Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Here is a summary of a paper submitted on making a graphene balloon:
http://eprintweb.org/S/article/cond-mat/0805.3309
The PDF is linked on that page.
http://eprintweb.org/S/article/cond-mat/0805.3309
The PDF is linked on that page.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Ultra-Dense Storage from Graphene-based Memory Devices:
http://www.telecomskorea.com/index.php? ... 5&Itemid=2
http://www.telecomskorea.com/index.php? ... 5&Itemid=2
The POSTECH professor said tests have shown that the efficiency level of the magnetoresistance of graphene nanoribbons reaches into the million-percent range, compared to few hundred percent for devices created in the past.
Greater efficiency in magnetoresistance translates into smaller memory devices that can store more data.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/ ... er.science
A patient whose skin cancer had spread throughout his body has been given the all-clear after being injected with billions of his own immune cells.
Tests revealed that the 52-year-old man's tumours, which spread from his skin to his lung and groin, vanished within two months of having the treatment, and had not returned two years later.
Doctors attempted the experimental therapy as part of a clinical trial after the man's cancer failed to respond to conventional treatments.
The man is the first to benefit from the new technique, which uses cloning to produce billions of copies of a patient's immune cells. When they are injected into the body they attack the cancer and force it into remission.
Campaigners and scientists in the UK yesterday welcomed the breakthrough. "It's very exciting to see a cancer patient being successfully treated using immune cells cloned from his own body. While it's always good news when anyone with cancer gets the all-clear, this treatment will need to be tested in large clinical trials to work out how widely it could be used," said Ed Yong at Cancer Research UK.
Peter Johnson, chief clinician at the charity, added: "Although the technique is complex and difficult to use for all but a few patients, the principle that someone's own immune cells can be expanded and made to work in this way is very encouraging."
Cassian Yee at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Centre in Seattle extracted immune cells from the patient and found that a small proportion of them, called CD4 T cells, naturally attacked a protein found on nearly three-quarters of the cancer cells. Using cloning techniques, Yee's team replicated these cells until they had more than 5bn of them.
When the cells were injected into the patient they immediately began attacking the cancer. Intriguingly, the patient's immune system gradually began a wider offensive, attacking all the cancer cells in the body, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Two months later medical scans failed to pick up any signs of cancer in the patient.
The team believes the treatment could be effective in around a quarter of skin cancer patients whose immune systems have cells that are already primed to attack their tumours. "For this patient we were successful, but we would need to confirm the effectiveness of therapy in a larger study," Yee added.
In an accompanying article Louis Weiner, director of the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Centre at Georgetown University, Washington, wrote that Yee's work "underscores the remarkable potential of the immune system to eradicate cancer, even when the disease is widespread".
The case showed that hopes to turn the immune system into a weapon against cancer was becoming a reality, Weiner added. "If the destination is not yet at hand, it is in sight. The endgame has begun."
Using the immune system to fight cancer could be much safer than existing treatments, which often have serious side effects.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Undergraduates Forge New Area Of Bioinformatics
The new area of bioinformatics is called "comparative proteogenomics," and as the name implies, sits at the intersection of the fields of "comparative genomics" and "proteomics" -- which is the study of all of an organism's proteins.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
CERN,about to herald a new dimension in our understanding of the universe.A nice piece by Irfan Husain of the dawn,Karachi.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm
A voyage into inner space
By Irfan Husain
AT a time when the world is shrouded in doom and gloom, good news is hard to come by. For Pakistanis, especially, rising prices, terrorism and political uncertainty have all combined to produce a dire scenario.
But for me, there is a silver lining: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern on the Franco-Swiss border is about to be commissioned. Okay, this might not be a signal for universal celebration and the sound of thousands of champagne corks popping, but for those of us caught up in the excitement of standing at the edge of a brand new frontier in quantum physics, it is a very exciting moment.
Before readers think I have finally lost my marbles, let me explain what the LHC is, and what it means to physicists the world over. Just to give you a small idea about the scale of the Collider, it should be sufficient to say that one of its four detectors, Atlas, weighs as much as a hundred Boeing 747s. The tunnel around which particles will be accelerated to near light speed forms a circle of 27 kilometres. It has taken two decades and $10bn to construct, with several European countries collaborating to build it. (Some of this information is from a recent booklet published by the Guardian).
