bizscitek

Sensors

2009-05-10T19:12:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I wonder how many sensors are really out there in a modern war zone. Sensors can now be made that run off a variety of sources such as solar, vibration, etc. I'd be surprised if the military doesn't have wind-powered sensors.

It's not hard to store data in a sensor, but not easy to get the data back "home." But one good way might be to "pool" information among a number of sensors and then have it picked up by a UAV. I like the idea of "grasshopper" sensors---sensors that hop from place to place. Seems like an efficient use of energy.

Sensors could be dropped off at one place by a UAV, disperse, gather info, and then re-converge to be picked up or debriefed by a second UAV visit. Sensors would not have to go to a pre-arranged spot---as long as they converged with each other utilizing signals. Then they could pull their resources to transmit a "find me" signal in response to a signal from the returning UAV.

We should heat clothes, not homes and apartments.

2009-01-02T13:48:00.000-08:00

My apartment is slightly cooler in the winter that I would make it if I had adjustable heat. I keep a space heater in my bedroom to keep that temperature perfect for me and in the other rooms I don't mind--- I just wear slightly warmer clothes.

I just pulled a long undershirt out of my freshly done laundry and put it on. It was warm and felt wonderful. I thought, "It would be great if it just stayed like this." Then I started thinking, they do make battery-heated clothing of various types such as socks for outdoor use in the winter for people like hunters. But really, if we are serious about energy conservation, we should all be wearing heated clothing at all times indoors in the winter time. It would be much more energy efficient to keep our clothes warm than to keep our rooms warm.

We would probably need to have some kind of harnesses with the heating elements--- one for shirts and one for pants for each person. Items of clothing would be swapped in and out of the harnesses. The harnesses would be on top of the clothing so as not to contact the person's body and pick up sweat smells. The harnesses would be powered by swappable rechargeable batteries.

Solution for the green remote control problem

2008-12-09T08:39:00.001-08:00

Just put a passive RFID circuit into the TV (like one of the tags in the books at Barnes & Nobles). It would start the TV in response to a remote signal---with no "always on" circuit in the TV.

Right/Left Brain Division Linked to Lower Structures

2008-10-09T05:09:00.000-07:00

I just had an amazing realization, based on intuition and a few observations that are just too ephemeral and personal to relate here. The right half of the cerebral cortex is more closely connected to the thalamus than the left half. The left half is more centered on itself. The limbic system is equally connected to both right and left halves of the cortex.

Extending this with a mixture of logic and intuition, I would say the pre-frontal lobe is more connected to the right half of the cortex than the left.

86 Architecture Rules at Intel

2008-10-04T13:14:00.000-07:00

Recently, Intel came out with a new line of chips based on the ancient type of software known as -86 or -286. Chips based on the software may give first come out in the early 1990s or maybe the late 1980s.

I find this very interesting. Although Intel periodically comes out with revolutionary new types of software based their chips on, such as RISC ( reduced instruction set), the old 286-based chips seem to be superseding a much more recent RISC chips, at least in many ways.

I believe the 286 represents a type of super-legacy technology that allows its practitioners to outperform its competitors due to their long familiarity with the software. I believe this is analogous to the way silicon continues to outperform every other material even though people come up with new materials sometimes it seemed to be better. In fact, silicon is the most frequently used material for nanomechanical devices, not because silicon is good material to make mechanical devices out of--- to the contrary I believe--- but because of the huge level of expertise engineers have developed in machining silicon to very small specifications due to its usage as the main material all the IC chips.

Slipping through cell walls, nanotubes deliver high-potency punch to cancer tumors in mice

2008-08-14T14:07:00.000-07:00

PhysOrg.com

Very cool!

Now researchers at Stanford University have addressed that problem using single-walled carbon nanotubes as delivery vehicles. The new method has enabled the researchers to get a higher proportion of a given dose of medication into the tumor cells than is possible with the "free" drug—that is, the one not bound to nanotubes—thus reducing the amount of medication that they need to inject into a subject to achieve the desired therapeutic effect.

"That means you will also have less drug reaching the normal tissue," said Hongjie Dai, professor of chemistry and senior author of a paper, which will be published in the Aug. 15 issue of Cancer Research. So not only is the medication more effective against the tumor, ounce for ounce, but it greatly reduces the side effects of the medication...

All blood vessel walls are slightly porous, but in healthy vessels the pores are relatively small. By tinkering with the length of the nanotubes, the researchers were able to tailor the nanotubes so that they were too large to get through the holes in the walls of normal blood vessels, but still small enough to easily slip through the larger holes in the relatively leaky blood vessels in the tumor tissue.

That enabled the nanotubes to deliver their medicinal payload with tremendous efficiency, throwing a therapeutic wrench into the cellular means of reproduction and thus squelching the hitherto unrestrained proliferation of the tumor cells.

Economic growth in a period of political fragmentation, Western Europe 900-13001

2008-07-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

http://www.iisg.nl/research/jvz-economic_growth.pdf

this paper tries to answer the question: Why did Europe grow rapidly economically during this period of political fragmentation. the number of states in Western Europe increased from something like 20 to something like 200 or 300 during this period.

Economic development during a time of political fragmentation contradicts most examples of economic development such as the Roman Empire, Qing dynasty in China,etc.

Paper concludes that the church and guilds were the key factors--- in opposition to the development of feudalism.

I doubt this because, as I noticed quite some time ago, the most advanced economic areas of the world ( not coming to the US which is an offshoot of Western Europe) are Western Europe and Japan--- both of which had feudalism--- which existed nowhere else as far as I know.

from another paper:

A New Civilization Emerges in Western Europe

Edited By: R. A. Guisepi

"The second limitation on the royal families came from the traditions of

feudalism and from the landed aristocracy as a powerful class. Aristocrats

tended to resist too much monarchical control in the West, and they had the

strength to make their objections heard. These aristocrats, even when vassals

of the king, had their own economic base and their own military force -

sometimes, in the case of great nobles, they had an army greater than that of

the king. The growth of the monarchy cut into aristocratic power, but this led

to new statements of the limits of kings. In 1215 the unpopular English king

John faced opposition to his taxation measures from an alliance of nobles,

townspeople, and church officials. Defeated in his war with France and then

forced down by the leading English lords, John was forced to sign the Great

Charter, or Magna Carta, which confirmed basically feudal rights against

monarchical claims. John promised to observe restraint in his dealings with

the nobles and the Church, agreeing for example not to institute new taxes

without the lords' permission or to appoint bishops without the Church's

permission. A few modern-sounding references to general rights of the English

people against the state that were included in Magna Carta largely served to

show where the feudal idea of mutual limits and obligations between rulers and

ruled could later expand.

This same feudal balance led, late in the 13th century, to the creation

of parliaments as bodies representing not individual voters but privileged

groups such as the nobles and the Church. The first full English parliament

convened in 1265, with the House of Lords representing the nobles and the

church hierarchy, and the Commons made up of elected representatives from

wealthy citizens of the towns. The parliament institutionalized the feudal

principle that monarchs should consult with their vassals. In particular,

parliaments gained the right to rule on any proposed changes in taxation;

through this power, they could also advise the crown on other policy issues.

While the parliamentary tradition became strongest in England, similar

institutions arose in France, Spain, and several of the regional governments

in Germany. Here too, parliaments represented the key estates: Church, nobles,

and urban leaders. They were not widely elected.

Feudal government was not modern government. People had rights according

to the estate into which they were born; there was no general concept of

citizenship and no democracy. Thus parliaments represented only a minority,

and even this minority only in terms of the three or four estates voting as

units (nobles, clergy, urban merchants, and sometimes wealthy peasants), not

some generalized collection of voters. Still, by creating a concept of limited

government and some hint of representative institutions, Western feudal

monarchy produced the beginnings of a distinctive political tradition. This

tradition differed from the political results of Japanese feudalism, which

emphasized group loyalty more than checks on central power.

During the postclassical period, a key result of the establishment of

feudal monarchy was a comparatively weak central core; although several

monarchies gained ground steadily, they wielded very few general powers. This

would change, as kings attained far more extensive powers in military affairs,

cultural patronage, and the like. However, some solid remnants of medieval

traditions, embodied in institutions like parliaments and ideas like the

separation between God's authority and state power, would define a basic

thread in the Western political process even in the later 20th century."

MEMS industry growth

2008-07-04T17:55:00.000-07:00

The MEMS industry has witnessed large growth rates in recent years in applications including cell phones, digital still cameras, camcorders, laptops, MP3 players, and robots.

New Software Tool Helps with Floorplanning for System on a Chip

2008-05-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

Magma takes floorplanning to another level, so to speak

"Floorplanning for SoCs seems to be a subject rife with paradox. On one hand, the exercise of iteratively refining the chip's floorplan seems to be the axel that holds hierarchical design together. On the other hand, improving the floorplan always seems to require one more level of detail than is currently available to the planners. So invariably, the floorplan is based on estimates of the size, shape, and timing of the blocks, and its quality depends heavily on the experience of the senior design staff...

"Next, Hydra can automatically generate primary floorplans, including creation of voltage domains, pin and pad placement, and gradual definition of the inner shapes of the blocks. At this point the tool can work interactively with designers to absorb, for example, information about the shape and location of hard IP blocks. The tool also creates partitions in the logical hierarchy automatically, impacting pin placement and timing as things get laid out.

"The information thus generated is passed as constraints to a shaping engine, which shapes the partitions that have been defined on the logical hierarchy, and also places and legalizes macros with a shape- and congestion-aware auto-placement engine. With this process complete, Hydra can automatically generate power grids and clock tree hierarchy. At this point the tool can generate production-quality top-level clock structures and prototype-quality block-level clock trees, Bali says. Hydra can also work with Magma's package co-design tools on placing bumps, I/O cells, and redistribution layer information along with the emerging floor plan...

"A key part of the process now, according to Bali, is budgeting. The information Hydra has generated in the process of constructing the floorplan gets pushed down to the block level as timing budgets and other constraints for the block implementation tools. As blocks are implemented, Hydra allows abstraction of detailed block designs back into the floorplanning process to refine the emerging picture of the full chip. By maintaining relative floorplanning constraints, the tool can incorporate changes without disrupting the rest of the plan.Thus, Magma claims, the tool provides a single cockpit for managing an hierarchical design from early exploration through implementation and into the final assembly process. Bali says that Hydra is unique in its ability to serve the team from planning through prototyping, and on to the preparation of the production-ready floorplan."

AI system for static and dynamic analysis of MEMS design and manufacture

2008-05-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

artificial intelligence approach for the design and manufacturing of micro electro mechanical systems

Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) is a new field. However, the application of MEMS has increased drastically for the past decade. The design and manufacturing of MEMS require specific expertise. A computerized consultant system for thorough static and dynamic analysis of MEMS is needed for design and manufacturing. A PC-based Expert System, EASYMEMS, has been developed. EASYMEMS contains domain specific knowledge of MEMS as well as the reasoning process of a human expert. It includes three sections: material, design, and manufacturing. It can be used to select the material for MEMS. It supports human reasoning and thus can offer MEMS design guidelines for engineers. It is also capable of performing thorough static and dynamic analysis and then calculating critical dimensions for the design of MEMS. Furthermore, it can be used for the consultation for MEMS manufacture. The computer graphics offered by EASYMEMS are very helpful for both MEMS design and manufacturing. In simple words, EASYMEMS is very user-friendly and is very beneficial for MEMS engineers.

2008-04-28T05:07:00.001-07:00

Evolution isn't finished with us. Scientists using data from the HapMap Project, a large scale effort to identify variations in human genes, have discovered evidence that evolution is actually accelerating. Granted, we're not talking about the decade scale here. Compared to your grandparents you're not some kind of advanced mutant.

But anthropologist Henry Harpending of the University of Utah, a co-author of the new study, says there have been significant changes in the last 1,000 or 2,000 years. The rate of evolution is far greater in the last few millenia, Harpending and his colleagues say, than it had been in the millions of years before. One of the possible causes of the acceleration, the scientists assert, may be the population boom. With more people, there's a greater likelihood that an advantageous genetic mutation will arise, and spread. Others contest the group's conclusions. Either way, this probably isn't the last controversial or groundbreaking idea we're going to hear about from the HapMap Project.—Gregory Mone

Mechanisms of memory [mis-]identified

2008-04-23T18:23:00.000-07:00

This is a continuing, not very effective line of research in my opinion. That memories are stored in molecules, partly due to the 3-D bending and contorting of some kind of protein or nucleic acid, is obvious to me. (See a previous post on the subject.) Only protein, DNA, and RNA is complex enough for this task, in my view.

Obviously, there is neuronal transmission involved with the formation of memory and blocking it blocks memory. This is not, as the article (and others like it) imply, getting to the actual mechanism of memory.

phys.org

"By blocking certain mechanisms that control the way that nerve cells in the brain communicate, scientists from the University of Bristol have been able to prevent visual recognition memory in rats...

"One hypothesis is that changes at the specialised junctions (synapses) between nerve cells in the brain, hold the secrets to learning and memory. The change in the strength of communication between synapses is called synaptic plasticity and, it is believed, the mechanisms of synaptic plasticity may be important for learning and memory. Bashir and his colleagues tested this hypothesis...

"Dr Sarah Griffiths, lead author on the paper, explained: “Nerve cells in the perirhinal cortex of the brain are known to be vital for visual recognition memory. Using a combination of biological techniques and behavioural testing, we examined whether the mechanisms involved in synaptic plasticity are also vital for visual recognition memory.”

"In their experiments, they were able to identify a key molecular mechanism that controls synaptic plasticity in the perirhinal cortex. They then demonstrated that blocking the same molecular mechanism that controls synaptic plasticity also prevented visual recognition memory in rats. This shows that such memory relies on specific molecular processes in the brain."

[What a brilliant thing to prove. What are the alternatives? That memory relies on "general" molecular processes in the brain? That it relies on "non-molecular" processes? Like maybe purely ionization, or something like noble gases? Practically every life process relies on "specific molecular processes!"

The exceptions, like the concentration of Na+ in the cell, are quite simple and obviously memory is not something like that. Even the concentration of Na+ in the cell, really depends on "specific molecular processes." Or perhaps their brilliance lies in the assertion that memory is "in the brain?" That narrows it down. It's not in the hand, or the appendix?

Sloppy writing, sloppy thinking, and sloppy science.

The Nature of Warlordism:Insights and Analysis

2008-04-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

In the midst of the Olympic protests, I am thinking about that central problem of Darfur (Somalia), warlordism.

By:Abdirizak Adam Hassan (Durqun)

"Warlordism as a paradigm is not a recent phenomenon to the field of factional rivalry and power politics. Many political philosophers wrote extensively on this condition of state absence and lawlessness. Thomas Hobbes, an English political philosopher of 17th-century described such a scenario as "hell on earth", and life becomes " nasty, brutish and short". Others Thought such a condition of life as "unthinkable, natural and barbaric" (John Locke), as "the day of the cannibal, Zero Hour, revealing the real man" ( Fredrick Hegel), and as "the day of the coward and the dread of the brave, cultural suicide and undoing civilization" (Jacques Rousseau). What this means is that the old world has witnessed and grabbled with what can become of the human existence in the absence of overarching conventions of a commonwealth that would indiscriminately uphold and exercise the enforcement of the law for the common survival of the society. To most of us, warlordism appears as a relatively new innovation by Somali warlords just because we are conditioned by, and accustomed to, an orderly peaceful existence provided by the state through the enforcement of law and order. Thus, we didn't know what to think of a situation where there is no state to foster us and provide basic security guarantees for us. The reality of life in southern Somalia can be best understood in shifting our thinking away from the lulling view of warlordism as a brief, circumstantial and interim situation that could be easily overcome once law and order returns. We should rather think of warlordism as a self-contained phenomena, and a full fledged known paradigm that has a substantive existence of its own right. It is a state of existence that draws its validation by default due to the absence of enforceable legal order. It has a de-facto underpinning of a legitimate operational practicality by the sole virtue of the absence of any credible challenge. And, it is a self-perpetuating bstinate state of power politics that is here to stay, unless proven otherwise. The only thing political about warlordism is the fact it acts and plans for its survival which can be only achieved through securing the supremacy and the upper hand for the control of the country, region,city or fiefdom. The rest of its manifestations are all-out belligerence of personal nature. Despite that, I argue, worlordism is not all about drunkenness and mayhem; it has a life (reason), sense of direction (goal) and adheres unto its own norms (laws) - albeit laws that don't make sense.

