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Some programmable logic technologies handle wiring with a uniform sea of logic gates connected by fuses, and you create a particular logic circuit by selectively blowing fuses. The HP/UCLA rotaxane work involves essentially the same idea, using molecular switches at the intersections of a 2D grid of molecular wires. In addition to some discussion here on Slashdot, there is more at Nanodot, and a fairly extended discussion on sci.nanotech.

Solving the problem of routing specific wires to specific gates, and doing it in a way that's reliably manufacturable in mole quantities, will pretty much relegate today's foundries to niche markets. But that's probably a long way off, numerous problems to solve to get there. Interesting times ahead.

You need to read the comp.basilisk FAQ.

Growth of any living organism is ultimately limited by the growth requirement in shortest supply. Algal growth in the ocean is typically limited by the availability of soluble iron, nitrogen, phosphorus, or silicon, wheras carbon dioxide is readily available. Also, pumping up the CO2 level in seawater will a) increase the acidity of the water, b) decrease the partial pressure of oxygen. All of these factors can adversely affect the balance of the ecosystems in a variety of ways.

P.S. They've tried (expensive) fertilization of the ocean in the hopes that all that fixed carbon would end up in the sea floor eventually - but there was no evidence that it did end up there.

nature.com has this story about it too. Seems fairly closely matched with the displayed link.

I said that "D" that is probability of life on planet is nearly ZERO

If you said that, then you were in fact wrong. Read the article, it is talking about the probability of a Earth-like planet (C?) being formed as nearly zero. The probability of an Earth-like planet producing life has recently been estimated at 1 in 3 by some other researchers.

As an aside, the Manifold books by Stephen Baxter have good ideas of what the existence or non-existence of other life could mean. Manifold: Space deals with what happens assuming life is abundant. It is NOT pretty...

Very true. Even Clones either die fast or have defects that the originals didn't.

In the "new stuff about amino acids" department, several researchers have recently discovered that there is a fifth taste in addition to sweet, sour, salty and bitter. It has been called umami and has been extensively researched at Howard Hughes Medical Center. Naturally the Japanese have established a whole new research center on this at SRUT (Japanese character module required) so can a special edition of Iron Chef be far behind?

Society tells you what you can and can't do every day, yes, even morally. Get used to it. For example, society considers it illegal AND immoral to sexually assault someone. But gee, who are they to tell YOU what to do, right?

I should've clarified, I don't like being told what I can do when it harms no one else. To protect the general welfare is the function of governments, to give me a moral code is not. That's the crux of that.

The only issue is whether life begins at conception. If it does, then experiments on a living, unique, human entity is wrong. If it doesn't, then it's not morally wrong.

Doesn't really have to be an issue, if we aren't harming the individual the stem cells are harvested from, as is the case when they are taken from say a liposuction patient. Then it comes down to whether it's okay to break us down into component parts and harvest us. Given the alternatives, I think it's better. This tech needs to develop, and it is a religious issue, unfortunately. They oppose it on ethical grounds, but those ethical grounds are grounded firmly in their theology. It's not saying all life begins at birth and is precious, it's more, do not strip me of the idea that I am special. It's hubris, on both sides.

The subject was Nature's response to James Lovelock's first paper submission after leaving industry / academia.

James Lovelock manages to practice research independently in part du to holding patents in gas chromotography. As in independent thinker he has been able to ask questions that are hard to ask within academia. Today Nature is happy to charge me $15 to read a trivial and uninformative review of Wolfram's book or charge me a couple hundred $US for a subscription. Acacemic presses are well supported by tax and corporate research funds. Yes this is a luxury I peronally can do without.

Lovelock's co-author Lynn Margulis remains in academia but has the scars to show just how poor the academic model can be for recognizing important new work. Her key discovery that eukariotic cell structure originated in a symbiotic relationship between prokariotic cells and bacteria was initially derided by her peers, and took years to be recognized as one of the more important results of modern biology.

Neither of these individuals is especially comfortable with their celebrity status. Lovelock is quick to point out that many people in the green movements 'not only don't understand science, they hate science'. Margulis remains a professional biologist who is extrarodinarily dedicated to teaching and to furthering the science of 'simple(sic)' organisms.

Three other examples who spring to mind are authors JRR Tolkein, JK Rowling and Robert Pirsig. All three created works that are important in that they have become part of the wider culture, and were all rejected by 20-30 publishers.

