Explore Your Possibilities

Review: Toate panzele sus!

2011-08-08T05:01:00.001-04:00

Toate panzele sus! by Radu Tudoran

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

That's the image for industrial engineering at the beginning of the past century !
Well and alert ocean text, Pacific is missing there ! Pacific pirates already in !
Mediterranean area is the core of the story, that have as starting point Levant gates !

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Review: Încercări Filosofice

2011-08-08T02:59:00.001-04:00

Încercări Filosofice by Lucian Blaga

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Cei patru arhangheli erau trei: Luca și Matei.
În geografie cele cinci principii fundamentale sunt trei: Geografia Fizică și Ecologia.
Aci e viceversa, trilogia cunoașterii trebuia a conține cinci cărți în, planul sistemului filosofic blagian despre care se face vorbăraie prin 1940.
1) trilogia cunoașterii
2) trilogia culturii
3) trilogia valorilor
4) trilogia cosmologică
5) trilogia pragmatică.
Și două vorbe despre Bergson:
metodul său original e chemat să cunoască viața (timpul), iar inteligența cu tendința sa după fixare materia (spațiul).

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Review: Ultima noapte de dragoste, întîia noapte de război

2011-08-01T01:39:00.001-04:00

Ultima noapte de dragoste, întîia noapte de război by Camil Petrescu

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Camil Petrescu, împrumutânnd ridiculizarea eroticului de la Standhal, cu sarasm de învins sentimental, oferă o realizare tehnică cu caracter dramatic, acum 80 de ani pe cheiurile gârlei.
Un erou, Ștefan Gheorghidiu, își face despre femeie o imagine irealizabilă: frumoasă și capabilă de speculație filozofică. Ei, dacă e frumoasă e nefilozoafă, geloasă, înșelătoare, lacomă, seacă și rea.
La război soldații se asund sub podețe de frică, trași de picioare de ofițeri, un rănit cu mațele scoase salută amical pe un prieten, coloana vertebrală a armatei, plutonierul, ține discursuri patriotice în culmea zăpăcelii.
Dialog teatral, fiecare comentează cu un ochi la cititor, grija autorului este de a stinge melodramatismui firesc al unor eroi, momente vii care dau asupra misterului uman o privire scurtă și profundă

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Review: Cugir; Watershed

2011-07-13T23:47:00.001-04:00

Cugir; Watershed by Valentin Chirosca

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Valentin Chirosca abordează Bazinul Hidrografic al Râului Cugir din prisma 2010 folosind documente din 1965 - 1975. Documentele au fost generate la epoca respectivă, nu au fost acceptate la publicare niciodată. Prezentau oameni reali în situații reale, lucru inadmisibil într-o perioadă in care dacă într-o poză ce o voiai publică apărea cu spatele o babă contextuală autorul trebuia a răspude la întrebări de tipul ”Cine este baba ? Ai cerut voie să o fotografiezi? Ce caută în poza asta ?”

Multe lucruri noi nu se pot spune: din debitul aproape insuficient al râului s-a mai preluat o parte pentru măreața realizare de pe Valea

Sebeșului așa că apa potabilă din Vinerea merge din Râul Cugirului în cel al Sebeșului și de acolo se pompează până la utilizator.

Distrugerile au continuat, dar aici s-au colectat o serie de date care permit o analiză climaterică și socială pe o perioadă relevantă.

Cartea redă datele unui experiment didactic de utilizare a metodei științifice (observație - dezvoltare experiment - comunicare), și permite evaluarea efectelor surpresării etapei de comunicare.

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Water Tower

2011-06-22T00:28:00.002-04:00

Image via WikipediaCugir Valley is area where history meet technology generating a strange population. Cugir river, starting in the city where Raul Mare meet Raul Mic will split again after less than a dozen of miles meeting Mureș river. Two or three century ago was a border town for Habsburg Empire. Landmark for the area from that times is Water Tower, part of hydro energy plant built in the city, still I'm digging around this subject with the filling that missing documents become a trade mark for iron curtain. Border town it is today.
Details for recent history. After WWII, comuna Cugir was a border of Hunedoara county, logic if we accept integration of steel factories in the same area. At that time an autonomous Magyar county was inside Romania. Well, we are Romanian, so the counties was change, term "regiunea" was change to "județ" and the city cross the border inside Alba county. Why ? The city now have guns and ammo facilities, this means money for government, and Alba, late Alba Iulia want more money than Deva. After Cool War end, all industry was destruct, government is more efficient than shells, so whiteout ...pollution city does not appear on local economic plans. Now another term and geographic county change at nadir and guess what, Cugir will maintain peripheries position.

Habsburg Empire industrialization was higher than Japan, Italy and Russia. That means, in Cugir, a new hydro electric plant built by cooperation of Italian, Cheh, Hungarian, German and Romanian people, around 1906.
At the end of tower, water from Râul Mic will go inside Râul Mare, so Cugir river is a quarter of mile longer.
That tower is under maintenance work

Fekete or Schwartz ?

2011-06-22T00:18:00.001-04:00

...the debate between full reserve banking Austrians and advocates of Real Bills such as Fekete can be considered "technical" in nature. Both strongly advocate a return to the gold standard in preference to the current monetary system, which both groups consider unsuistainable and destructive.

Well, current economic thinking, epitomized by J.M. Keynes, criticizes the gold standard for being the cause (and international transmission vector) of the 1930s depression. Fekete's rebuttal is that the Great Depression (and interest rate volatility generally) were a response to legislatures and central banks suppressing the market in Real Bills and taking gold coinage (into which bills mature) out of consumers' hands. He cites events of 1909 in France and Germany, obliging their civil servants to accept paper money in lieu of the gold coin of the realm, and says international trade sanctions after World War I finished destroying the international commercial paper markets.

Pointing out the difference between discount and interest

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle ...

2010-11-20T01:57:00.002-05:00

Image via WikipediaHeisenberg Uncertainty Principle sets limits on Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance,' new research finds
Researchers have uncovered a fundamental link between the two defining properties of quantum physics. Stephanie Wehner of Singapore's Centre for Quantum Technologies and the National University of Singapore and Jonathan Oppenheim of the United Kingdom's University of Cambridge published their work today in the latest edition of the journal Science.
Wehner worked as a 'computer hacker for hire', and now works in quantum information theory, while Oppenheim is a physicist. Wehner thinks that applying techniques from computer science to the laws of theoretical physics was key to spotting the connection. "I think one of the crucial ideas is to link the question to a coding problem," Wehner says. "Traditional ways of viewing non-locality and uncertainty obscured the close connection between the two concepts."

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Today Pellagra and Iron Curtain

2010-08-29T21:56:00.002-04:00

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A population depending on untreated maize as a staple food risks malnourishment, and is more likely to develop deficiency diseases such as pellagra. Maize also is deficient in essential amino acids, which can result in kwashiorkor. Maize cooked with lime provided niacin in this diet. Beans, when consumed with the maize, provided the amino acids required to balance the diet for protein.

Adoption of the nixtamalization process did not accompany the grain to Europe and beyond, perhaps because the Europeans already had more efficient milling processes for hulling grain mechanically. Without alkaline processing, maize is a much less beneficial foodstuff, and malnutrition struck many areas where it became a dominant food crop. In the nineteenth century, pellagra epidemics were recorded in France, Italy, and Egypt, and kwashiorkor hit parts of Africa where maize had become a dietary staple.

That's example of European Iron Curtain.

Engineer

2010-07-08T00:42:00.001-04:00

Job analysis

Detailed examination of the (1) tasks (performance elements) that make up a job (employee role), (2)conditions under which they are performed, and (3) what the job requires in terms of aptitudes (potential for achievement), attitudes (behavior characteristics),knowledge, skills, and the physical condition of the employee. Its objectives include (a) determination of the most efficient methods of doing a job, (b) enhancement of the employee's job satisfaction, (c) improvement in trainingmethods, (d) development of performance measurement systems, and (e) matching of job-specifications with theperson-specifications in employee selection. Comprehensive job analysis begins with the study of the organization itself: its purpose, design and structure, inputs and outputs, internal and external environments, and resource constraints. It is the first step in a thorough understanding of the job and forms the basis of job description whichleads to job specification. Also called human resource audit, job study, or occupational analysis. See also activity analysis, performance analysis, and task analysis.

Duty

1. Ethical, legal, or moral accountability, owed always or for a certain period, specially to someone who has a corresponding right to demand satisfaction of an obligation.

2. Responsibility of conduct, function, or performance that arises from an express or implied contract, or from the factof holding an office or position.

3. Alternative term for customs duty. See also duty of care and duty to act.

Responsibility

Duty or obligation to satisfactorily perform or complete atask (assigned by someone, or created by one's own promise or circumstances) that one must fulfill, and which has a consequent penalty for failure.

Scope

Sum of all individual jobs comprising a contract,employment, program, or project. See also scope of work.

Working conditions

Terms of a contract of employment that affect or pertain toworking conditions. Also called working conditions.

All together:

Broad, general, and written statement of a specific job, based on the findings of a job analysis. It generally includesduties, purpose, responsibilities, scope, and working conditions of a job along with the job's title, and the name or designation of the person to whom the employee reports. Job description usually forms the basis of job specification.

job description is in the HR, Recruiting, Teams, & Training subject.

job description appears in the definitions of the following terms: promote and job analysis.

Recovery Slows With Weak Job Creation in June

2010-07-03T07:01:00.001-04:00

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...unable to generate enough jobs in the last two months to keep pace with population growth, much less reduce the vast numbers of unemployed Americans.
“In general the economy is downshifting, maybe to stall speed, or just above stall.”
Just as May’s jobs report appeared deceptively robust, swollen by 411,000 workers hired by the federal government to help with the Census, so the June report appears deceptively anemic, as the government shed 225,000 of those workers.
...the stock markets are caught between indigestion and serious worries.
Others, however, join Mr. Krugman in warning that stagnation could loose another wolf: deflation. “In the winter of 2009, I said the risks are for inflation, not deflation,” Mr. Kasriel noted. “In the summer of 2010, I think the risks are now tilted toward deflation. We run the risk of entering a really bad environment.”
"Deflation refers to a persistent tendency, over an extended period of time, for prices and incomes to decline. If deflation persists, businesses may shut down or reduce their production. As a result, unemployment may increase and wage rates may fall. The spiraling effect of deflation on prices and wages may create pessimism, and the economy could fall into a recession."
A growing number of economists faulted the European Central Bank for what they saw as an inflexible fixation on fighting inflation. Unlike the Federal Reserve or the central bank in Japan, the European Central Bank has taken limited steps in expanding the money supply to counteract the drying up of bank loans. The bank has remained firm in its focus on containing inflation. Jean-Claude Trichet, the bank's president, has said he considers inflation a tax on the poor. And the bank's charter obliges it to serve foremost as guardian of price stability.