"The life of a typical warlord could be characterized as being paranoid at best, if not schizophrenic. Like all criminals at lose, his life is plagued with a constant and impeding insecurity and suspicion. He secretly harbors the unsettling realization that he has inflicted gross inhumanities to many people and looted many public and private wealth; and he would logically want to get away with it. Trying to get away with it, however, requires a towering vigil and expediency from his part to identify, predict and eliminate what he regards as a potential source of danger to himself. As a result, the worst kind of fear ( the bodily one) is the hallmark of the life of a warlord and it is what makes him tick. Warlordism as a profession, thus, thrives on the dynamics of sheer survival and that is what gives life and reason for the justification of its core operational norms (laws) of shrewd plotting and cold brutality. Consequently, you can expect everything from a warlord but to willingly undo himself by dismantling his power-base for the sake of the nation, his own family or anything in-between.

"The goal of a warlord is to deny justice as we know it and replace it with a justice of his own making and taste. It is a justice that would polish him as a benevolent moral statesman and as a hero who has struggled and dearly sacrificed for the common good of the nation as a whole. It is a justice that must erase his shameful past and purge all traces of his criminality by compelling the nation to submit to his wanton desires of survival, wealth, fame and power. A warlord can never conceive of any other way out of this predicament of his own making, except through the choice between two evils: (a) the inevitable continuation of the mayhem, and (b) the eventual wise decision of the people to let him realize his goal of reaching the apex of power by becoming the head of the state. His will to power is intimately connected with his will to live. Hypothetically, even if the nascent state promises a grant of a retroactive blanket amnesty for the warlords, it would not be a sufficient guarantee for their insatiable security needs. This underlines how entrenched is the resolve of a warlord and as far as he is concerned, he is here to stay.

"The operational norms (laws) of Warlordism are simple, unwritten and tactical in nature. They are not "laws" per se, but laws nevertheless, in as much as they make sense and can be explained by the rational mind. They are akin to the raw tenets of balance of power and the logic of maximizing gains. Sometimes securing any scant of a relative gain over other warlords might be about enough for a given warlord. Often times, however, a warlord of good standing may raise the stakes and aim for an absolute gain. When such a warlord emerges, the rest of the warlords would suddenly cease all active hostilities between them and form a tactical alliance for the purpose of confronting him. Curiously though, even if the alliance succeeds in defeating their common enemy, it would not go the extra mile and form a government. What may explain this unwitting loss of opportunity is primarily the simple fact that forming a government and thereby ending warlordism would involve the emergence of one of them as the leader, and that spells as horrific a scenario as the one they just collectively defeated. Their need (use) for each other stops there and they would invariably resume their perpetual enmity of each other. A warlord for a warlord is both a sworn enemy and an occasional tactical ally (savior). This neurosis that trips between [H]ate-love dichotomy stems from the dictates of being realistic and not letting lofty ideals of any kind undermine ones sacred desire for survival and perseverance. It is what gives credence to the old classical theories of balance of power and Real-Politick which are the passionate breechings of realism."

Forms of warlordism can be found in many different realms and the idea of it can be extended to a general principle---the formation of a rogue power center within a structure originally designed for another purpose. Here is an example from politics in India:

Factionalism within Cong takes ugly turn

"Factionalism within the Congress took an ugly turn today with the acting leader of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP), Capt Ajay Singh, alleging that the Union Minister of State, Mr Rao Inderjeet Singh, worked against him and other party candidates in the Ahirwal belt in just concluded Assembly elections.

"Capt Ajay Singh, Congress MLA from Rewari, without naming Mr Rao Inderjeet Singh said the Union Minister of State, who hails from South Haryana, worked against party nominees.

"The allegation of Capt Ajay Singh, considered to be in the vanguard of anti-Rao Bireder Singh politics, assumes serious political significance. In the Ahirwal belt, comprising districts of Rewari, Gurgaon and Mahendergarh, politics of Congress leaders is polarised between pro and anti-Rao Birender Singh, former Chief Minister of Haryana. Rao Inderjeet Singh is the son of Rao Birender Singh...

"However, some leaders like Capt Ajay Singh, Rao Dharam Pal (Sohna), Rao Narender Singh (Ateli), Ms Anita Yadav (Salawas), have been winning elections in the past inspite of the opposition from the Rao Birender Singh’s clan. The anti-Rao Birender Singh faction allege that Rao Birender Singh’s family has a vested interest in not allowing others to rise and always try to brow beat the Congress leadership by claiming that it has monopoly in Ahirwal politics. The family leverages the figure of Rao Bireder Singh in the Congress high command just to scupper the political growth of the leaders who show signs of “independence and maturity” and “preferred loyalty” to the party organisation, they add."

Researchers stumped by drug addiction paradox

2008-04-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.physorg.com/news127559887.html

Phys.org

"Throughout history, plants have created their toxins by mimicking their own [errror in article, I think, must mean animals' own] molecules that regulate metabolism, growth and reproduction. When ingested by herbivores, some of these molecules can interfere with nearly every step in the animal’s neural signaling process...

"However, the researchers point to several other studies which show that the detoxification enzymes developed by animals (and which originally evolved in bacteria about 3.5 billion years ago) expanded in animals about 400 million years ago – about the same time that plants were evolving their own toxins. In other words, animals and plants seemed to have coevolved competitive genes in response to each other, which contradicts the evolutionary interpretation.

"As the researchers investigated further, they compiled other studies showing evidence that humans inherited these detox genes from their mammalian ancestors. Interestingly, although many modern animal species can tolerate plant toxins, different species possess different detox function levels. Even among humans from different geographic locations, these functions differ. Often, human populations with greater numbers of toxin-metabolizing genes originate from parts of the world that contain an abundance of those plants. For example, human populations in and near Turkey have a very high frequency of enzymes that can metabolize opiates, and the opiate poppy is native to the Turkish region...

"Based on evidence from previous studies, Sullivan, Hagen, and Hammerstein note that plant toxins may actually have some kind of benefit for animals. For instance, because plant toxins are more harmful to some species than to others, the less affected species might actually consume levels of toxin that are tolerable to themselves but much worse for the parasites or pathogens that feed on them in order to protect themselves. For example, earlier humans that consumed nicotine (in much smaller amounts than today) could have received the benefit of fewer parasitic infections. Of course, the benefits also come with trade-offs."

Swarm of Tiny UAVs With Stationary Base Relay

2008-03-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

This is a kind of surveillance idea. There would be a large number of small, relatively inexpensive UAVs. Each UAV would incorporate a camera capable of taking only still photos. Each UAV would transmit the photos over a relatively short distance. Along with each photo would be a data package including as much information as could be economically gather about its own position including height from the ground, compass heading of the front end of the UAV, angle of tilt from horizontal, etc. GPS would definitely not be included (too expensive).

The stationary base relay (SBR) would be a relatively larger, higher-powered unit compared to the UAVs. Initially, the stationary base relay and the smaller UAVs would be delivered to the base location by a mother UAV that would drop them off and leave. The SBR would be dropped at the base of a plant. The SBR's antenna would be dropped into the foliage of the plant for camouflage.

The SBR would pick up the short-range transmissions of the UAV and relay them to the main base station, or military base. a computer at the main base station would correlate the various photos from the UAVs to create a larger (incomplete) picture of the area. The SBR would locate the source of each photo via triangulation to help with this overall image-building process. signals broadcasted from the SBR would teach the UAV where it was and train it not to stray out of range of the SBR receiver.

UAVs, and possibly the SBR, could be powered by solar energy. The SBR might have the capability of rolling to a new location, bringing the UAVs along, of course. The SBR could also receive a blackout signal from the main base station, which would of course be relayed to all UAVs---for purposes of temporary concealment in the event of possible enemy detection. Perhaps the mother UAV could also repair the SBR in the event of a malfunction.

RNA and Memory

2008-03-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

•

RNA and Memory

Research by Flexnar and colleagues in the early 1960s demonstrated that inhibitors of RNA and protein synthesis block the formation of long term memory, when administered at the appropriate time.

"RNA and Memory: From feeding to localization" by Ralph J. Greenspan

Discovery alters longstanding concept of fixed protein structure

2008-03-17T14:22:00.000-07:00

Phys.org

"Now, researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee have found that a protein, lymphotactin, which plays a vital role in the body’s immune response, can rapidly shift its shape --up to ten times a second-- between two totally unrelated structures, each with a unique role in defending the body...

"Dr. Volkman’s team is using highly sensitive nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to solve three-dimensional protein structures. NMR provides information on the number and type of chemical entities in a molecule, and can measure distances between pairs of atoms within the molecule to produce a computer-generated 3-D model of its structure.

"They discovered that human lymphotactin, a regulatory protein released by the immune system to attract and activate white blood cells, exists naturally in two distinct structures, and that the newly-identified form has no similarity to any other known protein. They also learned that each form has a unique role, one attaching to the interior wall of the blood vessel, and the other reaching out to grab white blood cells. This means that converting from one lymphotactin structure to the other is likely essential for its activation, according to Dr. Volkman."

I predict this information will end up being central to the question of how thoughts form and how memories are stored in the brain. I believe memory storage must be based on the folding of complex molecules---maybe RNA or possibly proteins. (I suppose it would be incorrect to call RNA itself a protein, though I am not sure.) I think this because I simply cannot come up with another plausible possibility.

I believe people must sleep a certain way (on the back, stomach, left or right side) to flood blood into one part of the brain to allow these proteins to fold and unfold more easily. I think durng the day, information is stored in temporary form. Then during sleep, it is converted to a more permanent form. But it is not a simple conversion of form. Rather, the information is re-worked. Chemically, I believe this is characterized by a group of proteins or RNA molecules seeking the "lowest energy" configuration---what we perceive as "the way of looking at things that makes the best sense."

To get to these low energy configurations, however, the molecules must move through higher energy configurations. The massive quantities of blood allow the molecules to more easily pass through "tangles" to get to the optimal, low energy configuration (i.e., the "best interpretation of the day's events."

MicroTweezer Specifications

2008-03-15T18:47:00.000-07:00

MEMS Precision Instruments

MicroTweezers could work as stand alone, or as part of the Robotic System.
The range of engineering specs that are available is shown below.

(Exact data for each design will be added as it becomes avaliable.)
Tip opening displacement: between 0 to 100 microns.
Applied Force: between 10 pico Newton to 1 Milli Newton depending on the Tip Design.
Actuator Voltage: between 0 to 18V, Atuator current: between 0 to 100 MA.
Time for Tip to Open is 0.5 Sec, Time for Tip to close is 0.5 Sec.

[MEMS 2008] Micro Air Flow Sensor Mounted on Dragonfly Wing

2008-03-15T18:22:00.000-07:00

Tech-on! tech news straight from Asia

"A research group at Graduate School of Information Science and Technology of Tokyo University developed a micro air flow sensor unit that can be attached on a wing of insects such as dragonfly to analyze the motions of the wing...

"The micro air flow sensor unit developed by the group is about 3mm-square with a thickness of about 1mm. Because two sensors are mounted on the 3mm-square chip, each sensor measures about 1.5 x 3mm...

"The sensor has a structure in which a cantilever piezoresistor, measuring about 0.5mm in length and less than 1μm in thickness, is formed on an SOI substrate with an electrode. The piezoresistor is a Si-based semiconductor."

Hmmm. How about cameras and transmitters on butterflies? Maybe a little airborne relay station to pass on the broadcasts---and also fire off some pherenome "bombs"in the right direction to keep the butterflies on track. Not promising, really.

But perhaps parts of insects could be incorporated into little UAVs.

Hmmmm. Complicated. Keeping part of an insect alive. More likely, its the whole insect, but the brain is brought under control by an implant. Gruesome and sci-fi, but workable.

"When the cantilever is bent by the wind, the resultant strain varies the electric resistance to indicate the degree of bending, hence the wind force. The cantilever only weighs 0.1μg."

MEMS companies advance rapidly

2008-03-15T18:18:00.000-07:00

A new report by market research firm Yole Developpement ranks the top MEMS manufacturers of 2007. "Nine companies are above $200 million sales, compared to only four companies two years ago," said Jean Christophe Eloy, Yole's founder....

First third-degree, transcendental L-function Is Discovered

2008-03-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

Glimpses of a new (mathematical) world

"A new mathematical object was revealed yesterday during a lecture at the American Institute of Mathematics (AIM). Two researchers from the University of Bristol exhibited the first example of a third degree transcendental L-function. These L-functions encode deep underlying connections between many different areas of mathematics.

"The news caused excitement at the AIM workshop attended by 25 of the world's leading analytic number theorists. The work is a joint project between Ce Bian and his adviser, Andrew Booker. Booker commented that, "This work was made possible by a combination of theoretical advances and the power of modern computers." During his lecture, Bian reported that it took approximately 10,000 hours of computer time to produce his initial results.

"'This breakthrough opens a door to the study of higher degree L-functions,' said Dennis Hejhal, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Minnesota and Uppsala University...

"There are two types of L-functions: algebraic and transcendental, and these are classified according to their degree. The Riemann zeta-function is the grand-daddy of all L-functions. It holds the secret to how the prime numbers are distributed, and is a first-degree algebraic L-function."

L-functions and modular forms

"L-functions and modular forms underlie much of twentieth century number theory
and are connected to the practical applications of number theory in cryptography. The
fundamental importance of these functions in mathematics is supported by the fact that two
of the seven Clay Mathematics Million Dollar Millennium Problems deal with properties
of these functions, namely the Riemann Hypothesis and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer
conjecture. The Riemann Hypothesis concerns the distribution of prime numbers. The
correctness of the best algorithms for constructing large prime numbers, which are used by
the public-key cryptosystems that everybody who uses the Internet relies on daily, depends
on the truth of a generalized version of this 150-year-old unsolved problem."

from Advanced Analytic Number Theory: L-Functions by Carlos J. Moreno

"The delicate behavior of L-functions on vertical strips will be studied by using a refined version of the Phragmen Lindelof Theory due to Rademacher. This theory is based on the harmonic properties of the absolute value of the gamma function. The explicit estimates obtained for L-functions on vertical strips are useful in applications in which numerical results are desired."

Apparently, these "vertical strips" are similar to or the same thing as the vertical strips they divide a shape up into in integration to measure the area under the curve.

New twist on life's power source

2008-03-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

New twist on life's power source

http://www.physorg.com/news124463490.html

During normal photosynthesis, light energy splits water molecules. This releases oxygen and provides electrons which are then used to “fix” carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and manufacture energy-rich molecules, such as sugars. In the newly discovered process, a large proportion of these electrons are not used to fix carbon dioxide, but instead go to putting the water molecules back together, which results in much less net oxygen production.

“It might seem like the cells are just doing a futile light-driven water-to-water cycle,” says Bailey. “But this is not really true since this novel cycle is also a way of using sunlight to produce energy, while protecting the photosynthetic apparatus from damage that can be caused by the absorption of light.”

The article did not actually explain how this works at all.

Researchers engineer new polymers to change their stiffness, strength when exposed to liquids

2008-03-06T17:39:00.000-08:00

Sea cucumbers inspired the design of chemo-responsive nanocomposite with adaptive mechanical properties.

"'"We can engineer these new polymers to change their mechanical properties -- in particular stiffness and strength -- in a programmed fashion when exposed to a specific chemical," says Weder, one of the senior authors of the paper.

