Tag: science

Micro world

A team of University of Michigan researchers has recently created a set of electron microscope images of carbon nanotube structures depicting images of US President-elect Barack Obama. John Hart, leader of the research team says it wasn’t a political statement, but an attempt to draw attention to what is possible these days with nanotechnology, and imaging at the very small scale. I’ll take him up on this invitation and share with you some other images of very tiny things in our world. For visualizing the scale, most measurements below are in microns – one micron is a millionth of a meter – human hair is approximately 100 microns thick. Rime on a columnar snow crystal. Contact between the snow crystal and the supercooled droplets in the air resulted in freezing of the liquid droplets onto the surface of the crystal. Observations of snow crystals clearly show cloud droplets measuring up to 50 microns on the surface of the crystal.

how does alan do it?

SRT1720

Mice given the new drug, called SRT1720, gorged on high-fat food for 4 months without gaining weight or developing diabetes, and ran 2x as far on a treadmill as their control-group counterparts. The effects of the compound are similar to those of resveratrol, a molecule found in red wine that has previously been shown to extend life span and have health benefits in mice. But SRT1720 is 1000x more potent than resveratrol, meaning that it could be taken in smaller doses.

Quantum cellular automaton

Quantum dot cellular automata are a proposed improvement on conventional computer design (CMOS), which have been devised in analogy to conventional models of cellular automata introduced by John von Neumann.

the technology to reach zettaflop performance

The concept of a memory device based on self-organized quantum dots (QDs) is presented, enabling extremely fast write times, limited only by the charge carrier relaxation time being in the picosecond range.

Virtual evil

What does it mean to be truly evil? Cognitive scientist Selmer Bringsjord is developing a virtual human that embodies their evolving definition of “evil.” In development for several years, the character, named “E,” is designed to interact with humans in a way that sounds similar to a chatbot, albeit a really demented chatbot.

someone has been cribbing off of “creating friendly ai” by eliezer yudkovski.

Botox for World Peace

People with Botox may be less vulnerable to the angry emotions of other people because they themselves can’t make angry or unhappy faces as easily. And because people with Botox can’t spread bad feelings to others via their expressions, people without Botox may be happier too

2012-11-26: for those of you having trouble delivering your lines

Card players who don’t want to give themselves away and tip their hand can turn to using Botox to “allow people to gain a poker face’’ in a service he calls Pokertox.

Cartesian dualism

The latest salvo in the war on Darwin: a resurrection of Cartesian dualism, with the idea that the brain is a physical object, but the mind that inhabits it is made from some kind of ghostly Jesusite-235 that conclusively proves the existence of the Invisible Sky Daddy in a white robe and beard

Signs of despair, and retreat to the last frontier of science. Once Jeff Hawkins decodes the brain these bozos can go screw themselves.