The space elevator Games 2010 competition is being covered at the Space elevator blog The competition will be from October 19-21, 2007. The competition has some bad weather issues. There is a space elevator climber competition and a tether competition. Five of the space elevator climber competitors are from Canada REDDIT UPDATE: More live coverage …
Venter’s is trying to create a synthetic genome that will be housed within an existing bacterial cell, other scientists are aiming for the even more ambitious target of building an entire living cell from the basic chemical ingredients. However, George Church has a grander and I think more intersting vision. George Church at Harvard Medical …
Rice University scientists today revealed a breakthrough method for producing molecular specks of semiconductors called quantum dots, a discovery that could clear the way for better, cheaper solar energy panels. One way towards cheaper solar cells is to make them out of quantum dots. Prior research by others has shown that four-legged quantum dots, which …
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 …
A pdf by Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg that surveys the state of cognitive enhancement in 2006 Nick Bostrom’s website The paper reviews ways to train ourselves to be more intelligent/expert, drugs for enhancement /nootropic drugs, genetic modification, enhancing devices like computers, and brain /computer interfaces. I think collaboration and collective productivity as in corporations …
If all the cars and light trucks in the nation switched from oil to electrons, idle capacity in the existing electric power system could generate most of the electricity consumed by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A new study for the Department of Energy finds that “off-peak” electricity production and transmission capacity could fuel 84 percent …
From New Scientist, an article reporting that Michael Dyakonov of the University of Montpellier in France believes large scale quantum computing is akin to achieving perpetual motion. The pdf of the paper is here He is referring to gate model quantum computers with 1000 to 1,000,000 qubits. Others think Dyakonov has got it wrong. “It …