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Energy Mix

2010-06-27T02:47:00.000-04:00

Up to now, most of the CCS RD&D focus has been on coal use, which is appropriate
because of its carbon intensity and its dominant role in the U.S. power sector (and
widespread use in China and India — both expanding energy consumers). The work
spans both post-combustion and pre-combustion (mainly gasification) capture.
However, to date, activity around CCS worldwide has been slow to reach the level
of demonstration needed to establish utility-scale sequestration in a timely fashion.
And as carbon emissions constraints grow tighter, natural gas combustion will also
need CCS (as indicated in Section 3 of this report).
Clearly, much of the CCS research is applicable to any fossil fuel source, especially
for post-combustion capture. For pre-combustion capture, there are technical
simplicities
in starting with natural gas, since the conversion to synthesis gas is much
simpler than for solid fuels. Consequently, consideration should be given to natural
gas CCS demonstration as part of the portfolio of demonstration projects needed
to establish this important technology for a very low carbon future.

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Morning glory

2010-06-26T00:23:00.000-04:00

Mesoamericans , including Aztek and Maya, know how to make different kinds of rubber, mixing latex from rubber tree with juice squezzed from morning glory vines in different proportions !
3000 years before Goodyear's process!

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Bleeding Heart

2010-06-22T02:15:00.000-04:00

To begin narration of the story, hold a heart blossom in the palm of your hand.

Read more at Suite101: Folklore and the Bleeding Heart Flower: Stories About a Garden Favorite http://flowergardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/folklore-and-the-bleeding-heart#ixzz0rYlv6Ge0

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May 7

2010-05-07T08:57:00.001-04:00

(May 7, 1918), settlement forced upon Romania after it had been defeated by the Central Powers during World War I. According to the terms of the treaty, Romania had to return southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, give Austria-Hungary control of the passes in the Carpathian Mountains, and lease its oil wells to Germany for 90 years. The Central Powers recognized the Union of Bessarabia with Romania When the Central Powers collapsed in November, the Treaty of Bucharest was nullified.
Alexandru Marghiloman negotiated and signed the Treaty of Bucharest with the Central Powers on 7 May 1918. However, King Ferdinand I of Romania refused to sign the treaty (already ratified by the Chamber of Deputies on 28 June and by the Senate on 4 July 1918)
One century ago was an another treaty:
May 16, 1812 - 1. All the clauses and stipulations of the Treaty of Peace, concluded at Bucharest, on the 16th of May, 1812, (17th day of the TYloon of Djemazeiul-ewel, of the 1227th year of the Hegira,) are confirmed in all their force and value, by the present Convention, as if the treaty of Bucharest. was here found inserted, word for word, the eclaircisscment of which forms the object of the present Convention, being but to serve for the determination of the precise sense, and to ...

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What is the optimal correlation between Arieseni, Alba, Romania and New York,NY, USA?

2010-05-02T14:05:00.000-04:00

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What is the optimal correlation between Arieseni, Alba, Romania and New York,NY, USA?

Silence !

or "The map is not the territory."

In the New Year Eve, at Arieseni, Alba, Romania, 1982, an well educated physician from Cluj, bring in our attention at every half hour one word: Silence ! Of course standing up on the table full of food and alcoholic beverages, including rose champagne, that's an another story, hardly yielding in order to cover some Beatles or ABA music at maximal level for that time. His hard working lesson, ended for him at 5 0'klock in the morning landing on the floor and remain there,have a strange end for me now, here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, after Obama visit, the city was incredibly quiet.

Now Don’t Hear This

The old idea of quiet zones around hospitals has found new validation in studies linking silence and healing. These are macro benefits, but often silence feels good on a purely animal level.
These problems are everywhere, but can be especially acute in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Too many people think of silence only in terms of “being silenced,” of suppressing truth. In consequence, silence itself is now often suppressed.
Another report a 50 percent drop in their general noise annoyance levels if residential buildings have a quiet side. These modest sanctuaries can provide at least a taste of silence, which is then recognized not to be silence at all, but the sounds of the larger world we inhabit: birdsong and footsteps, water, voices and wind.
Even a little bit of silence can create a sense of connection with our environment that diminishes alienation, and prompts a desire to discover more quiet.

Sleep

Another people goal is to educate Americans about the science and benefits of healthful sleep, and this, plus his title — senior director of sleep innovation and clinical research — makes him seem deliberately more man-of-science than mattress-salesman. The distinction is less clear-cut when it comes to the man himself.
For years, doctors have been discouraged by Americans’ disregard for and mismanagement of their sleep. Sleep may finally be claiming its place beside diet and exercise as both a critical health issue and a niche for profitable consumer products.
“The good news is, there’s more and more awareness about the power of a good night’s sleep,” says David Perry, bedding editor of the trade magazine Furniture Today.
The bad news: “What we’re doing in America is, we’re drugging people to make it through the night on, in many cases, a lousy bed.”

Underlying public attitudes about nuclear power is, if not fear, at least lingering anxiety. This is the industry that gave American English the all-purpose term for disaster, from the financial markets to a toddler’s tantrum: meltdown. The recent deaths of 29 coal miners in West Virginia, of six construction workers at a natural gas plant in Connecticut in February and of five maintenance workers at a hydroelectric plant in Colorado in October 2007 have not shaken the popular conception that it is nuclear power that is dangerous. This seems to be true even as the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979, before many Americans living today were born, fades into memory.

“The nuclear industry is just so far removed from people’s lives, they don’t have much feeling for it,” said Baruch Fischhoff, a professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “They don’t really trust it. Although it hasn’t done anything recently to lose the general public’s trust, it hasn’t done anything to gain people’s trust.”

Among the elements of such calculations are whether Congress will pass legislation on carbon-dioxide emissions, which would help their project by handicapping the competition; the overall demand for power; and the price of natural gas, which is always volatile but has been especially low lately, partly because new drilling techniques have raised the amount of gas believed to be available.

... but the industry was dormant for so long that it hardly noticed that the new requirements exceeded its abilities. So Most such parts come from Japan Steel Works....For an American company to do the same would require an enormous capital investment.(Kyoto at work !)...he believed that business would continue to grow, but “at this point we’re not really sure what the winner is going to be at the end.”

“If you’re interested in investing in energy and water, you become interested in investing in agriculture,”
“Sustainable ag smells like clean tech, but it’s not so obscure that you’ve never heard of it but obscure enough there’s no competition,” said Ms. Yorio, who added that investors had approached her about bringing the Agriculture 2.0 conference to Canada, Europe and India.
...the challenge would be to build a Silicon Valley-style ecosystem around sustainable agriculture.

Instead of a stimulating cup of coffee, bracing dose of truth. “People have such very poor sense of time,”
Humans make errors. We make errors of fact and errors of judgment. We have blind spots in our field of vision and gaps in our stream of attention. Sometimes we can’t even answer the simplest questions. Where was I last week at this time? How long have I had this pain in my knee? How much money do I typically spend in a day? These weaknesses put us at a disadvantage. We make decisions with partial information. We are forced to steer by guesswork. We go with our gut.
That is, some of us do. Others use data.
Most thoughts are tagged with date, time and location. What for other people is an inchoate flow of mental life is broken up into elements and cross-referenced.
Charles Dickens was already making fun of this obsession in 1854, with his sketch of the fact-mad schoolmaster Gradgrind, who blasted his students with memorized trivia. But Dickens’s great caricature only proved the durability of the type. For another century and a half, it got worse.
If Isaac Newton weren't this kind of quantifier our culture would be quite stunted in our knowledge of physical phenomena and the rules that allow us to model and make predictions... A pity I can't make myself do this sort of thing. I recognize there is a correlation between weather, humidity, barometric pressure and the grind setting on my coffee grinder with regard to making an optimal espresso.
The trend that I see is man vs. machine and that over time we are becoming more like them; 24x7, quantitatively driven, etc. as the chip (computer brain) keeps doubling every 18 months over time this will only continue.
Isn't progress based on someone working in that area of the "known-unknown", where we know that we don't know?

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Eclology

2010-04-24T19:49:00.000-04:00

Study of the relationships between organisms and their environment. Physiological ecology focuses on the relationships between individual organisms and the physical and chemical features of their environment. Behavioral ecologists study the behaviours of individual organisms as they react to their environment. Population ecology is the study of processes that affect the distribution and abundance of animal and plant populations. Community ecology studies how communities of plant and animal populations function and are organized; it frequently concentrates on particular subsets of organisms such as plant communities or insect communities. Ecosystem ecology examines large-scale ecological issues, ones that often are framed in terms of measures such as biomass, energy flow, and nutrient cycling. Applied ecology applies ecological principles to the management of populations of crops and animals. Theoretical ecologists provide simulations of particular practical problems and develop models of general ecological relevance.

Water management

2010-04-24T09:03:00.001-04:00

Image by Vattenfall via Flickr

Companies increasingly are running into water-related obstacles. Last week, New York State denied a permit for Entergy’s Indian Point nuclear power plant because of its enormous consumption of cooling water.
Environmental Protection Agency issued new water quality rules that could limit mining company operations. And in California, regulators recently pressured the utility giant FPL Group to use more water-efficient technology in a solar power plant project while denying access to water supplies to other developers.

“Unlike carbon, water use isn’t fungible,” Mr. Alexander said. “You can’t offset a water shortage in one region with credits in another region.”

Nonprofit Group Will Prod Companies to Report Their Water Use.

Most of the direct water use, is accounted for by the broad categories of power generation and agriculture. As for individual sectors, almost all use more water indirectly than directly. For example, in cane sugar refining, relatively little water is used at the mills. More than 95 percent is used indirectly, to grow the cane, generate electricity for the mills and in other parts of the supply chain.

“If you’re doing a lifecycle assessment, you want to make sure you include upstream activities that are water intensive,” Dr. Hendrickson said. “This tool should allow people to understand the implications of water use.”

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Electroreduction of Dioxygen for Fuel-Cell Applications: Materials and Challenges

2010-04-12T08:02:00.001-04:00

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A review of the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) and its use in fuel-cell applications is presented. Discussed are mechanisms of the ORR and implementations of catalysts for this reaction. Specific catalysts discussed include nanoparticles, macrocycles and pyrolysis products, carbons, chalcogenides, enzymes, and coordination complexes. A prospectus for future efforts is provided.

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Linus Pauling (American scientist) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia

2010-02-28T06:03:00.000-05:00

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Linus Pauling (American scientist) -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia: "http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/447161/Linus-Pauling"
American scientist
in full Linus Carl Pauling
born February 28, 1901, Portland, Oregon, U.S.
died August 19, 1994, Big Sur, California
American theoretical physical chemist who became the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes. His first prize (1954 was awarded for research into the nature of the chemical bond and its use in elucidating molecular structure; the second (1962) recognized his efforts to ban the testing of nuclear weapons.
... structural knowledge assisted him in developing an electronegativity scale in which he assigned a number representing a particular atom’s power of attracting electrons in a covalent bond.

