I hate the way TV stations clutter up programming–especially news programming–with crawls and sidebars and temperatures and God knows what else. And now I have scientific evidence to support my curmudgeonly grumbling.
Artificial retina undergoing tests
This is cool–opthamologists are conducting trials of an artificial retina for people with severe vision loss due to diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. In an earlier trial, all 10 patients provided with the artificial retina reported some improvement. If all goes well, the device could be available for widespread use in just …
More tabletop fusion
Coincidentally, after I posted the item before, I ran acrossthis story on another form of tabletop fusion.
Tabletop fusion
A fusion reactor on every tabletop? That’s almost (with allowances for poetic hyperbole) the dream of two engineers who announced in 2002 they had produced thermonuclear fusion by imploding tiny deuterium-rich gas bubbles with sound waves and neutrons. Now they’re trying to build on that discovery, to see if it’s possible to generate electricity with …
More on quantum wire
Quantum wire is one of Technology Review‘s technologies to watch, as the post below notes: here’s a Wired article on why. Think space elevators, faster computers, a new generation of flat-planel TV displays, and more.
Understanding antibiotic resistance
This sounds promising: Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers are making strides in understandin g antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Their findings are already leading to new, experimental antibiotics. We do NOT want to find ourselves living in a post-antibiotic age. In the words of Billy Joel, “The good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow ain’t …
Technologies to watch for
Technology Review offers10 technologies to watch, ones they think will transform the Internet, computing, medicine, energy, nanotechnology and more. Short version: they’re Airborne Networks, Quantum Wires, Silicon Photonics, Metabolomics, Magnetic-Resonance Force Microscopy, Universal Memory, Bacterial Factories, Enviromatics, Cell-Phone Viruses and Biomechatronics. If you don’t know what some of those are (and I didn’t) read the …
"Exploding Toads Puzzle German Scientists"
This isn’t exactly the science fiction headline of the day–it’s more like the H. P. Lovecraftian headline of the day.
My favorite gardener
I understand it’s gardening season, and in honor of that fact, (though I personally avoid gardening as being too much like work), I’d like to introduce you to my favorite gardener of all time: an Augustinian monk named Gregor Mendel. Gregor Mendel was born Johann Mendel on July 22, 1822, in what is now the …
Superlens opens an optical window on the incredibly tiny
University of California Berkeley researchers have created a superlens that allows optical imaging at a resolution of about 60 nanometers. By contrast, current optical microscopes can only make out details down to about 400 nanometers. The possible technological advances that could result include enormously enhanced data storage (the example given is a single DVD holding …
And still more on those old papyri…
Here’s another article on the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, from National Geographic News, quoting Dirk Obbink at some length.
Remote-controlled rats to sniff out explosives
A couple of years ago I wrote a column about remote-controlled rats. Here’s an update from New Scientist. And this would be my runner-up for science-fiction headline of the day (but the day is young…).
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