Science
Monday, May 22, 2006
Question Everything
1:10 PMThursday, October 13, 2005
A new paradigm in computing?
5:25 PM
Stan
Williams from HP Labs' QSR
group was here yesterday, to deliver the Keynote speech at the 6th Nano
Day.
He presented some really interesting research that they've
been doing at HP, including a way of doing logic where the information is
not represented by voltage, but by resistance. (The were initially trying
for crossbar memory, but recently realized that two adjacent contacts
could function as a latch)
If you know your Boolean algebra, you'd
know what he meant by "creating a NAND function using three Implication
gates" (or something to that effect.) And if you know your chip design,
you probably also understand that if you have a NAND gate, you can build a
universal computer. (I don't, understand, that is... I'll have to take it
on face value for now.) The remarkable thing is, this 'computer' does not
need any semiconductors - it's built entirely out of conductors with
resistive junctions (think crossbar memory architecture)
You can
read the related publication "The crossbar latch: Logic value storage,
restoration, and inversion in crossbar circuits" here
(if you have access to Journal of Applied Physics...). Also see the
Applied Physics A March 2005 special "Nanoelectronics"
issue, where the QSR group has 20 papers.
HP stock
is currently near 52 week highs and the P/E is 26, but if they're going to
build the next generation of computers, that might work out to be cheap.
Finally,
Feynman Lectures on Computation
Thursday, September 08, 2005
The Genographic Project
4:58 PM
Interesting stuff at the Genographic
Project webpages - you can track the history of human
migration as it is currently known, and even pay and find out your own
genomic heritage!
Also
read about ongoing brain evolution in a one
of the two
recent NYTimes articles.
BTW, do you have the bug-me-not extension installed on your Firefox?
Thursday, August 11, 2005
The Physics of Everyday Life
5:13 PM
Found this fantastic page today: How
Things Work It's maintained by a physics professor in the University
of Virginia. Do check it out.
You can no longer have your own
questions answered, at least not for free, but the ones that are already
on the page should cover whatever you want to ask ;)
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Hey Steve,
11:29 AM
sign up here!
Read
about the Project
Steve. (more links here)
On
a related note, see these comic strips: 1,
2.
(Thanks, Sam!); and of course, thanks to Dubya
for inspiring this post. :-|
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
Guns Germs and Steel
12:25 PM
Keep an eye out for Guns
Germs and Steel coming to PBS (sneak
peek) on July 11, 18 and 25 as a TV
series. I suspect the series website will have more interactive stuff
soon, and once it has aired, probably a webcast of the series too. I
haven't read the book yet, but it has won a Pulitzer, among other praise;
so definitely worth putting on the reading list.
Also see: an
interview with the author here.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Global Warming
6:39 PMRead the Joint science academies’ statement: Global response to climate change. It's the gist of our scientific understanding about how global climate is going to change ofver the next few decades, and how we should respond.
- ChinmayThursday, June 02, 2005
Birdflu
3:09 PM
An uncharacteristically thought-provoking and cogent article in El Reg about the real risks from Avian Influenza.
Interesting quote - "By definition, 'news' means that it hardly ever happens. If a risk is in the news, then it's probably not worth worrying about. When something is no longer reported - automobile deaths, domestic violence - when it's so common that it's not news, then you should start worrying." - Bruce Schneier
Also see the Nature Focus collection of articles on the same subject.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Epigenetic Adaptation - Fascinating!
8:59 PM
A NYTimes article
elaborates on a paper
in Medical Hypotheses- The sweet thing about Type 1 diabetes: A
cryoprotective evolutionary adaptation.
In simple words, Type I
diabetes* was a adaptive response to rapid temperature drop in Northern
Europe, and the change wasn't in the genetic information, but in
expression!
*In Type I diabetes, the immune system attacks insuling
producing cells, thus decreasing insulin, and increasing blood glucose
levels. Increased blood glucose means that the freezing point of the
tissues is lowered. TI diabetes is very common among descendants of
Northern Europeans, and is very rare among descendants of populations who
never had to face the minor ice age.
Friday, April 29, 2005
Arrgghhhh! My Brain is burning!
7:11 PM
Haven't blogged in a while, but this seemed important enough that I had to
get it out.
I came across this page about 'Utility
Fog' (In fact, I'd heard of the concept for the first time only a few
days ago while reading 'Age
of the Spiritual Machines' (that books itself is worth another entry))
In short a Utility Fog is this
- "Imagine a microscopic robot. It has a
body about the size of a human cell and 12 arms sticking out in all
directions. A bucketfull of such robots might form a 'robot crystal' by
linking their arms up into a lattice structure. Now take a room, with
people, furniture, and other objects in it -- it's still mostly empty air.
Fill the air completely full of robots. The robots are called Foglets and
the substance they form is Utility Fog, which may have many useful medical
applications. And when a number of utility foglets hold hands with their
neighbors, they form a reconfigurable array of 'smart matter.'" - J.
Storrs Hall
Now I suppose other people have aired their
objections to this before, but here are mine -
- If these particles are smaller than dust (Utility foglets are proposed to be ~100 microns, dust is anything below 500 microns), how do they overcome Brownian motion in air?
