Those Crazy Japanese

Greetings, campers! Yes, I am back. I thought no one was reading this, but occasionally someone does. Besides, it is a good way for me to keep track of my Internet wanderings. In light of the talk about space elevators, one cannot ignore the dreams of one Japanese construction company. The XSEED 4000 is a Utopian skyscraper modeled after Mt. Fuji and would be 4000m tall! Well, we all have to dream! Also see links to other proposed super buildings by clicking here! Keep those cards and letters coming. Please comment or email. I have to use to verification system to stop the pesky robots that cruise blogs and leave messages offering me mortgages and other less mundane things.

Technology Review: Special Reports: 10 Emerging Technologies

Technology Review: Special Reports: 10 Emerging Technologies

Read about how the Internet is about to drown in digital video, new DVD technology, nanohealing, nanocharging solar and more!

Technology Review: Mining for Cheap Flights

Technology Review: Mining for Cheap Flights: "On a flight to his brother's wedding in 2001, Oren Etzioni discovered that the people sitting next to him had bought their tickets later than he did, yet had paid less. For some, this could have been an infuriating revelation, but Etzioni didn't get mad; as a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, in Seattle, he got inspired. 'I thought, 'Why don't I collect historical data [on airfares] and use that to anticipate ticket prices?''"

Trying to find cheap flights, read this article. Try Farecast
Also, try Kayak.

Let me know if they work!

Plasma process converts garbage into clean energy | The Green Geek

Plasma process converts garbage into clean energy | The Green Geek

I may have posted something similar in the past, but this site really lays it out. Garbage to Clean Energy...almost the holy grail of waste/energy! The site is also pretty nifty, "The Green Geek"!. Also, see the Sunday, March 25 2007 Oregonian Newspaper about the conversion of the Silicon Forest from semiconductors to solar panels in the article described below.

"New solar cell plant in Hillsboro may usher in better times
German SolarWorld's plant may help bring recovery after a high-tech slump"


http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/stories/index.ssf?/base/news/1174631106288630.xml&coll=7

http://tinyurl.com/27jpb4

Similarities in making solar chips and microchips
Friday, March 23, 2007
The Oregonian

Many Oregon chip-industry veterans possess skills that readily transfer to the solar business, piquing the excitement of state economic officials.

Five categories of production-operator positions common to both industries:

Crystal growing: The same process of growing silicon-crystal ingot is used in both industries, differing mainly in the purity of the polysilicon raw material. The steps: melting and chemically doping polysilicon, dipping seed crystal, extracting ingot from molten polysilicon. Solar usually grows ingots of smaller diameter, but three times longer (about 3 feet).

Grinding: In both industries, ingots are ground to remove surface irregularities. The major differences are grinding specifications and speeds.

Wafer slicing: Both industries use similar wire saw machines to cut ingot into wafers. Solar wafers are about as thin as a business card; chip wafers are about three times as thick. Using longer ingot, the solar business cuts about four times as many wafers at a time.

Diffusion: Both industries turn wafers into an electrical device with a positive and negative side. Typically, phosphorus is diffused into the wafers. The process forms an oxide layer, which must be removed.

Printing: Many solar businesses use a screening technique to print a grid pattern on both sides of cells. In the chip industry, photolithography is extremely complex -- much more so than in solar.

-- SolarWorld Group




http://www.oregonlive.com/printer/printer.ssf?/base/factboxes/11746329338810.xml

http://tinyurl.com/2pv73x

Seed: Science is Culture

Seed: Science is Culture

This is a magazine that even I can understand. I have a subscription for it. The print edition is quite dramatic.

Science and technology information from Scientific American

Science and technology information from Scientific American

This is a link to SciAm's great website. If you do podcasts, look for the links for the daily and weekly SciAm podcasts.

Strange Moon Facts

Strange Moon Facts

Strange Stuff...."The Moon is the Rosetta Stone of the Planets"

Asteroid threat demands response, experts warn - space - 17 February 2007 - New Scientist Space

Asteroid threat demands response, experts warn - space - 17 February 2007 - New Scientist Space

Technology Review: A Practical Use for Waste Methane

Technology Review: A Practical Use for Waste Methane

Finally, something to do with Cow burps and Farts!

WAVE ENERGY

Previous posts here dealt with wave energy projects off of the
Oregon Coast

The above is a link to an Oregon government website on the current wave projects. Also, see my November 2005 posts by on Oregon wave energy by clicking here.

