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Ask Franz Embacher and his team from the university of Vienna. They do exactly what I described and transferred information over half the city. I think he can control which number shows up.

No, that's Roland Piquepaille's technology trends

http://www.primidi.com/2004/11/26.html

"3D Biometric Facial Recognition Comes To UK"
(2004)

His contact info:

• roland@primidi.com (with subject "Feedback about Primidi.com")
• +33 6 78887128 (mobile)
• +33 1 45574961 (phone)

Can somebody please contact him directly to confirm his passing?

(R.I.P. Roland. Hope you don't mind us making jokes about you.)

Since when did they let long winded douchebags with nothing to say have blogs?

You aren't familar with Roland Piquepaille are you?

=Smidge=

Indeed, the record is an order of magnitude beyond what he says is impossible. That link is from 2005 too. The current record is probably even better. Of course, as you say, the performance numbers are radically different. Sacrifices were made. At least it's a cool-looking vehicle though. I wish some of the 50-mpg jelly-beans they put on the road looked that good.

Researcher Proposes New Framework For Understanding Cells, Disease.

Researcher Jamey Marth, publishing recently in Nature Cell Biology, has organized 68 molecular building blocks into four categories and illustrated their roles within cells. Marth suggests that organizing these building blocks, much as chemists organize the periodic table, will "provide a conceptual framework for biology that has the potential to enhance education and research by promoting the integration of knowledge.". Roland Piquepaille and Thomas Joseph offer commentary on their blogs.

I've read several articles and I still have no clue what the hell a "comfort capsule" is. Is it a whole plane? Is it an add-on to a plane? Is it one of those napping pods like you can find here? Am I alone in this one?

Slashdot doesn't claim to be anything more than links to, and commentary about, news. They're not really advertising themselves as journalists.

Roland Piquepaille's blog is a great example of the OP's complaint. He (Roland) finds other people's articles and research, writes a half assed summary, and pretends he's some trendy blogging journalist.

I wish that Slashdot editors would not post stories by Roland Piquepaille. He is a paid publicity manager. He is paid to place stories. Do Slashdot editors get paid when they post his stories? They have never said they don't, apparently.

He has apparently succeeded in getting this story in many publications.

This sentence is nonsense: "He's now going further, saying that he wants to build objects 100,000 times smaller than the atomic nucleus." Someone made a mistake somewhere. If there are things that small, they have nothing to do with making isotopes. Neither Roland Piquepaille nor the Slashdot editors have enough knowledge of science that they could see the mistake.

There is apparently nothing particularly new about the apparatus described in the Michigan State University press release.

Apparently the writer of the Michigan State University press release, "Sue Nichols", didn't have the slightest understanding of the subject either, and didn't care, because she said, "Isotopes are the different versions of an element." Maybe she was in a hurry to go shopping. She could have looked on Google for a definition of isotope: "Atoms of the same element that have the same number of protons (same atomic number) but different numbers of neutrons (different atomic masses)."

Roland Piquepaille, who submitted this story, is PAID to do public relations. In my opinion, he has been responsible for other dubious stories, such as these (The links are to my comments.):

Imaging Breakthrough "Sees" Lung Disease

A Single-Photon Server

Would You Wear Video Glasses?

Here is Mr. Piquepaille's web site.

Nuclear plants however are only available in the huge, bulky variation.

For more detail, including the citation of the paper, see this http://www.primidi.com/2008/02/03.html

This is a well known electromagnetic phenomenon associated with metals at optical frequencies. For example, if one manufactures metallic nanoparticles (small with respect to optical wavelengths), the resulting reflected light depends primarily on the size of the particles, not its composition. A good example is here:

http://www.primidi.com/2005/03/04.html

The scientists from the article are abusing a similar phenomenon.

While this suit is totally cool, I think bigger, mass-production robots like this rice-planting robot are far more practical. The robot suit is indeed a technological breakthrough, but I think robots that can help more than one person at a time are far more valuable. Or, check out these weed-killers.

