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It is up for free now here.

The method in the article is gene therapy, replacing the natural gene with a gene to block myostatin. The NY Times article talks about a drug antibody to prevent myostatin from reaching muscle satalite cells.

This month's Scientific American discusses gene doping. The basic premise is that the same gene therapies that can help individuals with genetic diseases can be twisted to give athletes an unfair advantage. More massive muscles, more oxygen carrying blood cells, taller, etc. Although it's years away, given the state of drug doping in athletics today, it only seems the next stage.

Look at Gene Doping. Look at the bull on page 2.

The cover story in the July Scientific American is about genetic enhancements of muscle. (They havent put the article online free yet.) The thrust is finding an inhibitor for the muscle-growth inhibitor called myostatin. In the article is a picture of a bovine lacking the myostatin gene. It is so bulked up, that it looks like a cylinder of meat with a nose and four hooves sticking out.

Oh, I'm sure they already know and are planning for it.

But for your sake, enjoy a link.

I thought I'd add a few interesting ideas and resources to this discussion.

Check out the works of Amory Lovins / L. Hunter Lovins / Paul Hawken;
they have an interesting book which can be read free online or be purchased
in print depending on one's desire --
Read 'Natural Capitalism' free online or buy the book!
Read 'Natural Capitalism' free online
Read 'Natural Capitalism' free online

Amory Lovins has a lot to do with the Rocky Mountain Instutute
Rocky Mountain Instutute and there's a lot more information about efficient
technologies and industrial / social evolutions there.

"Natural Capitalism: Creating the next industrial revolution" is all about
paradigm shifts that evaluates efficiency and resource conservation as
being key factors both for environmental reasons as well as economic reasons --
economics is about the market prosperity of the most efficient products and
services, and surely there are disadvantages in inefficient use of one's
inputs.

"Achieve multiple benefits with single expendutures" -- and the book/ebook
is full of really thought provoking and compelling practical paradigms to
illustrate the power of that thinking!

Ok so my next salient point and resource on the subject of power supply efficiency is to look beyond the power supply to the load and realize that
computing itself can be as close to a "zero power needed" technology as one
cares to implement. Current digital circuits waste the vast majority of their
power by irreversably converting 1's to 0's and 0's to ones, basically charging
up capacitors to make a high voltage "1" where there was no voltage before
and then wasting all that energy a bit later shunting it to ground / zero volts
to make a "0" again. This isn't necessary to achieve the computing function!
And here are some interesting readings on that area:

"Reversible Logic" is one such practical approach to it --
Article At MIT

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=%22rever si ble+logic%22+%2BMIT

And otherwise: Book Info: "Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information"
"Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information"
a great read on the relationship between information theory, computing,
and thermodynamic entropy's relationship to data entropy, even touching
on how many "bits" of information a black hole must accumulate based upon
the entropy of the infalling matter/energy!

Besides classical circuit theory implementations like "Reversible Logic"
to save power there are very exciting opportunities in other quantum-computing
technologies like "Spintronics" (e.g. using the spin-quantum of currents flowing between magnetized metals / semiconductors to represent "1", "0" or
multi-level logic which is basically related to the way a NMR device gets
its signals):
Spintronics
Google It ...and various other quantum-effect computing technologies.

As for efficient power supplies, how about one that's 99% efficient,
generally non-toxic, cheap to manufacture (actually it's self manufacturing!)
and generates perfectly 'clean energy'?
Wired: Algae based fuel cells!
How about using the same kinds of photosynthesis that every green plant
on earth uses to split Hydrogen apart from Oxygen and create a microscopic
electrochemical fuel cell complete with the option of integrated
efficient 'storage batteries' for holding power when the sun's no

I feel bad when I don't buy my products carefully.

In addition to New Scientist, you can usually find good stuff on the same topic in Science News, Scientific American, Nature, and Science, to name a few.

A little radiation is not really a hazard. In fact, some radiation is benefical. You may not be familiar with hormesis.

I suggest you read this:

this
and this
and this.

