Many people who discess the enlightenment and social discuss the power of the masses versus the power of the lite. The supporters of the Enlightenment do not want “the elite” to roll back society to a more fuedal looking power structure. Who are the elite and where does real power reside ? Newsweek has a …
Stanford University School of Medicine researchers has developed a new type of imaging system that can illuminate tumors in living subjects—getting pictures with a precision of nearly on nanometer (one-trillionth of a meter). This technique, called Raman spectroscopy, expands the available toolbox for the field of molecular imaging, said team leader Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, MD, …
A way to carry out genetic surgery [more precise gene therapy] has been devised by a British Nobel prizewinner that is already under test on diabetic patients and being readied for use to treat Aids, blocked blood vessels and chronic pain. Safety and precision problems and concerns have been holding back wider use of gene …
Carnival of Space week 44 is up at Bad Astronomy My contribution was my article on large sheets of carbon nanotubes being produced this year which could be used for high performance solar sails. Several of the posts are about Mars. Why the Mars avalanches were interesting Creating a early warning system for future Mars …
Here is another update to my March 2006 technology predictions. Prediction: Real-time biomarker tracking and monitoring 2008-2012 Progress: Cheap less than $100 USB gene testerOld mockup of the cheap gene tester. The device is now much smaller than size of a shoe-box (USB stick size) with the optics and supporting electronics filling the space around …
The World Bank has updated 1986 pricing data for China to 2005 pricing data and reduced by 40% the purchasing power parity size of China’s economy. Under the old calculation, China had a GDP of $8.8 trillion, about 15% of global GDP of $59 trillion. According to the new calculation, China’s economy shrank by 40% …
Using a special hollow-core photonic crystal fibre, a team at the University of Bath, UK, has opened the door to what could prove to be a new sub-branch of photonics, the science of light guidance and trapping. The team, led by Dr Fetah Benabid, reports on the discovery, which relates to the emerging attotechnology, the …
From the SENS3 conference via the Methuselah Foundation blog, several researchers presented their recent work aimed at advancing this and other potentially useful approaches to mitochondrial damage. Mitochondrial damage is one of seven kinds of damage resulting from aging which if the damage was prevented or greatly reduced or repaired could result in lifespans increasing …
What made North America any better than uninhabited parts of Europe ? People who left were able to start fresh. They were able to tap into a different resource base. We can think of the world as your parents house and the unfinished basement as the Gobi Desert. What makes moving out better than living …
The Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease in San Francisco has found that slashing the tau protein, which regulates the internal brain skeleton, can prevent seizures, memory loss and defects related to Alzheimer’s disease. The finding could lead to complementary treatments for the most common form of dementia, researchers found. “It appears that reducing tau has …
Engineer-Poet analyzes the H2CAR proposal and shows why it is a misleading diversion from real solutions H2CAR is completely unaffordable. In the H2CAR paper, figures such as 239 billion kg/year of hydrogen from 58,000 km2 of solar PV panels are tossed off rather casually. These numbers bear deeper analysis than they receive. For instance, 58,000 …