NIST researchers have made metafilms of both yttrium iron spheres (right, each about 50 millimeters in diameter) embedded in a matrix, and tiny copper squares etched on a wafer (above). Credit: (Top) C. Holloway/NIST, (Right) © Geoffrey Wheeler National Institute of Standards and Technology has demonstrated that thin films made of “metamaterials”—manmade composites engineered to …
A new superconducting material fabricated by a Canadian-German team has been fabricated out of a silicon-hydrogen compound [after supercompression, 96-120GPa] and does not require cooling. They had to keep the material under pressure (100GPa) in order to get it to superconduct. CORRECTION: The press release talked about not using refrigerant and EEtimes said room temperature …
On rare cold days in Antarctica this material would be superconducting outdoors without added cooling. UPDATE: Announcement of room temperature superconductors from highly compressed silicon and hydrogen was premature in journal Science by Saskatchewan, Canada and German researchers. The transition temperature was low for the data that they had but they believe there is pressure …
The latest word from the IEC fusion effort. Basically progress is being made by a dedicated team, but results will be rigorously confirmed before they are published. A visitor to the lab reports: The effort is very professional, the crew is made of experienced people who get their hands dirty, and progress is occurring at …
The Kiplinger Letter talks about the potential and timing of the Bakken oil play An official government survey of the Bakken region’s oil treasure trove is due out next month. The report is expected to play it very conservatively, because it will confine estimates to the amount of oil that likely can be produced profitably …
Gene therapy up until now has been the insertion of a new working gene into cells to add or activate a capability, but now the controlled deletion of multiple genes is a new way to effect cellular activity. The targeted removal of genes — the exact opposite of what a gene therapist would do — …
Scientists used a safe virus to deliver a protein called follistatin into the leg muscles of young and older mice that have a disorder similar to human Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The protein inhibits the activity of myostatin, identified in previous research as a protein that limits muscle growth. Both young and old mice treated …
ABC News’ online coverage of the Taiwan presidential election, with most polls showing presidential candidate Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT with big or small leads. Prediction markets also are forecasting a Ma Ying-jeou win in the Taiwan Presidential election at the end of this week (March 22, 2008). I have had several articles on this …
Skype’s Jonathan Christensen presented slides to the Emerging Communications Conference. Christensen is Skype’s GM for Voice and Video. Hat tip to Phil Wolff at Skype Journal. The Era of Rich Mobile Internet Communications [from 2008-2017]– Multi-modal communications (original SIP vision) – Real time HD video, Data, Presence, Text, Wideband Audio – Smart endpoints, open platform… …
Dwave Systems has explicitly demonstrated that the computation time in AQC can be much longer than single qubit decoherence time T2. So their AQC computer should some more quantumness and speedup than would be indicated if speedup only occured when the system was quantumly coherent. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a …
Comparing deaths/TWh for all energy sources Energy Source Death Rate (deaths per TWh) Coal – world average 161 (26% of world energy, 50% of electricity) Coal – China 278 Coal – USA 15 Oil 36 (36% of world energy) Natural Gas 4 (21% of world energy) Biofuel/Biomass 12 Peat 12 Solar (rooftop) 0.44 (less than …