- If a room is filled with foglets waiting to be assembled, how do you avoid breathing them in and accumulating them in your lungs?
- What is the source of energy? (counterintuitively: random thermal energy)
- What is the mechanism of motion? (even more counterintuitively: Brownian motion, see below)
- Even if the foglets had energy and motion, how much time do you think would be required for fog-objects to transform? For anything other than superficial - presumably color and micro-texture - changes, it'll be rather slow.
On a related note, here's a '95 Wired article Reality Check: The Future of Nanotechnology It's funny to read some of the predictions in there - According to a professor at UConn (at that time in Syracuse), we're supposed to have Molecular assemblers now. Even Smalley thinks we should have some kind of cell repair by 2010. I'll keep my doubts until I see 2010.
I suppose there are dreamers in every new field, but what is frightening is that these new dreamers are not sticking to writing Sci-Fi, but calling themselves scientists (AFAIK, Drexler, Hall are not Professors/Scientist in any institutes but those that they founded themselves (IMM, Foresight), Kurzweil is atleast a proven entrepreneur, and frighteningly, Merkel is a GaTech professor, and a director at Alcor!)
Now one may think that Heavier than Air flying machines and Land travel above 40mph were also ridiculed based on the understanding of science at those times, but
a) our understanding of science is much more empirical and rational,
b)the objections that I have are based on some very real scientific principles and most importantly,
c) these dreamers are not doing any science research, but only propounding dreams to an easily gullible general population
I suppose we'll see soon enough... Oh, also -
- Artificial Intelligence
- Space Travel, Planetary colonization
- Superconductivity
- Flying Cars!
Edited on: Saturday, April 30, 2005 12:18 PM
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Monday, March 14, 2005
Ovonic memory devices
7:15 PM
Old idea [1968, by Stanford Ovshinsky] finally near workable -
Nature
news
reports -
... a material called antimony telluride, which starts off in
an 'amorphous' state, with all its atoms jumbled up. But a small pulse of
electricity provides enough heat to make the atoms line up into rows,
creating an ordered, crystalline arrangement. A second, higher-voltage
pulse melts the crystalline structure, resetting the material back to its
jumbled state.
A computer could tell the difference between the two
because the crystalline phase has a much lower electrical resistance
The approach has huge potential, says Matthias Wuttig, a materials
scientist at the RWTH Aachen University in Germany. "Imagine you could
start your laptop and have it ready for you to work in less than a
second," he says, "or that you were able to record and watch full-length
movies on your mobile phone."
Sunday, February 13, 2005
Knotty problems!
5:28 PM
A couple of days back, I had the good fortune to attend Dr. Brian Green's lecture on "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality.". It was mostly a the same material as from the PBS program - The Elegant Universe [which you can actually watch online], and presumably, from his books [which I haven't read]. Nonetheless, it was great to see and hear a leading physicist of our day in person.
I couldn't ask him any questions though... so I'm going to post them here. Of course, since I know nothing of the current status of string theory, I don't know whether these questions are still questions for everybody or just for me. Feel free to answer them, or to ask more questions...
- How does matter interact with space-time and warp it at the large scale? [not strictly related to string theory, but arising from the lecture.]
- What 'form' of energy are the strings?
- or - When mass is converted to energy, what is happening in terms of strings?
- or - Can we convert energy to mass? [this has perhaps been done before string theory?] If we can, how is that happening in terms of strings?
- If space rips, and there are no strings around to 'heal' it, then what? [I suppose we can always invoke virtual strings, like virtual particle pairs]
- How do strings 'calm' space over Planck lengths? Is Planck length effectively a smallest unit of space - making space discreet, rather than continuous? [Possibly, but at lengths far smaller than Planck length..]
- What would happen to the strings inside a black hole? [Apparently, a singularity can't be smaller than a string...but can multiple strings be packed in the same space?]
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Distributed Computing
1:44 PM
More and more computing intensive research projects are utilizing the 'Volunteer your CPU cycles' approach of SETI@Home [which I've never ran, I don't think it's a significant quest as of now...]
Last year I used to run grid.org's cancer research program, but this year I've switched to ClimatePrediction's whole earth climate simulations [they recently published [pdf] in Nature!]. There's also Foldin@Home which explores the protein folding problems - partly to understand protein mis-folding diseases like
bovine spongiform encephalopathy [mad cow disease to us mortals], cystic fibrosis, and Alzheimer's, among many others.
Now there is a newcomer [yet to be launched] - Einstein@Home! It plans to "search for spinning neutron stars (also called pulsars) using data from the LIGO and GEO gravitational wave detectors" whatever that means! ;) - here's an introductory article on news@nature.com.
Take your pick! [tell me if you know some more, I'll add them to my list - look in the left hand column...]
Interestingly, Google has started helping out [having considerable experience in running DC] by offering a DC Client bundled with their Toolbar. Right now you can run Folding@Home via the toolbar, but they're saying that there will be more.
