Lifeboat Foundation

A Sandia National Laboratories-led team has for the first time used optics rather than electronics to switch a nanometer-thick thin film device from completely dark to completely transparent, or light, at a speed of trillionths of a second.

The team led by principal investigator Igal Brener published a Nature Photonics paper this spring with collaborators at North Carolina State University. The paper describes work on optical information processing, such as switching or light polarization control using light as the control beam, at terahertz speeds, a rate much faster than what is achievable today by electronic means, and a smaller overall device size than other all-optical switching technologies.

Electrons spinning around inside devices like those used in telecommunications equipment have a speed limit due to a slow charging rate and poor heat dissipation, so if significantly faster operation is the goal, electrons might have to give way to photons.

Continue reading “Nanotechnology experts create first terahertz-speed polarization optical switch” »

Bitcoin was hit by a double whammy this week. On Tuesday, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan declared that Bitcoin is a fraud that will “blow up”. Then, just this morning, a Bitcoin exchange in China announced that it would shut its doors in response to verbal pressure from regulators and an uncertain regulatory environment.

Don’t ya just love it when bad news breaks on Bitcoin? I sure do! It creates a buying opportunity. After all, just look at what happened after the last five bouts of bad news: _{[updated Oct 2017—Click to reverse colors & enlarge]}

Continue reading “Bad News is Good News for Bitcoin Investors” »

Research paves way for possible advances in chemistry, material science.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=RxwZClHWekQ

Researchers from Wits University have linked a brain directly to the internet. Data gathered from this project could help fuel the next steps in machine learning and brain-computer interfaces.

A team of researchers at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa have made a major breakthrough in the field of biomedical engineering. According to a release published on Medical Express, for the first time ever, researchers have devised a way of connecting the human brain to the internet in real time. It’s been dubbed the “Brainternet” project, and it essentially turns the brain “…into an Internet of Things (IoT) node on the World Wide Web.”

Continue reading “Researchers Have Linked a Human Brain to the Internet for the First Time Ever” »

Tokyo condemns ‘absolutely unacceptable’ provocation, as Pyongyang reacts to imposition of new UN sanctions following missile tests.

For it to work it actually has to break the laws of physics.

Imagine a robot that could help you tidy your home: roving about, sorting stray socks into the laundry and dirty dishes into the dishwasher. While such a practical helper may still be the stuff of science fiction, Caltech scientists have developed an autonomous molecular machine that can perform similar tasks—at the nanoscale. This “robot,” made of a single strand of DNA, can autonomously “walk” around a surface, pick up certain molecules and drop them off in designated locations.

The work was done in the laboratory of Lulu Qian, assistant professor of bioengineering. It appears in a paper in the September 15 issue of Science.

Why Nanobots?

Continue reading “A DNA nanorobot is programmed to pick up and sort molecules into predefined regions” »

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As edible, affordable lab-grown meat remains out of reach, a tiny start-up might have found a faster route to dinner tables.