So what do scientists expect to discover once the Collider is operational? Nothing less than the ultimate composition of matter itself. Since the quantum theory was first postulated a century ago, many sub-atomic particles have been discovered. At this level, things get truly weird, and appropriately, particles get names to match. Neutrons and protons are made of up quarks, and these are known as up, down, and strange. When another quark was discovered in 1974, it was dubbed the charm quark to welcome its arrival. Binding quarks together are particles called gluons.
Despite this proliferation of particles and sub-particles, there are many gaps in our knowledge. Perhaps the biggest mystery in the universe is the composition of ‘dark matter’: this is the invisible stuff that holds galaxies together, and constitutes the bulk of all matter. Some forty years ago, Peter Higgs proposed the existence of a particle — named the Higgs boson in his honour — that would be the missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics. However, if this particle is not found at the LHC, other theories will gain currency. Among these, my personal favourite is the so-called ‘string theory’, a complex model that allows for the presence of an infinite number of parallel universes. Alas, no empirical evidence has yet been discovered to underpin this exotic theory.
Many people question the usefulness of spending so much money on this enterprise. For me, the cooperation that has made the LHC possible is the finest example of what can be achieved if nations work together instead of making war. Some of the finest minds in Europe have collaborated to produce this monument to the human spirit. For if any one quality defines us as a species it is our endless curiosity. The questions surrounding the beginning of the universe have occupied theologians, scientists and philosophers for centuries. Step by step, physicists and mathematicians have pieced the jigsaw puzzle together, but a few pieces still remain. Perhaps the LHC will answer the remaining questions.
By creating conditions that existed a billionth of a second after the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, the scientists at Cern hope to study what the universe looked like at the beginning of time. In order to accelerate sub-atomic particles to 99.9 per cent of the speed of light, the entire 27 kilometre tunnel is currently being cooled to near absolute zero, and air is being pumped out to create a vacuum. In fact, when it has reached its lowest temperature, the tunnel will be the coldest place in the universe. The particles will then be fired in opposite directions, and accelerated by superconducting magnets. When they smash into each other, the violent collisions will be recorded by four detectors monitored by over five thousand scientists.
For those who think that such scientific quests are a waste of time and resources, it might come as a surprise to know that the Internet was first invented in Cern. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, an obscure computer scientist, came up with an idea that would allow physicists to share information over a distributed net that he named the World Wide Web. In order to handle the incredible volume of data that will be generated by the LHC, a network of some 20,000 desktop computers distributed over 11 academic computing clusters will be connected to form a supercomputer of immense power. On the average day, the LHC will produce some 40,000 gigabytes of useful information.
Bizarrely, some individuals in Hawaii have moved a court to halt the Cern experiment on the grounds that it might generate black holes that would grow and swallow the world. Indeed, it is one of the hopes of scientists that black holes will be created, but they will be so tiny, and will last for such a brief moment, that there is no danger to the facility, or to the rest of us. Every time mankind seeks to explore the unknown, there are people who mutter warnings and predict the worst. Luckily for us, these doom-and-gloom merchants have not succeeded in halting the march of progress.
If a civilisation stops exploring new frontiers, it stagnates and ultimately dies. Over the last half century, as man has tried to step off this planet, there have been naysayers who have objected to these expensive expeditions on the grounds of expense. Their argument is based on the widespread poverty that blights our planet. But oddly, they do not object to the billions we spend on weapons and armies. So far, the US has blown over $600bn on its Iraq misadventure, and that’s only the official figure. And yet, few people have said the war should never have been fought on the basis of its cost.
The truth is that if we had done a cost-benefit analysis before undertaking every voyage of discovery, we would probably still be in the Stone Age today.
http://www.dawn.com/weekly/mazdak/mazdak.htm
A voyage into inner space
By Irfan Husain
AT a time when the world is shrouded in doom and gloom, good news is hard to come by. For Pakistanis, especially, rising prices, terrorism and political uncertainty have all combined to produce a dire scenario.
