Technology has immortality, cures for the worlds devastating diseases, quantum computing and a host of other science fiction notions in its grasp. Current trends in a number of areas indicate that over the next 10 years many of these technologies will come to fruition. "The Next 10 Years" tracks the trends that will transform our everyday lives in almost unimaginable ways.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

Scientists Identify Intelligence Gene - Science & Innovation - NewsFactor Network: "Psychiatric scientists at The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Glen Oaks, N.Y., say they've found a gene that seems to influence intelligence. "

Big-Ticket Technology for When Money Is No Object, Part Four - Tech Trends - NewsFactor Network: "Welcome back to technology's version of Fantasyland, where no expense is too big and nothing is beyond the realm of possibility. Of course, if you have the cash to throw down for this stuff, welcome back to your reality.

Heading up this month's lineup of top-dollar goodies is a $555,000 'Supercar' that ought to have an 'S' emblazoned on its hood because it's practically faster than a speeding bullet. At the other end of price spectrum ($1,450) is an elegantly designed cordless telephone that you might spend more time admiring than using. "

trend: personalized luxury

Maybe the Heirs Aren't Apparent - New York Times: "THE watchdog group Public Citizen (citizen.org) and the advocacy group United for a Fair Economy (faireconomy.org) issued a report this week saying that 18 superwealthy families are largely responsible for financing the lobbying campaign aimed at repealing the estate tax; the Senate is scheduled to take up repeal next month."

Making money on the moon seen key to exploration - Yahoo! News: "Making money on the moon is an essential part of the U.S. plan for space exploration, NASA officials said on Friday after a four-day strategy workshop with international space officials and scientists.

Billed as the first meeting to determine what explorers would do if they return to the lunar surface after more than three decades, the gathering drew some 180 participants from more than a dozen countries, including China, Russia, Japan and the nations of the European Space Agency.
Shana Dale, NASA's "

Saturday, April 29, 2006

EU and US strike different tones on Iran - Yahoo! News: "Influential U.S. Senator John McCain told the Brussels Forum in a speech on Friday night: 'There is only one thing worse than military action, and that is a nuclear-armed Iran.'"

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - Nanowires and water are a memorable mix: "Adding water to nanowires could create computer memory devices capable of storing 10 million times more information in the same physical space as existing drives.

Researchers at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania, both in Philadelphia, and Harvard University in Massachusetts, US, discovered that water turns barium titanate (BaTiO3) nanowires into a potential form of computer memory.

Barium titanate is a ferroelectric material. It maintains an electric polarisation analogous to magnetisation - a positive charge on one end and a negative charge at the other - that can be oriented by an electric field. This makes ferroelectric materials suitable for storing data, in the form of electric polarisation, on the microscale."

Genzyme's Drug for Rare Enzyme Deficiency Is Approved - New York Times: "Genzyme won federal approval yesterday to sell the first drug for Pompe disease, a rare inherited enzyme deficiency that destroys muscles and can kill infants by their first birthday.

The drug, Myozyme, is the fourth developed by Genzyme to treat a rare enzyme deficiency under the incentives provided by the federal government to develop medicines for so-called orphan diseases. "

Guardian Unlimited The Guardian Scathing nuclear report as US brands Iran enemy No 1: "The US administration branded Iran public enemy number one, calling it one of the world's most active sponsors of terrorism, as the UN nuclear inspectors revealed that Tehran has successfully enriched uranium and is racing ahead with its nuclear programme.

The report from Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), to the UN security council shifted the nuclear dispute on to a new plane, with the US and Britain leading a campaign for enforcement and punitive action against Iran. "

trend: threat of war will continue to drive up energy costs and may stall global economic expansion.

Quick Fixes Won't Solve Looming Oil Crisis, Scientists Say - Yahoo! News: "With the cost of oil at or near record territory and gasoline prices hovering around $3 a gallon, the government is advocating new measures to sooth growing public concern over rising prices at the pumps.

But the fixes are only temporary and largely symbolic, scientists say. They will do little to address the more serious threat of what will happen when demand for oil outstrips the ability to produce it."

Trading Frenzy Adding to Rise in Price of Oil - New York Times: "A global economic boom, sharply higher demand, extraordinarily tight supplies and domestic instability in many of the world's top oil-producing countries — in that environment higher oil prices were inevitable. "

Guardian Unlimited Technology Technology Home network storage will be the talk of the town, I bet: "It's time to talk about Network Attached Storage. No, come back! I mean for the home, not some dull 'enterprise' thing. Although NAS, as it's known in the trade, has for years been commonly used in bigger businesses, to store data centrally rather than across dozens or hundreds of PCs, only recently have prices come down - and more importantly, the home use of networks and our patterns of domestic computer use changed- sufficiently to make it worth considering."

Is Microsoft Preparing a Big Attack? - New York Times: "Microsoft reported strong third-quarter revenue growth on Thursday, but analysts said the company also telegraphed a significant increase in spending, an indication that it was preparing to take on its big online rivals, Google and Yahoo."

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Wired News: Making a Revolution: "Maker's Faire and its estimated 20,000 visitors are part of the DIY movement, and this movement has a political side. Presenters and attendees alike say they are tired of being infantilized by technology. They want five cent parts for their fuel pumps. They want the DMCA to be repealed. They want to make their own soap and baby food. They want be able to open the box, peer inside and muck around in the innards. Socializing at an event that brings hackers, grease monkeys, knitters and robot builders together can feel like the melding of niche communities that never should have been separated. Craftiness is activism based on a value system that seamstresses and Linux hackers share.
Still, the philosophy is not so much counter-consumerism as counter-corporate control. At the fair, some adherents to old-school hacker ethics passed out flyers asking whether makers were really doing anything very radical at all. If a hacker is just a weekend hobbyist, hacking does not challenge the commercialism that gave us black box technologies, restrictive licensing agreements and the DMCA in the first place. 'Asking for the right to modify a commodity that has been sold to us does not challenge anything. These projects only help to create bigger cages or longer leashes,' read an anonymous handbill circulating at the fairgrounds."