"'"The materials on which we reported in Science were designed to change from a hard plastic -- think of a CD case -- to a soft rubber when brought in contact with water," adds Rowan, who has been Weder's partner on the project for almost six years...

"'"These creatures [sea cucumbers] can reversibly and quickly change the stiffness of their skin. Normally it is very soft, but, for example, in response to a threat, the animal can activate its 'body armor' by hardening its skin," explains Capadona, who has a sea cucumber in his aquarium. Marine biologists have shown in earlier studies that the switching effect in the biological tissue is derived from a distinct nanocomposite structure in which highly rigid collagen nanofibers are embedded in a soft connective tissue. The stiffness is mediated by specific chemicals that are secreted by the animal's nervous system and which control the interactions among the collagen nanofibers. When connected, the nanofibers form a reinforcing network which increases the overall stiffness of the material considerably, when compared to the disconnected (soft) state...

"'A problem observed in experimental studies [that researchers hope to solve with this type of material] is that the quality of the brain signals recorded by such microelectrodes usually degrades within a few months after implantation, making chronic applications challenging. One hypothesis for this failure is that the high stiffness of these electrodes, which is required for their insertion, causes damage to the surrounding, very soft brain tissue over time."'

New Technique for Estimates Relating to Massive Quantities of Data

2008-03-01T07:20:00.000-08:00

Brown mathematicians prove new way to build a better estimate

phys.org

Brown University mathematician Charles “Chip” Lawrence and graduate student Luis Carvalho have proved a new way to build a better estimate to answer the question, "How do you sift through hundreds of billions of bits of information and make accurate inferences from such gargantuan sets of data?"

"For more than 80 years, one of the most common methods of statistical prediction has been maximum likelihood estimation (MLE). This method is used to find the single most probable solution, or estimate, from a set of data.

"But new technologies that capture enormous amounts of data – human genome sequencing, "Internet transaction tracking, instruments that beam high-resolution images from outer space – have opened opportunities to predict discrete “high dimensional” or “high-D” unknowns. The huge number of combinations of these “high-D” unknowns produces enormous statistical uncertainty. Data has outgrown data analysis.

"This discrepancy creates a paradox. Instead of producing more precise predictions about gene activity, shopping habits or the presence of faraway stars, these large data sets are producing more unreliable predictions, given current procedures. That’s because maximum likelihood estimators use data to identify the single most probable solution. But because any one data point swims in an increasingly immense sea, it’s not likely to be representative...

"Lawrence and Carvahlo used statistical decision theory to understand the limitations of the old procedure when faced with new “high-D” problems. They also used statistical decision-making theory to find an estimation procedure that applies to a broad range of statistical problems. These “centroid” estimators identify not the single most probable solution, but the solution that is most representative of all the data in a set."

Wall Street Journal Article on Correcting Business Students' English---My Idea, Take them to Bars

2007-12-16T05:48:00.000-08:00

How Students From Abroad Learn to Talk the Talk

"Now, North Carolina is rolling out a program called Honing Executive English Language Skills, or Heels (a catchy acronym to Tar Heels fans). It requires all of its foreign M.B.A. students -- more than a quarter of the class -- to take an oral and written test when they arrive on campus. The students are rated on a nine-point scale based on their accent, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and other factors. To boost their scores, students can pay a fee to take special classes taught by linguists that focus on speaking English in a business context...

"In the HEELS classes at North Carolina, students are grouped by their native regions, such as Western Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Africa or Latin America, because they tend to share similar problems with accent and pronunciation. The program also addresses nonverbal communication and body language, which may vary from culture to culture. The classes attempt to change behavior that might be misinterpreted by U.S. managers, co-workers or clients. "For example, a U.S. recruiter would expect direct eye contact and a firm handshake," says Mindy Storrie, interim director of Kenan-Flagler's career management center, "but that isn't a universal norm in other countries' business dealings."...

"In addition to the English classes, North Carolina offers courses for international M.B.A. students on American culture -- from sports and entertainment to the origin of slang expressions -- and on U.S. business communication, including practice exercises for impromptu speeches, team presentations, boardroom pitches and employee performance reviews...

"While North Carolina's courses are among the most comprehensive, other schools are also expanding programs to help foreign students prepare for careers in the U.S. The University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business, where nearly half of the M.B.A. class is international, offers an English-language and U.S.-culture program that includes language instruction and trips to museums, theaters and sports events."

Here's my take. These foreign business students are, in a sense, trying to create models of what an American business co-worker is inside their heads. Once they do that, they can imitate that model and thus build rapport. The problem, from my perspective is that they are trying to model "half" a person. That is to say, they are trying to build a model of people by only looking at one side.

This idea was triggered by the last quoted paragraph: talking about taking them to museums, theaters, and sports events. This struck me is not a very effective way to achieve the desired goal. Better would be to take them to bars and allow them to see something of the "other side" of Americans.

One could argue that bars are themselves a somewhat artificial venue, but the point is, it is difficult to inject foreign business students into America in a real way. One key element of a bar is---it is publicly accessible. I would send in two-person teams consisting of one foreign business student at one American "expert" in bars. The job of the American would be: first of all, to keep the person safe; secondly, try to prevent too much emotional damage; and third, provide an opportunity for real exposure to Americans completely outside a business context.

It has to be one foreign student at a time or else they will circle the wagons.

Mossberg Says Amazon ebook Delivers Books---Short on Software

2007-12-03T15:28:00.000-08:00

This is referencing a Mossberg article in the Wall Street Journal of the past couple of weeks. Probably around November 19 when two other articles on the subject appeared in WSJ, but I can't find the specific Mossberg reference.

Here is the essence of the matter. Mossberg checked out the new Amazon e-book called Kindle, or something, and found its access to books and periodicals was pretty decent. In addition, he found that reading it was like reading a piece of paper. (It uses the same technology as Sony e-book which apparently is for rent from the company that created it.)

On the other hand, Mossberg hand the product because the software was inadequate. My point is, what does this mean? Sony has already done a fairly good job on the software, I would set the solution of that problem is really quite trivial.

In other words, the demise of the book is in fact at hand.

Yes, there have been false alarms, but the technology is finally ready. Books may persist for a while in the form of novels were perhaps treatises on philosophy, that sort of thing. But in terms of sources of information, the book is clearly on its way out.

The implications are interesting. Of course, there will be "books" of information on various subjects that will be downloaded to e-books. unlike current paper books however, these books will be linked via the Internet to other sources of relevant information. So the entire concept of a book will to a significant extent, become much more fuzzy. A new group of words will develop to describe these new types of "books." "Books", will probably be much more of a collaboration in the near future than they are now. Getting credit for one's ideas and words will still be important, and authorship labels will still accompany the various pieces of text that will conglomerate to become a "book." But I don't think any one person will be controlling the boundaries of "books" anymore. Rather, I imagine that there would be multiple editors, each defining his or her version of the "book."

In addition, new editions of the books can be created virtually at any time and the frequency of new additions would be unrestrained by anything. Reminds me of some of the people who publish regularly on the Internet, who include a time of day with the article as well as a date. cat in the near future, there will in many cases be more than one addition of a book within a single day simply because an author has found new information and added it.

Wikepedia Vulnerable to Malware, According to McAfee

2007-11-24T11:31:00.000-08:00

"Organized Crime and the Internet," McAfee Virtual Criminology Report, http://www.mcafee.com/us/local_content/white_papers/threat_center/wp_virtual_criminology_report_2007.pdf

"Just like with social networking sites like My Space, the very openness of Wikepedia that allows its users to freely add or edit available content has made it an attractive target for virus authors to plant malicious code in articles. In October 2006, a piece on the German edition of Wikepedia was rewritten to contain false information about a supposedly new version of the infamous Blaster worm, along with the link to a supposed fix. In reality, the link pointed to a malware designed to infect Windows PCs.

An e-mail was also mass spammed to German computer users requiring them to download a security fix. The e-mail was crafted to supposedly appear from Wikepedia, complete with an official with an official Wikepedia logo."

Web Site Lets Bloggers Make Their Own Ads for Big Company Products

2007-11-24T10:18:00.000-08:00

"Nescafé Brews Buzz Via Blogs," WSJ, P. B3 11/23/07

[a French website]

"BlogBang [BlogBang.com, a website with 2,000 bloggers as participants] also has tried to draw bloggers into the creative process. Companies looking for new ways to pitch their products can post requests for bloggers to develop their own campaigns. BlogBang's members can then put their homemade ads on the site. The one that gets the most clicks is spread around the bloggers' Web sites, and the author of the winning ad earns a fee. Garnier, a division of cosmetics group L'Oréal, advertised its Fructis hair gel this way. Garnier couldn't be reached for comment."

http://insights20.com/2007/07/09/blogbang-a-network-for-consumer-generated-advertising/

"Blogbang: a network for consumer-generated advertising
Published July 9th, 2007 in blogging.

"My friend Julien Braun just launched in France a new ad network called BlogBang . BlogBang is a marketplace for advertisers, “creatives” and publishers (bloggers).

"An advertiser submits a creative brief, “creatives” (consumers, agencies, etc) generate their own commercial (mostly video), which show on the publisher’s blog. Example here or here. Publishers/bloggers can pick ads that might work well based on their editorial content. An optimization system (I am not sure how it works, but I think something like advertising.com) determines over time which ads work better for each blog.

"The interesting part is that creatives and publishers split the revenues (with the ad agency of course). And anyone can be a creative and try to compete with the professional agencies to create the most efficient ads. As opposed to traditional creative contests, which are judged on their creative qualities, the best ads here are those that perform better. So, consumers who understand how to create ads that would perform well with a particular audience, on a particular blog, etc, can get a share of the action and help publishers make more money with ads that perform better.

"Julien’s philosophy is that each media has its own advertising format (30 seconds for TV etc) but that social media has not found yet a format that works well. By letting users create their own ads, advertising becomes social and, while serving the advertiser’s brief, has a human voice."

Breakthrough Idea: How to Prototype Software

2007-11-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

Been thinking about this one for a while, and I got it.

Consider a software group writing a program for in-house use. The biggest problem is communication between the software group and the users. Creation of a dumb prototype is a well-known attempt to solve the problem. However, as I envision the creation of the prototype, I can see many problems potentially developing.

Essentially, time must be invested, people from two different departments must communicate, tensions may arise, and ultimately, the task of prototyping may be abandoned rather too easily at any time. The software group would like to abandon the task because it's not the sort of thing they like to do: they want to get on with writing the program. The users would like to abandon the task because they do not enjoy interacting with the software group.

In addition, the users have been assured by the software group that the writing of this software is really quite a simple and easy task that does not require the burdensome process of writing a prototype---imposed by the rather stupid types in management, at any rate. Naïvely, viewing the whole situation as a "simple, straightforward technical problem", the user group alludes with the software group in prematurely terminating the task of prototype-building, which in any case seems to be inordinately difficult for reasons that no one can quite understand. Happily, once the prototype task is abandoned, the software group can get down to the real business of writing the program and the user group can get down to their real job whatever it happens to be.

Unfortunately, the reason the prototype was difficult to write was because the task of the users that the software is designed to integrate with---a task which seems so simple to the software engineers that only a moron could be doing it for a job---is, in fact, complicated in a variety of subtle ways. Not to worry, all of the subtleties will turn up---later, after the software is written and tremendous work and effort has been put into doing so.

Okay, that's the problem. I know what you are thinking, "What a brilliant formulation of the problem!" However, let me modestly point out that the formulation of the problem is fairly obvious and well known.

Okay, here's the solution: we create super simple, super user-friendly prototype building software designed explicitly for non-programmers (i.e. "users") to use. Included with the product would be a "manual." (see, "Software; Ancient History in your encyclopedia for an explanation of this term.) However, instead of a nice, bound booklet with high-quality color illustrations, this manual would be online, that is to say it would be a living document.

Different versions of the manual would be written for people in different professions, the point of view of the manual being the process of getting some particular task done such as lawyering, being an accountant, or more specifically, deciding who gets to take out a loan to buy a house, helping someone write up a tax return, designing a of building out of steel, designing interior components like door handles for a car, etc.

Instead of a carefully crafted document designed to last for the ages, I envision a series of down- and-dirty versions of the manual. Scratch that, what I mean is there would be a core manual describing operations and then a variety of intros aimed at different professions. The idea being to not only tell people how to use it but to convince them that it's important to use it. There would also be a general intro for everyone, describing the perils of writing software without an effective prototype.

I Predict Google Cell Phone Network

2007-11-16T13:26:00.000-08:00

This information (aside from my clearly stated opinions) is from an article onpage B1, Wall Street Journal today (11/16/07)

Google has set up---with approval from the FCC---a small private cell phone network on its campus. The Wall Street Journal describes it as a "advanced high-speed wireless network." They are preparing to bid for a chunk of the wireless spectrum, though they have not officially confirmed their intentions to make the bid. (Yet it is obvious that they will bid.) Apparently it will be bidding $4.6 billion. It also appears that they will be bidding without a partner, in part to give them more flexibility in their bidding strategy -- which is being crafted by specialists in game theory. It is also said they are afraid that if they partnered with some people it would offend the people that they did not partner with. In addition, Wall Street seems eager to lend them money so that makes that part easy.

Part of what they're going after is 700 MHz, a type of signal that can travel very far between towers and therefore needs less towers.

A few days ago, the story came out about Google's new open platform for cell phones, called Android, I think. They have a Taiwan manufacturer preparing to make the cell phones, and I guess a few of them were made because they are already using them on their campus.

So far, the WSJ implies that it is unknown as to whether Google will make its own network but it seems like a certainty to me. Interestingly, Google applied a fair amount of pressure to the U. S. Government before this auction and succeeded certain conditions being placed on it. The idea is, that anyone who wins spectrum in this auction has to make their network open to other companies. I don't really know what that means but it is interesting. Now some people say Google may feel that they should be in the auction, having pressured the government and gotten their way on this.

Others say they will be afraid to alienate their telecommunications partners, but this seems pretty ridiculous to me. In addition, many people think Google will not be smart enough to put together a network, also highly unlikely. In addition, there are fears of dispersion of management focus. Usually, as I have repeatedly mentioned on this blog (Wal-Mart and others) -- I support the concept of maintaining management focus and oppose efforts that seem to dissipate it. However, in this case, I have a feeling that Google will be able to succeed in this venture without dropping the ball on search engines and advertising on the Internet.

It is Google's time; they are seizing the moment.

For Stratego Lovers Only

2007-11-13T16:35:00.000-08:00

just came up with a great idea for a new version of Stratego -- this would only be played on a computer. The idea arose from thinking about the Spy piece and wondering what would be like if it could actually spy so the first step would be to change the name of the current Spy piece to the Assassin to eliminate confusion.

Here's how spying would work. Whenever one of your pieces moves into a position adjacent to one of the pieces of the enemy---doesn't matter if it's to the right left in front of or in back of -- both you and the enemy would have the opportunity to subvert the other person's piece and turn it into a spy.

However, you would only have the opportunity to do this twice per game. If you make the choice to do this, the enemy piece will then secretly become your spy. However, the enemy will not know about this. Once the piece is your spy, it means that every time that piece becomes adjacent to another of your opponent's pieces, you get to find out the identity of that other opponent's piece. In addition, you get to find out the identity of each piece directly adjacent to the piece you are spying on.

That means in any one move, you can find out about a maximum of four different enemy pieces. In addition, at any point in the game, you could decide to "take over" active control of this piece. At this point, the piece would lose its spy powers and revert to its ordinary powers depending on its rank. It would be just like one of your regular pieces. The enemy would find out when one of his pieces suddenly moved without him moving it, and then changed color.

One of the keys is, if you move next to an enemy piece, you have three seconds to "subvert it" into a spy. After those three seconds, the enemy can, if he chooses, subvert your piece into a spy. However, if you subvert an enemy piece into a spy and he subsequently tries to subvert your same piece into a spy---within the same move---then not only will his piece become your spy, but your piece will become a double agent. What this means is, that you will gain control of the flow of information going to the enemy about what your pieces supposedly are. You can send him any type of misinformation you want to.