But for me, there is a silver lining: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at Cern on the Franco-Swiss border is about to be commissioned. Okay, this might not be a signal for universal celebration and the sound of thousands of champagne corks popping, but for those of us caught up in the excitement of standing at the edge of a brand new frontier in quantum physics, it is a very exciting moment.
Before readers think I have finally lost my marbles, let me explain what the LHC is, and what it means to physicists the world over. Just to give you a small idea about the scale of the Collider, it should be sufficient to say that one of its four detectors, Atlas, weighs as much as a hundred Boeing 747s. The tunnel around which particles will be accelerated to near light speed forms a circle of 27 kilometres. It has taken two decades and $10bn to construct, with several European countries collaborating to build it. (Some of this information is from a recent booklet published by the Guardian).
So what do scientists expect to discover once the Collider is operational? Nothing less than the ultimate composition of matter itself. Since the quantum theory was first postulated a century ago, many sub-atomic particles have been discovered. At this level, things get truly weird, and appropriately, particles get names to match. Neutrons and protons are made of up quarks, and these are known as up, down, and strange. When another quark was discovered in 1974, it was dubbed the charm quark to welcome its arrival. Binding quarks together are particles called gluons.
Despite this proliferation of particles and sub-particles, there are many gaps in our knowledge. Perhaps the biggest mystery in the universe is the composition of ‘dark matter’: this is the invisible stuff that holds galaxies together, and constitutes the bulk of all matter. Some forty years ago, Peter Higgs proposed the existence of a particle — named the Higgs boson in his honour — that would be the missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics. However, if this particle is not found at the LHC, other theories will gain currency. Among these, my personal favourite is the so-called ‘string theory’, a complex model that allows for the presence of an infinite number of parallel universes. Alas, no empirical evidence has yet been discovered to underpin this exotic theory.
Many people question the usefulness of spending so much money on this enterprise. For me, the cooperation that has made the LHC possible is the finest example of what can be achieved if nations work together instead of making war. Some of the finest minds in Europe have collaborated to produce this monument to the human spirit. For if any one quality defines us as a species it is our endless curiosity. The questions surrounding the beginning of the universe have occupied theologians, scientists and philosophers for centuries. Step by step, physicists and mathematicians have pieced the jigsaw puzzle together, but a few pieces still remain. Perhaps the LHC will answer the remaining questions.
By creating conditions that existed a billionth of a second after the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, the scientists at Cern hope to study what the universe looked like at the beginning of time. In order to accelerate sub-atomic particles to 99.9 per cent of the speed of light, the entire 27 kilometre tunnel is currently being cooled to near absolute zero, and air is being pumped out to create a vacuum. In fact, when it has reached its lowest temperature, the tunnel will be the coldest place in the universe. The particles will then be fired in opposite directions, and accelerated by superconducting magnets. When they smash into each other, the violent collisions will be recorded by four detectors monitored by over five thousand scientists.
For those who think that such scientific quests are a waste of time and resources, it might come as a surprise to know that the Internet was first invented in Cern. In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, an obscure computer scientist, came up with an idea that would allow physicists to share information over a distributed net that he named the World Wide Web. In order to handle the incredible volume of data that will be generated by the LHC, a network of some 20,000 desktop computers distributed over 11 academic computing clusters will be connected to form a supercomputer of immense power. On the average day, the LHC will produce some 40,000 gigabytes of useful information.
Bizarrely, some individuals in Hawaii have moved a court to halt the Cern experiment on the grounds that it might generate black holes that would grow and swallow the world. Indeed, it is one of the hopes of scientists that black holes will be created, but they will be so tiny, and will last for such a brief moment, that there is no danger to the facility, or to the rest of us. Every time mankind seeks to explore the unknown, there are people who mutter warnings and predict the worst. Luckily for us, these doom-and-gloom merchants have not succeeded in halting the march of progress.
