PhoneSecure
On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk
I'm not generally an insecure person. I'm perfectly happy with carrying in excess of ?1000 in electronics on my person... well, maybe I should get some protection after all, and I've found it, in the form of PhoneSecure.
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Phraselator
On 12 January, 2005, by se99jmk
One step closer to the babelfish from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
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Epson fabricates 20-layer PCB using InkJet tec
On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought
Epson has fabricated a 200micron thick 20 layer using their own InkJet technology with a conductive ink containing silver micro-particles measuring from several nanometers to several tens of nanometers in diameter, and a newly developed insulator ink.
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PetaPixel displays, 100TB storage and more...
On 05 November, 2004, by Dreadnought
Colossal Storage is developing 14M dpi or 200Tpixels per square inch of near-non-volatile display. It is based on a ferroelectric material which gives each pixel a state retension of up to 12 hours. Display resolutions of up to 4Petapixel will be possible with this technology.
Colossal Storage is also developing a holographic media which can store 10TB on a single 3?" disc. The theory behind it can go up to 1.5Exabytes (1.5x10^1
.
They are currently looking for companies who are interresting in licensing the products.
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Fast Interfaces and Cognitive Integration
article written by : karenfuxia released on : 24 April, 2005 | send karenfuxia a private message! karenfuxia's rating : ***** |
On the following just try to free your mind as much as possible.
Acting in the world, feeling the world, has always been an explicit ?information transfer? business. You?re sort of surrounded by a permeating shell, an action and a sensation shell? let?s think that sensations are the way the world transfers information to you, and actions the way you transfer information to the world.
While sensations can be easily seen as information, actions maybe a bit less. Just think an action as the ?ultimate collapse? of an information?. a sort of ?the information of an action?. You might well turn the other way round and say ?information is the ultimate collapse of an action?? you?re perfectly right. Everything fits. Maybe one is the dual representation of the other. I?ll think this over :-)
Anyhow, just look at how things happen by themselves out there, I mean, in Physics: actions, forces, is the way Reality communicates among things, how Reality itself is made and held together. In quantum mechanics, by the way, everything and everyhow can be seen directly as information. Which means that processes and objects are different way of calling the same thing. A pen is a stable algorhythm of shape and function ultimately written in Quantum OS. The other way round: a process is an object if seen from the ?energy? side of things instead than from the ?matter? side of things. There is a physicist, Seth Lloyd, who calculated the biggest information processing shot ever, all in a row.. the computational capacity of the Universe since the Big Bang, thinking the Universe as a giant Quantum computer: his article is dated back to 2001 http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0110141
You yourself, inside, you are made and you function either by actions or information of actions -whichever representation fits better for you :-) - so you begin to feel where I?m heading to: I?m trying to put everything on the same homogeneous field of interaction ?let me call it ?Action space? or ?Systems space?- and begin to shape alive, cognitive beings right into The Whole Big There. Last move: as a matter of fact, a being has a boundary, the ?permeating action and sensation shell? I was talking about before, and this boundary ?at a first glance- seems to correspond more or less to the physical body of the being? I?m moving all this too on the action space.
Figure 1: Action Space + Temporal Threshold Criteria upon Typical Information Processing Time = Partition of Cognitive Beings. Action Space + Temporal Threshold Criteria upon Typical Information Processing Time = Partition of Cognitive Beings
Starting from Cybernetics, William Gibson , flying through chapters of Science Fiction and ending to the whole Matrix stuff, you can get a practical literature out of all this. In academical Cognitive Science, issues are more pesky and debates running on are quite sophisticated.
So I?ve brought you to the core point of this article, I will make an attempt at giving a partition criterion, a functional criterion to decide up to where a being can be considered to be extending: A being extends up to where it can act and sense the outside at a speed comparable to its inner information processes, which is to say, to the speed of its cognitive processes
So, voil?, you have a subjective criterion: it depends on the very nature of the being itself and on the very nature of contextual world, which is quite an abstract but at the same time quite a local criterion. You can go everywhere with this, find beings all the way through the Universe, all the way through Time, all the way through whatever spectral range of concepts or Physical evidences you may locate. They (the beings) exist even if you, human being, you cannot see them. They could be across you too.
I will call a fast interface anything is built or expressively designed on the boundary of a being, which meets the temporal threshold criteria or takes care of expanding real time connections between its inner and outside information
Figure 2: How to extend a Cognitive Being into the Action Space through an artificial Fast Interface
If you follow me correctly, you should realize that this boundary has no reason to be specifically a ?high contrast? boundary, a net, sharp boundary?.because information just keeps flowing, doesn?t care? there?s no ?information embargo? whatsoever? as far as information flow is concerned, it?s going through The Whole Big There? there?s nothing preventing it to actuate its ?free? Information Economy? This fits immediately into the ?still less- Science Fiction Gaia organism picture.