Software Released for Programming the Cell (PS3)

2007-11-13T15:07:00.000-08:00

I can't figure out why this press release doesn't mention the PS3. I suppose game programmers may need different types of software suites to help them program that Cell Processor than other types of programmers.

http://www.mc.com/mediacenter/pressrelease.aspx?id=2062

"MultiCore Plus SDK empowers users with programming ease and maximizes application performance for Cell BE processor-based solutions from Mercury and IBM

"CHELMSFORD, Mass., Sept. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Mercury Computer Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRCY) announced the release of its software suite for programming the Cell Broadband Engine^TM (BE) processor.

"The Mercury MultiCore Plus^TM SDK 1.0 (Software Development Kit) provides a complete, intuitive programming environment for products based on the Cell BE and other multicore processors. Combining a powerful set of software tools and libraries into a seamless package, the MultiCore Plus SDK enables users to maximize resources and application performance by taking full advantage of the multicore processor's computation model. The Beta version of this software has been in use at customers across industries since late 2005 including aerospace & defense, seismic, semiconductor, life sciences, digital media, and national labs."

Intel Using New Material for Chips---In Addition to Silicon Dioxide

2007-11-12T15:05:00.000-08:00

As reported on page B7 of the Wall Street Journal today, a historic shift is occurring as Intel starts utilizing a key new substance in its IC chips, added to the ubiquitous silicon dioxide. The material being utilized by Intel in their new chip called the Core 2 Extreme QX9650 is called hafnium dioxide.

"Hafnium [all general info on hafnium and hafnium dioxide to follow quoted from Wikepedia] is a chemical element that has the symbol Hf and atomic number 72. A lustrous, silvery gray tetravalent transition metal, hafnium resembles zirconium chemically and it is found in zirconium minerals.

"Hafnium dioxide is quite inert. It reacts with strong acids such as concentrated sulfuric acid and with strong bases. It dissolves slowly in hydrofluoric acid to give fluorohafnate anions. At elevated temperatures, it reacts with chlorine in the presence of graphite or carbon tetrachloride to give hafnium tetrachloride. It is used in optical coatings, and as a high-k dielectric in DRAM capacitors.

"The term high-k dielectric refers to a material with a high dielectric constant (k) (as compared to silicon dioxide) used in semiconductor manufacturing processes which replaces the silicon dioxide gate dielectric. The implementation of high-k gate dielectrics is one of several strategies developed to allow further miniaturization of microelectronic components, colloquially referred to as extending Moore's Law." [end Wikepedia]

from http://www.genus.com/glossary.html:

High k dielectric: An insulator which will not conduct electricity but which, when sandwiched between metal plates, will easily allow these plates to talk to each other via electric fields (this is called a capacitor structure). These can be used as memories, and one structure that is being considered for very high density DRAMs (dynamic random access memories) is a layer of barium strontium titanate (BST -- a high k dielectric) between platinum electrodes. While high k dielectrics are good for capacitors, the opposite is true of the insulators used to separate metal lines, for which low k dielectrics are desirable (see low k dielectric).

Next Material from:"Hafnium oxide helps make chips smaller and faster," Chemistry World, March 2007, http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/Issues/2007/March/HafniumOxideHelpsMakeChipsSmallerFaster.asp

"'Researchers have learnt to deposit very thin films of hafnium oxide and mix it with silica or silicon nitride at the molecular scale to tailor their insulating and charge storage properties,' explained Paul McIntyre from the Stanford University Engineering and Science Institute, California...

"But depositing conducting silicon gate materials on top of the insulating hafnium oxide is problematic. Though hafnium oxide is tough stuff, the high temperatures needed to lay down the silicon gate damage the insulator's surface, drastically reducing the transistor's clock speed compared to typical silicon gate/silica insulator devices. Enter Intel and IBM's secret new gate materials, which can be stuck to the dielectric at less extreme conditions.

'Research groups worldwide have demonstrated hafnium oxide-containing transistors with a variety of gate metal materials,' said McIntyre. 'These include titanium and hafnium nitrides, tungsten, ruthenium and ruthenium oxide and certain metal silicides,' he said. 'But mass producing reliable chips is a whole different ball game from single-device manufacture in the lab,' McIntyre told Chemistry World. 'Until we can buy the new chips and cut them open, we can't really know what gate metals Intel have chosen'...

"According to Gordon Moore, 'the implementation of high k and metal materials marks the biggest change in transistor technology since the introduction of polysilicon gate MOS transistors in the late 1960s.'"

These "new chips" are now on the market. Incredibly cool stuff and unfortunately I am buried with work and cannot pursue this. Here is some paraphrased material from the Chemistry World web site.

As they have been making the gates of transistors and IC chips smaller and smaller, they have now gotten down to gates that are only a few atoms wide. So, the electrons are utilizing quantum tunneling to go right through the gate, causing leakage of current and messing up the circuit. (Digital means everything is on or off---you don't want and off transistor leaking current. Quantum tunneling is a super cool phenomenon whereby electrons on one side of an impenetrable barrier sometimes appear on the other side of the barrier---without ever having actually passed through it---All in the parentheses are my own, possibly incorrect contributions.)

It has been known for a while that adding hafnium dioxide to the gate can rectify this problem. Unfortunately, silicon dioxide must be added on top of the HfO2, in this requires temperatures so high that the HfO2 is destroyed. So essentially, Intel and IBM came up with the "secret sauce" that solves this problem. Now that the chips are on the market, the techies can cut them open and figure out what this material is.

Source of Optimistic Thoughts Located in Brain

2007-11-09T09:17:00.000-08:00

Wall Street Journal, November 9, page B1

"'These rosy thoughts triggered one key brain region most strongly. Called the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, this neural nub is active whenever we think of hopes and aspirations. "This region of the cortex may actually be taking information and transforming it in a way that creates this optimism bias," Dr. Phelps said."'

Pet Peeve: Where is the Map?

2007-10-23T08:38:00.000-07:00

On Monday, October 22, 2007, Wall Street Journal had a special advertising page, "Investing in Japan" on page A 16. The subtitle was, "Country Offers Opportunities Beyond its Big Cities."

Actually, the page was pretty interesting, talking about the foreign direct investment (FDI) into Japan as a whole and then going into all of the less populated regions that they are trying to get money into. Since the whole premiseof the page was that people are not aware of these places, I am amazed that this advertising page was not accompanied by a map.

This lack is rather common, especially in news articles about obscure countries.

Sam Zell -- Genius or Just Lucky?

2007-10-21T08:42:00.000-07:00

October 20 -- 21 2007 article in WSJ page A11 talks about House Sam Zell, the real estate virtuoso at Master investor is supposedly some kind of genius. He built up his company, Equity Office Properties, a real estate investment trust out over decades and sold it to Blackstone for $39 billion in February of 2007. By August, the value of these properties had no doubt plummeted due to the real estate crash.

As a result, and for other reasons I suppose, Zell is considered some kind of genius. But when asked, he says that he did not know that the market was sitting atop. Rather, he says that he felt Blackstone offered him more money for the company than it was worth so he took it. If he's telling the truth, then he avoided disaster in the real estate market by blind luck. The story doesn't look too impressive to me: typical relic, that someone who gets lucky is called a genius.

That was not what happened, in my opinion, when Marty Zweig called the market bottom on Wall Street week before it happened, I believe this was in the early 1980s. He made the call about six months before the actual market bottom and stuck with it the whole time when everyone else in the country felt that stocks were equivalent to the Black plague. He was fully invested through that period. I saw him accumulate gray hairs during that six-month period. That was a combination of genius and guts, something real, not just luck.

Programming the PS3's Cell Processor

2007-10-18T16:38:00.000-07:00

I found that excellent article I mentioned in an earlier post about how to program the new Cell processor in the PS3.

Dr. Dobbs Portal, Programming the Cell Processor

"In this article, we present strategies we've used to make a Breadth-First Search on graphs as fast as possible on the Cell, reaching a performance that's 22 times higher than Intel's Woodcrest, comparable to a 256-processor BlueGene/L supercomputer—and all this with just with a single Cell processor! Some techniques (loop unrolling, function inlining, SIMDization) are familiar; others (bulk synchronous parallelization, DMA traffic scheduling, overlapping of computation and transfers) are less so."

Here's another article I just found that is less intensely technical than the above, but also very good.

Cell Architecture Explained Version 2

"It is when the SPEs are working on compute heavy streaming applications that the Cell will be working hardest. It's in these applications that the Cell may get close to it's theoretical maximum performance and perform an order of magnitude more calculations per second than any desktop processor currently available.

On the other hand if the stream uses large amounts of bandwidth and the data blocks can fit into the local stores the performance difference might actually be bigger. Even if conventional CPUs are capable of processing, the data at the same rate the transfers between the CPUs will be held up while they wait for chip to chip transfers. The Cell’s internal interconnect system allows transfers running into hundreds of Gigabytes per second, chip to chip interconnects allows transfers in the low 10’s of Gigabytes per second.

While conventional processors have vector units on board (SSE or VMX / AltiVec) they are not dedicated vector processors. The vector processing capability is an add-on to the existing instruction sets and has to share the CPUs resources. The SPEs are dedicated high speed vector processors and with their own memory don't need to share anything other than the memory (and not even this much if the data can fit in the local stores). Add to this the fact there are 8 of them and you can see why their potential computational capacity is so large."

GM plants hit by UAW pickets - Sep. 24, 2007

2007-09-24T12:32:00.000-07:00

GM plants hit by UAW pickets - Sep. 24, 2007

My take on this may be surprising. The strike is good news. It means the union has decided to accept the massive concessions it must make to keep GM viable.

The key is contained in the quote below from the article cited above.

"'David Healy, analyst with Burnham Securities, said he believes GM could take a strike of up to a month without a significant problem.

"It's sort of an odd thing, the first thing that happens with an automaker in case of a strike is their cash increases, as their payroll stops, and they still keep collecting cash for the cars that have been shipped," said Healy.

He believes the two sides are close enough that the strike will be a short one.

"Days, not weeks or months, that would be my guess," he said.'''

As we can see, the union, about to make unprecedented concessions, has decided that they must demonstrate a display of strength and/or recklessness to placate their members before collapsing in the negotiations.

In addition, they need to bring GM reasonably close to devastating losses to give time for the reality of the situation to percolate through the reptile brands of union members and bubble up into their cerebral cortexes. In other words, union members need to be able to demonstrate anger and rage for awhile so they can feel a little better and also, having gotten these emotions out of their system, so they can think about what it really means---to both union members and retirees---if they destroy GM. Not that they lack that capability.

Toshiba to demonstrate prototype of new 'SpursEngine' processor

2007-09-24T09:09:00.000-07:00

Toshiba to demonstrate prototype of new 'SpursEngine' processor

quote from the article:

"Notebook PCs integrating SpursEngine will be used in the world's first public demonstration of the processor's capabilities in 3D image processing and manipulation: real-time transformations of hair styles and makeup that instantaneously recognize and process changes in position, angle, and facial expression, and render them as computer graphics....SpursEngine, a co-processor that works in cooperation with a host CPU, fuses Cell/B.E.'s high performance multi-core technology with Toshiba's advanced image processing technology to perform stream processing of video sources--image recognition and processing--at the increasingly sophisticated level required by new generations of digital consumer products."

What interests me about these this article is not the SpursEngine, the new Toshiba chip, but the fact that it is integrated with the Cell/B.E.---the same chip that is at the core of the PlayStation 3.

While there may be other examples, this is the first example I know of the the revolutionary Cell/B.E. that is the core of the Sony PlayStation 3 being utilized for another (non-PlayStation) application. This powerful computer chip---jointly developed by IBM, Sony Group and Toshiba---was initially developed for the PlayStation 3 but the idea was that would be utilized for other applications as well.

This is an incredibly powerful chip that in some ways is analogous to a supercomputer (if I remember correctly). However, utilizing the full power is quite difficult and, as far as I know, no game maker has yet come close to doing so. As I recall, there are nine cells in the core of the chip. Each cell is somewhat akin to a separate microprocessor. What gives the system so much power potentially is the fact that each cell utilizes its own separate memory.

Unfortunately, this is also what makes the chip so incredibly difficult to program. The chip can be used in an easier, more conventional programming fashion without utilizing this great power, but then the results end up being somewhat mediocre. Mediocre is the description of all of the games made for PlayStation 3 so far ,and the reason is the failure of any group of programmers to fully utilize the power of the Cell/B.E..

However, it looks like a breakthrough has occurred in the utilization of the Cell/B.E. Although the Toshiba product does not utilize all the cells, it utilizes four of them according to this news story. The key question in regards to PlayStation 3 would be whether Toshiba would share with Sony the programming expertise it developed during the course of this project. If they did so, Sony would then share the expertise with all potential game makers. My understanding is that this means they would essentially make the knowledge public. Whether Toshiba would do this or not I do not know.

Armor: SAS Supacat

2007-09-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

Armor: SAS Supacat

Interesting vehicle being purchased by the British, mainly for the SAS. Designed to hold four people, it is almost completely open on top, reminiscent of the old Jeep. However, it is heavily armored on the bottom against IED's. Kind of clashes with my view of the SAS; I don't think of them driving vehicles.

Web Site Designed to Supply Creative Solutions

2007-09-02T07:56:00.000-07:00

The web site would have restricted submission categories for scientists, engineers, technicians, and the general public. In terms of supplying solutions, however, all categories would be accessible to anyone who visited the web site.

Before supplying solutions, each "problem solver" visiting the web site would be tested and given a provisional score in reference to his or her conative profile. Then pairs of problem solvers would be created to bring together sets of desirable strengths. For example, each person with a low QuickStart rating would be paired with someone with a high QuickStart rating. (QuickStart is the conative is trait that is heavily connected with creativity.)

Next, each pair would be presented with a list of suggested problems that particularly suited them. For example, a pair with a strong Implementor would be presented with a list of suggested mechanical problems. (Implementor is the conative trait that is most connected with the physical world three dimensions, athletes, and mechanics, etc.) Each pair could also work off the suggested list if desired.

There could be different strategies for posting solutions. They could be posted publicly and be public property (obviously none of the problems themselves could be considered proprietary information under this model). Alternately, the solutions could be posted privately to the people who posed the problems, possibly with some kind of payment involved. I suppose the payment system would up being similar to eBay, with people rating the people presenting problems for how reliable they were in being fair in paying for valid solutions. In some ways, I like the model of publicly posted solutions better. Makes the site more interesting. Or there might be both options, public or private. I suppose conceivably, solutions might be submitted privately to a trusted third-party that would give an evaluation of the solution to the problem-poser. Based on the solution evaluation, the problem poser would decide whether or not to pay the fee for the solution proposed by the problem solver .

Push a Stock Price Down So You Can Profit on the Upswing?

2007-08-29T05:11:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a fair amount lately about companies that invest in another company with a depressed stock price and then try to make changes in the company to bring the stock price up. Nothing wrong with this.

However, I've noticed that sometimes these investor companies are invested for quite a long while before they make an aggressive move on the management. Sometimes, it seems, that a significant part of the downturn has occurred after the investor company got in. What if the investor company surreptitiously did things on purpose to cause the stock price to go down? Then they could greatly increase their holdings, having excellent insight into the "problem" (being as they caused it themselves). Then they could solve the problem and benefit from the rebound in the stock price.

Illegal, but people might be getting away with it.

Participatory Music Site

2007-08-26T08:03:00.000-07:00

This idea is pretty far out. Increasingly, people are using the Internet to find rock groups they enjoy listening to. The Internet is then further utilized to allow these musical groups to have tours that garner them just enough money to support themselves on a low level.

In addition, the software for creating music is becoming increasingly sophisticated and powerful in terms of its effects but also increasingly easy to use. What if there was a way for users to not only find music they like on the Internet but add their own input to the music, changing it into something that fit their tastes better?

