Sensors

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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."