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Sep 4, 2015

Squishy transistors—a device concept for fast, low-power electronics

Posted by in categories: computing, electronics

An international team of researchers from the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), IBM, the University of Edinburgh and Auburn University have shown that a new device concept — a ‘squishy’ transistor — can overcome the predicted power bottleneck caused by CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) technology reaching its fundamental limits.

Moore’s law predicted that the number of transistors able to fit on a given die area would double every two years. As transistor density doubled, chip size shrank and processing speeds increased. This march of progress led to rapid advances in and a surge in the number of interconnected devices. The challenge with making anything smaller is that there are fundamental physical limits that can’t be ignored and we are now entering the final years of CMOS transistor shrinkage.

Furthermore, this proliferation is driving an increase in data volume, accompanied by rising demands on energy to process, store and communicate it all; as a result, IT infrastructure now draws an estimated 10 % of the world’s electrical power. Previous efforts have focused on remediation by reducing the amount of energy per bit. However, soon we will hit a power barrier that will prevent continued voltage scaling. The development of novel, low-power devices based on different physical principles is therefore crucial to the continued evolution of IT.

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Sep 4, 2015

The World in 2025: 8 Predictions for the Next 10 Years

Posted by in category: futurism

In 2025, in accordance with Moore’s Law, we’ll see an acceleration in the rate of change as we move closer to a world of true abundance. Here are eight areas where we’ll see extraordinary transformation in the next decade:

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Sep 4, 2015

The Longevity Dividend

Posted by in category: life extension

Investments in Longevity Could Really Pay Off


With a ‘silver tsunami’ ahead, tackling aging makes all kinds of sense — and could reap rich rewards.

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Sep 4, 2015

This Presidential Candidate Is Promising Immortality

Posted by in categories: geopolitics, life extension, transhumanism

AOL running an energetic 2-min video on transhumanism and longevity on their morning show:


Zoltan Istvan of the Transhumanist Party is running for President on one platform: longevity.

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Sep 4, 2015

The Genomics Revolution: Building An App Store For Genomes

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Your DNA contains a huge amount of information, and it’s getting cheaper and easier to sequence it every day. The problem now is not the sequencing, but what you can actually learn from the information — if you can at all. We’re pretty good at reading off the code nowadays, but the vast majority of it is still a mystery. While there are many companies that will sequence your DNA for a relatively cheap fee, there’s no unified platform directing you to companies who can actually make sense of the code for you; after all there’s not much use having information if you have no idea what it means. Starting with a $100 million investment and partners including Illumina (a world leader in sequencing), new company Helix aims to change this by building a sort of genome ‘App store’ — putting you in touch with your DNA.

Helix wants to act like a hub, connecting you with the right companies and enabling you to find out information you want on your very own genome. As sequencing expands, buoyed by the precision medicine drive, we’re learning more and more about our DNA. This platform hopes to bring all these developments together so that discoveries can trickle through to individuals at home trying to decipher their own genomes.

”Genomics is reaching an inflection point in cost, volumes, and knowledge, creating a significant opportunity to unlock information that is currently not widely accessible to individuals”

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Sep 4, 2015

New General Relativity Area law theory suggests time runs backward inside a blackhole

Posted by in categories: cosmology, physics

Black holes are known to have many strange properties, such as that they allow nothing—not even light—to escape after falling in. A lesser known but equally bizarre property is that black holes appear to “know” what happens in the future in order to form in the first place. However, this strange property arises from the way in which black holes are defined, which has motivated some physicists to explore alternative definitions.

They reported a new area law in general relativity that is based on an interpretation of black holes as curved geometric objects called “holographic screens.”

“The so-called teleology of the black hole event horizon is an artifact of the way in which physicists define an event horizon: the event horizon is defined with respect to infinite future elapsed time, so by definition it ‘knows’ about the entire fate of the universe,” Engelhardt told Phys.org. “In general relativity, the black hole event horizon cannot be observed by any physical observer in finite time, and there isn’t a sense in which the black hole as an entity knows about future infinity. It is simply a convenient way of describing black holes.”

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Sep 4, 2015

VASIMR: Here’s How we Might Reach Mars in 39 Days

Posted by in categories: energy, space

The first VASIMR experiment was conducted at MIT in 1983 on their magnetic mirror device plasma device, and in 1998 ASPL created the first VASIMR rocket, the VX-10. By 2005 the ASPL had created the VX-50, which was capable of up to 50kW of plasma discharge. So, what’s so significant about this design?

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Sep 3, 2015

Bitcoin Network Stress Test Could Occur Next Week

Posted by in category: bitcoin

The controversial group behind several bitcoin ‘stress tests’ has confirmed it will push ahead with its biggest experiment to date.

Speaking to CoinDesk, CoinWallet COO James Wilson said the test – which could reportedly cause a 30-day backlog of transactions – would be executed at 10am Thursday (GMT) next week.

The mysterious group, which sees its work as a drastic but necessary demonstration of Bitcoin XT’s need, has been criticised by some users for “bullying” a live network worth several billion dollars.

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Sep 3, 2015

Lyfe

Posted by in category: media & arts

With the standard of a gamified social media, two young adults meet for a date with the expectation of personal fulfillment.

Alex Stanton’s Thesis Project for Full Sail University’s Digital Cinematography Bachelor’s of Science program.

Directed by: Alex Stanton vimeo.com/alexstanton, Brent Howard.
Story by: Pride. St. Clair.
Cinematography by: Josh Russell vimeo.com/joshrussell
Original Music Composed by: Josh Wilson.
Title Design: Chris Koelsch vimeo.com/thisnthat
Starring: Justin Stanton.
Lissy Smith vimeo.com/user9221474
Dylan Stretchbery vimeo.com/user27301393
Daniel Lee Robertson III

Continue reading “Lyfe” »

Sep 3, 2015

Live: AMA with a scientist who is working on a way to “laser print” neurons

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Reddit AMAs are such a great feature. They’re one of the (admittedly few) redeeming features that keep the community interesting enough to follow, despite all the crap that the site otherwise plays host to.

In this Ask Me Anything, a series in which a notable person stays with a Reddit topic to answer Redditors’ questions, Matt Thomson from the UC San Francisco explains how he and the team he works with are able to use coloured light to get stem cells to develop in such a way as to form otherwise rare neurons, and similar cells that have until recently been beyond cellular biologists’ grasp. Here’s a video to get you started:

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