Once the user had made changes to a particular song, the web site could remember those changes and always apply them to the song when that user played it. Users could listen to each other's versions in a My Space-like community. The types of changes the user made in one song could be automatically applied to another song created by the same musical group, to make it something the user more wanted to listen to.

These types of changes could certainly be done with lyrics. There could be collaborative software for lyrics similar to Lotus Notes.

Eventually, some changes could percolate up into the groups own versions of songs. The data thus gathered could also cause the group to present songs differently in different venues, depending on the feedback of people from that geographical area.

Perhaps the process could advance to the point where a group of online users would not need to start with a musical group at all, but could create their own music according to their own taste. Obviously, the creation process would be much aided by software trying to fashion a desirable song. Perhaps people could start with templates of traditional songs not protected by copyrights. Once a desirable song had been created that was enjoyed by enough people in a particular part of the country, a group of actual musicians could learn the song and go perform it there for them.

Making TV Advertising Like the Internet

2007-08-26T07:50:00.000-07:00

The Internet is rapidly gaining popularity as an advertising medium because ads are individually targeted to users. So Google, for example, can take into account a person's searching history when they present an ad for him or her to look at (at least, this is how I interpret the situation.)

TV on the other hand is "mass media" which is to say everyone watching a TV program sees the same ad. This could change, but it would require some modification of the technical system through which TV is currently delivered. I believe however, that these technical problems have already been solved in the pursuit of other product ideas that ended up not working (the various schemes that provided for viewer input. Do they have this on American Idol?)

For example, the cable company could build a profile of a viewer based on his or her viewing habits and then provide different ads to different people on that basis. Alternately, the cable company could link to "cookie" data accumulated by the person's Internet surfing. Presumably, this would have to be voluntarily done by people on an individual basis. It seems that some might do it nonetheless, however, in order to be able to see ads related to things they actually wanted, which would be more enjoyable (presuming they will have to see some kind of ads).

This idea is presented separately from the whole TiVo problem, which is reducing peoples viewing of ads. The fact is, ads are still sold so the idea could still be workable. Presumably, an early stage filter built into the system would be required to remove any porn-related Web surfing cookies for this to work. Some people would still feel uncomfortable about making public certain aspects of their Web surfing. For example, this could apply to politics. People who felt uncomfortable about those things would presumably not opt for the option to link to the cookie data. But the porn thing would need to be dealt with automatically, since this is supposedly the single biggest use of the Web.

Part 2 on the New Economy and Why I Don't Expect a Recession (Quite Rambling)

2007-08-06T12:47:00.000-07:00

I was reading in the Wall Street Journal today about how there's a widespread expectation of the financial sector taking a heavy hit. In particular, the number one guy at Bear Stearns just fired the number two guy, their stock has plummeted, and everyone is expecting more bad news there. incorporating their own difficult to believe claims, I sum up Bear Stearns thusly: they made money in June, they made money in July, they will be bankrupt by September.

Reading between the lines however, I take heart that much of the deepest concern seems localized to the financial sector. So far, the overall losses in the stock market have not been large although the volatility has been. There was mention of losses in the consumer sector and of course the housing sector is a disaster; that is what has caused the current problem (Bear Stearns is a Wall Street firm that was especially heavily invested in mortgages.)

However, my optimism remains strong that we will not have a recession at this time. I consider this to be quite striking and notable, if true. No doubt, the complete collapse of the housing sector would have tended to cause a recession in the past. And make no doubt about it, I believe the housing sector will not recover for a decade, maybe three to five decades. I am much more pessimistic about the housing sector than the average analyst, so none of my optimism has to do with expecting "an upturn in the housing market in 2008."

No, the housing market has collapsed, completely and utterly. Now, people must learn that housing prices rise and fall just like the price of every other thing in the world. Is just that the cycle of the housing market prices is much slower than the cycle of prices of practically anything else. Housing prices tend to rise for 50 or 60 years at a time and fall for 50 or 60 years at a time; at least this is the implication of the data for the past one to 120 years (sorry I have no reference).

My optimism, rather is based on the notion that our US economy has become much more segmented in recent years. By this I mean much less integrated. Of course, this is only true in certain ways. In other ways, the economy is no doubt much more integrated.

But the segmentation I refer to focuses on the new ways of packaging debt. Due to these new types of debt packaging, many more players have gotten into the lending market who weren't in it before. Many of these players are smaller players. In some cases they are dumber players and for sure many are losing money and about to lose some more.

This is the result of the collapse of the housing market. However, unlike in the past, when most of the lending was done by the banks, this need not lead to a recession. When most of the lending was done by the banks, that particular segment of our economy would have been getting extremely cautious about now due to some very large losses. This would have caused the recession.

Of course, this is all a very tortured hypothetical. The recent hyper-boom was made possible by the new types of debt-packaging. That means that the new types of debt-packaging actually caused the current problem. This makes sense really. These new players are learning the hard way.

But mainly, what I wanted to say today to add to my previous post on this subject was thoughts about how the Great Depression occurred and what makes a country poor. In the Great Depression, as I understand it, banks stopped lending money and businesses generally could not grow or even continue to operate. This is in a sense, caused by the centralization of capital in banks. Now on the other hand, we have capital being spread out much more. This tends to result in more failures (like the current failure of the housing market) but make each failure less catastrophic.

Another result of the current situation is that it allows people to learn more and learn faster. Yet another result of the current situation is that it gives the smarter and more creative people more of an edge. It seems to me, at least at first glance, that this tends to benefit society by tending to put more resources in areas where there will be greater yield (i.e., someplace new).

Consider the tremendous pressures that so many companies face against raising prices for their customers even though the price of commodities, energy, and other expenses are currently rising rapidly. It seems to me (and I'll admit this could be quite a bit of a stretch) that these kinds of forces may squeeze some capital out of "commodity operations" and thus release some capital for innovative operations.

Commodity operations are operations in which the company does the same thing that other companies do. They hope the prices change in a way that will be favorable to them and they try to do things more efficiently than the other companies. However, is usually difficult to be very profitable in these areas and it seems that lately it is becoming more difficult.

Now look at where the money is flowing. Most obviously, it is flowing to China. How does this fit in with this thesis? It does because in a sense, all operations in China are currently innovative operations. Producing in China is an attempt to take advantage of previously underutilized resources. It is an attempt to seize on an investment opportunity as opposed to simply performing a commodity operation.

How about high-tech? I don't feel overly impressed with what is going on in the high-tech sector at this time. In fact, I feel that this sector was so successful in innovating in the past that it has resulted in innovation being stifled in the present. It seems to me that the idea of innovation in high-tech has become, "let's add video to it," "let's do it wirelessly," "let's increase the capacity/ throughput of the system," etc.

I don't see people doing new things all that much. I'll admit, I may be completely wrong on this one.

Let me give an example. Bluetooth has been an exciting innovation in recent years. it was fairly quickly applied to cell phone headsets because phone company technology has a certain amount of standardization---probably a hangover from the AT&T era.

On the other hand, it took years to see a single audio Bluetooth headset appear, and they still seem to be rare (I may be wrong on that last.) The reason there were no audio Bluetooth headsets for years after there were cell phone Bluetooth headsets is because audio technology is not standardized among companies. It was felt that any audio Bluetooth headset needed to be compatible with the products of all companies and this proved to be very difficult to do, so they simply went years without any products at all. Wouldn't it have made more sense to make products that were only compatible with specific companies as a temporary solution?

I apologize for all the rambling here today. Despite the non-innovativeness of the high-tech sector, I believe there is a lot of innovation in the world today that is creating a lot of wealth and benefiting many people. Admittedly this blog does not have much of an overall point today, but I did make some individual points that I wanted to make.

Idea to Prevent Bridge Collapses like the Tragic Minnesota I-35 Bridge

2007-08-02T14:23:00.000-07:00

Admittedly harebrained. Drill thin holes into the core of the bridge at key points. Insert a strain sensor into the each hole. Each sensor would be connected by wire to the outside of the hole. Each sensor would incorporate a rechargeable battery and RF transmitter circuitry. On the outside of the hole would be an antenna for broadcasting signal and a solar cell for recharging the battery.

When a problem developed, a warning signal would be broadcasted. There would also be periodic "I'm OK," broadcasts to show that the system was still functioning. Probably, there would be a number of sensors and one bridge but only one antenna and solar cell array feeding and fed by all the sensors. This would allow the antenna and solar cell array to be in a transparent vandal-proof plastic box.

I Have Decided that I Believe in the "New Economy"

2007-07-31T19:37:00.000-07:00

I have been thinking for a while about the so-called "new economy." Of course, my knowledge of economics is quite limited, just what I've picked up from reading the Wall Street Journal of the years. Nonetheless, I have come to form an opinion on the "new economy," and I have decided I'm for it.

The "new economy," from the perspective of my limited understanding, consists of hedge funds, new ways of packaging debt and investment, and many more leveraged buyouts (LBO's) than in the past. On hedge funds, my understanding is still pretty cloudy. However, I've come to accept the idea that they sometimes serve as a sort of "shock absorber" in the economy.

The new ways of packaging debt and investment have, in large part, led to our current meltdown in the sub-prime housing loan market. This is that of course but it is a probably inevitable result of being in the early part of the learning curve in understanding these new ways of packaging debt and investment.

What is positive is that this sub-prime market meltdown has not resulted in a recession---at least not yet. Apparently, this is because, unlike in the past, banks are not holding the bulk of loans. Therefore, the meltdown in the sub-prime market is not resulting in overall withdrawal of credit from banks. This is a good thing.

Of course, banks are tightening their credit in certain ways this time. Most specifically, they are rapidly and extremely tightening the credit they extend to hedge funds. In part, this is related to the sub-prime market but to be honest, I cannot remember how. But mainly, it is related to the fact that hedge funds have gotten in trouble and banks are more reluctant to lend them money.

At the same time, it must be pointed out that banks are already very committed and vulnerable on large number of loans known as "bridge loans." These are short-term loans that banks give hedge funds and LBO companies. They allow hedge funds and LBO companies to close deals without actually having adequate cash on hand. The deals are closed using the banks money, than the hedge fund and/or LBO company arranges financing.

What is going on now is a bit like musical chairs when the music stops. Unfortunately for the banks, in some cases they are the ones without a chair. The banks are going to be losing some money here and it is making them more cautious in a general way. This is obviously bad news for the economy, reflected in the current stock market. However, it still seems more positive than the previous type of situation where the banks would have been carrying all of the subprime loans and when the sub-prime market fell apart, money would dry up all over the economy, causing a recession.

Because of new ways of packaging loans and investments, businesses are less dependent on banks for financing. This is a good thing. It helps stabilize the economy and allows it to keep a positive track for a longer period of time. On the other hand, the current meltdown in the subprime one market probably would not have occurred without these new ways of packaging loans and investments. Sorry that this is somewhat repetitive, but I was developing another point at the same time I was repeating myself. I lack the time and energy during this period my life to straighten this blog entry out into a well-written piece.

LBO companies are possibly the most positive part of the "new economy." Of course, they are quite negative for many individuals, causing large numbers of layoffs. Nonetheless, I feel that the overall positive for the economy is quite definite. In my mind, LBO's are converting the large-scale economy, which tends to consist of somewhat ossified corporations, into something more resembling the small-scale economy, which tends to consist of aggressive, pennypinching small businesses.

This conversion is uncomfortable to many people who lose their jobs. I was reading the Friday Wall Street Journal about the layoffs that resulted when Blackstone took over a company that was involved in airplane flight reservations. It seemed like they laid off many people in their 50s and 60s with very high paying jobs. Though the article didn't explicitly state this, I drew the implication that they were replacing some of them with younger employees. What the article said was that they were firing some people and then hiring others to adapt to "new technologies."

Yes, this is pretty brutal stuff. However, it is also the nature of capitalism. Our economy already has numerous features to try to help people in transitional job situations and we will probably need to develop more of these features. In regard to the Blackstone example cited above, I imagine some of the people in their 50s and 60s would be able to retire with reasonable comfort, but some would not. In addition, many younger people were also laid off.

In reading about waves of layoffs in the telecommunications industry in the 90s, I found that most of the people laid off got new jobs pretty quickly. This depends on two things: highly trained people and a healthy economy. This is not to discount the pain and suffering involved in being laid off, even if you find a new job fairly quickly. In addition, some do not get new jobs. Another unpleasant fact is that some of the people who were laid off do not perform as well. However, the article seemed to imply that this reality does not exist. They only referred to people who were laid off who had "good performance records." These records are often nonsense, in my opinion.

On the negative side of LBO companies, they are accelerating the process of turnaround. Laying off people faster, cutting expenses faster... This part seems like a scam. You can cut expenses past the desirable point and not affect profits for a while. Then if you sell it fast enough, you can make a big profit yourself. After it is sold however, the company crashes, goes into a hangover, and money needs to be spent to rebuild it. So part of the phenomenon is just a scam, in my view. However, is really impossible to separate this sort of thing from truly adding value, or a should say it is impossible in a general sense. For some people, it is possible to separate scams from adding value. These are the real investors.

Capitalism is pretty painful, but so is life. The alternative is a European-type system based on "job protection." However, it seems to me that the European system is inevitably sliding and spiraling downward. I will admit that I'm not sure about this last point.

I will close with a statement made by a person from England who had moved to America. This person said that most of all, they were struck by the optimism of this country. I think optimism springs from opportunity, and we still have it.

Some Thoughts on MEMS in the Human Body

2007-07-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

definition from:


	SearchSMB.com Definitions,

http://searchsmb.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid44_gci214093,00.html

"Micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) is a technology that combines computers with tiny mechanical devices such as sensors, valves, gears, mirrors, and actuators embedded in semiconductor chips. Paul Saffo of the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California, believes MEMS or what he calls analog computing will be "the foundational technology of the next decade." MEMS is also sometimes called smart matter.

MEMS are already used as accelerometers in automobile air-bags. They've replaced a less reliable device at lower cost and show promise of being able to inflate a bag not only on the basis of sensed deceleration but also on the basis of the size of the person they are protecting. Basically, a MEMS device contains micro-circuitry on a tiny silicon chip into which some mechanical device such as a mirror or a sensor has been manufactured. Potentially, such chips can be built in large quantities at low cost, making them cost-effective for many uses.

Among the presently available uses of MEMS or those under study are:

Global position system sensors that can be included with courier parcels for constant tracking and that can also sense parcel treatment en route
Sensors built into the fabric of an airplane wing so that it can sense and react to air flow by changing the wing surface resistance; effectively creating a myriad of tiny wing flaps
Optical switching devices that can switch light signals over different paths at 20-nanosecond switching speeds
Sensor-driven heating and cooling systems that dramatically improve energy savings
Building supports with imbedded sensors that can alter the flexibility properties of a material based on atmospheric stress sensing

Saffo distinguishes between sensor-effector type microcomputing (which he calls "MEMS") and micro-devices containing gears, mirrors, valves, and other parts (which he calls "micro-machines")."

My Thoughts:

MEMS devices will probably start being brought into the human body for therapeutic purposes before too long. How will they send data out of the body? MEMS devices could be organized in a network similar to the servers on the Internet. Each device would be capable of short range transmission. The data of the message would be divided into packets like the IP (Internet Protocol) packets. Packets would move randomly through the system until they reached the destination, possibly some kind of data collection device embedded under the skin. Presumably, the data from this device could be read without the direct contact of a port containing bare metal contacts. I presume this for aesthetic reasons---the preference of the patient. Data transfer could be done via RF transmission, possibly utilizing a passive RF circuit similar to those used anti-theft devices and stores. Perhaps data transmission could be done electromagnetically. However, I can't recall reading about data transmission based on this principle---only power transmission.

