Science - Technology Updates

Anyone remember the movie, "The Day After Tomorrow?” Did the lurid, eco collapse scenario seem unlikely?  Think again. "Research hints at tipping point in the Atlantic’s currents… Lots of fresh water from melting ice could radically alter the Atlantic’s currents."

Scientific American makes it explicit: “The Arctic Is Breaking Climate Records, Altering Weather Worldwide.”  Shake your mad cousins awake. No one is asking them to start adoring campus lefty flakes. But their country and civilization and planet and posterity need them to stop giving loyalty to lunatics. And that means turning… off… Fox. Or at least getting multiple sources, instead of staring at hypnosis.

== Recent tech advances ==

New efficient and inexpensive technologies could allow extraction of rare earth elements REE, critical components of many electronics and green products, from waste coal ash. This innovation could enable the U.S. to enter into the $4 billion rare earth element production market while recycling coal ash in an environmentally friendly way. This breakthrough could be critical; China, which controls over 90 percent of the supply, with wide implications on the U.S. economy and national security. For example, "after China reduced export quotas in 2010, the cost of rare earth magnets for one wind turbine increased from $80,000 to $500,000," reports Purdue News. 

 Current separation technologies produce large amounts of chemical waste. One of the 10 most polluted sites in the world is a manmade lake in China, where the waste effluents from REE extractions are stored. Coal ash is rich in rare earth elements, as rich as some of the best ore deposits. So this new method could have huge implications.

Updates to the Periodic Table: University of Minnesota researchers have discovered a fourth element that is magnetic at room temperatures: Ruthenium (Ru). The others: iron, nickel and cobalt.  Could have importance to computing and high tech industries.

Interesting times:  By herding rubidium atoms into specific arrangements, physicists have been able to create agglomerations that are - in effect -- weird macro particles. A few years ago, one of these pseudo-entities showed many of the outward traits of a magnetic monopole...

... and more recently, the rubidium atom array took on the behaviors seen in "ball lightning." (Note that Liu Cixin's next book is about... and has the title... Ball Lightning. It's... speculative.)

Graphene-4 based hair dye might be stable, non-toxic and electrically conducting, allowing the kind of waving photo-tendrils worn by Tor Povlov in Existence.  

== Was "Earth" a crystal ball? ==

Speak to your computer by subvocalizing....“The AlterEgo system consists of a wearable device with electrodes that pick up otherwise undetectable neuromuscular subvocalizations — saying words “in your head” in natural language.” Why does everyone else get prediction cred?  I prominently discussed "subvocal" interfaces in Earth, back in 1989. Sigh alas.

Another for the prediction registry? Found embedded within a South African diamond — the high-pressure perovskite-structured polymorph of calcium silicate (CaSiO3). This mineral should sound a bit familiar.  High-pressure perovskite- a structured polymorph of calcium silicate (CaSiO3) - is expected to be the fourth most abundant in the Earth—but this high pressure form has not previously been found in nature. Till now.

Cool news in its own right. But in my novel Earth (1989) referred to it making up large portions of our planetary interior. Why did I make a deal about it, long ago? Because of a funky coincidence — that perovskites also happen to be among the mineral forms that make among the best high temperature superconductors! Of course, I make good use of this coincidence in the plot. ;-)

Researchers are developing a machine that could, like a seasoned beekeeper, listen to the buzz of bees to help determine their health.  Sure, I’ll help test it out…

In a fluidized bed, loosely-bound grains can be separated by upward air flow, to behave just like a liquid. Long used to produce even combustion in coal plants, the FB concept also featured in my doctoral dissertation “Three Models of Dust Layers inCometary Nuclei.”  Now, typically, some of us have found a way to turn the whole thing into … fun. A craze for “sand floating” or even sand swimming has begun!

== Bio Tech and beyond... staring with braaaaaains ==

Fascinating. We’ve long known that there are differences in mental process between the human left and right hemispheres, that go beyond their responsibility for opposite sides of the body. The simplistic notion has long been that the left hemisphere handles language, logic, reasoning and the right far more of the subjective, comparative and non-discursive.

Dr. Michael Miller has been working on direct, targeted neural stimulation with electric currents. What seems to come forth is that the Left Hemisphere has a duty to reduce uncertainty, eliminating competing models of reality, either via evidence or else impulsive decision making.

Using tDCS transcranial Direct Current Stimulation on the left prefrontal cortex, researchers can crank things up, making a subject more certain in beliefs. And yes, the implications are creepy. Kind of like the amplified “focus” that Vernor Vinge portrayed in A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY.

The right hemisphere, by contrast, appears to be about reducing conflict.

At the same conference we heard Dr Megan Palmer - of Stanford…bio-security, leader in iGEM … equiv of FIRST Robotics for contests in genetic engineering.

A knotted variation of the DNA double helix has been discovered in living cells, causing perplexity over what it’s for.  

==... and... ==

Carnegie Mellon and Disney Research have teamed up to turn your walls into a touchscreen and gesture interface. Using a water-based nickel conductive paint, the team created a lattice pattern underneath a regular latex paint. Connected to a sensor board and a laptop for visualization, the system recognizes changes in capacitance (touch) and in electromagnetic (EM) waves to pick up presence, gestures and motion.

Mixed signals? Apparently, an Amazon Echo's Alexa recorded a private conversation - and sent the audio files to a user's contact. The likely cause: "inadvertent vocal cues."

“In Isaac Asimov’s 1941 short story “Nightfall,” a journalist in the distant future on a far away imaginary planet named Lagash strikingly resembles the cynical columnists on the planet Earth. Asimov’s story deals with climate denialists, too. In it, a Lagash scientist lashes out at a newspaper editor who could someone like Marc Morano or Anthony Watts of today: “You have led a vast newspaper campaign against the efforts of myself and my colleagues to organize the world against the menace which it is now too late to avert.” That quote from a 1941 sci fi story offers a chilling forecast of a modern journalism that gives equal time to climate change deniers. Scary.”  -- Dan Bloom, “coiner of Cli-Fi."

Just the Facts, Ma'am: a cogent defense of the importance of facts and science is posted by Jack Nilles, one of the officers of the AirlinePilots Association, the union that has helped keep our skies so reliably safe for so long.

Elon keeps getting dissed in the wannabe press Here’s a reaction by someone who gets it. Meanwhile, Musk's response is a media company to rate the credibility of journalists - a site that would be called "Pravda" - the Russian word for "truth."

Cosmologist and author of Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor, Brian Keating tells the inside story of BICEP2’s  mesmerizing discovery and the scientific drama that ensued. In his new book: Losing the Nobel Prize, Keating describes a rollercoaster journey of revelation and discovery, bringing to life the highly competitive, take-no-prisoners, publish-or-perish world of modern science. Along the way, he provocatively argues that the Nobel Prize, instead of advancing scientific progress, may actually hamper it, encouraging speed and greed while punishing collaboration and bold innovation. In a thoughtful reappraisal of the wishes of Alfred Nobel, Keating offers practical solutions for reforming the prize, providing a vision of a scientific future in which cosmologists may, finally, be able to see all the way back to the very beginning.

Watch this recent video from UCTV, where I interview Keating: "Losing the Nobel Prize with Brian Keating."