solar cells, quantum dots could catch more energy from the sun than current solar cells, up to three times as much.

Huge Set Of MIT Lectures

2006-02-24T00:26:00.000-05:00

I've been watching a few of these, and they are really cool. If you aren't smart/rich enough to go to MIT, these offer a great way to learn what they teach there.

Watch the lectures!

Future Enzyme Computers To Be Placed Inside You

2006-02-24T00:22:00.000-05:00

A molecular computer that uses enzymes to perform calculations has been built by researchers in Israel.

Itamar Willner, who constructed the molecular calculator with colleagues at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, believes enzyme-powered computers could eventually be implanted into the human body and used to, for example, tailor the release of drugs to a specific person's metabolism.

The team built their computer using two enzymes - glucose dehydrogenase (GDH) and horseradish peroxidase (HRP) - to trigger two interconnected chemical reactions. Two chemical components - hydrogen peroxide and glucose - were used to represent input values (A and B). The presence of each chemical corresponded to a binary 1, while the absence represented a binary 0. The chemical result of the enzyme-powered reaction was determined optically.

London To Be Totally Wi-Fi-Enabled

2006-02-23T18:10:00.000-05:00

The City of London Corporation is all set to have Wi-Fi network in place covering the entire city. The project is being undertaken by the corporation in partnership with a private Wi-Fi firm, The Cloud. It is expected to be implemented in full in the next few months.

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Cornell Research into Dragonfly Micro-Air Vehicle (MAV)

2006-02-23T17:47:00.000-05:00

"From houseflies to honeybees, insects inspire us with flight skills just beyond the grasp of our technology. Z. Jane Wang, a professor at Cornell University, is working to close this gap between inspiration and implementation. Wangâ��s recent work is on dragonflies, and here she has found some peculiarities."

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Some Great Physics Lectures By Walter Lewin

2006-02-23T15:48:00.000-05:00

Found these at this blog. They are really great. Lewin is a really good teacher, great examples, with a little humor to boot.

Walter Lewin MIT page

Walter Lewin's Physics I Course

Walter Lewin's Physics II Course

Walter Lewin's Physics III Course

More about Walter Lewin on Wikipedia

Quantum computer solves problem, without running

2006-02-22T19:20:00.000-05:00

Using an optical-based quantum computer, a research team led by physicist Paul Kwiat has presented the first demonstration of "counterfactual computation," inferring information about an answer, even though the computer did not run.

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10 Hilarious IT Stories

2006-02-22T03:14:00.000-05:00

Here are some great tech support stories. These are hilarious! Here is just one of them.

Caller:
Me: Hello, Tech Support.
Caller: Hello yes, I received this update from you for my new PC, but it cannot read any of the floppy disks you sent me.
Me: Hmm. Can you please explain what's happening?
Caller: OK, I opened the box and read the instructions telling me to put in disk 1 and run setup.
Me: Good; next?
Caller: So I got the disks out the box and put the first disk into the drive after removing the protective cover.
Me: Protective cover? Do you mean the little white sleeve that the disk comes in?
Caller: No the big black cover that the disk comes in. Is it supposed to be that hard to get the disk out?

Quantum Cloning Goes Beyond Single Photons

2006-02-21T19:46:00.000-05:00

Every new experiment conducted regarding quantum physics never cease to amaze me. A new experiment has now demonstrated “quantum telecloning” – transporting a whole laser beam to two separate places.

"Photons generated simultaneously by the same light source can display a peculiar entanglement if the two photons are sent in different directions. Quantum teleportation takes advantage of this entangled state.

Quantum mechanics dictates that the entangled photons' properties remain unknown until they are measured – but observing one photon instantaneously determines the properties of its "entangled" partner, no matter how far apart the two are."

Read the article here.

A Look At Web 2.0

2006-02-21T18:57:00.000-05:00

In this blog there are a bunch of web 2.0 logos and a list of a bunch of web 2.0 sites. Pretty cool. Great for those wondering exactly what web 2.0 is.

2006-02-21T18:16:00.000-05:00

The idea that one day stem cells may be the cure for alot of deseases has been around for a while. That day may soon be near, and specifically for cancer.

One day, perhaps in the distant future, stem cells may help repair diseased tissues. But there is a far more pressing reason to study them: stem cells are the source of at least some, and perhaps all, cancers.
At the heart of every tumor, some researchers believe, lie a handful of aberrant stem cells that maintain the malignant tissue.
The idea, if right, could explain why tumors often regenerate even after being almost destroyed by anticancer drugs. It also points to a different strategy for developing anticancer drugs, suggesting they should be selected for lethality to cancer stem cells and not, as at present, for their ability to kill just any cells and shrink tumors.

Read the rest here.

Understanding Moore's Law

2006-02-20T21:52:00.000-05:00

For how often Moore's law is cited, it is one of the most mis-understood statements in computing history. Many take it to mean that the top processing speed of the fastest computer in the world will double every one and a half to two years. Some think that if they bought a new computer every 18 months, its speed should be exactly double the one before it. What Moore's law actually says (and what the data backs up since transistors were invented) is that transistor density will double every 18-24 months.

This information is graphed logarithmically, a straight line in a logarithm graph means smooth exponential growth

Renowned futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil takes the concept further, and shows that the performance of processors per a constant amount of money also doubles about every one and a half to two years. He goes on to state that there has been exponential growth since the birth of computing, in 1890. This growth continues smoothly from then to now, and is expected to hold out for at least this decade, if not longer.

That bit of length might be accomplished by IBM with their new chip technology. This devolopment was announced today.

"The development, which comes from materials research in the design of advanced lenses and related technologies, will make it possible to create semiconductors with wires thinner than 30 nanometers, one-third the width in today's industry-standard chips.

Currently, the densest computer memory chips store 4 billion bits of information; the extension of Moore's Law might make possible a generation storing 64 billion bits by 2013. Such a chip could store roughly 2,000 songs based on today's storage standards.

The industry now uses advanced laser light sources to photo-etch wire lines that are finer than the wavelength of light itself. This is done by generating interference patterns that allow subwavelength resolution. But there had been a general consensus in the industry that this technology would fail below 40 nanometers, requiring a shift to X-ray light sources or other printing technologies."

Read the rest here.

Evolving Humans Were At The BOTTOM Of The Food Chain

2006-02-20T19:23:00.000-05:00

The popular view of our ancient ancestors as hunters who conquered all in their way is wrong, researchers have told a major US science conference. Instead, they argue, early humans were on the menu for predatory beasts.

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Q&A: A lost interview with ENIAC co-inventor J. Presper Eckert

2006-02-19T18:36:00.000-05:00

On February 14th, 1946 the world of computing was utterly changed when the ENIAC was unveiled. The ENIAC (the first practical all-electrion computer) was really the forefather of all modern computers. In a lost interview with the co-inventor J Presper Eckert, he debunks some myths revolving around his machine (such as soldiers saluting it as they entered the room where it was housed or that it dimmed the lights in Philadelphia when in use,) and tells some interesting stories about it.

Read the interview here.

Famous Unsolved Codes and Ciphers

2006-02-19T18:26:00.000-05:00

This is an unofficial list of well-known unsolved codes and ciphers. A couple of the better-known unsolved ancient historical scripts are also thrown in, since they tend to come up during any discussion of unsolved codes.

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The Click That Broke China's Grip

2006-02-19T18:18:00.000-05:00

The top editors of the China Youth Daily were meeting in a conference room last August when their cell phones started buzzing quietly with text messages. One after another, they discreetly read the notes. Then they traded nervous glances...

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