MEMS devices could be powered by electrical potentials inside the body. I believe devices powered in this way have already been developed, just for demonstration purposes at this point. However, I'm not sure about that, it may have only been speculation. MEMS devices could be composed of very small modules interconnected by biodegradable connectors. That way, the MEMS device would essentially dissolve after a set period of time and be expelled from the body in the urine or feces. I can't imagine that people would want to have this kind of stuff accumulating inside their bodies over time. This leads to an idea for another type of data collection. The MEMS devices could place the data into small capsules designed to be flushed out of the body with the urine. The patient would need to urinate into a receptacle handed over to his or her doctor. There could be redundancy of messages to cover the times when the patient was urinating away from home.

The introduced of MEMS devices into the human body seems quite likely to me. Currently, scientific understanding of disease is advancing and many of the specific mechanisms involved with disease are becoming better understood. For example, microphages, cells inside the bodies of animals that are part of the immune system and that are designed to "eat" bacteria and other small living things, have now been shown to sometimes play a key role in the development of cancer. (This example comes from a recent scientific American article.)

The evidence relates to one of the breeds of mice that has been genetically developed to regularly create cancer inside themselves. It was found that destroying the microphages of this mouse prevented it from developing cancer. Precancerous cells were developed as is normal for this mouse, but they could not convert into cancer.

The microphages are normally controlled by chemical signals created by the mouse's body. However, it now appears that some cancer cells have evolved a way to send bogus chemical signals to the microphages and hijack them. The microphages then play key role in converting precancerous cells into cancer. Killing the microphages in the mouse inhibits the final development of the cancer.

When one considers complex mechanisms like this that are involved in the creation of diseases, one can see the advantage of incorporating MEMS into the body to monitor highly localized processes. Of course, there would need to be some way of knowing where particular pieces of data came from in the body. One way to do this would be to somehow anchor each MEMS into a permanent, known position in the body. Then the doctor would be able to locate the origin of the data from the MEMS's own ID tag which would be included in each piece of data. However, anchoring a MEMS in the body does not sound very easy. Perhaps each MEMS could have a tropism for a particular biochemical environment located at a particular place in the body.

New Ford CEO---Titanic Analogy?

2007-07-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

I read an article in the Wall Street Journal today about the new Ford CEO. He talked a lot about the things he was doing to turn Ford around. His statements sounded reasonable as far as they went. However, his basic prioritizing referred to things that were obvious to myself before he took over---just from reading the Wall Street Journal. I refer to the fact that Ford is now building too many SUVs and large cars and has been doing so for a while.

After this rather broad initial analysis, he starts to descend directly into the daily minutia of running each of Ford's many different sections. I would've liked a sharper, deeper cutting analysis of Ford's overall problems---even if he wasn't yet sure what he was going to do about them.

Apparently, he started running Boeing shortly before the 9/11 disaster delivered a major shock to the company---I think it was in the year 2000 that he took over. According to the article, he apparently navigated Boeing through that period of time, which was a great setback to Boeing. Again according to the article, he did very well and turned things around for the company after 9/11.

However, it seems to me to Boeing's major crisis was earlier than this---in the 90s. Furthermore, it seems to me that their major coup of the last 20 years, the Dream liner, was decided on, conceived, and largely developed in the 90s as well. Perhaps my memory is not completely accurate in this matter (excuse my laziness in not googling it up).

But imagine a scenario in which an ace ship captain agrees to take over the Titanic shortly after it has made contact with the iceberg. Suppose he was skillful enough to have avoided hitting the iceberg had he been at the helm. Could he really make a difference after contact had been made? And wouldn't his willingness to take over the ship at that time tell us something about his ability to make assessments?

Why Can't a Microsoft PC Connect Directly to an Online Diagnostic Program?

2007-07-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

I did something I don't usually do yesterday: tried to clean out my PC following some instructions I've been given by Microsoft technician when he had earlier solved some problem or other over the telephone. I suppose I made a mistake because I got some dire warnings to the effect that some important file was missing that was crucial for the computer's operation.

I was instructed to insert the XP operating system disc to replace this critical file. Upon doing so, the program told me it was reluctant to download from this desk because I now had a newer version of the operating system that I would lose if I downloaded from the disc.

This scenario makes it seem as if Laurel and Hardy are in charge of Microsoft diagnostics, but that might not be fair. The Microsoft operating system is very complex, it does change pretty quickly, and it is hard to keep track of what is going on, let alone anticipate future changes when the initial diagnostic system is developed.

What I can't understand though, is why I cannot go on to a Microsoft web site that would connect up to built-in "hooks" in the operating system, take a look at what is going on, and recommend a course of action that I could take or not take as I chose. This would, it seems, be much more effective than the built-in diagnostic functions of the operating system, which seem to become obsolete when the first software update occurs.

Of course, such a web site would cost money to operate and maintain but it seems like it would be much less expensive than maintaining the current size of the telephone technician force that is needed. In addition, the online solution would be more effective. Since each specific variation of a problem would only need to be solved once, Microsoft could restrict the personnel working on the diagnostic web site to the very highest quality people. This would eliminate the frequent mistakes that occur with the current current telephone-based diagnostic system. In addition, diagnosis would be much faster.

In terms of my current problem by the way, I remembered how I had solved similar problems in the past. This was done by simply rebooting the computer, apparently eliminating all awareness in the operating system of this "vital" missing file.

Taiwanese Blunder: Taiwan PC Makers Going in Wrong Direction

2007-07-22T15:36:00.000-07:00

Within the past few days, I read an article in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) about how Taiwan PC makers, who have until now been making most of the PCs manufactured in the world, are feeling price pressure competition from China. The feeling in Taiwan is that their PC manufacturing business, as it is currently constituted, is starting to die. The main indication of this is shrinking profit margins.

Clearly, the Taiwan PC manufacturers need to respond in some way. Their response however, as reported in the WSJ, looks like a classic blunder to me. The WSJ reports that they are planning to start branding their PCs themselves. The general form of this blunder is as follows. A manufacturer starts to be forced out of a previous niche. The company responds by saying, "I am about this type of product. What new skills can I acquire to remain competitive in this market?"

The response should be, "I am about these types of skills. What new product can I find to apply these skills to?" Clearly, the skill set would probably need to be modified somewhat to be applied to a new type of product.

In regard to the specific situation of the Taiwan PC manufacturers, the manufacturers see themselves as "PC people." They are going to respond to the crisis by learning how to brand and market PCs, which would largely be done in the United States, Europe, and Japan which make up the bulk of the world market. Their reasoning probably go something like this. "I understand the PC product well. Until recently, I have been manufacturing them profitably. This is something that HP and Dell haven't been able to do for years in their own factories. Compared to manufacturing, branding and marketing seems pretty easy. And there's a bigger mark up in that part of the business."

This is a recipe for disaster. Anyone competing successfully in today's competitive world market, possesses a set of sophisticated skills that they developed over time with considerable effort. Everything is considerably more difficult than it looks. The Taiwan PC manufacturers will fail in their effort to brand and market PCs because they know nothing about how to do it and there is no reason to think they will be able to catch up with those who do. The advantages of vertical integration will prove marginal.

What should they do? It seems to me that one possible good answer would be to look for technical manufacturing niches they can evolve into. They should look for a number of products to replace their current single product because none of the new products will be as big as the PC. Learning how to manufacture more technically difficult products will require the development of new skills and the purchase of new equipment. But the skills needed would be an extension of skills they currently have so expanding into these areas would be an organic and natural progression.

Another possible good the answer would be to try to move into the novelty manufacturing area, possibly by forming partnerships with current novelty manufacturing companies (for products such as alarm clocks). These companies excel in things like plastic manufacture, rapid realignment of assembly lines, and stringent price control. However, they are relatively unsophisticated in the area of electronics. A strategy could be developed to upgrade the sophistication of electronics and novelty products while containing costs.

the real story behind PS3

2007-07-08T16:08:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some research on the Web of the past few months on PS3. Unfortunately, I did not bookmark any of the web sites and cannot provide any references.

Nonetheless, this is what I've discovered. PS3 contains an amazingly powerful computer. It is immensely more powerful than the Xbox 360. The problem is, at least at the time of the release of PS3, it was also immensely more difficult to program to its full potential than Xbox 360.

As I have come to understand it, Sony released the PS3 before programming aids for the PS3 were available. The references to this are not completely clear and I may be wrong, but this is what I think. According to what I've read, programming the PS three to its full potential without programming aids is so difficult as to be impractical.

At this point in time, at least some of the programming aids have been created and released by Sony. Sony provides these free to any game developer who wants them. I read said at least one game company is developing a "real" version of a PS3 game---a version that utilizes the PS3 to its real potential. The name of this game (an update of a previous game) includes the words "Ninja Gardens."

I'm not a gamer and have played few videogames in my life. However, I am fascinated with technology in general and computer technology in particular. I'm very interested in the PS3 as a piece of technology. as I understand it from my reading, once the PS3 has been programmed to something approaching its full potential, it will be completely incomparable to the Xbox 360. Not only will graphics, strictly speaking be in another league, but the program will be able to incorporate such things as the principles of physics applied to video games. A least one such program is already available. You simply draw some objects, for example, and let them "fall." The program automatically figures out the effects of gravity, momentum, collisions, etc. and automatically generates the graphics for you.

Current versions of PS3 games utilize only a small percentage of the total potential. This kind of programming is much easier on the PS3. There is some debate about exactly how difficult it is to currently program a PS3 to near its full potential, even with the programming aids devised by Sony up to this point, but it clearly seems to be more difficult than programming an Xbox. As a result of this and the fact that programming aids were not available at the time of release (as far as I can determine) current versions of PS3 games are slightly inferior to Xbox 360 versions.

However, when the next generation of games comes out, it will be seen that the PS3 is in a class of its on. I fully believe this at this point, though I do not presented as a fully established fact because some of the evidence has been a little unclear.

As far as I'm concerned, the question now is whether a great PS3 will have a hugely positive impact on Sony or not. Specifically, will it propel Sony's Blu Ray version of the next-generation high-definition DVD player into dominance against its competitor, which I believe is called HD DVD or something like that.

You'll recall, this is a replay of the VCR wars that Sony lost. This despite the apparent fact that they had the best technology. Well, we'll see what happens.

2007-07-05T10:19:00.001-07:00

I just read an article in today's Wall Street Journal about people who have a strange deficiency -- they are unable to recognize other people's faces. Apparently, as many as 2.5% of the population may suffer from this condition to one extent or another.

However, it is most interesting in its extreme form. There is a story about a young boy with this problem. His parents have had to transfer him to a small private school because it is so hard for him to deal with other students. The reporter talks to the child and he apparently can only identify two people in his class---due to their distinctive hairstyles. The kid is really struggling to deal with this problem on a daily basis.

While this is indeed unfortunate condition, I couldn't help but wonder. Why don't they just have all the students and teachers in the school wear name tags?

2007-04-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

from Physorg.com

http://www.physorg.com/news96891553.html

"Nanogap-nanohole devices can be used in the manufacture of single-molecule detectors and provide new opportunities for DNA nanopore sequencing."

Scientists have developed a way to "hand craft" nano devices with features smaller than 10 nanometers for the first time. Apparently this may allow the creation of machines small enough to manipulate DNA---at least, that is the implication I draw from the above sentence. Pretty amazing possibility.

Why are printers not designed with the paper feed on the top?

2007-04-24T12:00:00.000-07:00

Since the main problem with printers is paper jams, wouldn't it be much easier to design an efficient path for the paper that went with the force of gravity instead of moving against it?

Industries Square Off on Patent Bill

2007-04-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Comment on a WSJ article of that title, 4/19/07, p. A8

There is a new patent bill in Congress (not yet passed) that is going to try to protect industries that have been hurt excessively by patent battles such as the tech industry and financial services.

"The bill would require patent holders to be given a "reasonable royalty" for patent infringements, but would limit that to the economic value of the patent's "specific contribution over prior art" or the value of the new "thing" the patent reflects rather than the value of the entire product of which it is a part."

The problem is the bill is opposed by the drug companies because they fear it will hurt their ability to protect their own innovations.

It occurs to me that it may be telling to "split up" the patent law into different sections for broadly different types of products. Can one patent law really cover everything from software to drugs?

Another soup idea

2007-04-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

I like creamy soups best. There are a lot of dry soups (add water) but they are obviously not of the creamy type. Could a dry, creamy soup be marketed---requiring the user to just add milk and butter? I would buy it as it would taste fresher than canned (see previous entry).

New Kind of Soup; Partitioned Can Attached to Package

2007-04-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

I am a single guy who sometimes eats a lot of canned soup. Lately, however, I have been substituting a dish from my childhood---Kraft macaroni and cheese, with the addition of tuna (the tuna trick taught to me by a lovely lady I knew years ago).

I make it with butter instead of margarine, and I have found it helps to slice up the butter into thin pats before mixing it in with the macaroni. It all amounts to a little preparation before eating, which small level of work I enjoy.

But I have come to notice something else. I like this food, in part, because it tastes "fresher" than canned soup. This got me thinking. Having the ingredients of soup sit together in a can over time apparently makes the soup taste less fresh. Why not partition the can into sections, each section with different ingredients? The internal partitions would not need to be strong like the outside package. Instead of metal, the internal partition could be made of plastic bonded to metal. The user would simply pour the soup out into a saucepan, allowing it to mix. A disc-shaped plastic container could be attached to the top of the can for dried ingredients, also to be added. This would taste significantly better than ordinary canned soup, I am sure.

The Revolving Door for Predator Pilots

2007-04-07T19:23:00.000-07:00

Strategy Page

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htmurph/articles/20070404.aspx

"New operator equipment was developed to enable one pilot to handle more than one Predator simultaneously. But this did not work out as well as expected, and pilots were rarely able to deal with more than two Predators at a time."

In my opinion this is a clear indicator that more intelligence needs to be built into the Predator. It should do more flying of itself. While the human operators will still be making decisions, the implementation of these decisions should be carried out, by and large, by the Predator. I have a feeling these sorts of changes will be implemented very soon.

Eavesdropping nuthatches distinguish danger threats in chickadee alarm calls

2007-03-19T21:53:00.001-07:00

http://www.physorg.com/news93544258.html

The false separation between research in brain science and psychology

2007-03-19T21:27:00.001-07:00

I was recently in a Psychology Library picking out interesting things to read in journals. It amused me to notice the journals I selected were of 2 types: psychology and brain science. Though both subjects interest me, I was dissatisfied with both, and a little reflection showed me why.

Brain science journals are still studying psychological issues that are too small because that is within the scope of the things they can resolve with brain observations. Psychology journals also tackle issues that are, in a way too small, because that is within the scope of things that can be resolved with the methods of psychological experiments (statistics, questionnaires, etc.). In some way, the issues of psychology journals are interesting, but there is another problem---these journals don't really prove things due to the limitations of their methods.

I also realized the solution.

Brain scientists need to start getting more aggressive and tackle questions of larger scope---similar to the questions psychological philosophers tackle in their books, questions about the nature of perception, conceptualization, decision-making, goal formation, action, etc.

It is true that these experiments will be failed scientific experiments at this time; our scientific knowledge of the brain is not yet strong enough, so these experiments will be over-aggressive, not sufficiently controlled, and fail to prove anything. They might even have trouble getting published in a brain science journal.

But they will yield real, interesting knowledge on significant questions about the mind, and that is what we need.

I've come up with an idea to allow CAD/CAM designers to backtrack

2007-03-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was reading a slightly out of date (perhaps a month old, I'm not sure) NASA Tech Brief article about the biggest outstanding problems facing the designers of CAD/CAM software. NASA Tech Brief, by the way, is a monthly magazine put out by NASA about a variety of extremely cool technical subjects. occasionally the subjects are directly related to space exploration. I suppose all of the articles could be related to space exploration in some way, but most of them, like the CAD/CAM software article, have no particular direct connection to space exploration. There is also an online version of this and both are highly recommended.

One major problem delineated by the CAD/CAM article was that designers like to be able to backtrack to a previous point in the design, but they are generally not able to do so with currently existing software.