After crawling the web a bit I found a few more interesting links about Toshiba's "Micro-Nuke" technology. First an article from 2005 about a similar Toshiba reactor running on liquid Sodium that was slated to be installed in a remote Alaskan village some time before 2010. This doesn't appear to be the same reactor as mentioned here on /.

A blog entry with more information and links about this and other small reactors.

It seems to be fairly safe, though I can't imagine the red tape they'll have to get through in order to begin installing them, especially in North America. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the US has about a 60 month process to certify a reactor from the time the application is filed, Toshiba probably has a head start on this application from 2005 with its "4S" mini-reactor, but this new Lithium version will probably need its own application process. They plan to build these things at least 30m underground, encased in steel and concrete walls that probably put most bank vaults to shame, so I don't think tampering will be a major issue.

Is this the same unit?

Also Roland doesn't play nice when it comes to photographs. Please compare http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/helium_isotopes_may_uncover_new_geothermal_energy_sources with Roland's blog: http://www.primidi.com/2007/12/02.html#a2025. Btw van Soest has apparently been working on this subject for some time. Check out his publications list on his personal info page http://www-esd.lbl.gov/ESD_staff/van_soest/index.html

Some guys in Japan made a piloted plane that flew on 160 AA batteries: http://www.primidi.com/2006/07/17.html#a1571

Still, I'm a little more impressed by what NASA pulled off: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Prototype

Nice try. Maybe you should consider posting on topics you know about. Anyone who's had even a passing interest in parrots knows that they're extremely smart. Behaviorally its been asserted (with lots of supporting evidence), that they're about as smart as a two year old at least. In addition to that if you look for work by Irene Pepperberge, you'll find that she's been able to get parrots to count, discriminate and vocalize between groups of objects (for example she'll put down three blue squares and four red triangles, and ask "how many squares" and the bird (Alex I believe in this case) would respond "Three"), and even the concept of zero (in the same example she'll ask "how many red squares" "None" the bird will respond. There are videos of this very experiment available on the net if you google around). (Actually info available here: http://www.primidi.com/2005/07/09.html)

My mother's African Grey for example, has her cage by the laundry room, which of course has a a washing machine / dryer in it. When my mom would go inside to load up the laundry the parrot would start calling for her, and so she would naturally respond "I'm in the laundry room or Mummy is doing laundry". She developed some vocalizations around this but nothing super distinct ("Mummy is garble garble, etc) partially due to her age (she was less than one year old at the time). Whats interesting is that the dryer has a very annoying buzzer thats loud and obnoxious when its cycle ends, and this used to totally freak out the parrot. So my mom would say "Its just the dryer!".

After awhile (say a few months), the parrot started to vocalize more, and one of her favorite things became "Mummy is in the dryer!". Whats even more interesting is that she combines other sounds with "in the dryer". Like "Chris Pronger is in the dryer" (my mom watches alot of hockey) "Hockey is in the dryer". This could be attributed to semi random "sound" mixing, except that when someone goes into the laundry room she will usually use that persons identifier "Daddy is in the dryer", "Stevie is in the dryer", etc. So while it would be ridiculous to say that she understood the actual words, for sure the sounds "Mummy" and "is in the" and "dryer" got put together in her head. The other thing she does is when people leaves, she calls out "good bye" (fairly standard), and more interestingly "He's coming back!". "She's coming back" depending on the person (for certain people she knows she gets the gender right).

However the research on Alex (cited above) has resulted in far more sophisticated behaviour.

-=g

Sure. Where would slashdot be without Roland Piquepaille's blog

Go is not yet as well-automated as chess, but it appears that go-playing software is rapidly advancing:

"Two Hungarian scientists have now come up with an algorithm that helps computers pick the right move in Go, played by millions around the world, in which players must capture spaces by placing black and white marbles on a board in turn.

"On a nine by nine board we are not far from reaching the level of a professional Go player," said Levente Kocsis at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' computing lab SZTAKI.

The 19 by 19 board which top players use is still hard for a machine, but the new method is promising because it makes better use of the growing power of computers than earlier Go software."

