Seed magazine has a 9 page review of the Blue Brain project. Blue Brain is the IBM project to simulate a human brain on a supercomputer. Currently they have simulated one column of a neocortex (of a rat) with 10,000 neurons and 30 million synapses using a 22.8 teraflop supercomputer. (A human neocortex column has …
Worldwatch indicates that China will likely achieve—and may even exceed—its target to obtain 15 percent of its energy from renewables by 2020. If China’s commitment to diversifying its energy supply and becoming a global leader in renewables manufacturing persists, renewable energy could provide over 30 percent of the nation’s energy by 2050. China’s carbon dioxide …
First introduced at SC06 as the Exotic Technologies Initiative, the Disruptive Technologies activity will return to SC07. Each year, DT will serve as a forum for examining those technologies that may significantly reshape the world of HPC in the next five to fifteen years, but which are not common in today’s systems. A disruptive technology …
Hitachi is making current perpendicular-to-the-plane giant magneto-resistive heads (CPP-GMR) for hard disk drives to enable 4 terabyte drives in 2011 and/or 1 terabyte notebook drives. The CPP-GMR drive essentially changes the structure of drive heads. Current drives come with a tunnel magnetoresistance head. In these, an insulating layer sits between two magnetic layers. Electrons can …
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 …
WiPower uses induction (magnetic coupling) to transfer power from the base station to the receiving devices. They are claiming 68% efficiency in the transfer of power and believe that they can achieve 80% efficiency. A regular power cord is 58% efficient. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with …
Here is an analysis of a case where a 2007 supercomputer running a 1977 algorithm would be outperformed by a 1977 personal computer running a 2007 algorithm This is also discussed here This relates to the question of getting to better and better intelligence just by speeding up the hardware. Brian WangBrian Wang is a …
The US current account deficit was a record $857 billion in 2006 A 45% depreciation of the dollar against the yuan would not result in balanced U.S. bilateral trade with China. The cost advantage of most Chinese exports is simply too great to be eliminated by currency movements alone. Moreover, many of the goods that …
Nanowerk reports that the Advanced Energy Consortium (AEC), is to develop subsurface nanosensors that can be injected into oil and gas well bores. By virtue of their very small size, these sensors would migrate out of the well bores and into the pores of the surrounding geological structure to collect data about the physical characteristics …
We are getting closer to cyborgs that are as strong and as fast as people. The prototype rocket powered mechanical arm can lift (curl) about 20 to 25 pounds – three to four times more than current commercial arms – and can do so three to four times faster. “That means it has about 10 …
Loss of only one of the genes, a gene encoding the protein PHA-4, negated the lifespan-enhancing effect of calorie-restriction in worms. And, when researchers undertook the opposite experiment—by overexpressing pha-4 in worms—the longevity effect was enhanced. “PHA-4 acts completely independent of insulin/IGF-1 signaling and turns out to be essential for CR-mediated longevity,” says Panowski. “We …