Seagate's Giant 750GB Hard Drive Expands Universe of Drive Capacity - Yahoo! News: "Perpendicular recording--a shift from the longitudinal magnetic recording process used for the past 50 years--increases areal density by changing the way data is recorded to the drive. 'Everything changes, from the type of media to the type of head,' says Clark. 'At the drive level, you space your bits farther apart because they're standing on end vertically into the media, which makes them more stable and closer together as compared to longitudinal. So now you have more data bits which will slide underneath the heads as [each] head reads and writes.' "

WSJ.com - Portals: "Second only to watching a company achieve great technological and business success, there is nothing Silicon Valley enjoys more than figuring out how, once attained, that company's success might be outdone. A great deal of this scheming is currently directed at MySpace, the social-networking site that has become the online equivalent of the local mall, a place for teens and twentysomethings to spend lots of time -- lots! -- hanging out.

Because the MySpace business story couldn't be simpler or more spectacular -- two friends start it in 2003 and 24 months later it's bought by News Corp. for $580 million -- there are now dozens of start-ups trying to do to MySpace what MySpace did to the first big social-networking site, Friendster. (Buyouts are being made all the time, like the $102 million Viacom said it will spend for Xfire, a gaming site.)"

WSJ.com - Microsoft's 'Massive' Move Into Game Ads: "Microsoft Corp. plans to acquire Massive Inc., a closely held start-up that places ads in videogames, in a deal that highlights the growing flow of advertising into nontraditional media.

Massive, a two-year-old start-up with 80 employees, is one of several companies pioneering the business of placing ads in videogames. Massive's clients include Coca-Cola Co., Honda Motor Co. and other advertisers that are gradually increasing their spending on ads in videogames. Microsoft plans to announce next week an agreement to buy the New York company, said people familiar with the situation. People familiar with the matter estimated the deal to be valued at $200 million to $400 million"

iTulip.com - Past Commentaries: "Last night I attended a private roundtable held at Charles River Ventures in Waltham, Massachusetts to hear ex venture capitalist Mark Warner, conservative Democrat ex-Governor of VA who's running for President in 2008, give his pitch and take questions. Most of the audience was comprised of venture capitalists. You'd be surprised to know how many Democrats occupy the high risk, high return, low liquidity segment of the banking industry known as venture capital. And I noticed at least one card carrying Republican in the audience. I interpret his presence as an indicator of how strongly the need for change of regime is felt, even among stalwart Republican party members. "

Guardian Unlimited Special reports US privacy campaigners fear mark of the beast: "A decision by the Bush administration to proceed with what is believed to be the largest radio frequency tagging programme in history has triggered protests from US privacy campaigners.

The US department of agriculture (USDA) wants to keep track of all livestock production and movements in what it claims is an attempt to improve the traceability of disease outbreaks."

China clones mad cow-resistant calf - Yahoo! News: "Chinese scientists have cloned a calf that may be resistant to mad cow disease.

The calf, weighing 55 kilograms (121 pounds), was born on Tuesday in eastern China's Shandong province with genes that are resistant to mad cow disease, Xinhua news agency said Wednesday, citing a local science institute."

Monday, April 24, 2006

New Scientist Breaking News - 'Lego' approach thwarts anthrax toxin: "Complex nanoscale structures designed to bind and neutralise anthrax toxins have successfully protected rats from the deadly illness in the laboratory. The researchers say their novel approach may yield life-saving drugs to fight more common infections such as cholera, and possibly HIV.

The team used a special statistical analysis to design molecules which bind 10,000 times more strongly to the toxins produced by anthrax than conventional compounds.

“It’s the method that’s the important thing,” says Jeremy Mogridge of the University of Toronto, Canada. He says that, to his knowledge, no one else has ever applied this approach in the real world. “There have been theoretical models but no one has tested it for therapeutic purposes.”"

iTulip.com - China versus U.S.A.: "Easy to confuse the commitment of one nation to another for an act of friendship. As mid-19th century British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston once commented, nations don’t have friends; nations have interests. The mutual interests of China and the U.S. are the kind that kept the U.S. and the Soviet Union from going at each other with nukes during the Cold War.

China and the U.S. are running inter-dependent bubble economies, relying on the economic equivalent of Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.) to keep one from blowing up the other’s economy. Whether by intent or accident, sooner or later market forces will assert themselves and both economies will go through tough transitions. How will the world look after that?"

IMF chief warns high oil prices set to stay - Forbes.com: "IMF chief Rodrigo Rato warned that record oil prices are here to stay and appealed for collective action to rectify widening imbalances in the world economy.

The International Monetary Fund managing director said weekend meetings of global financial leaders here must also address the reform of the IMF to make the Western-dominated organization more representative of emerging economies, especially in Asia."

Hope for HIV microbicide breakthrough: scientists - Yahoo! News: "Researchers are closing in on a breakthrough microbicide gel to help prevent HIV infection in women, scientists said on Monday, but a lack of funding by major pharmaceutical companies is hampering research.

'I think for many years the microbicides research field was a little bit tentative about making too much noise about the potential of this technology,' Helen Rees, executive director of South Africa's Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit, said on the sidelines of an international conference in Cape Town."

Friday, April 21, 2006

Scientists Find the Elusive Gabbro - Yahoo! News: "It's not quite the center of the Earth, but scientists have drilled nearly a mile into the planet's ocean crust, retrieving samples from the pristine layer of igneous rock for the first time.

Scientists onboard the drilling ship JOIDES Resolution in the Pacific Ocean, about 500 miles west of Costa Rica, bored into the planet's crust and recovered black rocks called gabbro from intact crust."

Scientists Say Mars Had 3 Distinct Eras - Yahoo! News: "Today's cold, dry climate on Mars evolved about 3.5 billion years ago, ending a period when that planet had seen moist conditions, research indicates.

