[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/07/Edisons-Battery.mp3[/podcast] Thomas Edison gave us many wonderful inventions, mainstays of 20th century life. However, since he died in 1931, you might be forgiven for asking, “What has he done for us lately?” Him personally, not so much, what with being dead and all: but one of his inventions has just taken on new life, thanks …
Tag: nanotechnology
My short story in Space and Time
My short story “Waterlilies” has finally appeared in Space and Time Magazine, which bought it months and months ago (as is obvious by the bio, which refers to my seven-year-old daughter–that would be the one who just turned nine). Anyway, it’s nice to see it in print, my name up in lights–well, on the cover, …
Spray-on liquid glass
[podcast]http://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2010/02/Spray-on-Liquid-Glass.mp3[/podcast] “Spray-on liquid glass” sounds like a product you’d see advertised at two o’clock in the morning in an infomercial. It sounds even more like a 2 a.m. infomercial product when you see headlines about it that claim it is “about to revolutionize everything.” Maybe it’d sound more impressive if I used its more formal …
A needle today keeps disease away
Download the audio version.Get my science column weekly as a podcast. **** Children, I have observed (and recall, for my own childhood has not yet faded into the misty depths of time) do not enjoy getting stuck with needles. And yet, getting stuck with needles is a part of growing up, because vaccinations, unpleasant as …
Scientists achieve levitation
And, no, they’re not members of Canada’s old Natural Law Party (the one that advocated research into something called “yogic flying”). They say they can reverse the Casimir force: The Casimir force is a consequence of quantum mechanics, the theory that describes the world of atoms and subatomic particles that is not only the most …
Nanotechnology marches on…
…to the soccer field. Near-microscopic robots playing soccer. Is this a great time to be alive, or what?
This could be big!…er…small!
Spintronics+plasmonics=spinplasmonics: A University of Alberta research team has combined two fields of study in nanotechnology to create a third field that the researchers believe will lead to revolutionary advances in computer electronics, among many other areas. Dr. Abdulhakem Elezzabi and his colleagues have applied plasmonics principles to spintronics technology and created a novel way to …
Good news for fighting viral pandemics:
A 60-second test for virus infections. Best bit: “You could actually apply it to a person walking off a plane and know if they’re infected.”
The long-lost secret of Damascus blades:
Carbon nanotubes?
Talk about a chill down your spine…
From Live Science: “…a team headed by Dr. Moshe Shoham of Haifa’s Technion has created a novel propulsion system for a miniature robot to travel through the spinal canal, powering through cerebrospinal fluid.”
Anti-fogging nanoparticles
Those of you who don’t wear glasses don’t know how lucky you are. I’ve been a contact-wearer now for many years, but from the time I was about five until I was almost thirty I wore glasses, and I the most annoying thing about them was their inclination to fog up the minute you came …
Nanotech battle suits
In his 1959 novel Starship Troopers (the movie of the same name has almost nothing in common with the book–ignore it!), Robert Heinlein invented the idea of powered battle armor, which gave an infantryman more fighting power than a modern tank, protected him from battlefield hazards, allowed central command to locate him and monitor …
- 1
- 2
My latest live walk and vlog
Buy Autographed Books