Pirsig in particular is entirely ignored by academic philosophy. His unique synthesis has had influence in both mainstream and academic thought, yet academia dismisses his work. Pirsig draws heavily on Poincare who's work included many of the key ideas of relativity a couple of decades before Einstein and others developed the necessary frameworks for fully understanding these.

Whether or not Wolfram is important either within academia or in the larger context of society in any case will not be determined on /., and pinning thei idea that he is some sort of luser based on his inevitable notoriety herein is hardly a solid hypothesis imo.

Recently, they actually stopped light. I'm not sure where I heard it, but it had something to do with quantum computers. Here's a link. I'm not sure if this is the same principle as what CmdrTaco (really? The CmdrTaco??) was talking about, but it's cool.

The Journal Nature ran an article on this book, mainly on the reactions its getting (both good and bad):

Sorry, I really meant to use the preview button. O.K., here the clickable link: Nature article: first paragraph. Obviously also my statement about this material being insulating was wrong since the band gap only starts at 20 micron (on the low-energy side). Finally, most of the emission seems to be near 6 micron which is still well in the infrared (visible light is .4-.8 micron).

The end is coming soon (I think)...

Now it seems that pleasure can justify slavery, at least, in cases of extreme danger: like a bomb...

Thank's god that I am not a rat, or a pig, or an ape!:) :) :) Am I?

Contrary to what people here at /. are expecting, the authors do not use molecular data in their method (although they have compared their findings with studies using DNA). Instead, they have used a model for how species appears and goes extinct, modelled how the fossil record has been sampled, and then compared with known fossil data.

The speciation/extinction model says that species go extinct and split up in subspecies at certain rates. The fossil findings model is simply that the number of found fossils from a certain period of time is binomially distributed.

Data summarizing the number of primate fossils from different time periods was collected, and a starting point for the primate lineage that best explained the fossil record was computed.

In essence, if the starting point is too early, the method disqualifies it because we have not seen enough fossils, and if it is too late, it is disqualified because we have seen too many.

I could add that Simon Tavare is a well-respected statistician with solid experience in, for example, population genetics. (I don't recognize the other author names.) It would have been nice to see comments from other researchers about their assumptions, but I did not see anything on the Nature site and have not had the time to research this more closely.

Cheers,

Augustz is certainly correct. Hydrogen is not free. Indeed, 90% of the hydrogen produced now is made through steam reforming of hydrocarbons, which produces carbon dioxide as a biproduct, and wastes 30% of the energy.

A much better way to produce hydrogen is through the hydrolysis of water (the reverse reaction to what a fuel cell does), which requires an emissions-free source of electricity. Believe it or not, nuclear power is becoming safer with every generation. Another alternative is direct hydrolysis through solar semiconductors that can split water directly to hydrogen and oxygen. A review by Nate Lewis in last December's Nature (article not available on the web, but 414, 569, 2001) talks about new work in In/Ni doped TiO2 that have yields as high as 1%.

This article at Physics Today has a good discussion of many of the topics. Unfortunately, the excellent follow-up articles on hydrogen fuel and nuclear power are not availble on the web.

Wired had an article about a year or so ago . . .

Here's a link to the WIRED Article. The experiment you're talking about was called the Southern Ocean iron release experiment [SOIREE].

Some additional information on this strategy can be found here and here.

The problem behind any algae based solution is A) get enough nutrients to algae (thus the iron), and B) get the algae to sink to sea bottom where the CO2 won't just be released back into the atmosphere when the algae decomposes. The problem with this experiment was that A) worked, but B) wasn't addressed.

... astronomers have almost no idea what could be causing these enormous bursts.

... astronomers have almost no idea what could be causing these enormous bursts.

Since you're too lazy to get the full story I also used google, check this. Or don't you trust Nature. And this followup.

This myth has persisted for so long its amazing. The satellite data did not take into account the orbital decay of the sensor platforms.

This was published in Nature over a year ago (25 January 2001 to be precise). This article (PDF format) is a nonspecialist introduction to this work, and this article (PDF format) is the peer-reviewed research article from Nature.

This was published in Nature over a year ago (25 January 2001 to be precise). This article (PDF format) is a nonspecialist introduction to this work, and this article (PDF format) is the peer-reviewed research article from Nature.