This month's issue of Scientific American has a lengthly article on Microsoft's research division including an interview with Bill Gates. Its general conclusion is that Microsoft has one of the biggest pure computer science research labs ever. Apparently they have wooed some big names in the CS field to do research for their unit. It even likens what they are doing to the work Xerox PARC did back in the early 80s that ended up being the foundation for modern computing.

I rather trust Scientific American, so blame them instead of me...

This press release doesn't really have much new information in it. OLEDs have been around for several years now. And the article talks about printing the monitor on the same glass as a current LCD monitor. One of the real potential benefits of OLED is the ability to print them on a flexible plastic film. Check out this Scientific American article from back in February.

I may indeed read James Hansen's articles, like his recent Scientific American contribution. But I won't use his articles to determine the existence of a consensus.

I find the heuristic invaluable in filtering out "Chicken Littles." Further application of this heuristic is left as an exercise for the reader.

Quite true. It only jumped out at me because it seemed odd to compare a 3-dimensional object to a two-dimensional one. If they had specified how deep under alaska to measure in the 3rd dimension to obtain a volume of the same size, it would have made more sense.

I also noticed it because the tendancy of science writers to compare large things with "the size of France" has become a running joke. In addition to the Olympus Mons example, you might be interested to know that the Ross Ice Shelf (the largest ice shelf of Antarctica)is about the size of France. And another volcano (on Io) spews out ash that covers
an area of (guess what...) the size of France!

And for those who now want to know how big France is, exactly - well, it's 1/3 the size of Quebec, and more to the point, about the same as the area covered by coral reef worldwide. :)

There is a tremendous amount of stress placed upon the family of schizophrenic patients - by the patients, the medical community, and society in general. I've had three friends with this illness - one died in jail, one homeless and untreated by his own choice, and one has a wonderful life, family and career. Outcomes can vary widely.

Anyone with a schizophrenic family member should seek support -- from friends, family and social groups as well as professional counselling. At the least, this will help the family member deal with the stress of the situation and learn how to deal with the ill family member.

I, too, would like to extend my prayers for you and your family, for whatever it's worth to you - whether as something that is effective or simply an expression of concern from one human being to others in a difficult situation.

Excellent article to be found at Scientific American Neural Pharmacology Decoding Schizophrenia. Perhaps the most insidious and pernicious symptoms of schizophrenia are the negative symptoms of social isolation and apathy which can be wrongly seen to be a lack of effort on the part of the sufferer.

I thought it had a fairly nice description of how this works.

If you had an air bubble around your torpedo it would create drag. I assume that this uses a vacuume rather than an actual 'air bubble'.

You needn't assume. The article makes it clear that this is a bubble of gas, not vacume. It says:

The trick is to surround an object or vessel with a renewable envelope of gas so that the liquid wets very little of the body's surface, thereby drastically reducing the viscous drag.

Again, your questions were already answered. The bubble is started with a cavitation plate on the leading edge and expanded with gas injection around the nose...typically injection of a small portion of the exhaust gas from the rocket propulsion. The article says:

Supercavitation is an extreme version of cavitation in which a single bubble is formed that envelops the moving object almost completely...blunt-nosed cavitators and prow-mounted gas-injection systems produce these low-density gas pockets (what specialists call supercavities).

Just aft of the cavitator sit several rings of ventilation ducts that inject rocket exhaust and steam into the cavitation bubble to enlarge it.

I thought it had a fairly nice description of how this works.

If you had an air bubble around your torpedo it would create drag. I assume that this uses a vacuume rather than an actual 'air bubble'.

You needn't assume. The article makes it clear that this is a bubble of gas, not vacume. It says:

The trick is to surround an object or vessel with a renewable envelope of gas so that the liquid wets very little of the body's surface, thereby drastically reducing the viscous drag.

Again, your questions were already answered. The bubble is started with a cavitation plate on the leading edge and expanded with gas injection around the nose...typically injection of a small portion of the exhaust gas from the rocket propulsion. The article says:

Supercavitation is an extreme version of cavitation in which a single bubble is formed that envelops the moving object almost completely...blunt-nosed cavitators and prow-mounted gas-injection systems produce these low-density gas pockets (what specialists call supercavities).