An international team of scientists developed a timeline for Mars' geological evolution, reporting in Friday's issue of the journal Science that the planet had three distinct eras."

future trend: mars colonization and exploitation

Climate Change -- Breaking the Ice: Science Online Special Collection: "In the 24 March 2006 Science: A special report on what's happening to the world's ice sheets. Recent research papers in Science and elsewhere are pointing to a major acceleration in the loss of mass from the world's great ice sheets. That means that the sensitivity of these giant storehouses of water to climate warming may be far greater than expected -- with potentially dire sea level implications during the next several centuries. "

New Hamas security chief vows to fight Israel - Yahoo! News: "A militant leader appointed to a senior security position in the Hamas-led Palestinian government said on Friday he would not abandon the fight against Israel which has long sought to kill him.

Jamal Abu Samhadana, high on Israel's most wanted list as leader of the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), was appointed on Thursday to supervise the Interior Ministry and set up a new police force from militants to crack down on anarchy and chaos."

trend: higher oil prices

Thursday, April 20, 2006

How Will the CAFTA Agreement Benefit Your Business?: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance: "ORLANDO, Fla., April 20 /PRNewswire/ -- Enterprise Florida, Inc. (EFI) is hosting a 'CAFTA Intelligence Briefing' in New York City to help business leaders better understand the opportunities offered through the recently enacted Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). A distinguished panel of experts will provide guidance to companies interested in taking advantage of the new commercial opportunities. Speakers will give practical advice, explore relevant case studies and share important resources with attendees."

New Scientist Breaking News - Watching the brain 'switch off' self-awareness: "Everybody has experienced a sense of “losing oneself” in an activity – being totally absorbed in a task, a movie or sex. Now researchers have caught the brain in the act.

Self-awareness, regarded as a key element of being human, is switched off when the brain needs to concentrate hard on a tricky task, found the neurobiologists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

The team conducted a series of experiments to pinpoint the brain activity associated with introspection and that linked to sensory function. They found that the brain assumes a robotic functionality when it has to concentrate all its efforts on a difficult, timed task – only becoming 'human' again when it has the luxury of time."

witKeeping the mind young, strong - Entertainment - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: "Here's a look at a science-themed game and a Web site to help stimulate the noggin:
Brain Age, from Nintendo for Nintendo DS, rated E: content suitable for ages 13 and older, $19.99. Nintendo's magical hand-held gaming system celebrates the work of Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima by engaging owners in a series of hands-on exercises geared to giving their gray matter a rigorous workout.

Users turn their dual-screen DS system sideways to view the presentations as if reading a book. Mr. Kawashima makes an appearance (as a gregarious, disembodied talking head) to explain his theory that just as muscle mass decreases with age, so does brain function, and only by performing certain types of mental activities each day will we keep our minds young and in tiptop shape.

Tuning the prefrontal cortex involves using the DS' microphone and touch screen to perform nine timed activities centered around simple reading and mathematical problem solving.

Once users save some personal data, they measure the current age of their brains using the Stroop Test. A series of colored words is flashed on both screens, and the user must say the color of the words. Speed and proficiency indicate a lower brain age. Users can test their age every day and watch the graphics and statistics for improvements as Mr. Kawashima encourages them. "

Tiny Reactor Boosts Biodiesel Production - Forbes.com: "A tiny chemical reactor that can convert vegetable oil directly into biodiesel could help farmers turn some of their crops into homegrown fuel to operate agricultural equipment instead of relying on costly imported oil.

'This is all about producing energy in such a way that it liberates people,' said Goran Jovanovic, a chemical engineering professor at Oregon State University who developed the microreactor.

The device - about the size of a credit card - pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through tiny parallel channels, each smaller than a human hair, to convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly. "

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

China's Oil Needs Are High on U.S. Agenda - New York Times: "The competition for access to oil is emerging high on the agenda for President Hu Jintao's visit to the White House this week. President Bush has called China's growing demand for oil one reason for rising prices, and has warned Beijing against trying to 'lock up' global supplies."

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - Record test firing for futuristic rocket engine: "NASA has test-fired a rocket engine fuelled by liquid oxygen (LOX) and liquid methane for a record 103 seconds. A fully functioning engine is probably years away, but its efficiency means it could one day be used to take people to Mars. "

Scientists unveil world's oldest ice block - Yahoo! News: "Research based on a previous study of Antarctic ice and published by Nature magazine last year said concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane were far higher now than at any time in the last 650,000 years."

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

New Scientist Premium- Climate change: The great Atlantic shutdown - Features: "Shock findings suggest vital Atlantic currents are slowing dramatically. Will this soon plunge Europe into winter, turn the Amazon into grassland and cause famine in Asia?

IS EUROPE'S central-heating system about to break down, causing climate chaos around the world? Late last year, oceanographers reported a sudden and shocking slowdown in the currents of the North Atlantic, a critical part of the vast system of ocean circulation that influences temperatures and weather around the world. A shutdown could cause famine in south Asia, kill off the Amazon rainforest and plunge western Europe into a mini ice age.

However, if you live in Europe, don't order that snowcat just yet. The conclusions reported last year have been dismissed by many climate scientists, who say their models show the current will keep going for at least another hundred years or so. So what is really going on? Are changes in ocean circulation about to turn our lives upside down, or is this something only our grandchildren will have to cope with? "

aAccelerating-Intelligence News: Single Article View: "A scaffold of nanoscale fibers that self-assembles from small, synthetic protein-like components provides a framework for the regrowth of damaged brain tissue, allowing vision to be restored in hamsters with brain lesions, a team in the USA and China reports.

The nano-scaffold, made of short peptides, is biodegradable and non-toxic, causes no immune response, is injectable -- it self-assembles when the molecules come together in a salty solution -- and, because it is composed of nanofibers, allows an intimate interaction between the peptide matrix and the surrounding tissue. The researchers say that it provides a 'permissive environment' that helps cells, such as neurons, regrow and knit together damaged tissue."

Telegraph Money Market report: Soaring bond yields signal trouble ahead: "Bond yields worldwide reached 12-month highs last week with the yield on the benchmark 10-year US Treasury bonds rising above 5 per cent for the first time in almost four years on Thursday. The latest selloff was prompted by fears that interest rates in the world's largest economy might rise further than expected.