Is this really news, or hasn't this been done...

before?

or before?

-D

Could you please produce evidence (peer reviewed, of course) for these claims.

You seem to be using a whole heap of selective evidence. Perhaps you show check out this post from talk origins, from a ex-creationist on his use of selective evidence.

For example, your paragraph on proto-humans is extremely misleading. You when you ignore the fakes (incidently both Java and Nebraska men weren't fakes), you don't get to Neandertals. The source of your information is being highly dishonest. Perhaps you are unaware of Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus, Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor, and Homo heidelbergensis. For a very good reference source check out this page. As for your orthodondist (could you also please supply a citation to his peer reviewed report), my girlfriend has studied archeology and biology under both Colin Groves (very famous evolutionary biologist) and Alan Thorne (discoverer of the Mungo Man), and from her, I am well aware that the researchers take into account bone diseases. Plus your claim that Neandertals are just heavily arthritic old people is proved false by mitochondria DNA studies, which show them to be very far removed genetically removed from "mainstream" humanity (Check out here and here, as well as Krings M., Capelli C., Tschentscher F., Geisert H., Meyer S., von Haeseler A. et al (Nature Genetics, 2000, 26:144-6) for more information).

Your other points are just as weak as the human evolution one detailed above. If you want, I can go into detail on them.

As for rephrasing the Medal and Darwin comments; when Darwin first proposed his theory, the common held view about genetics (that traits where blended, ie, the child of a small person and a tall person would be of a medium height) provide a theoretical barrier to evolution (at least of the theoretical model of evolution provided by Darwin), this lead to the Darwin's predicting that the genetics was wrong. The answer to this problem came from Medel's work on peas, while this was done in Darwin's time, it was largely unknown (ironically, Darwin had a large book on genetics which included Medel's work, but never made the connection between Medel's peas and his own theoretical problem). This problem was solved by a variety of researchers who combined Darwin's theory with Mendel's, the synthesis of the two being call neodarwinism, which is the currently accepted view of how evolution occurs.

Could you please produce evidence (peer reviewed, of course) for these claims.

You seem to be using a whole heap of selective evidence. Perhaps you show check out this post from talk origins, from a ex-creationist on his use of selective evidence.

For example, your paragraph on proto-humans is extremely misleading. You when you ignore the fakes (incidently both Java and Nebraska men weren't fakes), you don't get to Neandertals. The source of your information is being highly dishonest. Perhaps you are unaware of Ardipithecus ramidus, Australopithecus anamensis, Australopithecus afarensis, Kenyanthropus platyops, Australopithecus africanus, Australopithecus garhi, Australopithecus aethiopicus, Australopithecus robustus, Australopithecus boisei, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Homo ergaster, Homo antecessor, and Homo heidelbergensis. For a very good reference source check out this page. As for your orthodondist (could you also please supply a citation to his peer reviewed report), my girlfriend has studied archeology and biology under both Colin Groves (very famous evolutionary biologist) and Alan Thorne (discoverer of the Mungo Man), and from her, I am well aware that the researchers take into account bone diseases. Plus your claim that Neandertals are just heavily arthritic old people is proved false by mitochondria DNA studies, which show them to be very far removed genetically removed from "mainstream" humanity (Check out here and here, as well as Krings M., Capelli C., Tschentscher F., Geisert H., Meyer S., von Haeseler A. et al (Nature Genetics, 2000, 26:144-6) for more information).

Your other points are just as weak as the human evolution one detailed above. If you want, I can go into detail on them.

As for rephrasing the Medal and Darwin comments; when Darwin first proposed his theory, the common held view about genetics (that traits where blended, ie, the child of a small person and a tall person would be of a medium height) provide a theoretical barrier to evolution (at least of the theoretical model of evolution provided by Darwin), this lead to the Darwin's predicting that the genetics was wrong. The answer to this problem came from Medel's work on peas, while this was done in Darwin's time, it was largely unknown (ironically, Darwin had a large book on genetics which included Medel's work, but never made the connection between Medel's peas and his own theoretical problem). This problem was solved by a variety of researchers who combined Darwin's theory with Mendel's, the synthesis of the two being call neodarwinism, which is the currently accepted view of how evolution occurs.

The human nervous system is based completely on a binary system.

