Misc wonders...

For many years I have consulted with government agencies (e.g. DoD, CIA, AirForce, DTRA and Homeland Security) about potential “unusual threats and opportunities.” So have several of my colleagues in the futurist/science-fiction game - proving that there are many skilled professionals at the upper-middle ranks who know the value of technologically informed imagination, in peering at the dangers that may lie ahead. Some scientifically qualified authors even formed a think tank consultation outfit called SIGMA years ago, in order to provide this kind of service at a larger scale. Alas, SIGMA never really took off...

...till now, that is. In a recent issue of USA Today you can read about the latest DHS conference at which SIGMA members explored dire scenarios of peril for the US Homeland. I was unable to attend. But do read abouyt Greg Bear and Larry Niven and others, hard at work using those “lamps on the brow” to peer ahead for the greater good.


----- More Misc Items ----

-- Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn't lost blood. All that's happened is his heart has stopped beating—the definition of "clinical death"—and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died? As recently as 1993, when Dr. Sherwin Nuland wrote the best seller "How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter," the conventional answer was that it was his cells that had died. The patient couldn't be revived because the tissues of his brain and heart had suffered irreversible damage from lack of oxygen. This process was understood to begin after just four or five minutes. If the patient doesn't receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation within that time, and if his heart can't be restarted soon thereafter, he is unlikely to recover. That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "After one hour," he says, "we couldn't see evidence the cells had died.

But if the cells are still alive, why can't doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. "It looks to us," says Becker, "as if the cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with oxygen. Something throws the switch that makes the cell die."

With this realization came another: that standard emergency-room procedure has it exactly backward. When someone collapses on the street of cardiac arrest, if he's lucky he will receive immediate CPR, maintaining circulation until he can be revived in the hospital. But the rest will have gone 10 or 15 minutes or more without a heartbeat by the time they reach the emergency department. And then what happens? "We give them oxygen," Becker says. "We jolt the heart with the paddles, we pump in epinephrine to force it to beat, so it's taking up more oxygen." Blood-starved heart muscle is suddenly flooded with oxygen, precisely the situation that leads to cell death. Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion. WOW!

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have found a way to stimulate the slow waves typical of deep sleep by the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to send a harmless magnetic signal through the skulls of sleeping folks.

India Looks To Produce World's First
European researchers have integrated thin-film organic solar cells with a flexiblehttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif polymer battery to produce a lightweight and ultrathin solar battery for low-wattage electronic devices, such as smart cards and mobile phones. The battery can recharge itself when exposed to natural or indoor sunlight

Scientists at Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (Spawar) claim they have achieved a low energy nuclear reaction (LERN) in an experiment that can be replicated and tested.

Much more efficient solar cells that make solar power about as cheap as electricity from the electric grid may soon be possible as a result of technology that more efficiently captures and uses light.

NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics, such as spacecraft that could surf the solar system on magnetic fields, motion-sensitive spacesuits that could generate power, and tiny, spherical robots that could explore Mars.

"metamaterial" that selectively filters terahertz radiation could perhaps be used for short-range wireless communications. The device is essentially a sheet of metal foil incorporating a carefully designed pattern of holes. It is a so-called metamaterial, since it interacts with electromagnetic waves in novel ways.

A sensor chip controlled not by wires and transistors, but by a living slime mould marks an important step towards more widespread use of biologically-driven components and devices.

Interesting interview re the quest for “intelligence” in . ”Ihave set these goals: the object recognition capabilities of a 2-year-old child, the language understanding of a 4-year-old.”

To which I would add a third & hardest far-out goal. The common sense of a chicken.


TerraPass is a company that sells "carbon offsets," mostly to individuals. What is a carbon offset? I’m glad you asked. Here’s how it works - customers come to the website, plug in the cars they drive, home energy usage, and airplane travel, and get back a calculation of how much carbon dioxide they are putting into the atmosphere every year. TerraPass then lets them pay renewable energy and efficiency projects to reduce emissions by the equivalent amount. So for example you might find that the "carbon footprint" of your minivan is 4 tons of carbon dioxide/year. Through the TerraPass website, you pay about $35, and your money is bundled with money from other customers to pay for reduction projects, or to keep ongoing projects in business. Typical project might be a landfill that is seeping methane gas (one of the worst of the global warming offenders), and TerraPass customer money is paying a developer to destroy or flare off that methane so it never enters the atmosphere. TerraPass is still small enough that we aren’t supporting projects single-handedly, and some projects also make some money by selling electricity, but you get the idea.