There was also a recent story on a BBC technology website about a different kind
of wave project off the coast of Portugal named Pelamis. The Pelamis is a sea snake, something
the new Portugal device resembles. The European Union has an aggressive alternative
energy program that includes wave energy. Click here for a link to the BBC World Podcast.

Speaking of energy, it appears that while Al Gore refused to rise to the bait at the Oscar
Awards ceremony and announce for President, former President Jimmy
Carter is bugging his so much about running, Gore is hiding from his calls. See a related story here.



On a closing note, I have hardly been keeping this blog up. I know, however,
that there are some readers. Please comment.

Telegraph | Business | PC World announces the end of the floppy disk

Telegraph | Business | PC World announces the end of the floppy disk

Read this article from the Daily Telegraph. One of Europe's largest PC stores is liquidating its stock of floppies. As the article notes, even a HD disk is not big enough to hold a song or a high resolution photograph. Doom! Does anyone have a 5 1/4" drive available? I need to save some of my File Scavenger very old data. Please email me.

YouTube - Hiroshima Atomic Bomb CGI Re-enactment

YouTube - Hiroshima Atomic Bomb CGI Re-enactment

Spooky, Scary, Intense reenactment from the BBC.

Time Travel by Ronald L. Mallett

Time Travel by Ronald L. Mallett

Serious actual research into Time Travel. This physicist lost his father at 12 years old and began a life long search to enable him to go back in time and warn him about taking care of himself to avoid a heart attack. The irony is that it seems that if time travel is invented, one could not return to a time before it's invention!

See these previous posts:

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

What's done is done… or is it? - fundamentals - 28 September 2006 - New Scientist

New Scientist sets out to discover if the future can change the past - welcome to "retrocausality"

"Ever wish you could reach back in time and change the past? Maybe you'd like to take back an unfortunate voicemail message, or rephrase what you just said to your boss. Or perhaps you've even dreamed of tweaking the outcome of yesterday's lottery to make yourself the winner."

Read this for the description of a fascinating experiment.

Researchers Say Prehistoric Extinctions in Australia Were Mans Work, Not Natures - The Lede - Breaking News - New York Times Blog

Researchers Say Prehistoric Extinctions in Australia Were Mans Work, Not Natures - The Lede - Breaking News - New York Times Blog

A Dingo Ate My Baby!

He's back! Read above link to see how time really works! Also, see the Outsider's song, "Time won't Let Me Be"

Movie Review: Children of Men
The above review is from the Hollywood Reporter. I do not totally agree. I am a fan of the author of the original book, P.D. James. I really liked the book. I now see why all of the ads for the movie did not tout the author. She probably did not want them to. As a movie, it was pretty good, but not at all what I remember the book to be. I was disappointed.

Now, going to SF books (note: P.D. James is a high class mystery writer and not a SF writer), be sure and read books by the Australian author Greg Egan. He is a computer programmer and holds a math degree from the University of Western Australia.

So far, I have read Teranesia , a very good book based on genetics. I tried reading Schild's Ladder, but it was too highly mathematical for my meager mind. I am now reading Diaspora, a book about computer evolution, consciousness and intelligence. Be sure and see Egan's web page at http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/

Hypography Science Forums - TIME EXPLAINED (v2.1)

Hypography Science Forums - TIME EXPLAINED (v2.1)
"A Dingo Ate my Baby!"
http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/TERANESIA/TERANESIA.html

Mirror gives Italian village its place in the sun - Yahoo! News

Mirror gives Italian village its place in the sun - Yahoo! News

This is a great Reuters/Yahoo Story. Click above for the full article.

"A village in the Italian Alps is finally basking in winter sunlight thanks to a giant mirror installed on a mountain top to reflect the sun's rays into the main square."

SPACE.com -- NASA announces discovery of evidence of water on Mars

SPACE.com -- NASA announces discovery of evidence of water on Mars

See, I told you so! When to I get to leave for Mars? Also, don't miss the three planet display Sunday morning.

"Sunday, 12/10 Mercury-Jupiter, 11:30 a.m. Mercury, having passed Mars yesterday, grazes Jupiter by a tenth of a degree this morning. Look to the southeast about 45 minutes before sunrise. Mars, much fainter than the other two, is about a degree to the right. This is a very nice sight, but one requiring a low horizon; clear, dark skies; and good eyesight.

