Nova Spivack – Minding the Planet

Recent research has found a way to reverse the Casimir force, which causes objects to stick together at nanoscales. This enables nanoscale levitation — among other things it could dramatically reduce friction in nanodevices. It could also enable new kinds of nanodevices in which for example rotating parts are levitated and held in place using [...]

Steorn, the Irish company that claims to have invented a mechanical device that generates unlimited free energy with no fuel, is scheduled to demonstrate their device publicly for the first time in London tomorrow. A panel of 22 independent world experts has been recruited to study the device. It should be an interesting demo! Related [...]

Just in time for the 4th of July, here is a comprehensive report on sunscreens which may be potentially unsafe to use. Yes, it turns out there are several new ingredients now being used in sunscreens which are not FDA approved and may cause unknown effects on humans. Other sunscreen ingredients paradoxically break down in [...]

Suspicions of a link between Aspartame (the commonly used artificial sweetener) and various forms of cancer have received another boost from a new Italian study. The study found that even at relatively low levels of consumption, rats exposed to Aspartame had a significantly increased risk of several types of cancer. The implications of this are [...]

The Business 2.0 Article on Radar Networks and the Semantic Web just came online. It’s a huge article. In many ways it’s one of the best popular articles written about the Semantic Web in the mainstream press. It also goes into a lot of detail about what Radar Networks is working on. One point of [...]

This just in. Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the Roswell Air Force base in 1947 when aliens or a weather balloon allegedly crash landed on a nearby ranch. Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the base in 1947, and was the man who issued the original and subsequent [...]

Another interesting article on the move towards wireless power, or what some are calling "WiTricity." I’ve written about this previously. The team at MIT is making some good headway. Check out the article for a diagram of how their wireless power beaming system works. It can power any device within about 9 feet. Nikola Tesla [...]

There are thousands of promising drugs for treating diseases that are simply not getting studied or brought to market because they are derived from natural or common substances that can’t be patented. The dirty little secret of the pharma business is that even a miracle cure for cancer won’t be invested in if it can’t [...]

New cancer treatment hailed as a breakthrough, but since it’s based on a common, non-patented drug, it may be hard to find money for clinical trails: A simple molecule, used for decades to treat children with rare metabolic diseases, commits "immortal" cancer cells to a natural death and could soon be used to treat many [...]

I’ve been thinking since 1994 about how to get past a fundamental barrier to human social progress, which I call “The Collective IQ Barrier.” Most recently I have been approaching this challenge in the products we are developing at my stealth venture, Radar Networks. In a nutshell, here is how I define this barrier: The [...]

Japanese scientists have developed a technique that can encode 100-bit messages into the DNA of common bacteria. The bacteria replicate and pass the message down from generation to generation for at least thousands of years. Because there are millions or more copies of the message it can survive gradual degradation or mutuations (so they claim). [...]

Thanks to Bram for pointing me to this article about how new research indicates that communication in the brain is quite different than we thought. Essentially neurons may release neurotransmitters all along axons, not just within synapses. This may enable new forms of global communication or state changes within the brain, beyond the "circuit model" [...]

Nice article in Scientific American about Gordon Bell’s work at Microsoft Research on the MyLifeBits project. MyLifeBits provides one perspective on the not-too-far-off future in which all our information, and even some of our memories and experiences, are recorded and made available to us (and possibly to others) for posterity. This is a good application [...]

Josh sent me this link. It’s a video of a new technology for doing laser graffitti on the sides of buildings at night. Josh and I have been discussing how to do this for years. You could also project onto clouds. And of course with a computer to control the image you could make some [...]

Google’s Larry Page recently gave a talk to the AAAS about how Google is looking towards a future in which they hope to implement AI on a massive scale. Larry’s idea is that intelligence is a function of massive computation, not of “fancy whiteboard algorithms.” In other words, in his conception the brain doesn’t do [...]

D-Wave, a company making quantum computers, claims the first quantum computer will be unveiled next week. If this really happens it could be big. Quantum computing can theoretically enable a massive increase in computing power. The question is what will it cost? If this technology is viable it also ups the ante in the encryption [...]

