Tuesday, April 24, 2012

New material shares many of graphene’s unusual properties

Graphene, a single-atom-thick layer of carbon, has spawned much research into its unique electronic, optical and mechanical properties. Now, researchers at MIT have found another compound that shares many of graphene’s unusual characteristics — and in some cases has interesting complementary properties to this much-heralded material.
Continue Reading on web.mit.edu

Mildred Dresselhaus
http://web.mit.edu/physics/people/faculty/dresselhaus_mildred.html

Shuang Tang
http://web.mit.edu/nanoengineering/people/students.shtml

Graphene
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

Bismuth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth

Antimony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimony

Hinode and SOHO Paint an Asymmetrical Picture of the Sun

Approximately every 11 years the magnetic field on the sun reverses completely -- the north magnetic pole switches to south, and vice versa. It's as if a bar magnet slowly lost its magnetic field and regained it in the opposite direction, so the positive side becomes the negative side. But, of course, the sun is not a simple bar magnet and the causes of the switch, not to mention the complex tracery of moving magnetic fields throughout the eleven-year cycle, are not easy to map out.
Continue Reading on ScienceDaily.com

Hinode: Mission to the Sun
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hinode/index.html

Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
http://soho.esac.esa.int/home.html

James Cameron on Earth's Deepest Spot: Desolate, Lunar-Like

The Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep—the deepest point on Earth—looks as bleak and barren as the moon, according to James Cameron, who successfully returned just hours ago from the first solo dive to the ocean abyss. 
At noon, local time Monday (10 p.m. ET Sunday), the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker's "vertical torpedo" sub broke the surface of the western Pacific, some 200 miles (322 kilometers) southwest of Guam.
Continue Reading on NationalGeographic.com

Deepsea Challenge
http://deepseachallenge.com/

Saturday, April 21, 2012

In the Family

"In the Family" centers on one of the notable performances I've seen — if, indeed, it is a performance. Perhaps Patrick Wang is exactly like that. Then he must be a very good man. He wrote, directed and stars in the film, but it's not a one-man show. It is about the meaning of "family." This is his first feature, and may signal the opening of an important career.
Continue Reading on RogerEbert.com

Friday, April 20, 2012

TV as Thin as a Sheet of Paper? Printable Flexible Electronics Just Became Easier With Stable Electrodes

Imagine owning a television with the thickness and weight of a sheet of paper. It will be possible, someday, thanks to the growing industry of printed electronics. The process, which allows manufacturers to literally print or roll materials onto surfaces to produce an electronically functional device, is already used in organic solar cells and organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) that form the displays of cellphones.
Continue Reading on ScienceDaily.com

Bernard Kippelen
http://www.ece.gatech.edu/about/personnel/bio.php?id=127

Georgia Institute of Technology
http://www.gatech.edu/

Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE)
http://www.cope.gatech.edu/

Animal: Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals

Animal
Empathy, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity -- caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human trait. But Frans de Waal shares some surprising videos of behavioral tests, on primates and other mammals, that show how many of these moral traits all of us share.

Distinct 'God Spot' in the Brain Does Not Exist, Study Shows

Scientists have speculated that the human brain features a "God spot," one distinct area of the brain responsible for spirituality. Now, University of Missouri researchers have completed research that indicates spirituality is a complex phenomenon, and multiple areas of the brain are responsible for the many aspects of spiritual experiences. Based on a previously published study that indicated spiritual transcendence is associated with decreased right parietal lobe functioning, MU researchers replicated their findings. In addition, the researchers determined that other aspects of spiritual functioning are related to increased activity in the frontal lobe.
Continue Reading on ScienceDaily.com

Brick Johnstone
http://shp.missouri.edu/profiles/johnstone-brick/index.php

University of Missouri
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Missouri

Parietal lobe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parietal_lobe

Self-oriented
http://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/self-oriented

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Billy Corgan Q&A

Billy Corgan is a modern rock icon, having led The Smashing Pumpkins to phenomenal success in the '90s with classic albums including Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, until their dramatic split in 2000. After a stint leading new group Zwan, the prolific songwriter revived the Pumpkins in 2005 and continues to create new music with the band despite being the only founding member still in the line-up. Never one to follow convention - which has sometimes put him at odds with fans and the media - Corgan discusses his motivation for keeping The Smashing Pumpkins alive, how he feels about playing the band's old material, and their forthcoming album Oceania.
Continue Reading on VMusic.com.au

Crestfallen.com Friday the 13th Interview with Billy Corgan

On Friday the 13th (April 2012), Crestfallen.com interviewed Billy Corgan over the phone. The interview lasted for well over an hour and covered the reissue process, an in-depth look at the Lucky 13 project, the upcoming release of Oceania, and much more.
Continue Reading on Crestfallen.com

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Artificial Photosynthesis Breakthrough: Fast Molecular Catalyzer

Researchers from the Department of Chemistry at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden, have managed to construct a molecular catalyzer that can oxidize water to oxygen very rapidly. In fact, these KTH scientists are the first to reach speeds approximating those is nature's own photosynthesis. The research findings play a critical role for the future use of solar energy and other renewable energy sources.
Continue Reading on ScienceDaily.com

On the Border Between Matter and Anti-Matter: Nanoscientists Find Long-Sought Majorana Particle

Scientists at TU Delft's Kavli Institute and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM Foundation) have succeeded for the first time in detecting a Majorana particle. In the 1930s, the brilliant Italian physicist Ettore Majorana deduced from quantum theory the possibility of the existence of a very special particle, a particle that is its own anti-particle: the Majorana fermion. That 'Majorana' would be right on the border between matter and anti-matter.

Nanoscientist Leo Kouwenhoven already caused great excitement among scientists in February by presenting the preliminary results at a scientific congress. Today, the scientists have published their research in Science. The research was financed by the FOM Foundation and Microsoft.
Continue Reading on ScienceDaily.com

Majorrna fermion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majorana_fermion

Ettore Majorana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettore_Majorana

Dirac fermion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_fermion


Geist and Zeitgeist - Hermann Broch

As John Hargraves notes in his introduction, Hermann Broch remains best known, especially in the English-speaking world, for his fiction (in particular the novels The Sleepwalkers (see our review) The Death of Virgil (see our review), two of the towering works of the 20th century), but of the twelve volumes of the German edition of his collected works four are devoted to his essays (and one to his poetry) -- and almost none of that, except the long piece Hugo Hofmannsthal and His Age, has been translated.

Geist and Zeitgeist offers a Broch-essay sampler: six pieces (including a chunk of the Hofmannsthal essay) first written between 1933 and 1948 that display many of Broch's preoccupations, interests, and approaches.
Continue Reading on Complete-Review.com

Kitsch

Kitsch (English pronunciation: /ˈkɪtʃ/, loanword from German) is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that are unoriginal. Kitsch also refers to the types of art that are aesthetically deficient (whether or not being sentimental, glamorous, theatrical, or creative) and that make creative gestures which merely imitate the superficial appearances of art through repeated conventions and formulae. Excessive sentimentality often is associated with the term.
Continue Reading on Wikipedia.org