Government bond prices around the globe have fallen markedly in the first quarter of this year, and the corresponding yields have surged higher. This follows signs of economic strength and concerns about inflation in the US, Japan and Europe, leading to worries that central banks will continue to increase interest rates in the coming months."

iTulip.com - Financial Markets are Polluted with Risk: "“I can assure you marking errors in the derivatives business have not been symmetrical. Almost invariably, they have favored either the trader who was eyeing a multi-million dollar bonus or the CEO who wanted to report impressive 'earnings' (or both). The bonuses were paid, and the CEO profited from his options. Only much later did shareholders learn that the reported earnings were a sham.”

Buffet concludes: “The derivatives genie is now well out of the bottle, and these instruments will almost certainly multiply in variety and number until some event makes their toxicity clear. Knowledge of how dangerous they are has already permeated the electricity and gas businesses, in which the eruption of major troubles caused the use of derivatives to diminish dramatically. Elsewhere, however, the derivatives business continues to expand unchecked. Central banks and governments have so far found no effective way to control, or even monitor, the risks posed by these contracts.” "

trend: financial market disruption, loss of wealth

USATODAY.com - Bush: 'All options on the table' in dealing with Iran: "WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush said Tuesday that 'all options are on the table' to prevent Iran from developing atomic weapons, but said he will continue to focus on the international diplomatic option to persuade Tehran to drop its nuclear ambitions.

'We want to solve this issue diplomatically and we're working hard to do so,' Bush told reporters in the Rose Garden.

Bush also said there should be a unified effort involving countries 'who recognize the danger of Iran having a nuclear weapon,' and he noted that U.S. officials are working closely nations such as Great Britain, France and Germany on the issue.' "

trend: higher oil prices, greater profits for oil companies

USATODAY.com - Wholesale inflation tame outside gasoline; housing starts tumble: "WASHINGTON (AP) — Producer prices outside of volatile food and energy costs posted their smallest gain in four months in March and housing starts tumbled, leading some analysts to cut bets on how far interest rates will rise.

The Labor Department said Tuesday its producer price index, a gauge of prices received by farms, factories and refineries, climbed 0.5% last month as energy prices resumed an upward march. But so-called core prices, which exclude food and energy, rose just 0.1%."

commentary: has the housing bubble begun to burst? Check out what the real guru's, i.e. those that actually have made accurate predictions, are saying at iTulip

USATODAY.com - Oil continues run past $70 a barrel: "Oil prices hit a new intraday high of $70.88 a barrel Tuesday a day after settling above $70 a barrel at the close of commodities trading in New York for the first time.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery surpassed the previous record of $70.85 a barrel in Asian electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange, before easing back to $70.75. That's up 35 cents from Monday, when the contract settled at $70.40 a barrel, a record close. "

USATODAY.com - Outsourcing gets closer to home with CAFTA: "MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Touting themselves as the 'new Asia,' pro-business and investment organizations across Latin America are talking about the benefits of 'nearsourcing.'

It's the same thing as outsourcing — sending jobs to lower-cost locations outside the USA — but closer to home: It's south rather than east, near rather than far. And it's increasingly attractive to U.S. companies.
Latin American leaders are boosting nearsoucing as the region readies for the Jan. 1 start of the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which ends most tariffs on more than $33 billion in goods traded between the USA and six Central American and Caribbean countries. Those are Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez toured Central America last month with executives of 20 leading U.S. companies to promote the pact."

Information about Costa Rica

Monday, April 17, 2006

USATODAY.com - Study finds raloxifene safer than tamoxifen for breast cancer: "A widely used osteoporosis drug is safer and just as effective reducing invasive breast cancer risk as tamoxifen, the only drug now approved for that use, say long-awaited data released Monday from a trial of nearly 20,000 women.

After an average of four years of treatment, both raloxifene and tamoxifen cut the risk by about 50%, say researchers with the Study of Tamoxifen and Raloxifene, or STAR. "

Sellers of Internet Addresses Get Big Payoffs - Internet Life - NewsFactor Network: "Internet domain names are red-hot again. This year, 15 names used in Internet addresses have resold for at least six figures to companies and individuals hoping to tap into big audiences. On.com got $635,000. Macau.com fetched $550,000.

Sex.com went for a record $12 million in cash and stock to adult-entertainment company Escom in January, according to industry-trade reports and sources with knowledge of the deal, who declined to be named because of the private nature of the sale. "

Online real estate: Online gambling and domain names

costa rica real estate: "Welcome to Costa Rica Real Estate
farm land in costa rica for sale"

Large flow of capital to Latin America ahead of the ratification of CAFTA

New Scientist Premium- Genome-in-a-day promised as DNA is put through hoops - Breaking News: "It took a decade of hard slog to produce the first, momentous, human genome readout - but a new device may soon do the job in just 24 hours

IT TOOK a decade of hard slog to produce the first, momentous read-out of the human genome, but researchers think they will soon be able to do the job in a day.
An instrument capable of reading thousands of DNA fragments per second is being developed by researchers led by Tony Bland of the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. The concept behind it was unveiled last week at a briefing in London. "

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Life Extension Daily News: "The antiobesity effect of epigallocatechin gallate from green tea deserves more attention.
'During the last decade, the traditional notion that green tea consumption benefits health has received significant scientific attention and, particularly, the areas of cardiovascular disease and cancer were subject to numerous studies. Due to the ever-growing obesity pandemic, the antiobesity effects of green tea are being increasingly investigated in cell, animal, and human studies,' scientists in Switzerland report in their review.
S. Wolfram and colleagues working with DSM Nutrition Products summarized, 'Green tea, green tea catechins, and epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) have been demonstrated in cell culture and animal models of obesity to reduce adipocyte differentiation and proliferation, lipogenesis, fat mass, body weight, fat absorption, plasma levels of triglycerides, free fatty acids, cholesterol, glucose, insulin and leptin, as well as to increase beta-oxidation and thermogenesis. "

Legume molecule may fight cancer. 11/04/2006. ABC News Online: "Legume molecule may fight cancer
Queensland researchers believe legumes may help stop the spread of cancer.
Professor Peter Greshoff, from the University of Queensland, says researchers have found a molecule in legumes that could cut the blood supply to tumours.