I came up with the solution---although I am admittedly not qualified in this area (and perhaps not qualified in any area!)

My idea is to have a "shadow" CAD/CAM hardware/software system that would-be slaved to the main system actually utilized by the user to create the design. This would be a master/slave set up, analogous to a master/slave flip-flop---but instead of the slave system being an inversion of the master system, the slave system would be an identical copy of the Master system.

At the core of this new CAD/CAM system, I presume, would be a pair of microprocessors linked together. Microprocessor 1 would be like an ordinary microprocessor at the core of the CAD/CAM system---except it would output a second stream of signals duplicating each signal in its ordinary output. The ordinary output would interface with the CAD/CAM system in the ordinary way doing things like changing the screen display, changing the data file describing the design, etc.

The second output of microprocessor 1 would be the input to microprocessor 2. Microprocessor 2 would not need to concern itself with user inputs since all of its inputs would come from microprocessor 1. Nor would microprocessor 2 need to concern itself with inputs from the knowledge base of the system, since it would be operating in "simple slave" mode. The main thing microprocessor to would do would be to compile a duplicate design data file, identical to the "real" design data file created by microprocessor 1.

Periodically, microprocessor 2 would rapidly copy the entire current design data file. I can't indicate how frequently such a snapshot would need to be taken because of never done CAD/CAM. All of the snapshots would be stored, thus providing a way for the designer to backtrack.

The tricky part of the system is being able to take the snapshots without screwing up the process all of maintaining an accurate design data file. This would be achieved via the insertion of a variable delay line in the data stream connecting microprocessor one and microprocessor 2. The size of the delay would be controlled by microprocessor 2 depending on how "pressed for time" it was.

Suppose a snap shot was once taken every five minutes. Microprocessor 2 would have the capability of shutting off all output from microprocessor 1 for 2-1/2 minutes, thus allowing the system 2-1/2 minutes to make a complete copy of the current design data file. During this 2-1/2 minute period, the content of the working design data file for microprocessor 2 would be frozen, enabling the copy process to go forward.

Once the copy was completed, microprocessor 2 would start allowing new data to flow into itself and start updating the design data file---for 2-1/2 minutes. Microprocessor 2 would be able to input new data twice as fast as microprocessor 1, thus allowing it to "catch-up" with the 5 minute data gap over the 2-1/2 minute period. Microprocessor 2 would also have the power to accelerate the flow of data through the dateline, enabling the "catch-up."

I can't see any logical flaw in this system. Obviously a large amount of storage space would be required for all these designs. in most cases however once the design of the project was finalized and sent to manufacturing, these various partial design data files could be erased---regaining the storage space. It occurs to me that this type of CAD/CAM system might work best with a dumb terminal directly connected to a server.

Paul Mercer---former iPod guru---takes on the iPhone

2007-03-09T09:28:00.000-08:00

Today's New York Times has a story about how Palm has hired Paul Mercer, who was instrumental in developing the iPod, to help Palm compete with the iPhone. ("Palm Responds to the iPhone", p. C7)

This article interested me, so I looked up another article on the Web--- here is a small quote.

"'He is an unusually detail-oriented software engineer," said Steve Capps, a former Apple and Microsoft software engineer, who was one of the designers of the original Macintosh interface and the leader of the Newton project, which created a hand-held computer. "He knows how to architect small pieces of software code.'

"Alliances between small firms and big electronics makers are becoming increasingly common as companies are forced to bring new devices to market practically every season.

"'We're seeing the rise of independent specialists who have a deep understanding of things that big companies don't have the ability to do,' said Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley consultant who is chairman of Samsung's science board, an advisory group."

"He Helped Build the iPod, Now He Has Built a Rival;" the New York Times, February 27, 2006; http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/27/technology/27mercer.html?ex=1298696400&en=7ea45081168b7a7f&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Here is another reference of some interest I found on Paul Mercer.

"Little-known startup was behind iPod's easy-to-use interface,
Firm's founder now working on the latest handhelds"; San Francisco Chronicle, August 16, 2004; http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/08/16/BUGTG878AR1.DTL

idea to combine retail and the Internet

2007-02-16T19:39:00.000-08:00

I think when people go to a store such as Rite Aid or CVS---what used to be called a drugstore but I can't even think what it would be called now, convenience store does not seem correct---they should be able to order items within a certain range of categories from the Internet.

The person making the order would have to identify himself or herself by name and show the driver's license to verify identity. However, the person would not be legally responsible for picking up the ordered item once it came and, if he or she did not buy it---the person would not be responsible for paying for the item.

Rather, the store would notify the person by e-mail that the item had arrived, hold it for one week, and then put it up for general sale. Anyone who feel to pick up an item however, or failed to pick up a certain number of items, say maybe three, would lose their ability to order new items.

There are number of purposes contained in this idea. one is an easier and less expensive way to order from the Internet, since a company like Rite Aid would be able to set up some bundled, lower-cost method of shipping. Even more important, however, would be the idea of Rite Aid getting new ideas for products to stock.

In fact, the whole idea of the store would change and become more flexible. In fact, this store would be halfway into the Internet.

A related idea of mine is that each store of this type should list every item they have on the Internet, along with their current price. It seems to be this would be something they could attain for software alone with no hours contributed from people working in the stores. I say this because stores like Rite Aid, due to their computerized cash registers, pretty much know everything that is in each store and have this information in their company servers. Of course, such information would be accompanied by a disclaimer that the information did not constitute a guarantee that a particular item would be in the store and an acknowledgment that errors could happen. However, I believe errors would be extremely rare.

This system would be particularly useful for people without cars for whom it can really be difficult to throttle round from one store to another looking for a particular item.

The idea

2007-02-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

some references on entrepreneurship.

angels; how to snag one to invest in your company; http://www.naturalentrepreneur.com/articles/20040630-01.html

entrepreneurs of expositions (like conventions) http://www.expoweb.com/For_Profit_Shows/April2322200524156PM.htm

drug entrepreneurs; small and aggressive and creative; http://www.startupjournal.com/howto/successstories/20070209-whalen.html
Small Drug Firms Eye Castoffs of Larger Rivals
By JEANNE WHALEN
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal.--February 09, 2007

Sony's Diffuse Strategy

2007-02-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

I have always been a fan of Sony, buying their electronic products and appreciating their quality---as well as appreciating the amazing story of the company---how it arose from the ashes of post-World War II Japan, starting with little more than a few educated, ingenious workers.

So the long, slow decline of the company has been painful for me to watch. It started for me when I bought a Sony device---either a very small entertainment system or a very large boom box depending on how you look at it---that turned out to be crap. Since then, I have followed their stumbling course on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Their decline has multiple causes. The arrogant dismissal of LCD and plasma TVs because the Trinitron has a better picture. (The Trinitron still has a better picture, but finally, Sony has acknowledged that it doesn't matter, they were wrong, and they are scrambling to try to catch up in LCD TV production. They have teamed up with Samsung to build an expensive new factory---probably just at the point when the best profits from LCD TVs are gone and they are turning into a commodity. Ironically, plasma and LCD TV picture quality is not equal to CRT picture quality, but people want giant screens and a giant CRT screen would have a box behind it that filled up your whole living room. This is because CRT pictures are made by shooting all the electrons out of a "gun"---a single point origin, and the box must encompass this cone, which requires a certain depth per amount of screen area.)

But for me, the central mistake of Sony is their purchase of, and continued ownership of---Time Warner. I think Time may now be sold, which would make it just Warner. In addition, I'll confess I don't know all the details of Sony's ownership of media companies.

What I object to is the basic idea of Sony owning media companies. It stems from them not knowing who they are anymore. They are the tinkerers, they are the builders of great electronic gizmos. This is their business and an attempt to add movies to this is bound to fail. The purchase came about, some of you will recall, in the go-go 90s. There was a theory at that time that hardware didn't matter anymore---only software. When applied to consumer electronics, that meant all the stuff Sony made didn't matter, so Sony went out and bought Warner Brothers said they could own the "content"---which 90's gurus assured everyone was the only source of future profit.

I remember reading at that time (can't specify the year, sorry, but obviously more toward the beginning of the 90s and the end of the 90s) that Cisco was irrelevant company because they only supplied the physical means for the Internet and that didn't matter---only for software and the "content". I remember when I read that I thought, "that's wrong," but I didn't take the next logical leap to realize "Cisco stock must thereby be undervalued and I should buy it." Had I taken that next logical leap, I would now be an extremely wealthy man---had I had any money to buy the stock in the first place.

So Sony went out and bought Warner Brothers, like a million other similar dumb moves in the 90s. But all that BS has been discredited for a long time now, so why hasn't Sony sold Warner Bros. long ago?

These various threads came together in the train wreck of the release of PlayStation 3. They still make the best video games I told myself, the true believer clinging to his faith. I noted the PlayStation 2---which was how many years old?---was still outselling the relatively new Xbox 360 on a month-to-month basis. Okay, that is just competing against Microsoft---not a real company. Everything they make outside of their desktop software fails, from their mobile phone operating systems, to the software they built for one of the Baby Bells to help the deliver TV, etc. They are in fact a utility, not accompany---they cannot compete.

But still, PlayStation has been a great product, everyone agrees. Not that I play video games.

So what did Sony do? They put a Blu-Ray DVD player into each PlayStation 3. This ended up delaying the release of PlayStation 3 quite a while---maybe a year---because they had trouble moving into mass production of the new Blu-Ray technology. The delay gave Nintendo the chance to come up with their innovative new Wii and released at the same time as PlayStation 3. Another case perhaps of Sony, the former king of innovation, being out-innovated. The Blu- Ray story itself looks like a Sony replay. Sony came up with the best videotape machine technology, I think it was called BetaMax. But the other technology ended it up winning and becoming the standard somehow. I have a feeling the same thing will happen with high-definition DVDs players.

But the real key to this whole screw-up is the linkage to Time Warner. That is why the Blu-Ray had to be in the PlayStation 3. Because controlling the dominant DVD player technology, will help boost their distribution of movies---or so they imagine. So they tie the whole company into one long string---and it's sink or swim for everyone at the same time. Except that such an unwieldy strategy almost guarantees the sink outcome---with a delayed, expensive, unprofitable PS3.

It reminds me of Wal-Mart's current floundering---once again stemming from not knowing who you are. Wal-Mart has been having trouble expanding in recent years. This has come about because they are one of the most successful companies in the history of the world and they have almost completely filled up their niche---which is selling retail commodities of every imaginable type at the lowest possible price in America outside the major cities.

Having achieved this singular success, all they had to do was maintain what they had. Shareholders of stock could have been rewarded with dividends---eliminating the need for constant expansion. Instead, Wal-Mart has embarked on two major strategies---international expansion and becoming the next Target. International expansion has failed because there are quintessentially an American company. Becoming the next Target has failed as well. Why is this? Run the historical tape. Target came onto the scene after Wal-Mart was already there (as I understand it). They knew they could never out Wal-Mart Wal-Mart. So, they created their own similar, but somewhat different specialty. It is called Target. They do it extremely well, and like most specialties, it is not easily learned. Target happens to make somewhat more money per square foot because they sell slightly higher-end items. So some accountant at Wal-Mart decided if they just do what Target does, they will boost Wal-Mart's income by X. amount. How sad.

Watching the once great elephant flounder.

ceramic armor

2007-02-10T10:43:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder how tank armor and armor tests worn by soldiers can be made of ceramic---even though when you drop your ceramic cup in the kitchen it shatters? Guess what? Ceramic tank armor also shatters when it is hit by a projectile. The shattering absorbs the shock and protects the tank underneath. Ceramic tank armor is in the form of plates that are attached to the outside of the tank. When one is hit, a new plate is simply attached in its place.

Ceramic armored vests are made of some material (probably largely Kevlar) with sewn-in pockets, each containing one ceramic plate. If a bullet impacts one of the plates, it shatters into pieces which are contained in the pocket. The soldier simply pours the pieces out and inserts a new plate. Cool, huh?

2007-02-09T13:00:00.000-08:00

just read an article starting on the front page of today's Wall Street Journal, "Big Dealer to Detroit: Fakes How You make Cars,"

In the Fort Lauderdale dealership of a huge national company called AutoNation Inc., that sells 4% of the cars sold in the U. S., the manager of the store, Mr. Devan, "recently pulled up data on Expedition sales on his computer. Although Ford offers about a dozen versions---two in four-wheel drive, long and short wheelbase---Mr. Devan says just three types account for 75% of the sales in all of South Florida. 'those are the ones I'll order,' he said, touching a finger to his display screen. 'Anything else, I'll pretty much stay away from'"

When I read something like this, it reminds me off the feature-crazy engineers I once worked with in Silicon Valley. This makes it sound like Ford (and other US automakers) have been taken over by the engineers.

2007-02-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

Scientists and engineers are incorporating principles of flight utilized by birds to create better unmanned airborne vehicles (UAVs). Animal flight is highly unsteady and complex compared to mechanical flight. The more complicated articulation of the living wing also makes this type of flight more essentially three-dimensional than conventional flying machines. So far, the main use of UAVs has been by the US military, the NASA is also co founding recent research on the subject at the University of Florida (UF). The current generation of UAVs has been spectacularly useful in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq---taking the Army brass by surprise and causing production to be quickly ramped up as combat infantry on the ground makes evermore requests for UAV support. However, the current generation of UAVs is designed to fly high above the ground.

The UF research is designed to create UAVs that will be more maneuverable than the current generation, allowing them to fly close to the ground and, for example, bring special sensors close in to investigate a particular individual building suspected of harboring the manufacture of chemical or biological weapons. The new generation of UAVs would be designed to be able to fly down a street with buildings on both sides, turn a corner, fly between two buildings, etc.

As Rick Lind, a UF assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering who heads the project explained, this will require the ability to do sharp turns, spins, and dives. To accomplish this, the new UAVs will have wings similar to those of a seagull---able to undergo drastic changes of shape during flight.

This idea came from mechanical and aerospace engineering doctoral student Mujahid Abdulrahim. He was impressed with the way seagulls could hover, dive, and then quickly climb to regain their altitude again. Photographs by Abdulrahim showed the gulls’ wings flexing both their shoulder and elbow joints to alter their flight patterns.

He incorporated structures analogous to a gull’s elbow and shoulder into the latest UAV prototype. With the UAV wings in a position analogous to a gulls’ wings with the elbows down, the UAV becomes less stable but highly maneuverable. With the “mechanical elbows” straight, the UAV glides very well. With the UAV wings in a position analogous to a gull’s wings with the elbows up, it is very easy to control and can be utilized to land the craft in a relatively small area. The motors in the UAV can move the wings from the down position to the up position (during flight) in 12 seconds. Abdulrahim says this is fast enough to make the craft maneuverable in a city landscape.

The UAV can complete three 360° rolls in one second---three times as many as an F-16. No human piloted plane would ever be designed with the ability to do three 360° rolls in one second because that would kill the pilot. In general, jet fighter design has been bumping up against the fairly immovable constraint of what the human body can withstand. This is one of the main reasons that when the U. S. Air Force announced that it was going to develop the F-35, it also said that this would be the last human-piloted jet fighter.

For awhile, there was understandable resistance against UAVs in the Air Force. Being in charge of employees enhances the power of bureaucrats, and in the air force, pilots are very prestigious employees. Being in charge of a bunch of flying machines will not seem to have the same importance. But the stellar performance of UAVs in Iraq and Afghanistan has caused any potential remaining resistance inside the Air Force to crumble.

Recently, the Air Force tried to retrofit the current state-of-the-art American fighter, the F-22 to perform ground reconnaissance in Iraq using sensors. However, the Predator UAV, costing about 5% as much as an F-22, ended up doing the job better. To be fair, the F-22 was never designed for ground sensor mission. Still, the incident is telling in a way. Grown sensor missions are mainly what we need---at least right now.