On one of his trips to visit Mirsky in New York, Pauling met Karl Landsteiner, the discoverer of blood types, who became his guide into the field of immunochemistry. Pauling was fascinated by the specificity of antibody-antigen reactions, and he later developed a theory that accounted for this specificity through a unique folding of the antibody’s polypeptide chain. World War II interrupted this theoretical work, and Pauling’s focus shifted to more practical problems, including the preparation of an artificial substitute for blood serum useful to wounded soldiers and an oxygen detector useful in submarines and airplanes. J. Robert Oppenheimer asked Pauling to head the chemistry section of the Manhattan Project, but his suffering from glomerulonephritis (inflammation of the glomerular region of the kidney) prevented him from accepting this offer. For his outstanding services during the war, Pauling was later awarded the Presidential Medal for Merit.
While serving as a visiting professor at the University of Oxford in 1948, Pauling returned to a problem that had intrigued him in the late 1930s—the three-dimensional structure of proteins. By folding a paper on which he had drawn a chain of linked amino acids, he discovered a cylindrical coil-like configuration, later called the alpha helix. The most significant aspect of Pauling’s structure was its determination of the number of amino acids per turn of the helix. During this same period he became interested in deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), and early in 1953 he and protein crystallographer Robert Corey published their version of DNA’s structure, three strands twisted around each other in ropelike fashion. Shortly thereafter James Watson and Francis Crick published DNA’s correct structure, a double helix. Pauling’s efforts to modify his postulated structure had been hampered by poor X-ray photographs of DNA and by his lack of understanding of this molecule’s wet and dry forms. In 1952 he failed to visit Rosalind Franklin, working in Maurice Wilkins’s laboratory at King’s College, London, and consequently did not see her X-ray pictures of DNA. Frankin’s pictures proved to be the linchpin in allowing Watson and Crick to elucidate the actual structure. Nevertheless, Pauling was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Chemistry “for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances.”
While at San Diego and Stanford, Pauling’s scientific interests centred on a particular molecule—ascorbic acid (vitamin C). He examined the published reports about this vitamin and concluded that, when taken in large enough quantities (megadoses), it would help the body fight off colds and other diseases. The outcome of his research was the book Vitamin C and the Common Cold (1970), which became a best-seller. Pauling’s interest in vitamin C in particular and orthomolecular medicine in general led, in 1973, to his founding an institute that eventually bore his name—the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. During his tenure at this institute, he became embroiled in controversies about the relative benefits and risks of ingesting megadoses of various vitamins. The controversy intensified when he advocated vitamin C’s usefulness in the treatment of cancer. Pauling and his collaborator, the Scottish physician Ewan Cameron, published their views in Cancer and Vitamin C (1979). Their ideas were subjected to experimental animal studies funded by the institute. While these studies supported their ideas, investigations at the Mayo Clinic involving human cancer patients did not corroborate Pauling’s results.

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Social Media Optimization: Emergence Media’s 5 Themes of SMO � Emergence Media

2010-02-27T09:16:00.001-05:00

Image by Josh Russell via Flickr

Social Media Optimization: Emergence Media’s 5 Themes of SMO � Emergence Media

Review after few years !
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Don't nag.
Don't try to make your partner over.
Don't criticize.
Give honest appreciation.
Pay little attentions.
Be courteous.
Listen carefully to what your partner says and make him/her feel important about what he/she says
...The last two sections were included in the original 1936 edition but omitted from the revised 1981 edition...
Now we have:
Twitter (text messages)
Facebook (Messages)
Google Buzz (Conversation)
and a social circle It is up to you, management of your social circle, add new friends or disconnect em.

Now, optmimum social behaviour is on the web. FriendFeed aims to be a one stop shop for all your social networking updates and news items.
For music is Pandora.
Profesional social circle is on LinkedIn.
Google profile have all your public on private data so search engines will appear able to understand your personal needs.
If you will generate web content, new, yours and will cooperate inside or outside of yours social circle optimum is there. Something like mobile or celular telefon!

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Toyota crisis puts spotlight on electronics - Autos- msnbc.com

2010-02-26T07:29:00.000-05:00

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Toyota crisis puts spotlight on electronics - Autos- msnbc.com: "'Those are very hard to reproduce. The problem happens and you go back and check and it's not there. The normal tendency is to blame it on the driver and go on.'

And that's what Toyota did initially."

It's troubling not only for Toyota owners but for drivers of any modern car that's basically a computer on wheels.
Toyota, which until recently had a reputation for being high-quality and cutting-edge, began replacing mechanical accelerators with electrical ones starting with the Camry in 2002. Since the 2007 model year, all its cars have been equipped with the high-tech throttle.

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HighlightsInChemicalScience, February 01, 2010 - ActiveMagazine by Olive Software

2010-02-25T10:42:00.000-05:00

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HighlightsInChemicalScience, February 01, 2010 - ActiveMagazine by Olive Software

Magnetic iron nanocatalysts
Easily recoverable, green and effective catalysts
Iron oxide nanoparticles make efficient recyclable catalysts for organic reactions say a team of scientists in Canada.
Environmentally friendly, economical and efficient catalysts for carbon–carbon bond forming reactions are desirable for industrial chemists. Magnetically recoverable catalysts are especially attractive due to their ease of separation from the reaction mixture. Chao-Jun Li and colleagues at McGill University, Montreal, have shown that iron oxide nanoparticles are efficient magnetic catalysts that can be reused up to 12 times without losing their effectiveness.
Immobilised or supported iron oxide nanoparticles have been used as catalysts before but their direct use without modification as magnetically recoverable catalysts for organic reactions is very rare, explains Li. His team demonstrated the nanoparticles effectiveness in the synthesis of important medicinal chemistry intermediates, propargylamines. Thanks to the magnetic character of the nanoparticles, they stick onto the magnetic stirring bar and are easily separated so they can be washed before being used again.
‘The separation and reuse of the magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles were very simple, effective and economical. In addition, the use of iron oxides as catalysts is also more environmentally friendly and safer than other transition metal catalysts,’ says Li.
Unni Pillai, an expert on green chemistry and catalysis at Dow Corning Corporation, Carrollton, US, says that ‘the ease of separation of these catalysts helps to avoid difficult and elaborate separation procedures involving filtration and centrifuging equipment and solvents; thereby contributing immensely to the ‘environmentally friendly’ aspects of the process.’
Li explains the team plan to explore the catalyst for other organic reactions. ‘A widespread expansion of these catalysts’ application is anticipated in the near future,’ adds Pillai.
Lorena Tomas Laudo

Photocatalyst sees the light
Energy saving bismuth photocatalyst works under visible light
A nanoparticle photocatalyst that works under natural light and could be used to remove pollutants from water has been developed by scientists in China and Japan.
Photocatalysts use light to speed up a reaction but most need ultraviolet (UV) light to work. Now, Renhong Li at the Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, China, and colleagues have used bismuth to make a catalyst that works under visible light.
Li’s catalyst uses platinum nanoparticles loaded with the semiconductor bismuth oxide (Bi2 O3 ). The Bi2 O3 allows transfer of electrons to take place on excitation by visible light. This generates holes on the surface that decompose organic molecules such as acetaldehyde and formaldehyde.
The reaction rates achieved by this new catalyst are comparable to ones that use UV light, says Bi2 O3 catalyst is very useful for energy saving purposes,’ he adds.
Leonardo Palmisano, a photocatalysis researcher at the University of Palermo, Italy, says ‘this shows some convincing results on the photo-oxidation of organic pollutants under visible light illumination, demonstrating an important plasmonic effect for Pt/Bi2 O3 photocatalysts.’ He adds that he sees promising applications for the new catalyst.
Li says that this research could provide advances in the use of platinum and other noble metals photocatalysts, such as the use of photocatalysts in water splitting under visible light which is an area the team hope to explore further.
Rebecca Brodie
Reference
R Li, et al, Green Chem., 2010, DOI: 10.1039/ b917233e

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Clean, cheap power from fuel cells in a box? - USATODAY.com

2010-02-24T11:02:00.000-05:00

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Clean, cheap power from fuel cells in a box? - USATODAY.com: "Bloom Energy, backed by Silicon Valley's leading venture capitalist, has been in stealth mode for eight years. Today, it's scheduled to announce that 20 companies, including Wal-Mart, Google, eBay, FedEx, Staples, Coca-Cola, Bank of America and Cox Enterprises, have bought Bloom's fuel-cell boxes. The commercial-scale boxes are about the size of a parking space and cost $700,000 to $800,000."

Bloom's technology is cheaper and more efficient than others because of proprietary technology that enables it to use low-cost materials — sand and ink — in 4-inch-by-4-inch fuel cells as thick as business cards. One cell powers a light bulb. Bloom stacks them together to produce more power.

Bloom's big breakthrough was reducing breakage by figuring out how to get the cells and the metal plates that go between them in the stacks to expand and shrink at the same rate at temperatures up to 800 degrees Celsius (1,472 degrees Fahrenheit). The high heat makes the fuel more reactive and the cell more efficient, Sridhar says. The heat also enables use of different fuels, making the tech easier and cheaper to deploy, he says.

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Alternatives to BPA containers not easy for U.S. foodmakers to find - washingtonpost.com

2010-02-23T06:35:00.001-05:00

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Alternatives to BPA containers not easy for U.S. foodmakers to find - washingtonpost.com
Bisphenol A, a chemical under scrutiny by federal regulators concerned about links to a range of health problems, including reproductive disorders and cancer.

Government studies estimate that the chemical has been found in the urine of more than 90 percent of the population.

ohn M. Rost, chairman of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, which represents the canned food and beverage industry, said BPA has been "used safely in metal food packaging for decades. They have been deemed safe by regulatory agencies around the world." He also said there hasn't been a case of food-borne illness resulting from a failure of metal packaging since the industry began using BPA in its linings more than 30 years ago.

Commercial uses of BPA exploded in the 1950s after scientists discovered its ability to make plastics more durable and shatterproof. By 1963, scientists were using it to create epoxy linings for steel cans, which held up under heat and other extreme conditions. Because the BPA linings extended the shelf life of canned goods, did not affect taste, prevented bacterial contamination and were relatively cheap, they became the industry standard by the 1970s.

Makers of plastic bottles found a quick and relatively simple BPA substitute, polypropylene, but canned-food makers are having considerably more trouble.

Foodmakers say that some alternative linings disintegrate, reducing a product's shelf life. Other linings can't withstand the high heat applied to certain canned products to kill bacteria. Still others interfere with taste.

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Where's the "Big Money" Headed Now?

2010-02-22T07:49:00.000-05:00

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Where's the "Big Money" Headed Now?: "First, despite the uneven market at the start of this year, it is important to keep one thing clearly in mind:�Group 20 central banks and governments still uniformly believe that their monetary and fiscal policy should be oriented toward boosting growth,�not curbing inflation."

