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Nov 2, 2015

Phenylpiracetam: The Effects, Usages and Dosages

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Phenylpiracetam, a water-soluble racetam, has neuro modulating and nootropic effects. Before any usage, it is beneficial to know the general dosages.

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Nov 2, 2015

New artificial skin can detect pressure and heat simultaneously

Posted by in categories: computing, cyborgs, materials, mobile phones, robotics/AI

A team of researchers with Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology and Dong-A University, both in South Korea, has developed an artificial skin that can detect both pressure and heat with a high degree of sensitivity, at the same time. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the team describes how they created the skin, what they found in testing it and the other types of things it can sense.

Many scientists around the world are working to develop , both to benefit robots and human beings who have lost skin sensation or limbs. Such efforts have led to a wide variety of artificial skin types, but until now, none of them have been able to sense both pressure and heat to a high degree, at the same time.

The new artificial skin is a sandwich of materials; at the top there is a meant to mimic the human fingerprint (it can sense texture), beneath that sit sensors sandwiched between . The sensors are domed shaped and compress to different degrees when the skin is exposed to different amount of pressure. The compression also causes a small electrical charge to move through the skin, as does heat or sound, which is also transmitted to sensors—the more pressure, heat or sound exerted, the more charge there is—using a computer to measure the charge allows for measuring the degree of sensation “felt.” The ability to sense sound, the team notes, was a bit of a surprise—additional testing showed that the artificial skin was actually better at picking up sound than an iPhone microphone.

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Nov 2, 2015

The world just got closer to a ‘hypersonic space plane’ that will transform ‘the economics of space’

Posted by in categories: economics, space travel

BAE just bought 20% of Reaction Engines. That’s a good indication it’s gonna happen!


BAE Systems, one of the world’s biggest aeronautics and defence firms, just made a significant investment in Reaction Engines.

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Nov 2, 2015

Is The Alcubierre Warp Drive Possible? | Space Time | PBS Digital Studios

Posted by in categories: physics, space travel

Is mankind capable of achieving warp speed?

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Nov 2, 2015

Dumb Holes Leak

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics, quantum physics

In August I went to Stephen Hawking’s public lecture in the fully packed Stockholm Opera. Hawking was wheeled onto the stage, placed in the spotlight, and delivered an entertaining presentation about black holes. The silence of the audience was interrupted only by laughter to Hawking’s well-placed jokes. It was a flawless performance with standing ovations.

In his lecture, Hawking expressed hope that he will win the Nobelprize for the discovery that black holes emit radiation. Now called “Hawking radiation,” this effect should have been detected at the LHC had black holes been produced there. But time has come, I think, for Hawking to update his slides. The ship to the promised land of micro black holes has long left the harbor, and it sunk – the LHC hasn’t seen black holes, has not, in fact, seen anything besides the Higgs.

But you don’t need black holes to see Hawking radiation. The radiation is a consequence of applying quantum field theory in a space- and time-dependent background, and you can use some other background to see the same effect. This can be done, for example, by measuring the propagation of quantum excitations in Bose-Einstein condensates. These condensates are clouds of about a billion or so ultra-cold atoms that form a fluid with basically zero viscosity. It’s as clean a system as it gets to see this effect. Handling and measuring the condensate is a big experimental challenge, but what wouldn’t you do to create a black hole in the lab?

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Nov 1, 2015

‘Alien Megastructure’ Mystery May Soon Be Solved

Posted by in category: alien life

The mystery behind a strangely dimming star could soon be solved.

Astronomers around the world are keeping a close eye on the star KIC 8462852, which has dimmed dramatically numerous times over the past few years, dropping in brightness by up to 22 percent. These big dips have spurred speculation that the star may be surrounded by some type of alien megastructure — a hypothesis that will be put to the test if and when KIC 8462852 dims again.

“As long as one of those events occurs again, we should be able to catch it in the act, and then we’ll definitely be able to figure out what we’re seeing,” said Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University. [13 Ways to Hunt Intelligent Alien Life]

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Nov 1, 2015

We’re on the cusp of a revolution that will change the world as much as computers did

Posted by in category: computing

People don’t understand how big of a deal this is.

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Nov 1, 2015

Post-Human

Posted by in categories: computing, entertainment, nanotechnology, robotics/AI

Post-Human is a scifi proof-of-concept short based on the bestselling series of novels by me, David Simpson. Amazingly, filmed over just three hours by a crew of three, the short depicts the opening of Post-Human, drawing back the curtain on the Post-Human world and letting viewers see the world and characters they’ve only been able to imagine previously. You’ll get a taste of a world where everyone is immortal, have onboard mental “mind’s eye” computers, nanotechnology can make your every dream a reality, and thanks to the magnetic targeted fusion implants every post-human has, everyone can fly (and yep, there’s flying in this short!) But there’s a dark side to this brave new world, including the fact that every post-human is monitored from the inside out, and the one artificial superintelligence running the show might be about to make its first big mistake. wink

The entire crew was only three people, including me, and I was behind the camera at all times. The talent is Madison Smith as James Keats, and Bridget Graham as his wife, Katherine. As a result of the expense of the spectacular location, the entire short had to be filmed in three hours, so we had to be lean and fast. What a rush! (Pun intended).

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Nov 1, 2015

Engineer invent a way without using the signals

Posted by in category: futurism

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Nov 1, 2015

Why doesn’t the ISS have a centrifugal gravity module?

Posted by in category: space

There are some very inexpensive ways of testing human effects of spinning motions and artificial gravity in space. We could probably do our first tethre based experiments, and our first short arm centrifuge experiments in space as well, within a year or two of deciding that this is a priority project.

But as for building such a module — it would be expensive to do the module — depending how it works. But not impossibly so. They actually had an idea to do this, the Nautilus X ISS demo, costed as between $83 million and $143 million at the time (2011) and requiring three years to develop, so if they had started then, it would be in space by now:

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