And even more promising model for UAVs the seagulls may be bats. Because bat wings are so flexible and highly articulated, bats have more lift, less drag, and greater maneuverability than birds. In contrast to man-made machines, bats fly very slowly, have highly compliant aerodynamic surfaces, and are very unsteady.

Two Brown University professors, Kenneth Breuer, a professor of engineering at who studied mechanical aerodynamics earlier in his career and Sharon Swartz, an associate professor in ecology and evolutionary biology, have collaborated to greatly advance the understanding of bat flight. Some of their findings were published in a study titled “Direct Measurements of the Kinematics and Dynamics of Bat Flight."

A bat wing has more than 24 joints---all independent of each other. A thin, flexible membrane encompasses the entire wing. The bones of a bat wing also go through a large degree of deformation during flight. The extremely flexible articulation of the bat’s wing allows a bat to make a 180° turn in less than half the distance of a wingspan. During the 180° turn, the turning rate exceeds 200° per second.

Bat wings are architecturally and mechanically more complex than those of other any other flying animal, resulting in more maneuverable flight with unique kinematics. (Kinematics is the branch of mechanics that studies the motion of a body or a system of bodies without consideration given to its mass or the forces acting on it. This is in contrast to dynamics, the branch of mechanics that is concerned with the effects of forces on the motion of a body or system of bodies, especially of forces that do not originate within the system itself.)

To better understand how the wings of bats function, Breuer and Swartz first set up videos shot from four angles simultaneously. Reflective markers were placed on joints, bones, and the wing membrane. Analysis of the videos helped the researchers understand how complex movements of the wing strokes related to the overall flight speed, body position, and angle of attack of the bats. After taking a series of ordinary videos, the research team injected a fine mist of aerosol particles into the area where the bats would fly. As the bat flew by, a laser imager imaging device captured the position, speed, and direction of the particles in her wake (all the tests bats were female).

The study revealed that unlike birds or insects, bats draw their wings into their bodies during the upstroke and then extend them out during the downstroke. In a sense, they are rowing rather than flying.

Another area of study is the development of a swarming capability for UAVs. A thousand starlings, flying together in a flock, are able to maneuver easily. The path of the group’s flight changes from moment to moment with no central control. Researchers are copying some of their subtle and effective control methods to help large numbers of UAVs flying near each other without collisions. Swarms (of bees for example) are more complex than flocks because they incorporate stigmergy---their form of communication between individuals. This results in even greater coordination.

Flying robots however, are capable of forming a system with much more complex and effective coordination. In a recent BBC Focus Magazine article, Professor Owen Holland talked about such a system he is building, which he describes as a “gridswarm” (the name of the particular gridswarm he is now developing is “Ultraswarm”---a group of miniature robot helicopters linked together computationally to create an indoor flying cluster computer.

“Imagine a large group of small unmanned autonomous aerial vehicles that can fly with the agility of a flock of starlings in a city square at dusk. Imagine linking their onboard computers together across a short range, high-bandwidth wireless network and configuring them to form an enormous distributed parallel computer. Imagine using this huge computational resource to process sensory data gathered by this swarm, and to direct its collective actions. You have now grasped the idea of a flying gridswarm.”

Although the article focuses on civilian applications, the application to military UAVs is obvious and will clearly becoming soon.

"New UAV designed to maneuver in tight spaces;" OE Magazine, the SPIE Magazine of Photonics Technologies and Applications; http://oemagazine.com/newscast/2005/082405_newscast01.html

"Predator Kicks F-22 Ass," Strategy Page http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htecm/articles/20070131.aspx

"Bats in flight reveal unexpected aerodynamics," Physorg.com, (their source: Brown University)

http://www.physorg.com/news88359720.html.

"Direct Measurements of the Kinematics and Dynamics of Bat Flight," by Xiaodong Tian, Jose Iriarte, Kevin Middleton, Ricardo Galvao, Emily Israeli, Abigail Roemer, Allyce Sullivan&, Arnold Song, Sharon Swartz and Kenneth Breuer, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, http://microfluids.engin.brown.edu/Breuer_Papers/Conferences/AIAA-2006-2865-552.pdf.

"UAV; Killer Swarms: The New Generation," by David Hambling, DefenseTech.org, http://www.defensetech.org/archives/002651.html

2007-01-29T23:31:00.000-08:00

I came up with an idea for cooling servers more efficiently after reading two articles in the wall Street Journal, Mon., 1/29/07, p. R7, "Less Is More, How companies are getting their computers to work harder," and "Running Wild, powering and cooling the computers cost more than the machines themselves. Now, new technologies are reducing their expenses."

The idea is based on blade servers, described in "Less Is More." For novices to this subject (such as myself) I found the following statement a good supplement to the information in the WSJ article.

"By separating CPU and memory from other components such as cabling, power supply, network connectivity and cooling systems, blade servers significantly reduce massive enterprise server architectures into highly compact and dense form factor."

from website:

Ultimate Storage Solutions,
http://www.bitmicro.com/press_resources_flash_ssd_blade_servers.php

Here is a nice statement on the subject for the non-computer-literate.

"In some blade server designs, integrated systems management processors with built-in intelligence make it simple to monitor and manage the status of blades, the chassis and the integrated switches all at once."

from website:

Express Computer, "Blade servers cut a new trail," http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20031215/technology01.shtml

In addition, as the first WSJ article states, a blade server is vertically oriented inside its chassis, as opposed to the traditional horizontal orientation. Blade servers sit in the chassis like books in a bookcase.

My idea is this: Create an ability to shift the location of computing tasks in the data center room based on cooling efficiency. This is complex, maybe too complex to ever be practical, I don't know. It would include simply measuring heat buildup in the room and predicting of heat buildup based on the scheduling of computer tasks during the corporate day, week, month, year. As excessive heat was detected or predicted, computer tasks would be redistributed to reduce heat, either by a person relocating blade servers or by some automated shifting of computing tasks between blades. The second method would require a fairly fast data connection between the blades.

Why are blade servers vertical instead of horizontal, exactly? I don't know. In an attempt to find out, however, I came upon some interesting info, shared below.

Here is an article delving a little more deeply into the technical problem of cooling a room full of computers:

Reliable Resources

http://www.relres.com/news/105/high-density-design-approach

High Density Design Approach

· Feb 28, 09:32 PM · Filed under News :: Articles

"Is high density really here? What is high density? How much density can my data center handle? These questions have always been part of the IT/facilities dialogue. But now they resonate with more urgency due to several recent technical developments.

"Today’s leading edge IT developments are relying more and more on blade server technology. According to International Data Corporation, blade server technology will become the dominant technology trend in the next few years. By 2007, blade servers will make up one quarter of the total server market. The trend to blade servers will have a significant impact on IT infrastructure that is migrating from the larger form factor servers that have been the workhorses of the last five years.

"Blade servers, which consist of a series of vertically oriented circuit-cards, each of which contain multiple processors, memory, communications & networking chipsets, and spinning storage, are usually packaged in a single chassis that also includes redundant hot swappable power supplies, and a common communications backplane connected to a managed switch. The horsepower available in a single rack filled with blade servers used to require 168 sq. ft. of space on the raised floor of a data center vs. 24 sq. ft. for a single rack (including clearance and circulation). This seven-fold reduction in space however does not come with a corresponding reduction in power consumption or heat rejection. What you will find is that most organizations will experience significant reductions in populated area on the raised floor while pushing their UPS and critical power systems to the limit.

"Cooling is also problematic because even if you spread these racks out, the difficulty is in getting enough directed airflow through the densely packed racks, and returning the heated air back to the heat rejection device without overheating adjacent equipment. A typical data center will have a slow moving high volume of air flowing under the raised floor and wafting up through perforated floor tile in a cold aisle. Depending on how return air is controlled or directed back to the air conditioning unit, you may end up with very little of the cooled air actually doing its job cooling the blades, but instead bypassing or mixing with the cooled air as it flows back to the return opening. In this scenario, the heat from the rack will rise into the ceiling area, get cooled there and re-cycle through the raised floor. The blades, which are designed for 34 degree rise (from a nominal 70 deg. F to 104 deg. F), experience higher and higher temperatures down at the rack level with entering air sometimes at 75 or 80 and discharge air well over the equipment rating. Equipment failures due to high temperature increase exponentially as the temperature exceeds the equipment ratings.

"For large blade installations there is another problem. When critical power systems consume more than 3,320 kva, you will exceed the maximum 4000A UL rating classification for low voltage switchboard style buses and circuit breakers. This is important because high availability systems require dual redundant path architecture to allow for component failures even when primary systems are down for maintenance. The right approach will distribute the redundancy requirement across high availability clusters that “share” or “distribute” the redundancy so that any two out of three, three out of four, or four out of five clusters can support the entire enterprise – without exceeding the 4,000 amp limit – depending on the total load. This approach will also increase reliability by ensuring that each cluster is partially loaded to prevent failures due to thermal stress when a normally zero percent loaded cluster suddenly is required to support a significant critical load. The shared redundant concept provides similar reliability to the popular system + system approach advocated for Tier 4 data centers by the Uptime Institute. The system + system is more reliable than shared redundant below 3,320 kva, but less reliable for systems over that level.
History & Data

"The blade phenomena is only the latest in the short history of information technology. Earlier epochs were punctuated by such advances as transistors, integrated circuits, Moore’s law and the ever shrinking CPU chip, and the migration away from centralized industrial strength data processing machinery (otherwise known as the mainframe) and towards distributed computing platforms. Each era left its imprint on the raised floor, and the following table will help illustrate what was considered low, medium, high and
ultra-high density.
Year Low Medium High Ultra-High
1970 10-15 20-30 40-50 60-75
1980 20-30 40-60 75-100 100-120
1990 30-45 50-80 90-120 130-150
2000 45-60 75-100 120-175 200-300
2010 60-80 100-150 200-300 300-500
High Density Characteristics

Low: Comprised of mainframe and large scale unix (such as AS400) with a high proportion of space occupied by both active and backup storage.

Medium: A homogenous mix of mainframe and wintel servers with a high proportion of SAN cabinets. Tape is probably in another room or off-site. Most corporate enterprise data centers fall into this category.

High: A wintel server environment with about 20% blade deployment, and a high proportion of SAN cabinets. PDUs and cooling units are usually located outside the raised floor environment.

Ultra-high: A maximum blade deployment with little or no storage, principally utilized in research and supercomputing architectures for simulations.
Design Approach

"The right approach will address the cooling challenges, power challenges and the space planning challenges so that an integrated solution is developed that is in alignment with project objectives, timeline and preliminary budget assumptions. The cooling team should determine the best approach from three basic cooling models as follows:

1. Directed Air: This concept controls airflow through the installation of ductwork between the air handling unit supply outlet and the cold aisles, and between the air handling return inlet and the hot aisles. The benefit here is that you can provide sufficient control of the airflow by reducing recycling and bypass of cooled air into the return air stream. The performance capacity of this approach will be dictated by the degree of control over the air stream, the need for a permanent and less flexible rack layout, and the height of the ceiling needed for an extensive network of ducts.
2. Water-Cooled Cabinets: This concept utilizes cabinets similar to Sanimina’s Ecobay product to support up to 24kw per cabinet. The downside is that they are expensive and you need to provide chilled water to the cabinet.
3. Ceiling Mounted Refrigeration Coolers: These units utilize refrigerant rather than chilled water and can be installed to support up to 500 w/sf through the use of a remote refrigerant pumping station which interfaces with a building chilled water loop. The ceiling mounted units receive return air from the hot aisles and blows cold air down on the cold aisles. Since the cooled media is a refrigerant, any leaks will only result in the escape of gases rather than liquids.

"An additional problem with high density facilities is the very short duration which can be tolerated without adequate air flow or cooling media. There will be a need (depending on the outcome of the criticality analysis and reliability modeling described below) to deal with fans and pumps on UPS power as well a thermal storage system in the form of a chilled water tank or ice storage system to allow the UPS to continue to support critical loads to the battery end-of-life. The goal is to prevent the IT equipment from failing on overtemp conditions prior to a UPS shutdown. In some cases the piping can be sized to provide adequate ride through of the cooling media.

"How Much Density Can I Handle?

"Simply calculating the average power density from your existing power and cooling systems will not tell you what your tolerance for high-density platforms will be. Most medium density data centers can tolerate up to 250 watts per sq. ft. in some limited deployment. The degree of the deployment capability and the extent of the limitations depends on a number of factors including ceiling height, average power density, available airflow (in CFM per sq. ft.), and spare UPS/PDU capacities. One example illustrates this concept.

"One recently completed data center of 40,000 sq. ft. of raised floor required that 20% of the area support 150 w/sf while the overall average was to support 60 w/sf. The average dictated that the overall UPS capacity support 2,400kw, while the 150 w/sf requirement meant that half the capacity (8,000 sf x 150 w/sf), or 1,200kw be utilized for high density. The remaining 32,000 sf is left with approximately 40 w/sf. For every 10 w/sf that the high density application doesn’t use, 2.5 w/sf is made available to the remaining area.

"To find out more about high density applications, or to determine how much capacity your data center can handle, contact Reliable Resources."

Here's part of an article describing a solution to the problem:

"Processor, Products, News & Information Data Centers Can Trust"

http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/P2847/24p47/24p47.asp

"Verari Systems [San Diego, seems like a VAR]
Staying Close To The Cutting Edge To Gain A Competitive Advantage"

"Verari’s competitive edge in HPC systems stems from providing a complete solution to customers who require high-performance computing environments. Not content to sell disparate components, Verari has built cluster management software that provides flexibility, scalability, and configurability, helping to reduce TCO for the SME. The VCC (Verari Command Center) suite ships with the Blade-Rack 2 systems, and in addition to its GUI interface, many of its functions are available through the command line.

"One key to providing high-density blade systems is coping with the thermal output created by the blades and storage systems. Traditional systems rely upon convection cooling to circulate air throughout the rack. Although this worked when utilized for traditional rackmount servers, blade servers simply generate too much heat to be effectively cooled in this manner.

"Verari’s solution is to utilize vertical cooling. Instead of using convection to move air from the front of the rack to exhausts in the rear, the BladeRack system uses high velocity vertical cooling to move cool air through the rack from top to bottom. This helps dissipate the high levels of heat generated by today’s processors.

"An additional strategy that Verari pursues is offering DC-powered systems as a complement to its AC systems. DC systems eliminate the need for inefficient AC power supplies in the blade servers, and Verari claims a 90% efficiency rate for its DC cabinets. In addition to reducing energy consumption, this also helps to minimize the amount of waste heat that needs to be dissipated."

Star Forming Region

2006-12-24T13:47:00.000-08:00

Here's a great astronomy picture of stars being formed:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061220.html

Pentagon commissioning brainwave studies

2006-12-17T09:27:00.000-08:00

The information in this entry was obtained from the article "A Pentagon Agency Is Looking at Brains---And Raising Eyebrows," by Sharon Begley (Science Journal), Wall Street Journal, 12/15/06, p. B1

In October 2006, the Pentagon's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) asked researchers to develop "innovative" techniques to understand and track what is going on inside the brain when a person learns new things and develops new skills. An example of the type of technique desired is to determine when brain waves transition from exhibiting patterns characteristic of novices to those characteristic of experts.

Strangely (in the view of this blogger), the Pentagon is also looking for "noninvasive ways to speed up the [above] process."

Lets think about this for a moment. Can we really create experts more rapidly by looking at the brain waves of experts, comparing them to the brain waves of novices (performing the same task) and then applying some "technique" (presumably based on insight that comes from brain waves) to make this transition faster?

Being an expert means understanding a particular area of knowledge. How could one "induce" such a state to develop more rapidly? By feeding the person sugar (or some other substance, maybe amphetamines) while they learn? Utilizing the same type of approach, could one analyze the electrical activity of a relatively low power PC, analyze the electrical activity of a higher power PC, and then find some general way to increase the power of a PC---perhaps by increasing the voltage?

I apologize for the analogy, which is indeed a bit messy.