Second, this year is shaping up much like 2004. That year saw a 100-point range in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index between 1,150 and 1,050 for the first nine months of the year. The trading phenomenon known as "trend extension" was lacking then, much to the dismay of participants who were looking for strong trends and breakouts like the prior three years. We're seeing that again this year, no doubt. So the analog with 2004 is tracking quite closely -- almost uncannily so, given that the 1,050-1,150 range is virtually identical.

Third, so far this year only currency markets in the United States, United Kingdom and Europe have exhibited trend extension outside of ranges seen in the last quarter of 2009. All other markets -- equities, commodities, bond and emerging markets -- have either been characterized by erratic range-trading or mean-reversion back to Q4 2009 ranges.

The real story is that we are seeing a separation of performance between cyclical and non-cyclical corporations -- which is exactly what we would expect coming out of a recession. Removing the financials (since they are in unique circumstances at the moment), cyclical stocks have reported 25% year-over-year earnings growth according to Golub. Compare this to the relatively flat earnings growth by more defensive companies, such as health care, utilities and soap makers.

Technology and semiconductor stocks have reported especially strong earnings. In Golub's words, tech stocks have been "knocking the cover off the ball, posting top-line and bottom-line growth of 11% and 62%." See below for new exposure to the sector to try to take advantage of combination of healthy profitability and the unhealthy investor skepticism.

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America's Most Miserable Cities 2010 - Yahoo! Real Estate

2010-02-20T11:14:00.000-05:00

This year Cleveland takes the top spot in our third annual ranking of America's Most Miserable Cities. Cleveland secured the position thanks to its high unemployment, high taxes, lousy weather, corruption by public officials and crummy sports teams.

I've just quit a job in that area. Mistake by the Lake

Cleveland ranked near the bottom when looking at corruption. Northern Ohio has seen 309 public officials convicted of crimes over the past 10 years according to the Justice Department. A current FBI investigation of public officials in Cuyahoga County (where Cleveland is located) has ensnared more than two dozen government employees and businessmen on charges including bribery, fraud and tax evasion.

Other cities on the list include Memphis, which came in third thanks to the second-worst rate of violent crime in the U.S. and an alarming rate of convicted public officials. Detroit, ravaged by the ailing auto industry was forth. Flint, Mich., was fifth. Also on the list?Chicago (No. 10) and New York City (No. 16). Torturous commute times and nosebleed-inducing taxes are the high prices locals pay for the cultural opportunities and corporate headquarters located there.

America's Most Miserable Cities 2010 - Yahoo! Real Estate

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German Missions in the United States - Opening of GCRI

2010-02-20T09:39:00.002-05:00

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German Missions in the United States - Opening of GCRI

More than a decade ago, Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Wolfgang Ketterle was honored with University of Colorado researchers Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman for work that led to the discovery of a new state of matter called the Bose-Einstein condensate. Together, they won the2001 Nobel Prize in Physics. Citing his success, Ketterle called for even greater scientific collaboration between disciplines, universities and countries during a brief lecture he gave Friday to mark the opening of the German Center for Research and Innovation (GCRI) in New York City.

First Piloted Fuel-Cell Powered Aircraft Takes Off in Hamburg

A fuel cell system is the centerpiece of propulsion technology. The fuel cell system was developed by the DLR Institute for Technical Thermodynamics in collaboration with BASF Fuel Cells and Serenergy A/S. It uses hydrogen as its fuel, and this is converted into electrical energy in a direct, electrochemical reaction with oxygen in the ambient air, without any combustion occurring. During this zero-particulate reaction, the only byproduct is water.

Fuel cell as future energy source for air transport
"With our successful first flight, we have verified the feasibility of fuel-cell powered flight and our next steps will focus on improving efficiency levels and on extending the service life of these systems," stated Antares Project Manager Josef Kallo from the DLR Institute for Technical Thermodynamics.
This could, for example, make it possible to significantly improve performance by optimizing the cooling concepts, fuel cell architecture and components such as the air supply system.

Something, somewhat, is the same story called now E 85. Ethanol use as fuel was tested for years in Brasilia and now is on his way over the road here.

This Hydrogen based technology for automotive industry a asking for new infrastructure that will be tested in Germany. After German success... here.

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Energy

2010-02-18T09:02:00.001-05:00

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news_pub_eo_2009.pdf - Google Docs

Energy a view to next 10 years.
In the United States, absent any policies Carbon capture and storage (CCS), would expect coal and natural gas to be lowest-cost options for future.
At $30 per ton of CO2, natural gas would become the most economic alternative for new-build power plants. This is where we expect CO2 costs may evolve over the next 10 years.
As the CO2 price increases, we would expect to see fuel switching from coal to natural gas.
At $60 per ton, natural gas is still very competitive. In addition, nuclear and wind are now competitive.
The cost of capturing solar energy in photovoltaic cells or concentrators remains generally unaffordable for large, commercial applications.

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Cogent analysis...

2010-02-17T17:58:00.000-05:00

Americans don't spend much time debating whether there ought to be a public option in the health insurance market, or whether consumer protection should be separated from bank supervision, or whether terrorists ought to be tried in criminal courts or by military tribunals. They expect that such issues will be decided by elected officials who understand their sometimes conflicting values and desires and use good judgment in resolving them.

This Presidents' Day week, we celebrate the leadership of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who confronted far worse division and dissent in their times. The reason we remember them as great presidents is that they threw off the yoke of party loyalty, defied popular opinion and used the full weight of their office to do what had to be done. They understood, or came to understand, an important truth: that only after they had demonstrated that they were willing to lead, and lead boldly, were the people willing to follow and drag Congress along with them.

It turns out that successful political leadership is not about this strategy or that tactic or where you place yourself on the left-right ideological spectrum. What it's mostly about is character

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Iron Curtain versus NLP Modelling

2010-02-16T01:27:00.001-05:00

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In the months immediately following the end of the Second World War, the United States was slow to realize the threat to international peace posed by the Soviet Union. In an effort to warn his American compatriots of this danger, the former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, just as he had warned the world of the threat posed by Nazi Germany, came to the United States to deliver this speech, with the hopes that his warnings would be received more succesfully. The result was this address, which became for west and east alike a landmark in what was to become known as the Cold War.

"An iron fence has descended," he complained.

Churchill must have liked the sound of that phrase.

But perhaps it wasn't quite completely right. After all, fences do not descend.

The Iron Curtain speech, perhaps more commonly known as the Sinews of Peace address, was delivered by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill on March 5th, 1946 at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri. The audience numbered around 40,000. In this speech, Churchill talked about how wrong it was that the Russians were occupying European countries. He spoke of all the terrible things that were going on within these countries, and of the threats and dangers of Communism. Churchill also described an "Iron Curtain" which prevented all communication and connection between the Soviets and Europe and which hung around many European countries. The Sinews of Peace address was a speech which attracted a lot of attention from the media (and so from the people) because of the revolutionary new concepts, phrases and ideas which he introduced in it.

Here are some excerpts from the Iron Curtain Speech:

"When I stand here this quiet afternoon I shudder to visualize what is actually happening to millions now and what is going to happen in this period when famine stalks the earth. None can compute what has been called "the unestimated sum of human pain." Our supreme task and duty is to guard the homes of the common people from the horrors and miseries of another war. We are all agreed on that."

"A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. Nobody knows what Soviet Russia and its Communist international organization intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and proselytizing tendencies. I have a strong admiration and regard for the valiant Russian people and for my wartime comrade, Marshal Stalin. There is deep sympathy and goodwill in Britain - and I doubt not here also - towards the peoples of all the Russias and a resolve to persevere through many differences and rebuffs in establishing lasting friendships. We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. We welcome Russia to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world. We welcome her flag upon the seas. Above all, we welcome constant, frequent and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on both sides of the Atlantic. It is my duty however, for I am sure you would wish me to state the facts as I see them to you, to place before you certain facts about the present position in Europe."

"If now the Soviet Government tries, by separate action, to build up a pro-Communist Germany in their areas, this will cause new serious difficulties in the British and American zones, and will give the defeated Germans the power of putting themselves up to auction between the Soviets and the Western Democracies. Whatever conclusions may be drawn from these facts - and facts they are - this is certainly not the Liberated Europe we fought to build up. Nor is it one which contains the essentials of permanent peace."

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."

"Let no man underrate the abiding power of the British Empire and Common-wealth. Because you see the 46 millions in our island harassed about their food supply, of which they only grow one half, even in war-time, or because we have difficulty in restarting our industries and export trade after six years of passionate war effort, do not suppose that we shall not come through these dark years of privation as we have come through the glorious years of agony, or that half a century from now, you will not see 70 or 80 millions of Britons spread about the world and united in defense of our traditions, our way of life, and of the world causes which you and we espouse. If the population of the English-speaking Commonwealths be added to that of the United States with all that such co-operation implies in the air, on the sea, all over the globe and in science and in industry, and in moral force, there will be no quivering, precarious balance of power to offer its temptation to ambition or adventure. On the contrary, there will be an overwhelming assurance of security. If we adhere faithfully to the Charter of the United Nations and walk forward in sedate and sober strength seeking no one's land or treasure, seeking to lay no arbitrary control upon the thoughts of men; if all British moral and material forces and convictions are joined with your own in fraternal association, the high-roads of the future will be clear, not only for us but for all, not only for our time, but for a century to come."

Half century is gone.

NLP Modelling is all about finding a model of excellence and then discovering how you can replicate that in yourself and others.

Most modelling is about taking a small slice of behaviour and being to replicate it, for example one element of a sales pitch…closing for example. This has a lot of value and another part of modelling is about the beliefs, values and attitudes that drive a person to perform the overall task. If I stick with the sales example it would be what drives a particular individual to be an expert sales professional, as opposed to just analysing one small element of what they do.

Romilla has the ability to look on experiences as a learning vehicle. This gives her permission to make mistakes, ask questions and ask for help. Also it is a different frame on the mistakes that are inevitably going to happen with a new project.

We are back at Pavlov.

Pavlov's description on how animals (and humans) can be trained to respond in a certain way to a particular stimulus drew tremendous interest from the time he first presented his results. His work paved the way for a new, more objective method of studying behavior.

Having taken and used these elements myself I have noticed some interesting results. I am now in the habit of writing about 2000 words a day for various projects. I am not sure how it got to be this much, but it does not take any real effort and nor does it take too much time out of the rest of my day. Virtually all of what I write is usable in its first draft barring some typos and grammar elements. And more importantly it all seems to fit with my overall game plan.

Here is the connection ... Social Media, Blogs, Twitter, Facebook.