Link

See also:

http://zaphod.aml.sztaki.hu/papers/ecml06.pdf

http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/vanderwerf03solving.ht ml

http://www.primidi.com/2007/02/26.html

-kgj

I find that http://www.primidi.com/ is the best place to get them. Editted by a Mr Roland Piquepaille.

http://www.primidi.com/2002/07/08.html

" This week, Microsoft announced Palladium through an exclusive story in Newsweek written by Steven Levy, who ought to have known better. Palladium is the code name for a Microsoft project to make all Internet communication safer by essentially pasting a digital certificate on every application, message, byte, and machine on the Net, then encrypting the data EVEN INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER PROCESSOR. Palladium compatible hardware (presumably chipsets and motherboards) will come from both AMD and Intel, and the software will, of course, come from Microsoft. That software is what I had dubbed TCP/MS.

        The point of all this is simple. It may actually make the Internet somewhat safer. But the real purpose of this stuff, I fear, is to take technology owned by nobody (TCP/IP) and replace it with technology owned by Redmond. That's taking the Internet and turning it into MSN. Oh, and we'll all have to buy new computers."

Check out this article on Cultured Meat

Very interesting. Wouldn't mind a "meat locker" in the house full of ribeye and strip steak.

It's because Carl Bialik is the new Roland Piquepaille. He submits a million articles, and they all get posted. Which is not to say he's the new Beatles-Beatles.

In Plastics Day in Surgery, Red Herring reports that an international team of U.S. and German researchers has developed a new kind of plastic that can shift between three different shapes when the temperature increases. Even if these polymeric triple-shape materials have not emerged from the lab, they could eventually be employed as removable stents and self-closing fasteners used by surgeons and more generally by the healthcare industry. But read more

This research work has been done partially at the MIT in Professor Robert Langers research lab. Please note that Ive already covered a previous Langers project in "Light Used to Design Shape-Shifting Plastics" (April 14, 2005).

For this new kind of plastic, Langer worked with Professor Andreas Lendlein, director of the Institute of Polymer Research at the GKSS Research Center in Teltow, Germany, and his team.

This research work has been published online before print by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) under the name "Polymeric triple-shape materials" (November 20, 2006). Here is a link to the abstract.

Shape-memory polymers represent a promising class of materials that can move from one shape to another in response to a stimulus such as heat. Thus far, these systems are dual-shape materials. Here, we report a triple-shape polymer able to change from a first shape (A) to a second shape (B) and from there to a third shape (C). Shapes B and C are recalled by subsequent temperature increases. Whereas shapes A and B are fixed by physical cross-links, shape C is defined by covalent cross-links established during network formation.

The triple-shape effect is a general concept that requires the application of a two-step programming process to suitable polymers and can be realized for various polymer networks whose molecular structure allows formation of at least two separated domains providing pronounced physical cross-links. These domains can act as the switches, which are used in the two-step programming process for temporarily fixing shapes A and B. It is demonstrated that different combinations of shapes A and B for a polymer network in a given shape C can be obtained by adjusting specific parameters of the programming process.

Below is a series of photographs illustrating this triple-shape effect. On the left is a tube which could be used as a stent and on the right is fastener consisting of a plate with anchors. From top to bottom, you can see the shape evolution when the temperature increases to 40C (in B) and 60C (in C). (Credit: MIT/GKSS Research Center). This image has been extracted from the PNAS paper mentioned above.

Picture

In "Morphing Materials Take On New Shapes," Technology Review describes this process in plain English.

Lendlein says the key to the new structures was developing two types of polymers that have distinct melting points. At room temperature, the material holds its first shape. But when heated above a certain temperature, areas throughout the material soften, allowing it to change to an intermediate shape. At a yet higher transition temperature, the rest of the material softens, allowing the structure to take its final shape.