Despite the fact that some of you feel The Reg. to be unnecessarily sarcastic or (tongue and cheek) sensationalistic, I think they've hit it spot on with their take on Prof. Warwick. He seems to be pretty much into it for the 'look-at-me-I'm-original' factor, but he doesn't seem to have much scientific credibility when it comes right down to it. Here is a good Reg. analysis from 2000, after his the big story in Wired came out about him: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/29/9250.html.

His attempts to become a cyborg from what I understand consisted of little more than putting a chip in his body which would open a door as he walked towards it. How is this that different from: having the chip in your pocket, sticking it to your arm with some sort of patch, etc. My roommate's cat has a chip implanted in her to find her in the case of her running away. Is she a cyborg kitty??

As far as this new venture is concerned, Warwick seems to have the idea that using this kind of technology to help paralyzed is his idea, or has never been done. Think again, Professor Warwick (I really this is somewhat different but seems to be essentially the same idea, stimulating nerves to create movement in people struggling with paralysis...my point is merely that Warwick is not the brilliant loner on the revolutionary fronts of scientific acheivement that he makes himself out to be...there are people doing real science all over who don't need the gratification of being in the media--this is a non-story).

Check out this link for further information: http://www.kevinwarwick.org.uk/.

Nature.com - Feb 15, 2001

Discover.com - May 2001

The only reason I bring this up is my story was rejected a year ago... *Whine* Wish I still had my original URL for that story... Nothing about magnetic properties tho...

I first heard about it when I spent a summer at Lawrence Livermore National Lab two years ago. An abstract of the Nature paper that group at Livermore published is available here

I don't know about warp drive, but transporters may be closer than we expect. Checkout

http://www.nature.com/nsu/010927/010927-11.html
It is a little dated but interesting none the less.

I suppose that it could be worse. Companies like Coke and Pepsi might entice us to shop at our local AMPM or CircleK more often with a chance to win money or something. At the absolut wurst they could embed advertising into our very content and change the nature of our speech to suit their needs.

Or isn't that being done already?

There are some kinky toads you might be interested in: bisexually reproducing triploid toads.. It's not the same as homosexual organisms, but you could speak of a potential evolutionary inhibiting factor here..
Who can argue with mother nature?!?

TheMatt writes "Scientists at the University of this place you've never heard of have analyzed Slashdot and found that it is almost like real society. The team studied the statistical properties of each user, the stories they posted in, and who else replied to their posts (through resources like the Slashdot archives). While there were some similarities to real society, a close look revealed the artificiality. For example, /. isn't very clustered, only 1.5x that of a random network; real life is about 10x more clustered. Of course, the realities of web boards (the interface) are why this occurs. Also, they found the most networked of all Slashdot users was CowboyNeal, the default poll choice."

Doesn't it seem that these scientists are going out of their way to discredit creationists? While the real bible-toting creationists constantly rail about the godlessness of science and the inherent evil they see in the theory of evolution, I always thought that the scientific view would be to let the results of solid research speak for themselves. A thinking person would be able to decide for himself what to make of the whole debate.

You forget one important thing: Creationists don't do battle in the scientific literature. Instead, they turn evolution into a strawman, which they then attack in a political way. Since what (almost) happened in Kansas, I think that scientists are beginning to realize that they must find in the political arena as well.

This seems to be way too over the top for my liking. Is it necessary to drag down opposing viewpoints while making your own best case?

Also remember that this is a press release which may have been spun a bit. If you read the paper online, you'll see that there's no mention of creationists.

Certainly, creationists feel that way about what science has shown us since the days of Darwin. Is it necessary to stoop to the same tactics?

You mean Galileo, right? Let's not forget what happened in that case. As long as Creationists rely on people's prejudices and lack of knowledge to further their position, some degree of spinning is necessary if science wants to capture mindshare in the public

Science: The earth is round

Skeptic: That's ludicrous! How can people on the other side keep from falling off? How can they walk around on their hands?!

Science: People evolved from a common ancestor as Chimpanzees

Creationist: That's ludicrous! Why don't we see monkeys in classrooms? How does water evolve from ice?

By the way, I've actually had people raise those objections.

See this for other reasons why the entire galaxy isn't hospitable to life.

First, here's a link to the original article in Nature, where you can download the paper in PDF format.