If a civilisation stops exploring new frontiers, it stagnates and ultimately dies. Over the last half century, as man has tried to step off this planet, there have been naysayers who have objected to these expensive expeditions on the grounds of expense. Their argument is based on the widespread poverty that blights our planet. But oddly, they do not object to the billions we spend on weapons and armies. So far, the US has blown over $600bn on its Iraq misadventure, and that’s only the official figure. And yet, few people have said the war should never have been fought on the basis of its cost.
The truth is that if we had done a cost-benefit analysis before undertaking every voyage of discovery, we would probably still be in the Stone Age today.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
A new gaming control interface based on thought control has been designed by a company called Emotiv:
http://www.physorg.com/news134708559.html
Soon, players will be able to control gameplay onscreen, using just their thoughts.
I wonder if such a technology could be adapted to the control of live weapon systems? Anybody remember that movie Firefox?
http://www.physorg.com/news134708559.html
Soon, players will be able to control gameplay onscreen, using just their thoughts.
I wonder if such a technology could be adapted to the control of live weapon systems? Anybody remember that movie Firefox?
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Gasoline from farm waste -
http://www.hcnonline.com/site/news.cfm? ... 9295&rfi=6
www.sustainablepower.com
http://www.hcnonline.com/site/news.cfm? ... 9295&rfi=6
www.sustainablepower.com
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Snake oil? Miracle that can drive a huge nail in the coffin of ME terrorists? You decide
http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/#post-33
There is going to be a time when solar is so cheap compared to grid power (in advanced countries like US/Japan/Germany to start with), with all the utility rebates and net metering etc., going on, old coal-fired power plants in the west would be dismantled at record scale and sold off to buyers in India! No need for nuclear deal!
http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/#post-33
There is going to be a time when solar is so cheap compared to grid power (in advanced countries like US/Japan/Germany to start with), with all the utility rebates and net metering etc., going on, old coal-fired power plants in the west would be dismantled at record scale and sold off to buyers in India! No need for nuclear deal!
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Now we have the super-material to beat all other super-materials, Graphene:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/new ... 9CBB0D0632
With this stuff, perhaps we could build giant blimps -- or, yes -- even giant pressure-inflated domes on Mars. Maybe we could build a giant solar sail or solar mirror with it, many kilometers wide.
I read the US Navy is looking to make stronger battleship hulls with it.
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/new ... 9CBB0D0632
With this stuff, perhaps we could build giant blimps -- or, yes -- even giant pressure-inflated domes on Mars. Maybe we could build a giant solar sail or solar mirror with it, many kilometers wide.
I read the US Navy is looking to make stronger battleship hulls with it.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
First successful fabrication of a graphene-on-silicon structure
This achievement may pave the way for the application of graphene to VLSI.
Realtime DNA Sequencing?
Will DNA sequencing results finally be made available immediately, in realtime?
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/21376/?a=f
The waveguide tech seems to be the new innovation, here.
Notice that it can do very long fragment reads.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/21376/?a=f
The waveguide tech seems to be the new innovation, here.
Notice that it can do very long fragment reads.
Turner calculates that with a camera that can track one million wells, a polymerase that operates at about 50 bases per hour (the current rate is 10), and full use of all the wells on the plate, Pacific Biosciences technology could read 100 gigabases an hour. That translates to full coverage of a human genome -- the same genome sequenced 15 times -- in just 15 minutes.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Breakthrough In Energy Storage: New Carbon Material Shows Promise Of Storing Large Quantities Of Renewable Electrical Energy
ScienceDaily (Sep. 17, 2008) — Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin have achieved a breakthrough in the use of a one-atom thick structure called "graphene" as a new carbon-based material for storing electrical charge in ultracapacitor devices, perhaps paving the way for the massive installation of renewable energies such as wind and solar power.
Unipolar CMOS: Semiconductor Breakthrough?
Here's a story about a new proposal from Yale Professor T P Ma, called Unipolar CMOS:
http://www.semiconductor.net/article/CA ... c=topstory
This may take the P out of P-N semiconductors, boosting performance by upto tens of times, depending upon the material. It could be quite a breakthrough in transistor design.
