Xconomy discusses why your next TV is a tablet. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is going to come between the content owners and the $32 billion they earn every year in affiliate fees—that is, their cut of cable and satellite subscription revenues. The prospect that these fees might be cut off or reduced is exactly what caused …
1. American Interest – Roelof van Ark, the chief executive, and Thomas Umberg, the chairman of the High Speed Rail Authority, announced they will step down from their posts as the odds against the project grow longer. The highly indebted, cash strapped state has commitments of $3.3 billion of federal money in hand against the …
Live Science – Psychopaths are known to be wily and manipulative, but even so, they unconsciously betray themselves, according to scientists who have looked for patterns in convicted murderers’ speech as they described their crimes. The researchers interviewed 52 convicted murderers, 14 of them ranked as psychopaths according to the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, a 20-item assessment, …
A private European organization has a proposal for creating 100-300 kilometer high multipurpose towers. The towers would be composed of moveable lighter-than-air rings stacked upon each other. Modules would be added from the bottom up and filled with a light gas. Shuttles within the shaft could take people and payloads to the top, slowly but …
Dr. Aubrey de Grey is a pioneering theoretical scientist in the field of human aging (biogerontology). H+ Magazine interviews Aubrey H+: SENS describes a whole battery of medical treatments that could theoretically defeat the aging process. These treatments range from relatively simple ones like injecting people with enzymes that can break down tough wastes inside …
mages of regenerated lenses after the seventeenth lentectomy. Following along a theme of what some would have called ‘Mad Science’ (the prior article being about a double leg transplant from a cadaver) we have a researcher who removed the lens from an eye of newts 18 times. Fictional Witches should never run out of the …
Scanning electron microscopy image showing a palladium nanoparticle with a gold antenna to enhance plasmonic sensing. (Image courtesy of Alivisatos group) Such highly coveted technical capabilities as the observation of single catalytic processes in nanoreactors, or the optical detection of low concentrations of biochemical agents and gases are an important step closer to fruition. Researchers …
The Leukocyte Infusion Therapy (LIFT) for cancer treatment pioneered by Dr. Zheng Cui of Wake Forest University has a clinical trial proceeding in China. The process is a simple transfusion of certain immune system white blood cells from people who are naturally immune to cancer to boost the immune system of people with weaker immune …
For the first 11 months of 2010, nuclear generation is 0.9% higher than the same period in 2009. For 2010, nuclear generation was 732.9 billion kilowatt-hours compared to 726.3 bkWh for the same period in 2009 and 734.5 bkWh in 2007 (the record year for nuclear generation). In 2007, nuclear power generated 806.5 billion kilowatt-hours …
Federal Reserve economic forecast for the US for 2010-2013 The Federal Reserve cut its outlook for the U.S. economy for this year (down from about 3.5% growth to 2.5%) and 2011 and projected that it could take several years for the economy to return to health. According to minutes from the Fed’s November 3 meeting …
Researchers at Oregon State University have created for the first time a high-performance “metal-insulator-metal” diode. High speed computers and electronics that don’t depend on transistors are possibilities. Also on the horizon are “energy harvesting” technologies such as the nighttime capture of re-radiated solar energy, a way to produce energy from the Earth as it cools …