1. The Atlantic – Walmart and China have launched a bold experiment in consumer behavior and environmental stewardship: to set green standards for 20,000 suppliers making several hundred thousand items sold to billions of shoppers worldwide. With some 30,000 Chinese factories making things for Walmart, the company’s future was tied to China in the most …
Arxiv – Adaptive on-chip control of nano-optical fields with optoplasmonic vortex nanogates (11 pages) A major challenge for plasmonics as an enabling technology for quantum information processing is the realization of active spatio-temporal control of light on the nanoscale. The use of phase-shaped pulses or beams enforces specific requirements for on-chip integration and imposes strict …
Technology Review – Japanese scientists have built a cellular automaton from individual molecules that carries out huge numbers of calculations in parallel They’ve laid down 300 DDQ molecules on a gold substrate, setting them up as a cellular automaton. More impressive still, they’ve then initialised the system so that it “calculates” the way heat diffuses …
The writer and columnist Sonia Arrison has recently published 100 plus in which she describes the coming “age of longevity”. Arrison argues that the fields of tissue engineering , as well as gene therapy and stem cell research, are experiencing rapid growth. In an interview with Sander Olson, Arrison discusses why longevity research will be …
At Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada is a site where the remains of nine 45-foot (14-meter) ichthyosaurs, of the species Shonisaurus popularis can be found. These were the Triassic’s counterpart to today’s predatory giant squid-eating sperm whales. The new thinking is that there was a Kraken (giant octopus) that preyed on the ichthyosaurs. They hypothesize …
The World Bank reports that based on current trends, the Chinese can expect to live only 66 “healthy years” (years free from disease and disability), ten years less than in some leading G-20 countries Non-communicable chronic diseases (NCDs) are the leading cause of death in China, accounting for close to 70 percent of the disease …
A new cancer treatment which strengthens a patient’s immune system and enables them to fight the disease more effectively is being trialled on patients for the first time in the UK. The treatment will use a new DNA vaccine, developed by scientists from the University of Southampton, which will treat a selected group of volunteers …
Watch the full episode. See more NOVA scienceNOW. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many …
Robert Reich recommends raising the marginal income tax rate on the highest earners to 70-90% to end the US recession. This site does not agree with that recommendation but provides it as an FYI (for your information). In the decades after World War II, legislation like the G.I. Bill, a vast expansion of public higher …
The Institute of Microelectronics (IME), a research institute of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), today announced a collaborative partnership with Stanford University in USA to develop nanoelectromechanical (NEM) relay technology to enable ultra-low power computation. NEMS-based integrated circuits are ideal for a wide range of emerging green electronics solutions as they eliminate …
Superconducting motor A Superconducting Permanent Magnet Motor has been built at Cambridge University’s Engineering Department in collaboration with Magnifye Ltd. Magnifye is developing the technology to produce the strongest permanent magnets in the world. Using rare earth superconductors Magnifye’s technology enables these to be magnetised to fields orders of magnitude greater than that available from …