Secondly, the electrical analogy is an excellent one. Basically, quantum theory started in 1900 with Planck postulating that atoms radiate energy (light, heat) only in discrete quantities. He used this as a "mathematical trick" to derive the spectrum of black-body radiation. (However, he didn't believe his "trick" was true in any literal sense until much later, about 1913). Then in 1905 Einstein postulated the existence of photons, and used them to explain the photoelectrical effect. I'll briefly explain what that is:

When you shine light on a metal plate, it can free electrons from the metal, which can then fly a short distance to a second plate and produce an electric current. What happens is that the electrons in the metal absorb some light and use this energy to break free from the metal (they need a certain threshold energy for this). Any additional energy they have left is then invested in their movement. According to the wave theory of light, the brighter the light you shine on the plate, the more energy the electrons absorb, and the more of them should be able to break free. But, that's not what happens. If you shine a very bright red light at the plate, you don't get any electrons, but a faint blue light, even if it contains much less energy in total, will liberate plenty of electrons. Einstein's explanation was that the photons of red light, having a longer wavelength, each contain less energy. If the light is very bright then you might have LOTS of photons, but each photon only has a relatively low energy. Now, typically, the probability that a given electron is hit by a photon is quite small. This means that those (lucky few) electrons that do aborb a photon will generally only absorb one, not more. If this is a red light photon, then this energy is simply not enough to break free of the metal, so there's no photo effect. But if you shine blue light at the plate, then each photon carries enough energy to liberate an electron, which is why you expect the effect to work with blue light. If you make the light brighter, then there are more photons, hence more electrons are released. But they each still have the same amount of energy. Incidentally, this is what Einstein got his Nobel prize for, not relativity.

Now for the analogy. What has been done in the Grenoble experiment is to confirm the analogue of Planck's result. So we now know (as we had guessed for a long time) that gravitational energy, at least in bound states, comes in discrete quantities. This does not yet imply the existence of gravitons, which would be analogous to photons. So the next experiment we would need is a gravitational version of the photo effect:

Imagine a system in which neutrons are bound in some state and need a little tug to be freed (I have no idea how to bind a neutron in a state such that such a weak tug could pull it free - remember that all other forces are SO much stronger than gravity). Then maybe we could see them pulled free by gravity, and notice the strange effect, that if we increase the gravitational field (by moving a large object near to it - with the experiment done in zero gee) we can pull free MORE neutrons, but each liberated neutron still starts off with the same energy (i.e. speed).

Anybody have any ideas for such a setup? Maybe we should study neutrons orbiting a small lead ball in a zero gee?

This actually spawned 3 papers in the current Nature. Viewing the first two requires that your institution be subscribed, but the third one is for all to read.

This actually spawned 3 papers in the current Nature. Viewing the first two requires that your institution be subscribed, but the third one is for all to read.

Ho hum. At least there are always New Scientist and Nature to satisfy our urges

I'm speaking here as founder and president of what was the 2nd largest biotechnology company in the U.S. focused on the molecular biology of aging during the mid-'90s. So we will assume for the sake of improving the discussion I'm moderately well informed in this arcane branch of knowledge.

Point #1: If you read something scientific or technical in the "popular" press, never assume that they managed to interpret it properly. If reporters don't have an education in a particular discipline, they are not likely to understand the subtleties of what is being discussed. Always go back to the most scientific sources you can get access to. Most of the readers are presumably qualified to evaluate arguments on technical merits (this is the /. forum!). Learn the jargon and if you don't understand something find an expert and ask questions (or post to the forum -- you never know when an expert might be lurking).

Point #2: Never assume a /. poster knows what they are talking about (or has verified what they may have copied or concluded from popular press). Case in point: "aging in mice seems to be the byproduct of the chemicals that prevent cancer". The material under discussion is a mutant p53 protein which is the byproduct of a modified p53 gene. It is not by anyone familiar with discussions in this field a "chemical". The p53 protein weighs tens of thousands of daltons and has multiple "active" functions -- most molecules considered "chemicals" weigh less than a few thousand daltons and have few, if any, "active" functions.

From the Nature news report: "they created mice with a chunk missing from one copy of the gene". Translating this into "programmer" terms -- this is in effect replacing 1 of 2 instantiations of an essential subroutine in an ~30,000 subroutine system with a subroutine that has had some of its lines deleted. How do you draw conclusions as to what is going on in that situation? Unless you know what lines were deleted and what the purpose of those lines was you have relatively little hope of drawing conclusions that would allow you to debug the system (at least IMHO). You certainly cannot discuss what the situation means in any intelligent fashion.