Tuesday, January 18, 2005
We now know...
1:32 PM
.. that protons flying at just 1 part in 1022 slower than light - and consequently having the same kinetic energy as golf balls in flight [nature.com] [which have 30 orders of magnitude more rest mass!!!] originate when magnetic fields in colliding galactic clusters become warped and set up humungous particle accelerators.
... that the tiny fluctuations in the distribution of matter that nucleated the first galaxies are still observable [nature.com] in the current distribution of galaxies, and that just 18% of the universe is made of particles that we know - the rest is dark matter.
... that due to Global Dimming [bbc] - one of the unnoticed cooling effects of particulate air pollution [the average temperature in the northern hemisphere actually went down a little in the 70's] we might have underestimated the heating effects of green house gases. If that is so, global warming predictions will have to be revised. RealClimate discusses this in detail.
... that Nuclear energy is safe and renewable [newkerala]. We owe this last revelation to George Bush [of course!]. Also see the SierraClub RAW article.
What a fantastic week for science!
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
Faith, Proof, Science
3:56 PM
Excellent piece in NYTimes [reg. req.] - "What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?" This was the question posed to scientists, futurists and other creative thinkers..."
Among the answers -
- [Pervasive] Irrationality [A Psychologist]
- Evolution and Natural Selection phenomena [An Evolutionary Biologist, A Psychologist]
- the existance [A Neuroscientist]and non-existance [A Psychologist] human and animal consciousness
- the existance [A Psychologist] and non-existance [A Neuroscientist] of god
-
Oh, and...
- True Love [A psychologist]
Edited on: Wednesday, January 05, 2005 4:01 PM
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Thursday, December 09, 2004
Sorry, busy...
1:59 PM
Haven't blogged in a while... I was busy with several things - end of the semester grading, setting up a new yahoogroup, reading, and of course, research....
I'll try and work on the nanotech hype/potential piece I promised Anya a long time ago...
Meanwhile, chek out The Dead Parrot Society. They are saying a lot of things I want to say, but am too lazy to...
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Beginnings
4:28 PM
Ask the experts: how to get hired in NatureJobs - Tips by leaders in academia and industry for people looking for research based jobs.
The gourmet food market expands [NYTimes].
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Entirely unrelated stuff
1:32 PM
Microsoft's new idea for becoming userfriendly seems to be this! WTH??? [I got it when GMail was acting up and FF said "Connection timed out when trying to contact..."]
In other news - "A US study found parents who were married or living together before conception were slightly more likely to have a boy than those who were not."
and
"Pregnant women carrying boys tend to eat more than those carrying girls, research has found."
Both of which can be explained by the long known fact that female embryos are more robust than male ones, and thus more likely to survive full term even in unfavourable conditions.
Monday, September 27, 2004
Choose one - Christian/Science
12:28 AM
Those looking to the US for technological innovation and scientific leadership in the 21st century [OK, enough with the 21st already, we need a new mirage to chase!] can stop now. It's not gonna happen. Trust me.
Via the pages of one of my friend's advisor* and his advisor* [--- more fun links here!] I reached this amazing page - Fellowship Baptist Creation Science Fair 2001.
Elementary school kids won prizes for such amusing projects like
"She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them... conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey"
and "how specifically complicated pine cones are and how they reveal God's design in nature."
Middle school children were far more scientific and demonstrated that
"life cannot come from non-life through natural processes - placed all the non-living ingredients of life - carbon (a charcoal briquet), purified water, and assorted minerals (a multi-vitamin) - into a sealed glass jar. The jar was left undisturbed, being exposed only to sunlight, for three weeks. No life evolved." 'Elementary', Holmes would have said!
High schoolers, of course, with their superior ability for rational thought, greater knowledge of the physical sciences, and apparently, greater ability for brutality, tackled such mind numbing concepts as "Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria" [Christians for Untreatable Diseases?];
"Maximal Packing Of Rodentia Kinds: A Feasibility Study" [No, you'll never guess what that means, our minds just don't operate that way] - "The Rodentia [using fancy words makes stuff more scientific of course; I know I've done it!] were placed in a cage with dimensions proportional to a section of the Ark.... Although there was little room left in the cage, all Rodentia were able to move just enough to ward off muscle atrophy."
and
"Thermodynamics Of Hell Fire" [Now that's something I can't even imagine how to start thinking about. By a long shot. My brain will probably crash if I try that!]
There are more links on this page that promise to show you "a wonderful scale model of a section of Noah's Ark made with popsicle sticks" [Yes, it's a little mentioned fact, but the whole sentence goes - 'On the seventh day He rested; and set up a popsicle factory.]
*Before you not visit the Advisors' pages and form a negative opinion of them, let me clarify that they are actually against this stuff too. They probably laughed as hard as I did too. So there is still hope, though perhaps only a fool's hope.
Edited on: Monday, September 27, 2004 12:31 AM
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Thursday, September 16, 2004
My Research
2:20 PM
So here's a short video from the National Cancer Institute that explains in simple terms how nanotechnology will work against cancer.
In the next video, I think they'll feature my work :)