Monday, 12/11
Mars-Jupiter, 7:00 p.m.
Although they have been close for several days, today marks the closest approach between Mars and Jupiter, at slightly less than one degree. This is a daylight occurrence, but they appear nearly as close before down on Monday and Tuesday, low to the southeast."

Above from Space.com "Night Sky"

Image from www.duncans.tv/2006/03/

NASA - Mars Global Surveyor

NASA - Mars Global Surveyor: "11.21.06 -- Mars Global Surveyor May Be at Mission's End NASA's Mars Global Surveyor has likely finished its operating career. The spacecraft has served the longest and been the most productive of any mission ever sent to the red planet."

Ack! How could this happen? Doom? Well, no, actually, it lasted a lot longer than scheduled and continued working even with many malfunctions. NASA is pointing the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at the spacecraft to see if they can get a picture and guess at what is wrong and try to fix it.

Technology Review: Hyperlinking Reality via Phones

Technology Review: Hyperlinking Reality via Phones: "Nokia researchers are working on a system that allows physical objects to be identified and connected to the Internet through mobile-phone screens."

Interesting this. I read a Scientific American article about this system a few years ago.

Fires in Far Northern Forests to Have Cooling, Not Warming, Effect

Fires in Far Northern Forests to Have Cooling, Not Warming, Effect

II just love all of this contradiction. Are we doomed or not doomed to global warming. What will more CO2 do? It was commonly thought that seeding the oceans with iron would increase production of organisms that would make the ocean a bigger CO2 sink. However, this may not be the case. See SOFeX2002
See also a National Academy of Science article here.

I am confused. Please help!



In a lighter vein, poetry from Ronald Hoffman, Nobel Laurete in Chemistry:

Below the fold, (http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2006/04/a_poetrywriting_chemist_for_na.php) Hoffman's poem "An unusual state of matter":

In the beach sands of Kerala,
abraded from the gneiss, in the stream sands of North Carolina
one finds monazite, the solitary
mineral. In its crystalline beginning
there was order, there was a lattice.
And the atoms - cerium, lanthanum,
thorium, yttrium, phosphate - danced
round their predestined sites,
tethered by the massless springs
of electrostatics
and by their neighbors' bulk.
They vibrated,
and sang
in quantized harmony.
to absent listeners, to me.

But the enemy is within.
The radioactive thorium's
nervous nuclei explode
in the random thrum
of a hammer
of no Norse god.

The invisible searchlights
of hell, gamma rays,
flash down the lattice.
Alpha particles, crazed nuclear
debris, are thrust on megavolt
missions of chance destruction.
The remnant atom, transmuted, recoils,
freeing itself from its lattice point,
cannonballs awry through
a crowded dance floor.
There are no exits to run to.
In chain collisions of disruption
neighbors are knocked from their sites.
The crystal swells from once limpid
long-range, short-range order
to yellow-brown amorphousness.
Faults,
defects,
vacancies,
dislocations,
interstitials,
undefine the metamict state.

(From W. Carleton and C. Bond, eds., Bound, Cornell University, 1986.)

.

Technology Review: Charging Batteries without Wires

Nikola Tesla's ideas finally get a break! (Though I guess that Alternating Current idea did catch on!)

Technology Review: Charging Batteries without Wires

Tired of plugging in to charge your batteries. This is the Bluetooth of battery charging.

On another Science note, having the Demo's in charge in Congress might hopefully reverse the slide into the gross politicalization (a word?) of Science. One major victory in the war against superstition was the defeat of Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum. See the article summary in the magazine Science. Unfortunately, some other senators also support ID, including Arizona Senator McCain. See the article in the New York Sun newspaper. A more comprehensive discussion of the impact of the election on science can be found at: Democratic Victory and Scientific Research

Well, that's all for now, folks! Keep those cards and letters coming. Hope the deer hunting remains good in Minnesota!

SPACE.com -- Universe Might be Bigger and Older than Expected

SPACE.com -- Universe Might be Bigger and Older than Expected

Just when you thought that cosmologists had figured out the age of the universe to be about 13.7 billion years old and 156 billion light years wide, the Hubble Constant changes. What? How can it change if it is a constant? Well, the value of the constant has changed due to new and more accurate ways of measuring the distance to a binary star system in M33.