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Chemists create synthetic 'gene-like' crystals for carbon dioxide capture

2010-02-12T07:01:00.000-05:00

Chemists create synthetic 'gene-like' crystals for carbon dioxide capture

In the early 1990s, Yaghi invented a class of materials called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), sometimes described as crystal sponges, in which he can change the components nearly at will. MOFs have pores -- openings on the nanoscale in which Yaghi and his colleagues can store gases that are usually difficult to store and transport. Molecules can go in and out of the pores unobstructed. Yaghi and his research team have made thousands of MOFs.
"We have created crystals of metal-organic frameworks in which the sequence of multiple functionalities of varying kind and ratios acts as a synthetic 'gene,'" Yaghi said. "With these multivariate MOFs, we have d out a way to incorporate controlled complexity, which biology operates on, in a synthetic crystal -- taking synthetic crystals to a new level of performance.
"This can be a boon for energy-related and other industrial applications, such as conversion of gases and liquids like carbon dioxide to fuel, or water to hydrogen, among many others," he said.

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U.S. Officials Plan $78.5 Million Effort to Keep Dangerous Carp Out of Great Lakes

2010-02-10T06:09:00.001-05:00

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By MONICA DAVEY

Published: February 9, 2010

Addressing a threat that has grown increasingly tense throughout the Midwest as genetic material from the fish was found in Lake Michigan.

Leaders from Michigan and other states point to the risks the carp pose to the fishing industry here, valued at $7 billion a year. But officials in Chicago worry about closing waterways between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River because of a barge industry that carries millions of tons of gravel, coal, cement and salt along that path.

“President Obama proved today that he’ll do anything to protect the narrow interests of his home state of Illinois,” said Mr. Cox, a Republican who is running for governor, “even if it means destroying Michigan’s economy.”

The Illinois Waterway system It is a system of rivers, lakes, and canals which provide a shipping connection from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River. The Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1849. In 1900, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal replaced it and reversed the flow of the Chicago River so it no longer flowed into Lake Michigan.

Everyone agrees that the carp should be kept out of the Great Lakes, which contain 20 percent of the world’s freshwater, but economic interests appear to have divided state officials.

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Ford offers repair for brake glitch

2010-02-06T16:09:00.001-05:00

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Giant US carmaker Ford has called on its customers who own Ford Fusion Hybrid and Mercury Milan Hybrid models to bring in their cars to upgrade the software that operates the brakes.

The move by Ford, which affects about 18,000 cars, came on Thursday on the heels of a similar problem experienced by its rival Toyota Prius hybrids.

A Consumer Reports engineer reportedly ran a stop sign when he was unable to stop his Ford hybrid with his normal braking action. Pushing the pedal farther than normal, he reported, caused the conventional brakes to engage, stopping the vehicle.

The engineer reported that, though his foot was firmly planted on the brake, the car slowed slightly but did not stop the way it normally did. According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, at least one other fusion driver has reported a similar incident to the agency.

Ford said it traced the problem to a software glitch in both the Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan hybrids built before October 17, 2009. The glitch is said to occur when the car shifts from electronic braking into conventional braking mode.

Ford said it could fix the problem by simply upgrading the software in the cars.

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Missing button

2010-02-05T09:46:00.001-05:00

Image by wolfnowl via Flickr

or "Toyota discovers the risks of flying by wire"

A friend of mine once had a Toyota that wouldn't die. ...

I think this is more than a retelling of the story of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. It also may be a Promethean tale of punishment for having stolen fire from the gods.

...Automobiles used to be mechanical devices. Now they are collections of mechanical parts that are told what to do by computers. In most cars, the gearshift, pedals and steering wheel are nothing more than proxies for electronic controls. When something goes wrong with a car, you don't start by opening the hood and unbolting pieces from the engine one at a time, the way we used to. You plug in a reader device and ask the vehicle what its problem is.

Sometimes you read...change the wire.
What if car is moving when something goes wrong with a car ? Well...any computerized truck have a little button namer "override". What for ? As a driver I have the decision on my hand, so. push that button and computer orders are ignored !
If your car have an acupuncture you ask the computer ?
In air you have a parachute. On land no way. Toyota forget the servo assisted steering lesson, if you lose the steering fluid you are able to change the direction, harder of course. And forget that speed of electronic devices, same for actions and malfunctions.
By by Volt & Co, flight by wire is to expensive.

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EPA biofuels guidelines could spur production of ethanol from corn - washingtonpost.com

2010-02-04T06:18:00.002-05:00

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EPA biofuels guidelines could spur production of ethanol from corn - washingtonpost.com

...the president's push for new offshore drilling, his budget's tripling of loan guarantees for nuclear power plants, and his repeated use of the phrase "clean coal," which the coal industry uses as shorthand for still unproven and uneconomic technologies that could limit carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants.
For this year, Congress had set a target of 100 million gallons of ethanol made from cellulosic raw materials such as switchgrass, corn cobs or wood chips. But the EPA said Wednesday that cellulosic production will amount to 6.5 million gallons, equal to a few pilot projects.
"The thing that makes me happy is that we finally have an accounting tool. It's not perfect, but it will get better over time," said Nathanael Greene, director of renewable-energy policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Let's leave decision to market economy !

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Charged-Particle Probing of X-ray–Driven Inertial-Fusion Implosions

2010-02-03T18:18:00.002-05:00

Fusion laser all fired up

A massive laser designed to test nuclear weapons and the viability of fusion power has reached a milestone. Last week, researchers announced that they had focused the 192 lasers of the giant National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (pictured) onto a single target.
The lasers injected 0.7 megajoules of energy into the target, more than any previous machine, but still half of that needed to trigger a self-sustained fusion 'burn' of hydrogen isotopes.

Measurements of x-ray–driven implosions with charged particleshave resulted in the quantitative characterization of criticalaspects of indirect-drive inertial fusion. Three types of spontaneouselectric fields differing in strength by two orders of magnitude,the largest being nearly one-tenth of the Bohr field, were discoveredwith time-gated proton radiographic imaging and spectrally resolvedproton self-emission. The views of the spatial structure andtemporal evolution of both the laser drive in a hohlraum andimplosion properties provide essential insight into, and modelingvalidation of, x-ray–driven implosions.

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Picasa Web Albums - valy8851 - Main Streets USA

2010-02-03T06:04:00.001-05:00

Cover of The Grapes of Wrath

Picasa Web Albums - valy8851 - Main Streets USA
Route 66, from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California was build under Federal Aid Act becoming one of the largest public works projects in the history. New Route 66 opened up portions of America not previously accessible by modern toad system. Route 66 helped to create a redistribution of America population during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl years. This migration to the west was captured by John Steinbeck in his classic story, "The Grapes of Wrath"

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Is GDP An Obsolete Measure of Progress?

2010-02-02T17:09:00.000-05:00

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Is GDP An Obsolete Measure of Progress?

The GDP, generally expressed as a per-capita figure and often adjusted to reflect purchasing power, represents the market value of good and services produced within a nation's boundaries. Sounds reasonable. Until we consider what it doesn't measure: the general progress in health and education, the condition of public infrastructure, fuel efficiency, community and leisure.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1957746,00.html?xid=rss-biztech-yahoo#ixzz0eLvbOiLL

One new calculation that's been attracting attention is the Happy Planet Index (HPI), which combines economic metrics with indicators of well-being, including subjective measures of life satisfaction, which have become quite sophisticated (HPI uses data from Gallup, World Values Survey, and Ecological Footprint). The HPI assesses social and economic well-being in the context of resources used, looking at the degree of human happiness generated per quantity of environment consumed. The HPI metric was driven in part by the recognition that the environmental costs of economic growth must be figured into standard-of-living reports.

(See the worst business deals of 2009.)

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1957746,00.html?xid=rss-biztech-yahoo#ixzz0eLwoJvfp

The matter of how a nation measures performance is far from trivial, says Gus Speth, particularly at a time when environment sustainability is on many people's minds. He observes: "You tend to get what you measure, so we'd better measure what we want." In other words, to a certain extent we are what we count.

(See pictures of the stock market crash of 1929.)

For Nic Marks, the key shift introduced by the HPI is its "move away from measuring production and toward measuring consumption. The HPI serves as a signpost pointing more toward a society we want to live in — the delivery of good lives rather than the delivery of more goods."

So how does the U.S. fare in HPI terms? Not so good. It sits pretty far down the list at 114. The U.K. is 74, behind Germany, Italy and France. Topping the chart is Costa Rica, which has long life expectancy, high life satisfaction, and a per capita ecological footprint one-fourth the size of the U.S.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1957746,00.html?xid=rss-biztech-yahoo#ixzz0eLxGLNxK

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A science book worth your time - USATODAY.com

2010-02-01T08:49:00.000-05:00

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A science book worth your time - USATODAY.com

In the book, Carroll recounts the history of scientists thinking about the "arrow of time," the clock's curiously one-dimensional march ever onward (we have up and down, right and left, backwards and forwards, but time just zips along ever forward). In particular, he revisits some of the 19th century thinkers, such as statistical physicist Ludwig Boltzmann, overshadowed today by 20th century icons like Einstein.

Boltzmann and colleagues put entropy, energy's tendency toward disorder, on a statistical basis, offering a physics interpretation of time. Time results from entropy sending events, everything from the egg scrambled for your breakfast to stars running out of steam over billions of years, heading relentlessly one-way, never to unscramble themselves or restart their fires again.

One of the mysteries of the universe is its beginning in a highly-ordered low-entropy state, a hot, dense ball of energy some 13.7 billion years ago called the Big Bang. (Which was low-entropy in the sense that its energy was so useful for making stars, galaxies, planets, people and everything else, energy once spent that it couldn't be re-ordered like that breakfast egg that could be scrambled, poached or served sunny side up, but never put back together again.) "Why highly-ordered but not perfectly ordered,"

German opinion, God is perfect, close to perfect order means close to God

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Picasa Web Albums - valy8851 - Main Streets USA

2010-01-31T17:39:00.004-05:00

Image by dbking via Flickr

Picasa Web Albums - valy8851 - Main Streets USA
In 1952 Warner Brothers Studio and The Route 66 Association staged a cross-country caravan to designate U.S. Route 66 as the "Will Rogers Highway". Not only did this effort provide publicity for the Warner Brothers Movie, "The Will Rogers Story", it also create an intense interest in America first super highway. Eventually, this highway and the way of living it stood for was replaced ad bypassed by Interstate Highway System, I-44 . Much of the old road is still in place.

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China Is Leading the Race to Make Renewable Energy - NYTimes.com

2010-01-31T04:58:00.002-05:00

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China Is Leading the Race to Make Renewable Energy - NYTimes.com

China intends for wind, solar and biomass energy to represent 8 percent of its electricity generation capacity by 2020. That compares with less than 4 percent now in China and the United States. Coal will still represent two-thirds of China’s capacity in 2020, and nuclear and hydropower most of the rest.
As China seeks to dominate energy-equipment exports, it has the advantage of being the world’s largest market for power equipment. The government spends heavily to upgrade the electricity grid, committing $45 billion in 2009 alone. State-owned banks provide generous financing.

No oil or gas power plants !

So while Americans are used to thinking of themselves as having the world’s largest market in many industries, China’s market for power equipment dwarfs that of the United States, even though the American market is more mature. That means Chinese producers enjoy enormous efficiencies from large-scale production.

Mature market = enormous efficiencies from large scale production.