But what would be these

In Plastics Day in Surgery, Red Herring reports that an international team of U.S. and German researchers has developed a new kind of plastic that can shift between three different shapes when the temperature increases. Even if these polymeric triple-shape materials have not emerged from the lab, they could eventually be employed as removable stents and self-closing fasteners used by surgeons and more generally by the healthcare industry. But read more

This research work has been done partially at the MIT in Professor Robert Langers research lab. Please note that Ive already covered a previous Langers project in "Light Used to Design Shape-Shifting Plastics" (April 14, 2005).

For this new kind of plastic, Langer worked with Professor Andreas Lendlein, director of the Institute of Polymer Research at the GKSS Research Center in Teltow, Germany, and his team.

This research work has been published online before print by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) under the name "Polymeric triple-shape materials" (November 20, 2006). Here is a link to the abstract.

Shape-memory polymers represent a promising class of materials that can move from one shape to another in response to a stimulus such as heat. Thus far, these systems are dual-shape materials. Here, we report a triple-shape polymer able to change from a first shape (A) to a second shape (B) and from there to a third shape (C). Shapes B and C are recalled by subsequent temperature increases. Whereas shapes A and B are fixed by physical cross-links, shape C is defined by covalent cross-links established during network formation.

The triple-shape effect is a general concept that requires the application of a two-step programming process to suitable polymers and can be realized for various polymer networks whose molecular structure allows formation of at least two separated domains providing pronounced physical cross-links. These domains can act as the switches, which are used in the two-step programming process for temporarily fixing shapes A and B. It is demonstrated that different combinations of shapes A and B for a polymer network in a given shape C can be obtained by adjusting specific parameters of the programming process.

Below is a series of photographs illustrating this triple-shape effect. On the left is a tube which could be used as a stent and on the right is fastener consisting of a plate with anchors. From top to bottom, you can see the shape evolution when the temperature increases to 40C (in B) and 60C (in C). (Credit: MIT/GKSS Research Center). This image has been extracted from the PNAS paper mentioned above.

Picture

In "Morphing Materials Take On New Shapes," Technology Review describes this process in plain English.

Lendlein says the key to the new structures was developing two types of polymers that have distinct melting points. At room temperature, the material holds its first shape. But when heated above a certain temperature, areas throughout the material soften, allowing it to change to an intermediate shape. At a yet higher transition temperature, the rest of the material softens, allowing the structure to take its final shape.

But what would be these

Patents aren't a threat to innovation. They encourage innovation! People will innovate by coming up with new ways to work around the patents!

</sarcasm>

A post I've put at http://www.primidi.com/2006/10/28.html provides more details than the New Scientist article and shows the three robots used for these experiments and their 'sensorimotor' interactions with their environment.

That would be this guy:

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/

However that was extremely experimental and not what anyone would call even medium quality.

Of more interest is the research being done by the library of congress and the Berkeley physics department.

http://www.primidi.com/2004/04/19.html

They discovered you can use the same methods used in the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle to scan cylinder recordings which are too brittle to be played by traditional means. The results of those experiments are pretty astounding.

ad

Link whore.
Come on people! Do the link in your comments! Let's make Roland google's #1 hit for Link Whore.

Has anyone looked at the "diagram" cited in the original post? At first, I couldn't make sense of anything on there, especially the confusion of colors in the lower-right corner of the image. Then I spotted the "IE system components" and thought, "Oh, that explains it. This is describing Internet Explorer. No f***ing wonder it's a mess."

What little kid wouldn't want one of these as their best friend:
Orangutan!

From their 2004 press releases:

http://www.taborcommunications.com/hpcwire/hpcwire WWW/04/0827/108259.html
http://news.com.com/Japan+designers+shoot+for+supe rcomputer+on+a+chip/2100-1008_3-5322558.html
http://www.peta.co.jp/md2/faq_en.html
http://grape.astron.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/grape/computer .htm
http://www.primidi.com/2004/09/01.html

The graph also shows links betwen US_Military and AL_QAEDA, and between ARIEL_SHARON and Mid_East_Conflict. If only they'd had this technology when they were trying to justify the invasion of Iraq.