Well, in a somewhat lighter vein: "LONDON (Nov 8, 1996 1:48 p.m. EST) - Scientists searching for one of the fundamental keys to the universe found they had been beaten to the answer by the comic cult novel "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"; and the answer was 42." This is from the Humor Archives

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Sun probe sends back first data

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Sun probe sends back first data

Japan is one of those countries one does not always here about in regards to space exploration. They have a number of current and planned missions, though the one they sent to Mars several years ago failed. The Hinode mission described in the article linked above is meant to observe the sun. It is in a sun-synchronous polar orbit of polar orbit is about 600 km up. The Hinode mission is in conjunction with NASA and the European Space Agency. The link to NASA talks about plans to fix the Hubble Space Telescope discussed in an earlier post. It was launched by JAXA, the Japanese space agency. The Japanese are also involved in lunar, planetary and asteroid exploration. One of their projects, HAYABUSA) is a sample return mission from an asteroid. Click this SpaceRef.com link for an article about possible Japanese manned flight.

While in Asia, you might also be interested in the Chinese manned space flight program that is already operational. This is the link to the official China National Space Administration. India also has an ambitious space program and has flown astronauts on flights launched by the U.S. and Russia. One of its astronauts was killed in the Challenger disaster. This link will take you to an article about current space missions such as communications satellites and will soon launch and unmanned lunar mission.

Who knows what set me off on this strange mission. I will leave you all with a link to international space law. That will be a topic of future babblings!

Sayonara!

Orbiter to Look for Lost-To-Mars Probes - Yahoo! News

Orbiter to Look for Lost-To-Mars Probes - Yahoo! News

As noted in earlier posts, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has entered its working orbit after a long series of aerobraking maneuvers that placed it in its working orbit around Mars. One of it's cameras may help find previous spacecraft that failed to call home. ( Mars Polar Lander , Beagle 2)
MRO will also look for potential landing sites for future unmanned and manned missions.

In other Mars news, the two vehicles exploring the surface of Mars (Spirit, Opportunity) are years beyond their life expectancy and still working. They are about to start their second Mars Spring. One, Opportunity, will explore the Victoria Crater (picture taken with the MRO Hi-Rise Camera). See also Google Mars.

In news that won't mean much to anyone not on the U.S. West Coast or somewhere in the middle of oceans, the planet Mercury will soon transit the sun. Telescopes will be set up at OMSI in Portland to watch this event, weather permitting.

Finally, SETI is still in business. Originally, the radio telescopes were tuned to the wavelength of hydrogen gas with the belief that any civilization would choose the frequency most likely to penetrate the fog of space. However, over time and distance, this frequency shifts. The next generation of radio telescopes will be better able to take this into account in the search for intelligent signals from other civilizations. If you wish to donate computer time to this search, go to SETI @ Home.

The U.C. Berkeley computer geeks hosting this program also run a system known as Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC). Here, you can volunteer your computer time to SETI, math, biology, medicine, astronomy, physics or earth sciences. I've been a SETI @ Home participant for a number of years. However, to my knowledge, I have yet to analyze a "WOW" signal.

Well, that is all for today folks. Keep those Pink Flamingos in your yards!

Cosmopoly

Cosmopoly

Okay, this is a link to a new blog, Cosmopoly, that I started when the old Cosmical blog crashed. well, the old one is back. Click her for the two days you might have missed dealing with Mars and Hubble.

Today, however, is dedicated to the demise of the Pink Flamingo lawn ornament. One of my favorites, though my wife will not allow me to have one. I had Pink Flamingo shower curtains before I married.

RIP: Pink Flamingo, 1957-2006

The above story is published in a South Florida newspaper, naturally. " The pink plastic flamingo, a Florida-inspired icon that has been reviled as kitschy bad taste and revered as retro cool, is dead at age 49."

Pink Flamingo Desktop Wallpaper, click here
Warning, you will have to edit out fake desktop icons or you may confuse yourself! You might also go to a website specializing in Pink Flamingo items for sale. Click here!

Finally, you can't miss Pink Flamingos, the John Waters movie! Also see Sex Vixens From Outer Space in which the characters stay at the Pink Flamingo Hotel or the ever popular Maltese Flamingo!
However, the later does not appear to deal with flamingos at all, but, hey, it's in the title!
Well, that is all for now!

RIP: Pink Flamingo, 1957-2006: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

RIP: Pink Flamingo, 1957-2006: South Florida Sun-Sentinel