At the other end, Russ Daggatt offers this: ”By the time global warming got to the point where there was a broad scientific consensus that action was required there wasn't a whole lot of time to act before the problem gets beyond our ability to mitigate it. To our great misfortune, George W. Bush became president just as recognition of the problem became clear. Eight years is a long time in that context.

“Of course, it hasn't helped that ExxonMobil has spent $23 million since 1998 ($2.1 million in 2006 alone) funding various global warming denier groups http://www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-david/catching-the-tiger-in the_b_48787.html. There should be a special place in Hell for them (actually, if Houston, where they have their headquarters, gets any hotter and smoggier than it already is, it might qualify). But even Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson now says, "It is clear that something is going on. It is not useful to debate (the issue) any longer." Not that he is actually doing anything about it (like ... you know, maybe cutting off funding to deceptive pseudo-science).”

A special place in hell, indeed.

Speaking of which...

"Star Wars" documentary reveals nothing.

In interview after interview, punctuated with film clip after film clip, one "Star Wars" authority after another compares the stories in the films to great epics and classical mythology. Over two hours, experts (an assortment that includes anchor Dan Rather, director Peter Jackson, journalist Linda Ellerbee, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and political satirist Stephen Colbert) find parallels to "The Iliad," "The Odyssey," "The Lord of the Rings," "Paradise Lost," "Jason and the Argonauts," "Hamlet" and the story of Christianity, among others. Rarely has so much time been spent on elaborating the obvious.

On this, the 30th anniversary of the first "Star Wars" film, it would have been more interesting to assess how well Lucas fulfilled his vision, but there is not a syllable of criticism uttered. Not even about JarJar Binks. And, although Lucas' production company helped make the special, there isn't a single frame of Lucas discussing the underlying philosophy of "Star Wars," how it evolved and how well, in retrospect, it was reflected in the films. Was he off in some galaxy far away?

ah well....


And now, from the Transparency front...

The Visible Man: An FBI Target Puts His Whole Life Online

Hasan Elahi whips out his Samsung Pocket PC phone and shows me how he's keeping himself out of Guantanamo. He swivels the camera lens around and snaps a picture of the Manhattan Starbucks where we're drinking coffee. Then he squints and pecks at the phone's touchscreen. "OK! It's uploading now," says the cheery, 35-year-old artist and Rutgers professor, whose bleached-blond hair complements his fluorescent-green pants. "It'll go public in a few seconds." Sure enough, a moment later the shot appears on the front page of his Web site, TrackingTransience.net.

...Elahi's site is the perfect alibi. Or an audacious art project. Or both. The Bangladeshi-born American says the US government mistakenly listed him on its terrorist watch list — and once you're on, it's hard to get off. To convince the Feds of his innocence, Elahi has made his life an open book. Whenever they want, officials can go to his site and see where he is and what he's doing. Indeed, his server logs show hits from the Pentagon, the Secretary of Defense, and the Executive Office of the President, among others.

The globe-hopping prof says his overexposed life began in 2002, when he stepped off a flight from the Netherlands and was detained at the Detroit airport. He says FBI agents later told him they'd been tipped off that he was hoarding explosives in a Florida storage unit; subsequent lie detector tests convinced them he wasn't their man. But with his frequent travel — Elahi logs more than 70,000 air miles a year exhibiting his art work and attending conferences — he figured it was only a matter of time before he got hauled in again. He might even be shipped off to Gitmo before anyone realized their mistake. The FBI agents had given him their phone number, so he decided to call before each trip; that way, they could alert the field offices. He hasn't been detained since.

I’d have to classify this as something that may have started out 80% self-protection but is now 90% “art”. Great art, but the story hardly looks like top case on my Amnesty International intervention list. The guy seems to have seized the initiative in ways that we all approve-of, here. You go, boy.

And finally...

Gotta see these way cool handmade Steampunk Rayguns From the F/X Guys at Weta.