"Look, Saddam Hussein has links to Al Qaeda! You can see it on the graph!"

"Uh, Mister Vice-President, this graph is based on press conferences in which you repeatedly mentioned Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda in the same breath. It may not have any statistical value."

"Shut up and bring me my war britches, dimwit, the computer never lies!"

I know the parent post asks for labs in the USA, but there are plenty of options overseas - notably the government-funded CSIRO laboratories all around sunny Australia (disclaimer: that's where I work)*. If you are interested in computer science research, you can't go past the ICT Centre (/.). Specifically, if you're interested in cutting-edge robotics research, there's Autonomous Systems (who are frequent news items on ./), or if medical engineering is more your style, there's the BioMedIA lab. There are, of course, other research labs in Australia, but this is the one I know most about :)

Australia offers a good place to carry out research, with many state governments (notably Victoria and Queensland) pouring millions into funding. Plus the lifestyle and standard of living is pretty hard to beat :D

* The usual oddities that associated with any large organisation (management & HR weirdness) are omnipresent, but these come and go and are par for the course.

http://www.primidi.com/2005/03/27.html

and don't mind spending the money and don't mind looking around a bit, you can/could get the Grand Canyon Display from Liebermann Inc.

They used to reside at http://www.go-l.com/ but that seems to be defunct now. Last I checked they had one that was even bigger (5 1600x1200 monitors in one I believe), but since it's gone, I'm not entirely sure what it was called.

A teaser http://www.primidi.com/2003/09/25.html (that's a Roland link, sadly) for now though ;)

The link in the article circumvents Roland's blog by the way! The correct link is here.

Also Popular Mechanics ran an article on this like 4 months ago. In fact it was on the cover of that issue.

I was trying to remember where I somewhat recently read about this technology and thank you for reminding me that it was in Popular Mechanics.

I can't find a link to the Popular Mechanics article (I think it was in the february 2006 issue) but you can read more about this technology here http://alt-e.blogspot.com/2005/02/hybrids-hybrid-b oats-hybrid-ships-and.html and the following link has some more information as well as some interesting pictures/diagrams http://www.primidi.com/2005/03/07.html .

It is pretty amazing how much more efficient the sails can make a ship, from the last link I mentioned:

"cargo vessels can increase their speed by a minimum of 10% -- in the example given speed is increased yet by 2.25 bends, equaling 15%. Alternatively by using the SkySails propulsion fuel savings of up to 50% can be implemented."

It showed that using 1200 litres of fuel per hour a normal ship would cruise at ~15.5 knots and a skysail enhanced ship would cruise at close to 18 knots, not too bad of a speed gain. If the skysail ship wanted to cruise at 15.5 knots instead then fuel consumption would drop from 1200 litres per hour to around 550. That is just awesome and I really hope this goes into wide use where it is feasable to use it.

The reason these stories on Slashdot are useless is because all of the slashbots here will be screaming "I don't want ads!". Well, tough shit. Advertising is part of our world and culture and they are coming to video games whether you want them to or not.

There are 3 ways to avoid advertising. Here they are:

1) Die. Seriously. Then your problems with advertising will be all over for good. The drawback is that it is permanent [depending on your beliefs in an afterlife.... :) ].

2) Live 'off the grid' on public/private land with NONE of the technological amenities of modern civilization other than (maybe) a P.O. box or other suitable 'mail drop' (but then the ad men will probably get ahold of it and still send you junk mail! :P). I like how the USPS's definiton of '1st Class Mail' only covers bills/invoices/purchase orders/related whatnot, financial statements/legal papers/government correspondence, checks and equivalents, and handwritten personal correspondence. To them, everything else that is not a periodical or parcel of some kind is considered bulk mail and is fair game for recycling/disposal. :)

3) Use the technologies at hand to minimize/eliminate your exposure to advertising. Some examples:

3a) Digital Video Recorders with 'adskip' (if you can still buy 'em or build 'em). If push comes to shove, hang on to your VCRs and use them instead.

