1. Astroswanny takes a look at the ISON perihelion and social media action that made more than a few scientists almost choke on their thansgiving turkey. Astroswanny suggests that if a naked eye comet makes it to the Lasco C3 FOV – its going round! That “rule of thumb” is now two from two in …
58 countries have universal healthcare. Most countries in Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan and several other countries have universal healthcare. Several of the countries have universal healthcare and longer life expectancy and a lower proportion of GDP spent on medical costs. There is a book – Explaining Divergent Levels of Longevity in High-Income Countries. Although …
Richard Jones is an academic who started publishing writings on nanotechnology in 2004. He frequently got the details of what other people wrote or did incorrect. Usually Jones has a lot of things technically accurate but he will write about the Singularity and molecular nanotechnology as if his views are new and will recast a …
A commenter on google plus to an article that I wrote. The article I wrote indicated that people have the wrong intuition about aging, longevity and economics. The commenter responded with the following wrong intuition about aging. The assumption that if (for example) lifespan is increased 10 or 20 years, that the productive period of …
Ben Goertzel talks about the war on the war on death. A couple days ago the New York Times ran an article by 83 year old author Daniel Callahan, entitled “On Dying After Your Time.” The theme of the article is that extending human life is a bad idea, for a variety of reasons. The …
In a Sunday evening “60 Minutes” program aired on CBS Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos unveiled the new service, dubbed Prime Air, to CBS anchor Charlie Rose. The company has been working on the “octocopter” project in a secret research and development lab at its Seattle, Wash.-based headquarters for months in efforts to ramp up …
A McKinsey Global Institute report examines the distributional effects of these ultra-low rates. It finds that there have been significant effects on different sectors in the economy in terms of income interest and expense. From 2007 to 2012, governments in the eurozone, the United Kingdom, and the United States collectively benefited by $1.6 trillion both …
Merrill Lynch Wealth management has a view of dynamic forces that are sweeping across the globe, reshaping our lives and creating a wave of opportunities. Within 20 years, more than half of the world’s population rises out of poverty—while the median age in developed countries jumps by five years. The U.S. heads toward energy independence …
Joe Eck at Superconductors.org reports the observation of superconductivity above 53 Celsius (127F, 326K) in a new copper-oxide ceramic. The chemical formula of this discovery is Tl7Sn2Ba2SiCu10O20+. This is the thirteenth superconductor found to exhibit a Meissner transition above room temperature. There have only been three places on Earth with recorded temperatures above 53.6C. 56.7C …
DARPA’s integrated Photonic Delay (iPhoD) program created a new class of photonic waveguides with losses approaching that of optical fiber. The new waveguides are built onto microchips and include up to 50 meters of coiled material that is used to delay light. Conventional fiber optic coils of the same length would be about the size …
Nasa has announced plans to grow plants on the moon by 2015 in a project designed to further humanity’s chances of successfully colonising space. Plant growth will be an important part of space exploration in the future as NASA plans for long-duration missions to the moon. NASA scientists anticipate that astronauts may be able to …