In the United States, power companies frequently face a choice between buying renewable energy equipment or continuing to operate fossil-fuel-fired power plants that have already been built and paid for. In China, power companies have to buy lots of new equipment anyway, and alternative energy, particularly wind and nuclear, is increasingly priced competitively.

After WW2 Germany position। Using Marshal Plan in 10 yrs European Community train have economic engine called West Germany.

5 stars from 5

KEITH BRADSHER. Geothermal ? No one word. One image.

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Volvo, behind the whell.

2010-01-30T14:59:00.000-05:00

Image by networks via Flickr

Trucks, like any industrial tools in shrink to fit times, a looking for optimum point. As working element in logistics they daily are in the cutting point of technological and negotiating scissors. Customers always want an minimum price. Expenses are strong correlated with the diesel price. In good old times, this means less computing and more common sense, the price of 1 loaded mile = price of 1 diesel gal. Well, for optimum I will take this as reference point. On the another hand, without profit truck is out from the road in no time. This is an criteria. Negotiating is not my strongest point, always I'm using negotiators in my job, my point of view is technological. Leave the diesel price, from my observations high diesel price means increase of profit, maintenance expenses are the core of the business profitability.

Two centuries ago Leibniz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.

Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.

Volvo trucks position on the interstate system. And any driver depend upon.

As long as truck is on warranty, services authorized to fix any breakdown may be are on the limit of factory profitability. Next, what next, disaster. Easy to feel European optimum: after warranty one or two years on the road and expenses exceed the cost of a new car. Or, to mention here the words of an Canadian colleague, after 3000 miles you have to spend one week for maintenance. At current legal speed and hours of duty: one week over the road, one on the shop. I've driving few Volvo's over the road in last time looking at excellent MPG stories from truck stops involving Volvo truck's. Classic American trucks have 6 to 6.3 mpg., Volvo 7+. Is huge and is real using "13 speed" gearbox. For full automatic 6.2 to 6.8 mpg. Any car performance in this area have huge maintenance costs. Otto invented diesel engine long time ago, it is a German invention that it suppose do not work. After is started, over 500 rpm may be it work, at 800 rpm is working, the best performances are at 1250 rpm. Where is the fuel economy ? In the driver hand, always. From the factory, they have to select between economy point and power point at the design start. For me it seems economy point, I do not have power at low rpm, is OK after 70 mph. A truck have after him another vehicle that have 53' , so if you have a slow vehicle in front of you, in California or Arizona, maintenance shop is waiting for you at next location. If, and only if, you a lucky enough to get there. There means "authorized shop". Those are rare. Detroit diesel always are asking for the proof of damaged part, protecting truckers, Volvo will found another damaged part(s) so, you will take the truck out from the shop without any warranty remembering that Gestapo logo: "in Wald da sind die Räuber" (in forest are there the robbers).

Personal experience: Diagnose in Elko, Nevada: Harness failure probably injectors. Volvo send three times wrong harness to the shop, using only one service for this wasting 10 of my days, after that truck was on tow for 400 miles to Salt lake City, Utah. Here the harness was OK, but two injectors damaged, $ 1000 each. And the truck have damaged another mechanical part and will brake the vent belt. All of us know this story as "Volvo by purpose failure". Any mechanic will fix that problem in two or three hrs. Not a dealer, they have to sell $ 4000 parts.

In the Continental USA, a single driver is working maximum 550 miles/day at 1 to 1.5 $/mile to the truck. Five days for the truck expenses and my by one day for his expenses. If you feel like a Pharaoh.

Machines with interchangeable parts can now be constructed with great economy of effort. they perform reliably. The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability; and something is bound to come of it.

I do not discuss here about jewelry, it is about safety over the road.

Almost 90% of all accidents are due to the human factor. When looking at single accidents, 10-20% is due to tired drivers. Halo... a driver is not operating an computer so move the safety point to the driver.

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Column: The U.S. is broke. Here's why. - Opinion - USATODAY.com

2010-01-27T07:56:00.001-05:00

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Column: The U.S. is broke. Here's why. - Opinion - USATODAY.com

The disease? Fiscal sclerosis — setting future national priorities in stone long before the future has arrived. Our fiscal arteries are so clogged and hardened that to do anything new, meet any emergency, or engage any new opportunity, the president must renege on past legislators' promises regarding Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other such entitlement programs. If he doesn't address unsustainable promises head-on, Obama will have no wiggle room in the budget for the rest of his presidency, and government will be tied up with yesterday's problems and the demands of yesterday's voters.

Thanks to decades of promises for ever-higher benefits and low taxes for the indefinite future, there's now less give in future budgets than at any point in American history. At least profligate Congresses in the past confined their excesses and temporarily large deficits to the current year. Until recently, they didn't box in the future.

Both Democratic and Republican presidents and Congresses have presided over this shocking decline — fighting mainly over which downward path we'd take: by cutting revenues without reducing spending or increasing spending without raising revenues commensurately.

Imagine a business signing 50- and 100-year contracts that tied up all the hoped-for future revenues.

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Australia

2010-01-26T19:14:00.000-05:00

What do a stuffed Aborigine and the Queen have in common? The answer is Australia Day 1961.

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Paint, Architecture and Cinema

2009-09-18T04:07:00.000-04:00

Art Review

&Kandinsky&

The Angel in the Architecture

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: September 18, 2009

A sleek Kandinsky retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum offers an unencumbered view of his painting career.

In all, this show is the perfect cap to the Guggenheim’s yearlong birthday celebration of Wright’s building, which opened 50 years ago on Oct. 21.

... anonymous shots of things you look at every day but don’t see, used as transitions in movies.

... a clique to represent a widespread phenomenon, sometimes collected under the scary chapter heading “relational aesthetics.”

he was teaching at the Bauhaus ...American art schools have also rediscovered the Bauhaus school. The Master Craftsman Program at Florida State University bases its artistic philosophy on Bauhaus theory and practice.

Titanium is covering Museum, and is imported from USSR. Or Russia ?

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Recovery Picks Up in China as U.S. Economy Remains Ailing

2009-09-17T21:49:00.000-04:00

"“So often China and the U.S. are mixed together as being in the same situation, and that is totally wrong,” said Xu Xiaonian, an economist in Beijing with the China Europe International Business School.

That does not mean the two nations are not connected, of course. China’s rebound in growth may slow if the American economy does not pick up. China needs the United States to buy its goods, and the United States needs China to continue to buy its debt.

This mutual dependence makes it harder for either country to let the current dispute over Chinese tires and American chicken and auto parts to grow into a trade war.

But with more economic planning than the United States, China has been able to disburse its stimulus much faster, turning it into new rail lines and highways."
For the first time economic planning from communist countries is positive !
Current crisis appear for me as a price for China development.

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Second Honeymoon

2009-09-15T07:57:00.002-04:00

Starting a continental trip from Philadelphia, Pa to San Francisco, Ca। Bobby is with me। My Volvo have problems, Volvo send wrong parts and have problems, FedEx Air have some problems. For the last decades I do not have time for Bobby and now, stuck in Elko I have.

Lets see something special:

Ounce upon the time Mr. Ford have created a replacement for Pony Express:

Useful for working class, cheap using mass production rules. That's Detroit opinion...

Chicago have an another

And my generation, Hippie, Make Love Not War another:

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Today:
Tire tariffs provoke China threat to U.S. auto parts, chicken ...

Digital twist on Pavlov

2009-04-06T06:55:00.001-04:00

The phone rings and we pay

Technology

Micro-Billing, Byte by Byte, Suits the World of Cellphones

By MATT RICHTEL and BOB TEDESCHI

Published: April 6, 2009

The digital marketplace has strained many in the media realm, but one industry has thrived: the phone companies, which make sure not to give away entertainment.

It is a curious equation: pay for stuff on a tiny, low-resolution screen while getting some of the very same games and video free on a fancy widescreen monitor.
...the designers of the Internet envisioned it as utopian and open — two words rarely used to describe the phone experience
One example of the stark difference between the phone and the computer is the concept of micropayments. Newspapers and other content producers have examined the method — getting people to pay for content with a nickel here and a dime there — as a possible answer to their revenue problems on the Web.

“It’s like a slot machine.”

Phone is main business tool. And interconected with computers using securized communications tools is keyboard for that computer two distinct way. Recording vocal messages is same as fingerprints, message have signature.
Slot machine was in great depresion era main tool for "gocery boys pockets"
What should we do?
How about nothing? Capitalism is a "perennial gale of creative destruction" (Joseph Schumpeter)। Industries come and go.
If General Motors goes under, there will still be cars. And if the New York Times disappears, there will still be news.
And Pavlov's

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The 237th ACS National Meeting, Salt Lake City, UT, March 22-26, 2009

2009-04-03T04:47:00.001-04:00

~~Dispute~~
“CHEMISTS vs PHYSICISTS”, and it seems that the controversy on cold fusion will be finally resolved, but not by the physicists.
The new duel chemists vs physicists has ideological origin. The physicits keep their loyalty to Quantum Mechanics, because they dont accept to change their interpretation on the zitterbewegung, since such a changing requires a very deep modification in the foundations of Modern Physics (the zbw cannot be considered as a helical trajetory in Quantum Field Theory, which is the successor of Quantum Mechanics).

Unlike, the chemists keep their loyalty to the scientific method, according to which any experiment cannot be neglected only because it defies the principles of a theory, as happens now in this duel between Quantum Mechanics and cold fusion.

Nanotehology aplied at electrolysys proceses, very new, in the WWII era batle for deuterium (heawy water) was in the same area.

It has been 14 years since two little-known electrochemists announced, at an infamous news conference on March 23, 1989, what sounded like the biggest physics breakthrough since Enrico Fermi produced a nuclear chain reaction on a squash court in Chicago. Using a tabletop setup, Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann, of the University of Utah, said they had induced deuterium nuclei to fuse inside metal electrodes, producing measurable quantities of heat. (Deuterium, a.k.a. heavy hydrogen, has one proton and one neutron in its nucleus.)
"If you 'know' that cold fusion is impossible, then you don't have to pay attention to these results," says Prof. Hagelstein, an award-winning DOE physicist before being ostracized for his work in the theory of cold fusion. "The initial criticism was that people needed to do the [heat measurements] right, but now that some groups have spent millions of dollars doing just that, the critics still won't read the papers."

I, for one, would love to hear smart physicists explain why the excess heat from the deuterium-filled palladium reflects not nuclear fusion but the release of mechanical energy -- sort of like letting go of a stretched spring. I'd love to see a smart critique of a 2002 paper by Japanese scientists, published in a Japanese physics journal that few American scientists saw, describing (shades of medieval alchemists) the transmutation of elements through cold fusion.

What these claims need is critical scrutiny by skeptics. That's how science normally functions. But in cold fusion, it isn't. And that's the worst pathology of all.

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Lithium Ion Batteries

2009-04-02T21:24:00.002-04:00

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Fabricating Genetically Engineered High-Power Lithium Ion Batteries Using Multiple Virus Genes
These authors contributed equally to this work.

