Japan’s National Institute of Information and Communications Technology and private companies aim to develop and commercialise in around 2015 a network that can transfer data at 10 gigabits per second, 10 times faster than the 1 gbps next-generation network due to be launched in Japan this yea. The group will be joined by such companies …
Craig Venter indicates his support of the goal of cognitive enhancement, a core transhumanist objective, while discussing the movie Blade Runner Blade Runner was a landmark film that was prescient in anticipating globalization, genetic engineering, and biometric security. It also had influence in architecture and in movies and anime. It presented a plausible future environment. …
Businessweek reports that wireless industry consultants and marketing executives with knowledge of Google’s plans say it has been showing prototypes of a new phone to handset manufacturers and network operators for a couple of months Industry sources don’t expect one before the second half of 2008. Combine Google’s financial heft with its ultra-sophisticated ability to …
Computerworld discusses the impact of Sputnick on the development of computer technology and the internet and high risk/high payoff technology research. The article is making the case that the United States science and technology research community has seen a return to a culture which is less likely to pursue high risk/high payoff technology research. There …
Wide-angled gigapixel satellite surveillance: Researchers at Sony and the University of Alabama have come up with a wide-angle camera that can image a 10-kilometre-square area from an altitude of 7.5 kilometres with a resolution better than 50 centimetres per pixel. The system means that we could existing image capture chips with sub-gigapixel resolution to form …
Here is the Breakdown of energy used in the USA by source from 2002 to 2006 Nnadir has a further breakdown of the non-fossil fuel portion Non-fossil fuel source Share of non-fossil fuel total shareNuclear: 54.5% 8.2%Conventional Hydro: 19.2% 2.9%Wood: 14.0% 2.1%Other biofuels like, and including, ethanol: 5% 0.7%Garbage burning (waste): 2.7% 0.4%Geothermal: 2.3% 0.3%Wind: …
Two major steps toward putting quantum computers into real practice — sending a photon signal on demand from a qubit onto wires and transmitting the signal to a second, distant qubit — have been brought about by a team of scientists at Yale. They report that superconducting qubits, or artificial atoms, have been able to …
There is website that compares various CO2 reduction efforts against the increased CO2 from new coal plants. There are 151 coal plants in various stages of construction in the USA. Hat tip to Kirk at the thorium energy blog for finding this Many efforts do not equal the CO2 of even one medium sized coal …
Stanford physics Professor Shoucheng Zhang says a new generation of semiconductors, designed around the phenomenon known as the Quantum Spin Hall Effect, could keep Moore’s law in force for decades to come. Using special semiconductor material made from layers of mercury telluride and cadmium telluride, the experimenters employed quantum tricks to align the spin of …
I had developed this comment as part of a response to an article at amor mundi I am in favor of using smaller amounts of money to try a lot of different approaches to solving societal problems or reaching societal goals. I am applying an extension of some of the arguments used in support of …
Matthew S. O’Connor (okee, a.k.a. Dr. Okie) reports on the SENS3 conference on life extension at the Ouroboros website. Okee is currently a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, Bioengineering Department in the laboratory of Dr. Irina Conboy. Biomedical remediation (essentially the brain-child of Aubrey de Grey) is moving along quickly. Two teams have identified strains …