Check out this very impressive user-interface prototype for a desktop that works more like a real desk — a messy desk in fact. Very delightful design work that makes want to use it now! Related Posts:Fast Company Interview — "Connective Intelligence"Radar Networks Announces Twine.comListen to this Discussion on the Future of the WebMy "A Physics [...]

Some very interesting research out of University of Rochester. Researchers there have found a way to record and later retrieve an image using only a single photon. This is cool enough — but wait, there’s more — they did this by leveraging the famous "double slit" experiment of quantum mechanics in a really smart way. [...]

Interesting new study… It ranks among the most enduring mysteries of the cosmos. Physicists call it the Fermi paradox after the Italian Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi, who, in 1950, pointed out the glaring conflict between predictions that life was elsewhere in the universe – and the conspicuous lack of aliens who have come to visit. [...]

Umm…… take a look at this formula’s output….. OK. That must be some kind of a cosmic joke. Related Posts:Virtual Out of Body ExperiencesThe State of our Country: Newscaster Refuses to Read Paris Hilton Story; Burns Script on CameraVery Cool Laser Graffitti TechnologyVery Funny Instructional Video — How To Poke Pole the Monkeyfaced EelThis Guy [...]

A new "miracle drug" appears to cure many types of cancers in a novel way. But the catch is no pharmaceutical company will fund research in it because it can’t be patented! Maybe it’s time to start a government agency or a non-profit that funds research and development, and distribution of, wonder drugs that are [...]

Read this fun article that lists and defines some of the key concepts that every post-singularity transhumanist meta-intellectual should know! (via Kurzweil) Related Posts:Big Thinkers' Most Dangerous IdeasCollective Intelligence 2.0Simulated Universes and the Nature of ConsciousnessScientists Discuss their Beliefs in the UnknownHuman-Brained Monkeys Pose Ethical Challenge

Scientists have discovered a dramatic variation in the genetic make-up of humans that could lead to a fundamental reappraisal of what causes incurable diseases and could provide a greater understanding of mankind.                                          The discovery has astonished scientists studying the [...]

A group of physicists at MIT have come up with a new model for beaming wireless power to mobile devices, such as computers or cell phones. It promises to do for power, what wireless ethernet hubs do for network connectivity. I’ve been interested in wireless power ever since I first read the biography of Nikola [...]

I’ve been reading some of the further posts on various blogs in reaction to the Markoff article in the New York Times last Sunday. There is a tremendous amount of misconception about the Semantic Web– as evidenced for example by Ross Mayfield’s post recently. Ross implied that the Semantic Web is about automating the Web, [...]

I’ve read several blog posts reacting to John Markoff’s article today. There seem to be some misconceptions in those posts about what the Semantic Web is and is not. Here I will try to  succinctly correct a few of the larger misconceptions I’ve run into: The Semantic Web is not just a single Web. There [...]

Ok, here’s a very unusual news item: During his time as head of the Ministry of Defence UFO project, Nick Pope was persuaded into believing that other lifeforms may visit Earth and, more specifically, Britain. His concern is that "highly credible" sightings are simply dismissed. And he complains that the project he once ran is [...]

NOTES Master Copy can be found at this URL or http://tinyurl.com/yynb93 Last Update: Tuesday, November 7, 2006, 10:17AM PST License — This article is distributed under the Creative Commons Deed. If you would like to distribute a version of thisarticle, please link back to http://www.mindingtheplanet.net from yourversion, thanks. Printable version — Click here to download [...]

New research suggests that all the world’s ocean seafood stocks will be gone by 2050… WASHINGTON (AP) – Clambakes, crabcakes, swordfish steaks and even humble fish sticks could be little more than a fond memory in a few decades. If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face [...]

A Harvard University researcher believes that moral judgement is hard-wired into the brain: The moral grammar now universal among people presumably evolved to its final shape during the hunter-gatherer phase of the human past, before the dispersal from the ancestral homeland in northeast Africa some 50,000 years ago. This may be why events before our [...]