Development of materials that deliver more energy at high charge/discharge rates is important for high power applications, including portable electronic devices and hybrid electric vehicles. Reducing materials dimensions for lithium ion batteries can boost Li+ ion and electron transfer in nanostructured electrodes. We developed a strategy for attaching electrochemically active materials to conducting carbon nanotubes networks through biological molecular recognition
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1171541

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California

2009-03-30T17:19:00.000-04:00

...you can hear and see one of the most vital relationships in modern American agriculture: the droning dance of honey bees feasting on almond pollen....
My personal preferences are related to cherry tree blossom.

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American Dreams

2008-12-23T13:05:00.000-05:00

Ounce upon the time some people have dreams. Another have dreams all the time, that means, are young.
Sleep studies reveal that we are relaxing only when the brain is dreaming, that is few minutes at every quite 120 minutes.
Simple photographic tools give the opportunity to reveal for you part of the dreams!

Merry Christmas for you !

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Wall Street's 'Colossal' Risk Management Failure

2008-10-03T14:19:00.001-04:00

Financial heart attak

.
IT experts say the current Wall Street crisis may be a financial heart attack that warns of more serious problems ahead for the industry. Risk management controls have faltered in grand fashion, according to a well-known RSA data security executive. Consumer-oriented IT companies may face problems selling newer, faster products that aren't absolutely necessary to have, such as updated iPods.

"We [at RSA] certainly play a role in mitigating this sort of thing, but there's business risk, and it's as if the regulatory authorities and businesses themselves have not recognized the speed at which business is done today," Coviello said. "The ability to do these complex financial instruments requires literally a Ph.D. in applied mathematics to understand some of these things that are being treated by 25- and 35-year-olds without the profile of risk behind it.

"So you've got speed conspiring with complexity to create more risk, and there's nobody evaluating the risk!"

There's nothing wrong with the breakneck speed at which business operates, because it does lead to greater productivity, Coviello said.

Look nice and very "capitalist" approach. What if this is the result of communist attack on oil market, cash have migrated to oil companies and if I remember well those companies have R & D departments where computers a tools and no intention to reinvest on capital market. And there is a discontinuity, between industrial engineers with money now and people playing on market.

Liquidity is an accounting parameter that prevent this heart attacks. There is somebody reading basis accounting lessons and leave "risk management theory" at his area of expertise?
It seems clear that no one really knows what is coming next. Why?

Well, part of the reason is that economists still try to understand markets by using ideas from traditional economics, especially so-called equilibrium theory.

Really understanding what’s going on means going beyond equilibrium thinking and getting some insight into the underlying ecology of beliefs and expectations, perceptions and misperceptions, that drive market swings.

....models of deregulated electricity markets are being developed by a handful of researchers around the world, who see them as the only way of reckoning intelligently with the design of extremely complex deregulated electricity markets, where faith in the reliability of equilibrium reasoning has already led to several disasters, in California, notoriously, and more recently in Texas.

If we’re really going to avoid crises, we’re going to need something more imaginative, starting with a more open-minded attitude to how science can help us understand how markets really work. Done properly, computer simulation represents a kind of “telescope for the mind,” multiplying human powers of analysis and insight just as a telescope does our powers of vision. With simulations, we can discover relationships that the unaided human mind, or even the human mind aided with the best mathematical analysis, would never grasp.

Better market models alone will not prevent crises, but they may give regulators better ways for assessing market dynamics, and more important, techniques for detecting early signs of trouble. Economic tradition, of all things, shouldn’t be allowed to inhibit economic progress.

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Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization

2008-08-03T11:25:00.000-04:00

Mendeleev was one of the founders, in 1869, of the Russian Chemical Society. He worked on the theory and practice of protectionist trade and on agriculture.
...the collapse of world trade talks in Geneva last week also signal that ...
India and China a on opposite position with USA, talking about their own food products market.
"the Canadian investment bank CIBC World Markets, calculates that the recent surge in shipping costs is on average the equivalent of a 9 percent tariff on trade. “The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today,” the report concluded, and as a result “has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.”"
Last week, efforts to complete what is known as the Doha round of trade talks collapsed in acrimony, dealing a serious blow to tariff reduction. The negotiations, begun in 2001, failed after China and India battled the United States over agricultural tariffs, with the two developing countries insisting on broad rights to protect themselves against surges of food imports that could hurt their farmers.
...the sharp increase in transportation costs has implications for the “just-in-time” system pioneered in Japan and later adopted the world over.
“Despite everything, the American economy is still the biggest Rottweiler on the block,” said Jagdish N. Bhagwati, the author of “In Defense of Globalization” and a professor of economics at Columbia. “But if it’s expensive to get products from there to here, it’s also expensive to get them from here to there.”
....
School of Chemical Engineering and the Energy Center, School of Materials Engineering and the Birck Nanotechnology Center, Purdue University, West Lafayette Indiana 47906, and Institute of Energy Conversion, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware 19716

Received July 10, 2008

Revised July 17, 2008

Abstract:

The creation of a suitable inorganic colloidal nanocrystal ink for use in a scalable coating process is a key step in the development of low-cost solar cells. Here, we present a facile solution synthesis of chalcopyrite CuInSe₂ nanocrystals and demonstrate that inks based on these nanocrystals can be used to create simple solar cells, with our first cells exhibiting an efficiency of 3.2% under AM1.5 illumination. We also report the first solution synthesis of uniform hexagonal shaped single crystals CuInSe₂ nanorings by altering the synthesis parameter.

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Celebrity Morph by MyHeritage

2008-08-01T11:49:00.001-04:00

Alternative Fuel Use is Increasing in the State

2008-07-06T12:35:00.000-04:00

Ethanol blended fuel is becoming more popular here in the magnolia state.

At least 43 fuel distributors across Mississippi hold permits to mix ethanol and pure gasoline.

Stations that sell fuel containing 10% or less of ethanol began popping up after the Mississippi Legislature rewrote definitions of allowable gas mixtures in the state.

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Nanotechnology? What's That?! -- Engineers Create Exhibits on Achievements, Promise

2007-12-22T04:44:00.000-05:00

ScienceDaily () -- Nanotechnology has already brought advances such as self-cleaning windows and energy-efficient LED lighting, and could soon deliver medical breakthroughs. To educate the public about nanotechnology's promise, the National Science Foundation has slated $20 million to fund a network of interactive exhibits at 100 museums around the country.

Explosives At The Nanoscale With 'World's Smallest Controlled Heat Source'

ScienceDaily (2006-09-11) -- Using nanometer scale analysis techniques and quantities too small to explode, researchers have mapped the temperature and length-sale factors that make energetic materials -- otherwise known as explosives -- behave the way they do.

Close-up of AFM cantilever tip, the "world's smallest controlled heat source" used to study explosive materials at the nanoscale. (Image courtesy William King)

Scientists would like to design energetic materials with specific responses, with a given temperature producing a given burn rate, for example," explained William King, an assistant professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Mechanical Engineering. "Before our measurements, no one was able to interrogate these properties at the nanometer scale. With the data we have generated, it is possible to build physics-based models of how these materials behave rather than relying on empirical relationships seen at the macro scale."
Using an AFM tip capable of heating spots as small as a few nanometers in diameter, the researchers performed nanometer-scale thermal analysis on thin films of a polycrystalline energetic material known as Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN). They melted, evaporated and decomposed the PETN at length scales ranging from 100 nanometers to a few micrometers.

Georgia Institute of Technology (2006, September 11). Explosives At The Nanoscale With 'World's Smallest Controlled Heat Source'. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 22, 2007, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2006/09/060908171310.htm

Well, PETN is one of the most dangerous explosive with ammo. use. Have a very bad behavior; if you a unfamiliar with this class of detonating explosives, detonate very fast.

What's the point?

Explosives On A Chip: Unique Structure Enables New Generation Of Military Micro-detonators

cienceDaily (2007-12-23) -- Tiny copper structures with pores at both the nanometer and micron size scales could play a key role in the next generation of detonators used to improve the reliability, reduce the size and lower the cost of certain military munitions.

Georgia Institute of Technology (2007, December 23). Explosives On A Chip: Unique Structure Enables New Generation Of Military Micro-detonators. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 22, 2007,
from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2007/12/071218105422.htm#

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Semantic... what a word!

2007-09-21T12:36:00.000-04:00

The original vision of the semantic web as a layer on top of the current web, annotated in a way that computers can "understand," is certainly grandiose and intriguing. Yet, for the past decade it has been a kind of academic exercise rather than a practical technology.

… The purpose of the semantic web is to enable computers to "understand" semantics the way humans do. Equipped with this "understanding," computers will theoretically be able solve problems that are out of reach today….

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was presented in 2000 (see image below), the rest of the post will focus on the difficulties with this approach.

Well, this remember me first application of computers; translate Russian texts. So English speaking word will understand first flight in space. If I remember well, this was in 1957 or software able to translate on demand we have only after 2001. And those translations have to appear in public after human corrections.

The same ideas appear here, Russian have software for server able to interpret “xml” pages according with user’s manifested preferences. It seems to me that we are still overwhelming language barriers forgotten that is hard to obtain lets say a walking robot.

Because the designers were shooting for flexibility and completeness, the end result are documents that are confusing, verbose and difficult to analyze.

Again, designers, people searcing for something new, do not want to respect standards ;-)

If it is to be done be a centralized entity, then there will need to be Google-like semantic web crawler that takes pages and transforms them into RDF. This comes back to the issue we just discussed - having an automatic algorithm that infers meaning from text the way humans do. Creating such an algorithm may not be possible at all (and again begs the question of the need for RDF if the algorithm exists).

:-) Google is the worst enemy….or Chinese programmers have something new…

For example, suppose there are representations of a book defined by Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Each has common fields like ISBN and Author, but there maybe subtle differences, i.e., one of them may define edition like this: 1st edition and the other like this: edition 1. This seemingly minor difference, one that people would not even think twice about, would wreak havoc in computers.

The only way to have interoperability is to define a common standard for how to describe a book. So having self-describing documents is not enough, because there still needs to be a literal syntactic agreement in order for computer systems to interoperate. The bottom line is that there needs to be a standard and an API....

The original vision of the semantic web as a layer on top of the current web, annotated in a way that computers can "understand," is certainly grandiose and intriguing. Yet, for the past decade it has been a kind of academic exercise rather than a practical technology. The technical, scientific and business difficulties are substantial, and to overcome them, there needs to be more community support, standards and pushing. This is not likely to happen unless there are more clear reasons for it.

Well, nice conclusion for a person that neglect networks administrator’s jobs.

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b2bweb

2007-09-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

Sa vedem ce mai fac Romanii din Romania!

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9.11 from Ann Arbor

2007-09-11T11:38:00.000-04:00

2001: World Trade Center and Pentagon attacked by terrorists
On this day in 2001, 19 militants associated with the terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four planes in the United States, crashing three into buildings (the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania) and killing some 3,000 people.