Podcast of interview with Prof TP Ma on Unipolar CMOS:
http://www.semiconductor.net/contents/m ... 3?nid=3666
http://www.semiconductor.net/article/CA ... c=topstory
This may take the P out of P-N semiconductors, boosting performance by upto tens of times, depending upon the material. It could be quite a breakthrough in transistor design.
Also, scaling could be relaxed, starting with perhaps 0.5 µm devices while still getting a performance advantage over 45 nm silicon CMOS.
...
We can get rid of the PMOS transistors and switch much faster.”
Podcast of interview with Prof TP Ma on Unipolar CMOS:
http://www.semiconductor.net/contents/m ... 3?nid=3666
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Have we heard of Dr Tapan Parikh now in UC Berkely and his innovations with cellphones? he was featured in Dec Esquire magazine. He is at the Berkeley Center for New media. I think he is a genius. Some of our VC types should get together with him and get his ideas to mainstream.
Link
and
http://www.ekgaon.com/files/indolink.pdf
Link
and
http://www.ekgaon.com/files/indolink.pdf
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Graphene could revolutionize ultracapacitors and electrical power systems:
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/22062/?a=f
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/22062/?a=f
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Arya Sumantra
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Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Google e-books on phone
'We are excited to announce the launch of a mobile version of Google Book Search, opening up over 1.5 million mobile public domain books in the US (and over half a million outside the US) for you to browse,' the company said.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
This sounds very nice on paper but has tons of issues. I know this as i work in MEMS and have interacted with Dr.Maharbiz's students when he was formely in UMich before joining BSAC.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
where did he pull the $100 number from? The cost of the Chip+fluorescent reagents+reading machine etc would definitely be much higher. He has not even demonstrated sequencing, only the ability to seperate large fragments. This is just trying to do the opposite of what Illumina, 454, solexa do. I am not holding my breath on this one.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Stem Cell Breakthrough:
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1342585
Now ordinary skin cells can be reprogrammed into stem cells using a special "jumping gene" containing 4 genes capable of resetting the genome into embryonic state.
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=1342585
Now ordinary skin cells can be reprogrammed into stem cells using a special "jumping gene" containing 4 genes capable of resetting the genome into embryonic state.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Carbon Nanotube Nanostitching Makes Composites of Airplane Skins Ten Times Stronger At Weakest Point for Nominal Cost
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/03/carbon ... makes.html
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/03/carbon ... makes.html
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Here's an interesting new opposing piston engine concept:
http://engineeringtv.com/blogs/etv/arch ... ngine.aspx
http://engineeringtv.com/blogs/etv/arch ... ngine.aspx
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Amazing breakthrough innovation in battery tech!
MIT Technology Review
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Ultra-High-Power Lithium-Ion Batteries
New materials from MIT could power laser weapons or give hybrid cars jackrabbit acceleration.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
More on this battery breakthrough, with additional technical details:
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090311/ ... 9.156.html
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090311/ ... 9.156.html
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Non-precious Metal Catalyst Attains Platinum-like Performance:
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22386/?a=f
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22386/?a=f
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
Graphene Nano-ribbons Made Easily from Nanotubes:
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22503/?a=f
Amazing, now semi-conducting graphene nano-ribbons can be made in bulk, simply by cleaving open carbon nanotubes lengthwise.
http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/22503/?a=f
Amazing, now semi-conducting graphene nano-ribbons can be made in bulk, simply by cleaving open carbon nanotubes lengthwise.
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
New Nanocrystals Show Potential For Cheap Lasers, New Lighting
ScienceDaily (May 11, 2009) — For more than a decade, scientists have been frustrated in their attempts to create continuously emitting light sources from individual molecules because of an optical quirk called "blinking," but now scientists at the University of Rochester have uncovered the basic physics behind the phenomenon, and along with researchers at the Eastman Kodak Company, created a nanocrystal that constantly emits light.
Full story
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
DARPA in the US is researching various fundamental breakthrough technologies that would radically bolster US capabilities:
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/41935
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/41935
Re: Leapfrog / Disruptive Technologies
A simpler method for achieving invisibility has been developed, which does not resort to metamaterials:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/05/simple ... loped.html
http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/05/simple ... loped.html