Nonetheless, individual beings exists, so the boundary somehow exists, even if it?s more blurry than expected. Can you tell where the blurriness is? It?s both ways, either inside and outside the nominal boundary.
Figure 3: Actual being and nominal boundary in action space (yeah that?s Calvin & Hobbes into there :-)
Blurriness is inside, because information from the outside world can get up to the very ?kernel? of the being, flowing through either the being?s senses and plain body. The more this ?kernel? is stable with respect to the outside information throughput ?which is: kernel shape is given mainly by resident information process (that?s why I call this ?the kernel?)- the more the blurriness is concentrated on the boundary only.
I give the limit cases: should inner blurriness be all the way through, this means the being is no more a being, it is just a substrate, a cloud of information with no shape, basically a multidimensional wire all the way through, it is what one may usually say it is not a being. Instead, should there be no inner blurriness at all, the being has therefore no communication with the outside and, as far as this theoretical framing is concerned, that ?being? is not even into that Universe, because it is not interacting at all. There?s a hole right there but nobody knows.
Blurriness is outside, because just look at things the other way round: through its actions, the being is doing to the world the same things the world was doing to the being before.
Limit cases: Outer blurriness all the way through: the being has expanded itself all the way through the Universe, it is Gaia. No outer blurriness at all: again, there?s no interaction at all, theoretically speaking, the outside Universe is actually not there.
So let?s keep this trip alive and let?s tackle the practical problem of locating/defining a being in two ways: First approach, you need a core grain, a kernel, you already believe to be a being. Then you look at its boundaries, and everything is sufficiently fast (or can be wired sufficiently fast) to allow an information throughput at a speed comparable to the being?s cognitive processes -which is: a fast interface- is a part of that being.
Second approach, you happen to find some ?membrane? that looks to have a specific information transfer purpose? no matter what kind of information, but it?s definitively a membrane with a purpose?. Welllll, look either side of that boundary?.. there might be a being right there.
In everydays life, you can think as a fast interface everything is usually called a plain ?tool?, a musical instrument, a whatever fits in your hands or ears or eyes?, ?technological prothesis? or whatever else. But also learning to make calculations by heart, learning a new language, can be considered building fast interfaces, fast interfaces between your neurons. Etc. And this, as far as human beings are concerned. Now, if you stop looking at mere mortals, mere everyday life, mere technological gadgets of this XXI century, mere planet surface existence? and you begin to concentrate on serious issues?.stepping back from this usual picture and looking at the more or less blur kernels you are beginning to see around, you can see in code, and you?re beginning to frame the big picture
Happy trip outside the Matrix, guys! I hope this will stimulate a propositive debate
Breatheable Water
article written by : Shadroth released on : 15 June, 2005 | send Shadroth a private message! Shadroth's rating : ***** |
Hiding a submarine is a lot like hiding from foot soldiers. Most of the time the best thing to do is "Keep your head down and shutup!", or "Run Silent, Run Deep".
C'mon lads. It's just like in the movies
The problem with running deep is that you will eventually run out of oxygen. You can produce oxygen from water using electrolysis, but that needs a lot of power so it's only viable on nuclear powered submarines. Unfortunately nuclear reactors are pretty hot at the best of times and this heat makes the sub easier to find.
Running silent is a little easier to do, as this mainly involves slowing down enough to stop the propeller cavitating. When a propeller blade pushes through water the pressure on the back-facing side of the blade increases and the pressure on the front-facing side of the blade decreases. If the pressure drops low enough some water will change from liquid to a water-vapour bubble that soon "pops" back to liquid making lots of noise and slowly damaging the propeller. This process is cavitation. ( - Next issue I'll write about high speed silent transportation through water)
ARRGHHH... those bubbles are deafening
The bubbles formed by cavitation are not wholly water vapour; they also contain some (previously dissolved) oxygen. How happy will submariners be to find out that the same gas laws that participate in their detection will also let them extract dissolved oxygen from water with minimal power.
Oxy-Cola
N.B. Henry's Law applies to the oxygen, not water component of the cavitation bubble.
It seems all you need to get dissolved oxygen from water is a cleverly designed centrifuge. Of course this technology was not designed by a military scientist, but by an Israeli inventor trying to make SCUBA diving easier. Alon Bodner has developed an Open-Circuit SCUBA that uses a centrifuge to lower the pressure in an amount of water, thereby releasing some dissolved oxygen that is then diverted to the diver.
from http://www.isracast.com/Transcripts/100605a_trans.htm
The system will provide an hour of dive time per kilo of Lithium batteries you take with you. Diving with a conventional SCUBA tank will give you about an hour of dive time per 80lbs of air (tank weighs 10-15Kg when empty!).
