Whacked on Goofballs

KurzweilAI.net Accelerating Intelligence News

• How to see through opaque materials March 9, 2010
  A new experiment conducted by researchers at the City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI) has shown that it's possible to focus light through opaque materials and detect objects hidden behind them, provided you know enough about the material. They produced a numerical model called a transmission matrix, which […]
• A Little Black Box to Jog Failing Memory March 9, 2010
  Sensecam, which contains a digital camera and an accelerometer to measure movement, can be used for life-logging and as a memory aid for people with Alzheimer's and other memory disorders. (Microsoft Corporation) (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/health/09memory.html?ref=science)
• Speed Reading of DNA May Help Cancer Treatment March 9, 2010
  Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a way to monitor the progress of a patient's cancer treatment using a new technique for rapidly sequencing, or decoding, large amounts of DNA. It uses mitochondrial DNA as markers of cancerous cells, based on the finding that more than 80 percent of cancers had mutations in their mitochondrial DNA. […]
• How to build a superluminal computer March 9, 2010
  Superluminal (faster-than-light) hyprcomputers could be created by taking advantage of the nonlocal phenomenon (instant changes to a distant entangled particle), say Volkmar Putz and Karl Svozil at the Vienna University of Technology. For example, light traveling through a vacuum can be made to spontaneously form into an electron-positron pair--an entangled […]
• Google Public Data Explorer lets you create dynamic charts and maps March 9, 2010
  Google's new Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. You can create dynamic, interactive mash-up line graphs, bar graphs, maps and bubble charts that can be embedded in Web pages. The visualizations are dynamic, so you can watch them move over time, change topics, highlight different entries and change the s […]
• Reflections on Avatar by Ray Kurzweil March 8, 2010
  I recently watched James Cameron's Avatar in 3D. It was an enjoyable experience in some ways, but overall I left dismayed on a number of levels. It was enjoyable to watch the lush three-dimensional animation and motion capture controlled graphics. I'm not sure that 3D will take over -- as many now expect -- until we get rid of the glasses (and ther […]
• Time to start taking the Internet seriously March 8, 2010
  "The Internet ... has increased not the quality but the quantity of the information we see," says David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale. "We know that the Internet creates 'information overload,' a problem with two parts: increasing number of information sources and increasing information flow per source... Integra […]
• Catalyst could power homes on a bottle of water, produce hydrogen on-site March 8, 2010
  With one bottle of drinking water and four hours of sunlight, MIT chemist Dan Nocera claims that he can produce 30 KWh of electricity, which is enough to power an entire household in the developing world. With about three gallons of river water, he could satisfy the daily energy needs of a large American home. Using the electricity generated from a 30-square […]
• MIT builds first sensor to to detect single molecules produced by living cells March 8, 2010
  MIT researchers have built the first sensor array that can detect single molecules produced by living cells, using a carbon nanotube sensor array that can detect hydrogen peroxide molecules and could help scientists learn more about that molecule's role in cancer. The sensor consists of a film of carbon nanotubes embedded in collagen. Cells can grow on […]
• Carbon nanotubes generate electricity that could be harnessed for new energy systems March 8, 2010
  Carbon nanotubes with a lit fuel coating generate an electrical current, the result of a fast-moving combustion wave (thermal wave) traveling along the length of the carbon nanotube that drags electrons along, MIT scientists have discovered. The system puts out about 100 times greater energy in proportion to its weight than an lithium-ion battery. In theory, […]