Friday, August 31, 2012

Nanoelectronics just got smaller - Graphene and Boron Nitride in atom-thick semiconductor fabrication

Cornell University researchers have found a way to stack Graphene and Boron Nitride layers and produce integrated circuits that are nanometers thick. The resulting electronic chips would be slimmer, smaller and flexible. The fabrication process sounded pretty similar to present day IC fabrication methods, involving etching and lithography to fuse the layers together.

There are still huge kinks in the technology to be corrected before this can become a reality, but the possibilities in applications are endless. This will be a huge breakthrough in flexible and transparent electronics - reminds me of Minority Report, although that's not the first movie to show the possible use of transparent electronics.

Read more here.


Sunday, August 26, 2012

The (not so) secrets of American food industry!

When making money becomes the sole purpose of business, ethics and humanity goes out of the window. Compassion for animals is the last thing people have in mind. The powerful US meat, milk and egg industry  in collusion with government agencies responsible for supervision of this sector are simply showing how low they are willing to stoop to get rich.

Al Jazeera reports on the horrendous animal abuse going on in the name of industry and profit-making in the US.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Redhead Girl - Drawing with ballpoint pens!

This is what the description of the following image said: 

"Redhead Girl is an amazing portrait that was drawn, believe it or not, entirely with only 6 different colored ball point pens plus black. This artist has truly mastered the art of using ballpoint pens as shown in this piece and any other in their gallery." 

Amazing? I know! More about it at DeviantArt.


Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Solar Energy - future or just a dream?

We are in desperate search of clean renewable energy and out of all available prospects, solar energy is surely the best thing we have. The drive to put a hold on the continued damage we have so enthusiastically done to our climate and environment since the Industrial Revolution is recently seeing positive results - big tech companies are investing more time and resurces in developing solar energy technologies. Panasonic has been recently awarded the IEEE Corporate Innovation Award for developing HIT. They have improved efficiency of heterojunction solar cells up to 22%, which is actually quite an achievement.

I still see solar energy being used as much as conventional sources as a sweet but distant dream. Projects like this one in the Maldives are a bright start, but that's all. The technology is still new, undesirably lacking efficiency, disturbingly expensive, and most importantly, still not as popular as many would like to assert - specially with governments and corporations who thrive on the milking of the fossil fuel industry. Maybe all we need is a worldwide 'Energy-Source Spring'!

Magic on Strings - Street violinist Bryson Andres


Quoting Dalai Lama on Modern Education

I'm not a big fan of Dalai Lama or his teachings. The idea of absolute peace and harmony is dysfunctional. The world simply does not work that way. Well, that's a whole discussion - one not very attractive to me right now. But here is a pretty accurate quote from him on modern education - I could not have agreed more, at least on the first part:

Modern education is premised strongly on materialistic values. It is vital that when educating our children's brains that we do not neglect to educate their hearts, a key element of which has to be the nurturing of our compassionate nature.
For those interested, here is Dalai Lama's Google+ page.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

The Femto-Camera - watch light travel

Taking pictures at a rate of 1 trillionth of a second may not sound like a huge deal, but that's the point. It has nothing to do with what you hear, it is all about what you see. This new technology actually makes it possible to capture the motion of a photon (light 'particle') as it travels through space! You have to watch this video to have any resemblance of an idea of what I am talking about.

And later in the video, the speaker throws the bomb! The technology can be used, as his team at MIT has experimentally shown, to see around corners! How does that work? Just watch it!

Honestly I don't care about the promises of numerous practical applications in road safety, medical science or any other field this technology may usher in. I just love the idea of sitting in front of a screen and bathing in the joy of watching events that we can never imagine capturing with the naked eye, yet these events are as regular as the sun rising and setting every day.



How a word gets into the dictionary

Ever wondered how a word gets into the dictionary? Here's a little video from the editor/s of Merriam-Webster Online on this:


A comment below the video on youtube says: Does a word ever come out of a dictionary? Inquisitive, eh? But I think the answer is simple and obvious. Maybe they'll make a video on that some time. Oh well, they did: