Fwd: SKA

'IBM has revealed more about a PowerPC microserver it says will help to crunch data gathered by the square kilometre array (SKA), the colossal radio telescope to be built across South Africa and Australia.

Once operational, the SKA is expected to generate around an exabyte – a million terabytes - of data each day. Even sorting the junk is going to need plenty of computing power, but operations at that scale need to be frugal lest electricity costs alone make the SKA horribly expensive to operate.'

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/01/27/ibm_details_powerpc_microserver_aimed_at_square_kilometre_array/

Fwd: Microsoft VR

'Unlike other head-mounted computing systems in the works, Microsoft's new glasses-based virtual reality device, HoloLens, doesn't need to be connected to a phone or computer. "We've unlocked the screen," one developer said during the presentation at its Windows 10 event this afternoon.

Similar to existing Kinect technology on the Xbox, HoloLens allows wearers to interact with computer programs and games in three dimensions, using their hands and speaking commands.

During the presentation, a developer walked onstage wearing HoloLens, and used her finger and a 3D-modeling program called Holo Studio to build a quadcopter drone before the audience, which could then be sent to a 3D printer.

Microsoft also showed a video of a NASA scientist sitting at a computer wearing HoloLens glasses, then stepping away from the desk into an immersive hologram of the surface of Mars. It's not yet Star Trek's Holodeck (video), but it's not so far off.'

 

http://qz.com/330837/microsoft-wants-us-all-to-play-with-holograms/

 

Fwd: Autism

'Among the problems people with Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) struggle with are difficulties with social behavior and communication. That can translate to an inability to make friends, engage in routine conversations, or pick up on the social cues that are second nature to most people. Similarly, in a mouse model of ASD, the animals, like humans, show little interest in interacting or socializing with other mice.

Now researchers at UCLA have treated ASD mice with a neuropeptide--molecules used by neurons to communicate with each other--called oxytocin, and have found that it restores normal social behavior. In addition, the findings suggest that giving oxytocin as early as possible in the animal's life leads to more lasting effects in adults and adolescents. This suggests there may be critical times for treatment that are better than others.

The study appears in the January 21 online edition of the journal Science Translational Medicine.'

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150122154818.htm

Fwd: Warm

---------- Forwarded message ----------

From: John Coffey

Bob,

Been following this issue closely since the late 1980's.  

When people say that 97% of all scientists claim that global warming is happening and it is our fault, they are referring one specific survey where the vast majority of people surveyed were not atmospheric scientists.  A few people surveyed were theologians.  Furthermore, it frames the question in the wrong way.  Almost nobody is denying that global warming is happening.

By calling people global warming deniers, people have misrepresented the position of the skeptics and really unfairly maligned them.  The is a straw man attack.   In reality, almost nobody is denying that global warming is happening, except maybe for a few crackpots.  The issues have always been how much is happening, how much of that is our fault, and most importantly whether there is negative or positive feedback.  This video outlines the position better than anything ...

Climate Change in 12 Minutes - The Skeptic's Case

​About ​

25 years ago I was reading articles by skeptics.   At that time I was concerned about the issue and wanted to find out all I could about it.  The reason there were skeptics is that meteorologists were raising objections that we were moving too fast over an unproven theory.  There were others claiming that natural feedbacks would moderate global warming.

We have what is called the carbon dioxide cycle, where carbon is sequestered in rock underground and released by natural forces such as volcanoes.  So much carbon dioxide has been removed from the atmosphere that we have gone from an atmosphere of 43% carbon dioxide to 200 hundred parts per million before it went up to 300 parts per million.  Some people speculated that it would get so low that plants would have trouble growing.  The point is that CO2 levels have been much higher in past and been on a steady decline ever since.  70 million years ago, Utah was a tropical forest roamed by dinosaurs.  The CO2 level then was 5% and we are absolutely no danger of coming close to that level now.    

All of human civilization has arisen in a brief period between two ice ages.  In the 1970's NASA claimed we were about to enter another ice age.  Now geologists say no matter what we do, we will get another ice age in about 10,00 years.  In other words, there are natural forces beyond our control.

CO2 by itself is not enough to cause significant warming.  All assumptions of disaster are based upon water vapor adding to the warming.  

