China (including Hong Kong and Macau) has a larger GDP than Germany based on current exchange rates. The Euro has traded down to 10.77 to the Chinese Yuan The Euro/Yuan exchange rate will likely continue to fluctuate. The European countries (France, Spain, Italy) have been saying that the Euro has been too strong. The US …
Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of the frequency-tunable planar metamaterial. An individual unit cell (a. above), and periodically patterned square array (b. below). All dimensions are shown in microns and materials are indicated in the images. The polarization of the incident linearly-polarized THz radiation is also indicated in b. (Credit: Image courtesy of Nature Photonics) …
Research published this week in Regenerative Medicine, reports on a new technology that yields over 140 previously uncharacterized cell types, many on an industrial scale. This advance holds great promise for future research and may one day lead to many new cell-based therapies in the emerging field of regenerative medicine. Previously there have been occasional …
Wyeth is not stopping developement of drug MYO-029 for blocking myostatin. They foudnd that MYO-029 was safe but that it was not very good at blocking myostatin or boosting muscle growth. They and other companies are working on more powerful and hopefully effective versions. Two sets of experiments investigating the effects of interfering with myostatin, …
You’re soaking in it. This phrase was popularized by a television commercial campaign for Palmolive dish washing detergent. Madge, a manicurist, would comment on the dry, rough appearance of her client’s skin as she worked on one hand while the other soaked in a bowl of light green liquid. The client would ask her advice; …
David Brin has his defense of the Transparent Society up at Wired. This was in response to a critque by Bruce Schneier that centered around unequal power. My tiny involvement was emailing David Brin to make him aware of the Schneier article. A common problem with attacks on the 1997 book “The Transparent Society” is …
In a major step forward for computational protein design, University of Washington scientists have built from scratch a handful of enzymes that successfully catalyze a specific chemical reaction. These proteins have no naturally occurring counterparts, and the reaction–which breaks down a man-made chemical–has no natural catalyst. David Baker and his colleagues at the University of …
Toshiba Corporation today announced important breakthroughs in key technologies for magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM), a promising, next-generation semiconductor memory device. Cell Structure. A material with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, which is used for recording media and a type of cobalt-iron, is employed in the magnetic layer, with magnesium oxide in the insulating layer and cobalt-iron-boron …
What if we had to transition from oil in a hurry ? The goal would be to get to electrified transportion, some biofuels, and an energy efficient economy. So the transition is conservation, drill in ANWR and elsewhere, more oil from the oilsands and shale, temporarily ramp up biofuels and alternatives, ramp up nuclear and …