Cutting blood supply to tumours prevents them from growing and ultimately leads to their regression.
Professor Greshoff says it basically starves the cancer.

'This tumour cell will send out signals which then are interpreted by nearby blood vessels, so that little capillaries will grow into the tumour, feeding it,' he said."

Guardian Unlimited Technology Technology Cream of the crop: 100 most useful websites: "Millions of users now find it hard to imagine life without the internet - without email, instant messaging, web search engines and online trading or gaming.

Over the past decade since Online was launched, it's the web that has made the difference. It has made it easier to access all the net's facilities, and encouraged a huge explosion in the number and diversity of websites.

With the web still expanding, we have taken the opportunity to ask Online's readers, contributors, and some of the Guardian's journalists to suggest the 100 most useful sites."

reference: online life

ABC News: Is This Humanity's First Planetary Emergency?: "April 14, 2006 — The reports of a number of leading scientists show a new level of concern about the possibility of global warming producing planetwide upheaval in the lifetimes of today's children.

Please don't shoot the messenger. Those of us who cover global warming already have enough to think about as we consider some of the latest assessments coming from established scientists.
And it's important to mention at the outset that most of these scientists say there may still be a chance for humanity to avoid the worst if we get our global act together immediately — though they do say we are in for at least some very rough times."

The Rise of Digital Sports - Yahoo! News: "But when dubious calls come during high-profile events such as the Super Bowl, one question suddenly gains more and more legitimacy among legions of sports fans: Can technology help?

Proposals to modernize officiating have cropped up before. But the implementation of high tech has traditionally met with resistance from sports purists, who argue that officiating errors are part of the game. Debate still lingers over the use of instant replay in the NFL. "

LiveScience.com - Cell Division Reversed in Possible Path to Cancer Treatment: "One key to advanced life is cell division. Cells divide millions of times every day to sustain the life and growth of a single human.

But out-of-control cell division can fuel cancer. Now scientists have for the first time reversed the process of cell division, a breakthrough that could eventually lead to treatments for cancer and other disorders. They gained control over a protein responsible for division, then halted and reversed the process. Duplicate chromosomes were sent back to the center of the original cell, an event once thought impossible.

'Our studies indicate that the factors pointing cells toward division can be turned and even reversed,' said lead researcher Gary Gorbsky of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. 'If we wait too long, however, it doesn't work, so we know that there are multiple regulators in the cell division cycle. Now we will begin to study the triggers that set these events in motion.'

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Like to Tinker? NASA's Looking for You - New York Times: "STEVE JONES doesn't have a workshop, exactly, for his miniature space elevator; he is designing it in his dorm room and in four labs scattered across the University of British Columbia.

NASA sponsors 13 competitions, including, clockwise from top, for designing long-duration vehicles; developing more flexible and sensitive astronauts' gloves; removing lunar dirt, which is as hard as concrete and difficult to excavate; and creating safer aircraft. He doesn't have a staff, either; a collection of friends and fellow space enthusiasts volunteer to help. And his budget, in the low five figures, comes mostly from the school activities fund, although Red Bull is donating some energy drinks. "

Webby Awards: "10th Annual Webby Awards Nominees & Winners:"

Regrow Your Own - New York Times: "Stem cell therapy has long captured the limelight as a way to the goal of regenerative medicine, that of repairing the body with its own natural systems. But a few scientists, working in a relatively obscure field, believe another path to regenerative medicine may be as likely to succeed. The less illustrious approach is promising, in their view, because it is the solution that nature itself has developed for repairing damaged limbs or organs in a wide variety of animals. "

Run Windows and Mac OS Both at Once - New York Times: "ONLY a week ago, Apple released what seemed like an astonishing piece of software called Boot Camp. This program radically rewrote the rules of Macintosh-Windows warfare — by letting you run Windows XP on a Macintosh at full speed.
Skip to next paragraph

A Mac screen shows Parallels Workstation as it runs Windows and Mac software with no rebooting needed. Now, some in the Cult of Macintosh were baffled by the whole thing. Who on earth, they asked, wants to pollute the magnificence of the Mac with a headache like Windows XP?"

Friday, April 14, 2006

New Scientist Premium- Are prions the real cause of BSE and vCJD? - Breaking News: "Abnormal prions - misshapen versions of normal brain proteins - may not be infectious agents, but a consequence of 'prion diseases'

IT IS a finding that could turn the conventional wisdom of what causes diseases such as BSE and variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease on its head. Experiments in sheep suggest that abnormal prions - misshapen versions of normal brain proteins - may not be infectious agents, but a consequence of 'prion diseases'. "

New Breed of Soldier: Robots with Guns - Science & Innovation - NewsFactor Network: "Spurred by the risks from roadside bombs and terrorist ambushes, the military is aggressively seeking to replace troops with battlefield robots, including new versions armed with machine guns.

'There was a time just a few years ago when we almost had to beg people to try an unmanned ground vehicle,' says Marine Col. Terry Griffin, manager of the Robotic Systems Joint Project Office in Huntsville, Ala. 'We don't have to beg anymore.' "

Scientists Create a 'Tractor Beam' - Science & Innovation - NewsFactor Network: "Scientists are using a beam of light, similar to 'Star Trek's' tractor beams, to trap protein molecules and make them dance in space.

The technique -- developed by scientists from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the California Institute of Technology, and a company called Protein Discovery -- is said to be useful for separating, concentrating, and analyzing proteins quickly, with high sensitivity and selectivity.