Ann Arbor is in Michigan and here at 8:43 some people recall from memory that day, worst than Pearl Harbor day in American recent history.

Beyond September 11th: An Account of Post-Disaster Research

NSF Media Briefing

Engineers Week
Monday, February 23, 2004
National Science Foundation
Arlington, Virginia

Insight into Research at Ground Zero, Presented by the Researchers Who Were There
On Monday, February 23, the National Science Foundation hosted six of the nation's top rapid-response researchers to report on their experiences at Ground Zero.
Read about this event.

Scientists Use the "Dark Web" to Snag Extremists and Terrorists Online

Team from the University of Arizona identifies and tracks terrorists on the Web

The Dark Web project team catalogues and studies places online where terrorists operate.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies, Hsinchun Chen and his Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona have created the Dark Web project, which aims to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the Web.
... A recent report estimates that there are more than 5,000 Web sites created and maintained by known international terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda, the Iraqi insurgencies, and many home-grown terrorist cells in Europe....

Techniques:
	Social network analysis
	The technologies used are statistical analysis, cluster analysis, social network analysis (SNA), visualization, and various other approaches. SNA has recently been recognized as a promising technology for studying criminal and terrorist networks. Specifically, we use the centrality and structural equivalence measures from SNA to measure the importance of each network member. Centralities such as degree, prestige, betweenness, and closeness can automatically identify the leaders, gatekeepers, and outliers from a network. To detect terrorist groups in a network we employ traditional hierarchical clustering algorithms. In addition, with a rich set of approaches and metrics from SNA, we extract interaction patterns between groups using blockmodeling approach, analyze and predict the stability of a terrorist group using group density and cohesion measures. Moreover, we examine its topological characteristics in terms of level of centralization and degree of hierarchy. These structural properties found can be of great help in revealing the vulnerability of a terrorist organization.

....

...The book, in the end, is an invitation to critical thinking of some of the major myths of American History. Woods does not attempt to denigrate his targets or examine the issues in minute detail, instead offering a second look at American history. Even though everyone may not agree with Woods’ on all of the issues, it is more important to him that people know that there is another side to many of the best-known stories of America, and draw their own conclusions, rather than take the official public school-taught propaganda at face value.
or
A Review of "33 Questions about American History You're Not Supposed to Ask"

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Good Morning Annn...

2007-08-30T14:57:00.000-04:00

Ann Arbor The First Hundred Years (1927)

Contents I. ANN ARBOR'S ANTECEDENTS................................ 5
II. JOHN ALLEN FOUNDS A TOWN............................ 13
III. THIE SITE OF ANN A IBOR.................................... 23
IV. TIlE SETTLERS POUR IN......................... 27
V. E VIDENCES OF G ROW TH........................................ 44
V I. TI-IHE FIRST FEW Y EARS........................................ 62
VII. THE GERMANS...................................................... 80
VIII. PRIVATE SCHIOOLS................................................. 99
IX. THIE CLARK SCHOOL.............................................. 1.13
X. PUBLIC SCHOOLS........................................ 12.......... 1
XI. MILITARY MATTERS.............................................. 144
XII. POLITICS AND PUBLIC BUILID)INS................... 175
XIII. THE LIGHTER SIDE................................. 193
XIV. BUSINESS LIFE...................................................... 13
XV. TI-E UNIVERSITY-PART I.............................. 237
XVI. THE UNIVERSITY-PAIT II.............................. 255
XVII. TIHE UNIVERSITY-PART III.................... 281
X VIII. BANKS....................................................... 295
XIX. FIRE AND WATER.............................................. 307
XX. GAS AND LIGHT...................................................... 323
XXI. TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION............ 328
XXII. ANN ARBOR PUBLICATIONS.................................. 347
XXIII. HEALTH AND SANITATION............................. 360

....
CHAPTER XIII The Lighter Side LIKE other Americans, the people of Ann Arbor always have shown great interest in amusements and in social affairs. During the first two or three years of the city's history, no one came to the settlement, either to interest or entertain, other than the ministers or the emigrants. Such amusements as the people had they originated among themselves. The inauguration of the Masonic fraternity offered some diversion for the men, but for the women, their chief amusement was derived from the little gatherings about the community oven John Allen built on Ashley street, and which a few years later was covered by a shed at the back of the Clark School. Here the women sat and visited while their bread was baking, or, on Saturday evenings after they had placed their crocks of beans in the oven to cook during the night. Sunday morning the pioneers would gather in this cabin or that, and a hot bean breakfast would be served. These breakfasts often were followed by religious services or by quiet social hours where simple matters of local interest were discussed. The arrival of new settlers was ever a topic for gossip, but of all social events a wedding was the most interesting....
When Ann Arbor was young there were no distinctions based either upon social standing or wealth. The love-making was not confined to members of a particular "set," and a prospective wedding invited the interest of all alike.
....
August 20, 2007 Volume 85, Number 34 p. 10
Science Policy
Nanotech Survey
OECD countries are examining nanomaterials
Glenn Hess
A NEW REPORT by the 30-member-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development catalogs the growing number of initiatives under way in industrialized countries to address the health and environmental safety implications of manufactured nanomaterials.

Courtesy of Delina Lyon/Rice University

Risks of nanomaterials are still largely unknown. Shown is Delina Lyon, a Rice University researcher who studies the impact of buckyball aggregates on ecosystems.The 77-page document summarizes information on current developments provided by delegations that participated in the second meeting of OECD's Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials, held this past April in Berlin.

The report indicates that few regulatory decisions on nanomaterials have been made by governments around the world, as the impacts of nanotechnology remain largely unknown. But many countries are devoting more resources toward discovering what those impacts might be.

China, for example, told OECD that it has more than 30 research organizations studying the toxicological and environmental effects of nanomaterials and techniques for recovering nanoparticles from manufacturing processes.

"A lot of countries are placing a high premium on understanding and managing the potential risks of engineered nanomaterials at an early stage in the development of these technologies," says Andrew D. Maynard, chief science adviser for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Several countries, including Belgium and Ireland, say they do not currently have any specific national regulations in place, partly because there are no globally accepted definitions of nanomaterials. Maynard says a technical committee of the International Standards Organization, in Geneva, has been working on the problem.

France has no regulations to date, either, but the French Agency for Labor & Environmental Health Safety is working to ensure that nanoscale materials are included under the European Union's Registration, Evaluation & Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) program.

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Blogging Apple's Keynote Faster Than a Greased Leopard (Rawr!)

2007-06-11T07:24:00.000-04:00

There are many blog popularity-ranking services on the web, but unfortunately, they all rely on only one piece of data for their rankings. Either link popularity, RSS feeds or some sort of traffic-ranking service. We at eBizMBA have decided that in order to get a more accurate picture we needed to combine data from multiple sources.
The result:

Less than 5 seconds to publish. That's how fast our new liveblogging system will
be on Monday's Apple Keynote at 10AM PST.
We'll be able to deliver the words from El Jobso's mouth to your LCD faster
than any other blog by minutes. With nice photos. Cool, huh

Essential HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and miscellaneous cheatsheets
There are a ton of free cheatsheets, quick references, and downloadable resources for programming languages and related technologies online -- in this post I've tried to organize and list some of the best for web development.
I've focused on HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP, since those are the languages we use most commonly at Ning, but many of these sites point to resources for other languages as well.

« The truth about venture capitalists, Part 2 Main The truth about venture capitalists, Part 3 »

Maybe we'll stop by TUAWs
get together after we're done. (Any other parties going on afterwards?)
Man, I'm stoked to be able to get the news to you guys that much faster. Big
thanks to Tom and Ian over in Gawker Tech, our tiny little dev team with huge
hearts and brains. But I'd be lying if I wasn't nervous about stress testing new
software on such a big day. No guts, no glory, hmm?

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Climate & Intelligent Design

2007-06-04T11:31:00.000-04:00

For everyone who teaches Creationism or "Intelligent Design" of life, the topics menu arranged by the creation story in the Bible are as follows:

In the beginning God created...
Matter, Light -- The first day;
Water, Motion -- The second day;
Land, Plant Kingdom -- The third day;
Solar System, Astronomy -- The fourth day;
Marine Life, Birds, Dinosaurs -- The fifth day;
Animal Kingdom, Mankind -- The sixth day;
Learning, Creationism -- The seventh day;
Beyond the seventh day -- Discovery.

There is a lot of debate about the similarities and differences in "Intelligent Design" theory and creationism. The debate on the issue is, in itself, interesting to research and holds a lot of interest who are interested in the origins of life. The search terms [ "intelligent design" creation ] provide a good variety of websites for research. I haven't found any GREAT sites for exploring these topics yet, but If I do, I will list them here.

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Lights, Camera, Action

2007-05-28T23:21:00.000-04:00

Romania ete ...!

Vive la Romania !
CANNES, France, May 27 -- The international critics corps can be a tough crowd (if they don't like a film here, they boo), but they mostly agreed that the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival presented an especially strong slate of movies. At the awards ceremony at the Palais on Sunday evening, the head of the jury, British director Stephen Frears ("The Queen"), praised the selections. "I am told by people who come every year that this was a terrific festival. Thank you. The films were a pleasure to watch." They were also tough to watch, with meditations and stories about evil, sickness and death -- but filled, too, with the triumph, or sometimes just the mere survival, of the human spirit.
And so it was no surprise that the top prize, the Palme d'Or, went to one of the darlings of the festival, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu. The film is set in 1987 Bucharest, during the waning years of the Soviet bloc. It tells the story of a college student who has an illegal abortion, her friend and the abortionist, who is also a rapist. Whew, no?

At the end of a long day in the lab, what we'd all like is an award-winning movie. What makes for a good movie? An engrossing story, deft cinematography, and an extraordinary ensemble of actors. Cannes do not offer something like that so back to nanotechnologies until Eurabians will grow up. The goal of single-molecule research is to produce a movie of the cell. Biochemistry and biophysics done in the test tube already provide an understanding of the dynamic behavior of molecules; from these studies, what goes on in cells, minute by minute or even second by second, can be inferred.
Ultimately, however, the goal is to film single molecules in single cells, focusing in closely enough not only to observe spatial and temporal characteristics but also to decipher molecular mechanisms. We're not there yet, but recent advances in single-molecule techniques bring us tantalizingly close to a molecule-scale movie of cellular life.Because cells are optically transparent, light microscopy is ideal for noninvasive imaging of cells in three dimensions. However, until recently, the resolution of lens-based optical microscopes was constrained by the diffraction barrier, which gave a resolution cutoff at half the wavelength of light. In his Review, Hell (p. 1153) discusses concepts that show how the diffraction barrier can be broken in fluorescence spectroscopy and how these techniques have been applied to achieve nanoscale resolution. His Review gives hope that real-time three-dimensional imaging of live cells with electron-microscopy resolution may not be too far away.
sciencemag
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