All of that being said, I'll provide my "spin" on the results. The normal p53 protein is a "gatekeeper" protein. Its purpose is to determine whether or not DNA damage is present (i.e. whether your program has been corrupted). If too much damage is present it induces cells to commit apoptosis (cellular suicide). If less damage is present, it delays cellular replication (copying) until the damage that is present can be repaired (calling the ECC subroutines). So it acts as a brake on the replication of mutated/damaged DNA and an executioner for cells that are so far beyond the error-correction subroutines that they represent a threat to the entire organism. In larger organisms (which have more cells and are therefore at greater risk of developing a "mutant" program and therefore cancer [which is unregulated cellular replication]) it is important to constrain replication. So humans, in contrast to mice may have a p53 which strongly constrains cellular replication. { Alternatively they may have "redundant" subroutines like telomere shortening (mice have very long telomeres, humans do not) which function as "backup" programs that function to limit cellular division and therefore the development of cancer. (This is based on the concept that short telomeres inform cells to "stop dividing" just as "damaged DNA" [through the p53 protein] cause cells to stop dividing.) } The extent to which short telomeres may resemble "damaged" DNA (and therefore activate the p53 "subroutines") is unclear (to me) at this point. [This is a fairly hot topic of scientific debate.]

If we view cancer and aging as complementary ends of the see-saw -- allow too much cellular replication and one gets cancer -- allow too little cellular replication and those parts that wear out are not replaced, resulting in aging, and one may be able to interpret the results of this study. The part of the p53 gene that was deleted probably served to function to "remove" the block against replication or "enable" the replication function. So what may be occuring is that the mutant p53 gene may be detecting damage, blocking replication, but then when the damage is repaired the defective p53 may not be allowing replication to proceed. Thus you have very effective anti-cancer properties but as one gets older there are fewer and fewer cells available to replace those that are lost. Net result: accelerated aging.

Now, this result need not be pessimistic. As Tom Kirkwood, one of the world's leading gerontologists pointed out in the Nature article, "We could be able to pick a path through the molecular mechanisms of ageing without making cells more tumour-prone. 'There's no reason why you shouldn't get greater defence against cancer and greater longevity.'"

As a once upon a time programmer -- I encourage people in the software industry -- "View genomes as programs -- lets figure out where the bugs are and then lets go fix them."

You can find the original, non-watered down story at Nature. Of course, you need a subscription :-)

There are also a couple of articles over at Nature.

Meteoritics: Life's sweet beginnings?

and

Carbonaceous meteorites as a source of sugar-related organic compounds for the early Earth

There are also a couple of articles over at Nature.

Meteoritics: Life's sweet beginnings?

and

Carbonaceous meteorites as a source of sugar-related organic compounds for the early Earth

For anyone interested in a more detailed article, visit this link

/wave

Are you aware that a recent study published in Nature predicts that population growth will level off over the next 100 years?

Lots of good links here.
http://www.nature.com/nature/fow/010802.html

-l

Szulik said:

> "Open source is an intellectual property
> destroyer. I can't imagine something that
> could be worse than this for the software
> business."

He is technically right. Open Source in itself is not against the intellectual property... ask Apple. But the bulk of the software which RedHat is associated with a license whose originator has made no secret of his distaste for copyrights and patents... intellectual property in general.

Now, if you (like many academics and thinkers) think IP is bad, then great, you'll love the GNU idea. If, on the other hand, you are in a business protected only by IP rights (think software, videos, music, books, newspapers), then you just *may* believe otherwise.

New Scientist isn't Nature, it is just a scientific newspaper rather than a journal. It is also cheaper and has a much wider circulation. You may want to wait for the full paper in Nature, but as a non-particle physicist, I'm quite happy with New Scientist's summary for the moment.

Actually, Schroedringer's cat, being a classsically sized critter, is saved from the being a member of the living dead by decoherence.

How decoherence killed schroedringer's cat

Maybe one day we'll be able to figure out how to keep cats in superimposed states, but for the time being Schroedringer's gonna have to decide whether to whack the cat before he closes the lid.

http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/35107019

vikas

http://www.nature.com/nsu/011129/011129-13.html

vikas

This article at nature.com goes into more detail about what the 'hardware' and 'software' refers to, among other things.