'With this technique, we can steer DNA or other biomolecules for transport in three dimensions and also separate them according to size and their isoelectric point,' said Chuck Witkowski, a co-author and president of Protein Discovery, a Knoxville startup company. "

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Welcome to AI TOPICS: "AI TOPICS is a special web site provided by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence [AAAI] for students, teachers, journalists, and everyone who would like to explore what artificial intelligence is, and what AI scientists do. "

The Singularity Summit at Stanford: "The Symbolic Systems Program is pleased to host the Singularity Summit at Stanford University, a rare gathering of thinkers to explore the rising impact of science and technology on society. The summit has been organized to further the understanding of a controversial idea – the singularity scenario.The Symbolic Systems Program is pleased to host the Singularity Summit at Stanford University, a rare gathering of thinkers to explore the rising impact of science and technology on society. The summit has been organized to further the understanding of a controversial idea – the singularity scenario."

New Scientist Tech - News - Print me a heart and a set of arteries: "SITTING in a culture dish, a layer of chicken heart cells beats in synchrony. But this muscle layer was not sliced from an intact heart, nor even grown laboriously in the lab. Instead, it was 'printed', using a technology that could be the future of tissue engineering.

Gabor Forgacs, a biophysicist at the University of Missouri in Columbia, described his 'bioprinting' technique last week at the Experimental Biology 2006 meeting in San Francisco. It relies on droplets of 'bioink', clumps of cells a few hundred micrometres in diameter, which Forgacs has found behave just like a liquid."

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - Quantum quest leads to super-efficient lights: "A light that lasts 20 times longer than a conventional bulb and is 75% more energy efficient has been developed by researchers.

The light is based on organic light emitting diodes (OLEDs) that use a novel combination of photon-emitting compounds to convert more energy into light than existing versions. It was created by Stephen Forrest from Princeton University in New Jersey, and colleagues at the University of Southern California, both in the US."

The Importance of Being at the Top of Search Results - Tech Trends - NewsFactor Network: "For online businesses and others looking for recognition through the Internet, the importance of being at or near the top of the list in search results was driven home by a recent study showing that most search-engine users expect to find what they are looking for on the first page of results.

The survey, conducted by Jupiter Research and sponsored by search-engine marketing firm iProspect, reveals that just as search engines have gotten better at delivering relevant results, users have become more adept at tailoring their searches to find the information they need. "

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

United States Patent Application: 0060060706: "An inflatable structure constructed of flexible material that can occupy a minimal volume when in a deflated and stored condition as compared to its fully inflated and deployed configuration, has sufficient structural rigidity to function as a wing when deployed. The wing includes an array of inflatable chambers with generally circular cross-sections. The chambers are spaced a particular distance between their centers and held in that spacing by an outer wing skin. For equal cross-sectional diameter chambers this distance is less than the diameter. When the chambers are inflated the close spacing causes tension in the opposing surfaces to create a rigid structure. "

United States Patent Application: 0060060864: "All diamond self-aligned thin film transistor


Abstract
A substantially all diamond transistor with an electrically insulating substrate, an electrically conductive diamond layer on the substrate, and a source and a drain contact on the electrically conductive diamond layer. An electrically insulating diamond layer is in contact with the electrically conductive diamond layer, and a gate contact is on the electrically insulating diamond layer. The diamond layers may be homoepitaxial, polycrystalline, nanocrystalline or ultrananocrystalline in various combinations. A method of making a substantially all diamond self-aligned gate transistor is disclosed in which seeding and patterning can be avoided or minimized, if desired. All diamond self-aligned thin film transistor

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - Invention: Wing-sprouting drone: "Wing-sprouting drone
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can fly where no pilot would dare and are hard to shoot down because they are so small. The trouble is, they also waste a lot of fuel taking off, so usually cannot stay airborne for too long.

But Daryl Elam of Arizona, US, is working on a drone that needs no fuel for take-off. It could simply be shot into the air like a shell, before sprouting wings for normal flight."

Monday, April 10, 2006

Discovery of anti-freeze gene may be boon for crops - Yahoo! News: "SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian scientists have discovered an 'anti-freeze gene' that allows Antarctic grass to survive at minus 30 Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), saying it could prevent multi-million-dollar crop losses from frost.

'It's a gene from the saltgrass that managed to colonise the Antarctic peninsula called Antarctic Hairgrass,' said Professor German Spangenberg from La Trobe University in Victoria state."

New Scientist Tech - Nano-patterns guide stem cell development - Breaking News: "Stem cells can be prompted to develop into bone, instead of muscle or cartilage tissue, if they are grown on a substrate etched with nanoscopic patterns – and no added chemicals – researchers have found.

The discovery could lead to longer-lasting artificial implants that are nano-engineered to encourage suitable tissue to develop around them, experts say."

Empowering the Really Little Guys: "Empowering the Really Little Guys
by Glenn Harlan Reynolds



'Individuals are getting more and more powerful,' says author Glenn Reynolds in his insightful new book, An Army of Davids. 'With the current rate of progress we're seeing in biotechnology, nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and other technologies, it seems likely that individuals will one day -- and one day relatively soon -- possess powers once thought available only to nation-states, superheroes, or gods. That sounds dramatic, but we're already partway there' -- and nanotechnology may be the 'ultimate empowerer of ordinary people.'"



The York Daily Record - Health & Environment: "York College professor Paul Chang compares the questions this event generated to questions we may face this century because of advancements in drugs, medical sciences, manipulating genes and keeping people alive longer. Chang teaches biopsychology.
Some have predicted this century will be known for biotechnology, he said.
The predicted advancements could create more ethical questions. Questions that will touch other areas of life, not just science, Chang said.

He gave the example of lifespan. If someone knew in their 20s that they could live to be 100 and be vibrant, how would that affect their decision to marry and have children? How would that affect the age they chose to retire?

He pointed to genetic research and public policy. If the government doesn't ease up on its restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, it will lead to an exodus of talent from the country, Chang said. How would that affect the United States in the future?

Ethical questions must be addressed, he said, adding once the technology is in place, the genie is out.

On April 19, Dr. Michael Gazzaniga will present a lecture at York College's DeMeester Theater on 'The Ethical Brain,' which also is the title of one of his books."