The current system is pre prototype, but interest from major diving equipment manufacturers and the Israeli navy will no doubt accelerate the project.
No larger than water cooling for an O/C Pentium 840EE. -Click for larger, clearer image.
Consumer models are expected in a few years time.
-Shadroth
email ^@^.com
See Isracast: Like A Fish for more info
Read my next article (below) to find out more about the wonders of dissolved oxygen and cavitation
Oily Water
article written by : Shadroth released on : 14 June, 2005 | send Shadroth a private message! Shadroth's rating : ***** |
Cavitation is not just an enemy of submariners. It damages any propeller, or impeller travelling fast enough. (Impellers are used in jet-skis, high-speed boats and most pumps). Its effect on pumping systems for domestic and commercial heating boilers is given great attention, as bubbles in the water will decrease efficiency and increase noise and damage.
Cavitation is nucleated (seeded) by dissolved gas. Cavitation may still be able to occur in gas-free water, but the pressure required would be far lower than present in most systems. This is great news for those with pumps on closed systems, but not much good for the jet-skier who would need to rapidly de-gas the water entering the jet.
So what happens when you apply this on a molecular scale to oil and water mixing?
"There's around 20 mL of atmospheric gas dissolved in every litre of water at room temperature. That's not much though it's enough to keep a goldfish alive in an aquarium."
"These gas molecules don't really fit in with the water molecules so they tend to accumulate on hydrophobic surfaces such as the oil water interface. When the mix is agitated, droplets of oil begin to break away from the main oil body. A negative (suction) pressure forms between the droplet and the main oil body, and gas cavities form between them in a process called cavitation. These gas cavities act like a glue that prevents the oil droplet from leaving the oil surface, it draws them back to rejoin the oil surface."
- Future Materials
Professor Ric Pashley from the ANU has been testing this theory and has found to everyone's amazement that (degassed) water and oil will readily mix. If the oil is degassed as well and the mixture is sealed in an air-tight container then it will be easily mixable for months. The mixture will eventualy separate, as oil is less dense, but a quick shake will thoroughly mix the two again. Pashley degasses water using liquid nitrogen and a vacuum pump.
Easy as A, B, C
Gas is extracted by freezing the water and then suctioning off the gas. Repeating 4-5 times will result in sufficiently degassed water.
voil?!
So what can you do with degassed water or degassed oil/water mixes?
Cleaning applications have the mass-media excited: No more detergents for greasy clothes, dishes etc. Pashley says the technology will work in this area, but cautions that it will be some time before it is economically viable, most likely through the use of an alternative degassing technique.
Safer surgical implements will be the first likely implementation of degassed water as a cleaning agent. Currently the detergent residue on implements can react with some patients who are allergic or sensitive.
Drug Delivery will benefit enormously from this breakthrough. Around 40% of new drugs are shelved or used in a limited non-intravenous manner due to being hydrophobic. Hydrophobic drugs must be dissolved in oil (usually soy bean) and then combined with water using surfacants before injection (A straight drug-oil mix can't be used as this would raise blood fat to dangerous levels). Some patients can't receive sufficient quantities of drugs in this manner due to elevated blood fat, and others are allergic to the carrier oil and/or surfacants.
A few traditionally hydrophobic drugs (including Griseofulvin and Propofol) have been tested and all readily mix with degassed water, with particles small enough to make the mix suitable for injection.
Griseofulvin mixed with - Left: Regular water, Right: Degassed water. (Click for larger, clearer image)
Note the chunky bits in the regular water, and the even distribution in the degassed water resulting in an opaque appearance. This photo was taken ~2mins after the mixture was shaken.
Water-Cooling your overclocked beast will be easier with degassed water, due to its increased thermal transfer efficiency; and it'll be quieter due to a cavitation free pump.
I may be a cynic but this discovery sheds a new light on Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's quote:
"Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water."
Very slowly at best 
-Shadroth
email ^@^.com
Images from:
Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects
Future Materials
For more info see image sources or:
J. Phys. Chem. B. ; (Article); 2003; 107(7); 1714-1720.
J. Phys. Chem. B. ; (Article); 2005; 109(3); 1231-1238.
Langmuir; (Article); 2004; 20( ; 3129-3137.
'Degassed' water does away with detergent'
Issue Image!
Interesting feline innovations towards SCUBA?