Dr Don Easterbrook Exposes Climate Change Hoax

The issue of water vapor gets into the whole feedback issue as to whether it is positive or negative.  In this regard to this, see the first video and this one ... Lord Christopher Monckton ends the Global Warming Debate.  I have believed for over 20 years that the feedback was negative because I read articles to that effect, but also because when the temperatures spiked around 1999-2000 (during the peak of the sunspot cycle), it should had produced runaway greenhouse because of the positive feedback.  It didn't.  In 2007, during the low point of the sunspot cycle, over a hundred years of global warming seemed to disappear.  At this point I saw atmospheric scientists asking us to believe that we had entered a period of global cooling, which was also predicted in the mid 90's. 

Part of my concern is that I see what is politically motivated science.  I don't trust the government because this is an excuse to tax and control us, but the government is doing all the funding.  The cures for global warming aren't economically feasible.   The last U.N. report concluded that the global warming wasn't as much as we thought and it would cost too much to fix it.

How the Global Warming Scare Began

​

-- 

Best wishes,

John Coffey

Re: FBR and Starships

'A strange phenomenon has been observed by astronomers right as it was happening -- a 'fast radio burst'. The eruption is described as an extremely short, sharp flash of radio waves from an unknown source in the universe. The results have been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Over the past few years, astronomers have observed a new phenomenon, a brief burst of radio waves, lasting only a few milliseconds. It was first seen by chance in 2007, when astronomers went through archival data from the Parkes Radio Telescope in Eastern Australia. Since then we have seen six more such bursts in the Parkes telescope's data and a seventh burst was found in the data from the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. They were almost all discovered long after they had occurred, but then astronomers began to look specifically for them right as they happen.

Radio-, X-ray- and visible light

A team of astronomers in Australia developed a technique to search for these 'Fast Radio Bursts', so they could look for the bursts in real time. The technique worked and now a group of astronomers, led by Emily Petroff (Swinburne University of Technology), have succeeded in observing the first 'live' burst with the Parkes telescope. The characteristics of the event indicated that the source of the burst was up to 5.5 billion light years from Earth.'

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2015/01/19/snapshot.cosmic.burst.radio.waves

'Sid Meier Brings Us Farther into Space in Strategy Game Starships'

http://news.google.com/news/url?sr=1&ct2=us%2F4_0_s_2_12_a&sa=t&usg=AFQjCNFdQ74IzrINdJ-fVBkyp3-ci5rjsQ&cid=52778716320308&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.escapistmagazine.com%2Fnews%2Fview%2F139522-2K-Games-and-Firaxis-Announce-Starships-from-Sid-Meier&ei=KC69VPD4EeKnmAKFxIDYDg&rt=HOMEPAGE&vm=STANDARD&bvm=section&did=6038871433333866008&sid=en_us-tc&ssid=tc

 

 

Fwd: Quantum optical hard drive

'scientists developing a prototype quantum hard drive have improved storage time by a factor of more than 100.

The team's record storage time of six hours is a major step towards a secure worldwide data encryption network based on quantum information, which could be used for banking transactions and personal emails.

"We believe it will soon be possible to distribute quantum information between any two points on the globe," said lead author Manjin Zhong, from the Research School of Physics and Engineering (RSPE) at The Australian National University (ANU).

"Quantum states are very fragile and normally collapse in milliseconds. Our long storage times have the potential to revolutionise the transmission of quantum information."

Quantum information promises unbreakable encryption because quantum particles such as photons of light can be created in a way that intrinsically links them. Interactions with either of these entangled particles affect the other, no matter how far they are separated.

The team of physicists at ANU and the University of Otago stored quantum information in atoms of the rare earth element europium embedded in a crystal.

Their solid-state technique is a promising alternative to using laser beams in optical fibres, an approach which is currently used to create quantum networks around 100 kilometres long.

"Our storage times are now so long that it means people need to rethink what is the best way to distribute quantum data," Ms Zhong said.

"Even transporting our crystals at pedestrian speeds we have less loss than laser systems for a given distance."

"We can now imagine storing entangled light in separate crystals and then transporting them to different parts of the network thousands of kilometres apart. So, we are thinking of our crystals as portable optical hard drives for quantum entanglement."

After writing a quantum state onto the nuclear spin of the europium using laser light, the team subjected the crystal to a combination of a fixed and oscillating magnetic fields to preserve the fragile quantum information.

"The two fields isolate the europium spins and prevent the quantum information leaking away," said Dr Jevon Longdell of the University of Otago.'

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150108100658.htm