Environmental issues are forefront over the next ten years. Perhaps nanotech pollution 'disassemblers' can meet the call but until then we are left with political solutions.

New Scientist Premium- New world order of polluters - Breaking News: "A radical plan to let countries offset land against pollution would re-rank the worst offenders - is it a fair price to pay to end post-Kyoto stalemate?

SHOULD big countries with a small population be allowed to produce more pollution than smaller ones with more people? Two provocative studies on measuring national 'ecological footprints' say they should, and the argument could soon be deployed in talks on a successor to the Kyoto protocol on climate change.
Their rationale is that large countries have more natural vegetation to absorb pollution, and more fields and forests to provide natural resources for the world. So they should be entitled to a larger ecological footprint than small, densely populated countries. That would be good news for the US, Australia, Canada, Russia and Brazil, but not so good for Japan, most European countries, China and India. "

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Nsite Launches No-Coding Development Environment - Yahoo! News: "Software-as-a-service (SaaS) company Nsite, which has historically offered products that extend customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, will launch Tuesday a browser-based development environment that lets users build new applications. "

the next ten years and beyond - our shared future.
Kevin Kelly: Speculations on the future of science

Edge 179: "Projecting forward, Kelly had five things to say about the next 100 years in science...
1) There will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years.
2) This will be a century of biology. It is the domain with the most scientists, the most new results, the most economic value, the most ethical importance, and the most to learn.
3) Computers will keep leading to new ways of science. Information is growing by 66% per year while physical production grows by only 7% per year. The data volume is growing to such levels of 'zillionics' that we can expect science to compile vast combinatorial libraries, to run combinatorial sweeps through possibility space (as Stephen Wolfram has done with cellular automata), and to run multiple competing hypotheses in a matrix. Deep realtime simulations and hypothesis search will drive data collection in the real world.
4) New ways of knowing will emerge. 'Wikiscience' is leading to perpetually refined papers with a thousand authors. Distributed instrumentation and experiment, thanks to miniscule transaction cost, will yield smart-mob, hive-mind science operating 'fast, cheap, & out of control.' Negative results will have positive value (there is already a 'Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine'). Triple-blind experiments will emerge through massive non-invasive statistical data collection--- no one, not the subjects or the experimenters, will realize an experiment was going on until later. (In the Q&A, one questioner predicted the coming of the zero-author paper, generated wholly by computers.)
5) Science will create new levels of meaning. The Internet already is made of one quintillion transistors, a trillion links, a million emails per second, 20 exabytes of memory. It is approaching the level of the "

Red Hot Chile Peppers: Cancer Fighter? - Science & Innovation - NewsFactor Network: "Researchers are rolling out the spice rack against cancer with studies showing that ginger and the 'hot' element in red chile peppers induce tumor cells to die. But a separate review of studies evaluating the use of soy supplements against breast cancer finds the evidence of benefit slight. "

Tech Tidbits: Cool Concepts and Hot Stuff - Science & Innovation - NewsFactor Network: "Our latest look into the farthest reaches of technology has uncovered computers controlled by thoughts, luggage that thinks it's a dog, and a silent way to keep teens at a respectable distance. "

Study Links Punishment to an Ability to Profit - New York Times: "Sociologists have long known that communes and other cooperative groups usually collapse into bickering and disband if they do not have clear methods of punishing members who become selfish or exploitative.

Now an experiment by a team of German economists has found one reason punishment is so important: Groups that allow it can be more profitable than those that do not."

In Ancient Document, Judas, Minus the Betrayal - New York Times: "An early Christian manuscript, including the only known text of the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years, and it portrays Judas Iscariot not as a betrayer of Jesus but as his favored disciple and willing collaborator.
In this text, scholars reported yesterday, the account of events leading to the Crucifixion differs sharply from the four gospels in the New Testament. Here Jesus is said to entrust Judas with special knowledge and ask him to betray him to the Roman authorities. By doing so, he tells Judas, 'you will exceed' the other disciples."

Internet Calls Untethered From Your PC - New York Times: "WHY does Skype get so much hype? Sure, this software lets you make free 'phone calls,' computer to computer, anywhere in the world. But it wasn't the first such program, it's not the most feature-laden, and it's still a mystery to most people over 25."

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Virus-Enabled Synthesis and Assembly of Nanowires for Lithium Ion Battery Electrodes -- Nam et al., 10.1126/science.1122716 -- Science: "Both materials selection and assembly are ongoing issues in the development of smaller, more flexible batteries. Cobalt oxide has shown excellent electrochemical cycling properties and it thus under consideration as an electrode for advanced lithium batteries. We use viruses to synthesize and assemble nanowires of cobalt oxide at room temperature. By incorporating gold binding peptides into the filament coat, we could form hybrid gold-cobalt oxide wires that improved battery capacity. Combining the virus templated synthesis at the peptide level and our methods for the control of two dimensional assembly of viruses on polyelectrolyte multilayers provides a systematic platform for integrating these nanomaterials to form thin, flexible lithium ion batteries. "

Friday, April 07, 2006

Nanopore Method Could Revolutionize Genome Sequencing: "A team led by physicists at the University of California, San Diego has shown the feasibility of a fast, inexpensive technique to sequence DNA as it passes through tiny pores. The advance brings personalized, genome-based medicine closer to reality.

The paper, published in the April issue of the journal Nano Letters, describes a method to sequence a human genome in a matter of hours at a potentially low cost, by measuring the electrical perturbations generated by a single strand of DNA as it passes through a pore more than a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Because sequencing a person’s genome would take several months and millions of dollars with current DNA sequencing technology, the researchers say that the new method has the potential to usher in a revolution in medicine."

Oslo's sewage heats its homes - Yahoo! News: "OSLO (Reuters) - In an extreme energy project tapping heat from raw sewage, Oslo's citizens are helping to warm their homes and offices simply by flushing the toilet.

Large blue machines at the end of a 300-meter long tunnel in a hillside in central Oslo use fridge technology to suck heat from the sewer and transfer it to a network of hot water pipes feeding thousands of radiators and taps around the city."