3b) DVD Players that ignore Prohibited User Operation(s) (and region codeds as well!). Yay, no more FBI warnings/trailers/long animated menus before the movie! :) (the animated menu on Disney's Lion King DVD is notoriously long! :P) If you live in the USA and are thinking 'FVCK THE DMCA(.pdf)!!!!' there is software out there that will allow you to 'remaster' a commercial DVD to remove 'all' unwanted content. Non-USA world citizens don't have this worry (lucky them!)

3c) Ad blocking hosts file for your webbrowser such as this one. Use a 'surfer friendly' web browser like Off By One that ignores Flash and popup windows because it doesn't understand the SCRIPT and OBJECT HTML tags I am using it now to write this post instead of IE 5 that came with Windows 2000. Slashdot looks like crap in IE 5 so I gave up on it and am now using Off By One to surf Slashdot--much nicer! If you have to/want to use a 3rd party popup blocker, I heartily recommend NoAds

On Windows and tired of email spam? Filter it out with my absolutely free gift back to the Internet community at large who can use it. Since I started using it, my email spam has dropped to essentially zero. Attention Mods. before you mod this post down as spam/karmawhoring, consider 'going after' Roland Piquepaille first who always seems to get a story posted here no matter how trivial it is sometimes...or the multpage 'adfest' stories mentioned here from Tom's Hardware.

P.S. Sorry, I have no solution to public restroom advertising other than to keep your eyes closed while you do your business, use a 100% ad-free bathroom, or risk being arrested for defecating/urinating in public....

"The writing is on the wall" Indeed. Legal, for-profit commercial graffiti.... :P

The only technology trends I need is the magnificent Roland Piquepaille's site. It's great! You don't have to go searching all over the web for content - Roland kindly copies it all and puts it in his blog.

I can't get to the original article but here's something on the Cali drug cartel using phone records.

http://www.primidi.com/2002/07/07.html

According to former and current DEA, military, and State Department officials, the cartel had assembled a database that contained both the office and residential telephone numbers of U.S. diplomats and agents based in Colombia, along with the entire call log for the phone company in Cali, which was leaked by employees of the utility. The mainframe was loaded with custom-written data-mining software. It cross-referenced the Cali phone exchange's traffic with the phone numbers of American personnel and Colombian intelligence and law enforcement officials.

A top Colombian narcotics security adviser says the system fingered at least a dozen informants -- and that they were swiftly assassinated by the cartel. A high-level DEA official would go only this far: "It is very reasonable to assume that people were killed as a result of this capability."

Already been done.

http://www.primidi.com/2004/04/05.html

And if apple did it, it would look more like this than this.

Those glasses will never be cool without a major re-design. They're far too ugly.

Then you could get a date while wearing them.

Sadly, with these that will never happen.

The story is not about Roland or Beatles Beatles or whatever other random user is submitting a lot of stuff this week.

Shouldn't that read:

"The story is not about Roland or Beatles Beatles or whatever other random user is submitting a lot of stuff this week."?

Ah, slashdot editors...

I haven't submitted this story to Slashdot on Dec. 11 because I thought I didn't offer enough added value to the IsraCast article, except for different pictures and a few different references. But at least, I wrote the introduction myself, the one that Izeickl has completely duplicated --stolen??. Check for yourself by reading my my short version (on my blog) and my long version (for ZDNet.com) of "The nanoarmor of the future." Izeickl, what about sticking to laptop reviews? And if you move outside your domain, why don't you quote the sources you're using?

Having been closely involved with the USAF for a long while, I think most readers here on slashdot are misinterpreting this. Cyberspace and Cyberwarfare in this context doesn't mean a bunch of hackers/crackers trying to penetrate other countries' networks and do war stuff. This is not a Matrix/Neuromancer idea of "war in the internet".

The future of US warfare depends heavily on networking, NetCentric Warfare, and using WANs. Cyberspace means the network that exists between headquarters, soldiers, planes, tanks, etc. Think StarCraft or Command and Conquer. Defense of this network is a top priority.