Thursday, April 06, 2006

LiveScience.com: The Greatest Modern Minds

Armchair Scientists Can Work on Medical Breakthroughs - Yahoo! News: "The key to unlocking a cure for cancer might be sitting in your den or home office.

Modeled after the groundbreaking and wildly popular SETI@home project, scientists have conceived Rosetta@home to harness the power of PCs to solve basic problems in medicine.
Rosetta@home plans to use the extensive number-crunching power of computer time donated by tens of thousands of individuals to hopefully unravel basic mysteries of proteins, the building blocks of life."

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

Huge 1,500-year-old pyramid discovered in Mexico - Yahoo! News: "Archeologists have discovered a huge 1,500-year-old pre-Hispanic pyramid in a working class district of Mexico City after digging into a hill used every year to depict the crucifixion of Christ. "

Monday, April 03, 2006

At Last, Movies to Keep Arrive on the Internet - New York Times: "Six major studios plan to begin selling movies over the Internet today that buyers can download and keep for watching at any time.

Until now, the only downloads the studios have offered have been online rentals, which can be watched only for a 24-hour period — an idea that has not caught on with consumers. But the high prices and technological limits of the new permanent downloads suggest that they may not be an instant hit. "

Sunday, April 02, 2006

For Sale: Your Life on the Internet - Internet Life - NewsFactor Network: "Where To Start
Here is a short list of commercial Web sites to consider if you are looking to delve into someone's background. Features vary, but in general, expect to find access to records dealing with birth, death, adoption, bankruptcy, mortgages, marriages, divorces, felonies, small claims, foreclosures, tax liens, lawsuits, arrest warrants, and more.

For an online comparison, check out The Detective Detective, which lists the pros and cons of many sites that sell information.

Web Detective: Unlimited-use membership for $34.95.
Background Searcher: Lifetime membership for $39.95.
DataHound Detective: Search over 20,000 information-resource sites for $29.95
Online Investigations.net: One year's access is $29.95.
Intelius: Basic report $29.95; complete report $49.95.
Instant Detectives.net: In addition to providing access to public records, this site also sells a number of online spy tools such as keylogger software. Lifetime membership is $34.95.
Identity Crawler: Unlimited access for $19.95."

Composing Music Using Apple Computer's GarageBand Software - New York Times: "The title is 'Eventide,' meant to evoke not some ye olde troubadour's serenade but the trademark I glimpsed on a fearsome-looking piece of sound reinforcement equipment backstage at a Ted Nugent concert. 'Eventide' is four blistering minutes and 31 seconds long; it features three electric guitars, electric bass, grand piano, electric piano, two string sections, synthesizer, drums, congas, bongos, tambourine and shaker. I think it's smashing, frankly — the old 'Avengers' theme smudged with the dark atmospherics of Sigur Ros.

There's just one thing: I didn't compose 'Eventide' any more than Ashlee Simpson sang 'Pieces of Me' on 'Saturday Night Live.' The song sprang from computer-sampled snippets of musical instruments that I stitched together using Apple Computer's GarageBand software. GarageBand is a denatured version of industry-standard recording software that allows amateurs to cobble together a song using nothing but the program's digital instruments. You preview the samples from a Chinese-menu-like array, drag them into a virtual mixing console, push them this way and that, and voilà! The software automatically renders the composition into a tidy audio file that can be posted to Web sites like MySpace.com, which teems with thousands of MP3 files from would-be Coldplays and Alicia Keyses."

Saturday, April 01, 2006

EETimes.com - IBM develops method to control atom-scale magnetism: "MANHASSET, N.Y. — IBM scientists have developed a new technique, called spin-excitation spectroscopy, to explore and control magnetism at its fundamental atomic level.

The method promises to be important not only in the quest to understand the operation of future computer circuit and data-storage elements as they shrink toward atomic dimensions, but also to lay the foundation for new materials and computing devices that leverage atom-scale magnetic phenomena."

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - 'Mental typewriter' controlled by thought alone: "A computer controlled by the power of thought alone has been demonstrated at a major trade fair in Germany.
The device could provide a way for paralysed patients to operate computers, or for amputees to operate electronically controlled artificial limbs. But it also has non-medical applications, such as in the computer games and entertainment industries.

The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface (BBCI) – dubbed the 'mental typewriter' – was created by researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin and Charité, the medical school of Berlin Humboldt University in Germany. It was shown off at the CeBit electronics fair in Hanover, Germany. "

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - Second scramjet tested over Australian outback: "Scientists in Australia launched an experimental hypersonic scramjet engine for the second time in a week on Thursday, as they work towards building a plane that could revolutionise air travel.

The scramjet, Hyshot IV, was launched aboard a larger Terrier-Orion rocket and reached an altitude of 325 kilometres before falling back to Earth. During its descent, the scramjet engine should have activated and propelled the craft to more than 8000 kilometres per hour (Mach 8)."

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - 'Nano-skin' could create super-bendy screens: "A flexible polymer infused with billions of carbon nanotubes could be used to make incredibly bendy displays and other novel electronic devices, researchers say.

The 'nano-skin' polymer was created by scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York, US. Nanotubes are excellent electrical conductors and group member Swastik Kar says the material may well be used to build highly efficient electronic parts for highly flexible electronic displays."

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - Nano-welding could join molecular devices: "A nanoscale welding technique has been developed by sparking high-temperature chemical reactions inside 'nanopores'.
The technique could ultimately be used to weld together nanoscale components and could also lend itself to nanoscopic chemistry experiments, say the researchers.

By lacing a micrometre-thick film of aluminium with nanoscopic holes and filling the holes with iron oxide, the researchers produced a high-temperature 'thermite' reaction. "

New Scientist Invention blog: "Ever tried to read a car's maintenance manual while looking inside the engine for the right greasy bolt to unscrew? Then you'll appreciate an idea being patented by US defence contractor Northrop Grumman.

The patent covers a handheld device similar to a torch that contains a miniature mirror chip like the one used in a conventional video projector. The device beams a prerecorded image onto a surface as a maintenance guide."