Just aft of the cavitator sit several rings of ventilation ducts that inject rocket exhaust and steam into the cavitation bubble to enlarge it.

I thought it had a fairly nice description of how this works.

If you had an air bubble around your torpedo it would create drag. I assume that this uses a vacuume rather than an actual 'air bubble'.

You needn't assume. The article makes it clear that this is a bubble of gas, not vacume. It says:

The trick is to surround an object or vessel with a renewable envelope of gas so that the liquid wets very little of the body's surface, thereby drastically reducing the viscous drag.

Again, your questions were already answered. The bubble is started with a cavitation plate on the leading edge and expanded with gas injection around the nose...typically injection of a small portion of the exhaust gas from the rocket propulsion. The article says:

Supercavitation is an extreme version of cavitation in which a single bubble is formed that envelops the moving object almost completely...blunt-nosed cavitators and prow-mounted gas-injection systems produce these low-density gas pockets (what specialists call supercavities).

Just aft of the cavitator sit several rings of ventilation ducts that inject rocket exhaust and steam into the cavitation bubble to enlarge it.

It may be possible to have a universe that is expanding and contracting at different times based on variables we have no ability to measure, hence never be able to know which way we are going to go, only where we seem to have gone.

For some great educational sources for the non-astro-physicist, see The Elegant Universe excellent program (my six and ten year olds understood most of it). A few other articales are at Sky and Telescope and Scientific American

InnerWeb

slashdot discussed it at length a few years ago. The principles are well known, and the soviet military has been using 200+ mph supercavitating torpedos since the 1970s. The best article on the subject that I know of is from the May 2001 Scientific American

Years ago, when Mariner 10 went and disovered the Caloris Basin and wierd terrain on Mercury, I immediately wondered if something like that could happen on Earth. I was one of the first to notice that the volcanic Deccan Traps that formed in India at the time of the dinosaur extinction just happened to be located (after taking contintental drift into account) on the opposite side of the Earth from Chixulub. (As I recall, I wrote a letter to Scientific American about it, way back then...but they didn't think it publishable) And now the evidence seems to be accumulating, in favor of exactly such scenarios.

Or maybe there's so many articles out there that a search may give a better overview. That has nothing to do with laziness, and even less with being right or not.

And you are mistaken. 'It' in my post refers to the USA. And yes, the temperature range for each day increased. Which means that at some point (let's assume daytime, shall we?), the temperature raised, meaning it got hotter. And this, they claim, is the result of the lack of many contrails.
Whether the other end, assumed night-time, offsets this by being colder doesn't matter when only looking at the daytime timeframe.

I also didn't say that contrails cause greenhouse effects globally, which would relate to an increase in temperature. Some of the scientists involved do, however.

Just to humor you, a link : one of many search results

For instance, A volcanic erruption can cause so much more so called "greenhouse" gasses to be released into the atmosphere than all the polutants man has expelled since the first machine of industry.

That is, quite simply, crap. You're wrong and embarassingly so.

"There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity." - Scientific American

Moderators, please don't mod up silly statements like these where sources aren't cited.

Scientific American wrote about a simulare idea like this.

There is a definite trend of US politics having a detrimental effect on science.

The current issue of Scientific American mentions the censorship and blatant manipulation of facts by the current administration in order to further their political goals.

You are right that big bang is still the most credible theory - my sentence was not clear I guess. I meant that things like string theory and loop quantum gravity are becoming more credible, not that they are more credible than relativity/quantum mechanics. Look, everyone agrees (I think?) that relativity breaks down at the small scale and quantum mechanics break down at the large scale. That is why the whole world is looking for the unified theory of everything. You would be foolish to "believe" in either theory, since they are known to be flawed. That doesn't mean that you can't depend on their predictions inside their known limitations.

You, sir, are WRONG.

Drexler wrote Engines of Creation back in 1986. This is where a lot of the ideas of world destruction by a mass of self assembling nanobots - aka "grey goo" - came from. It is a rather scary thought, but its rather unlikely, IMHO. Btw, we are already using nanotechnology in PC's, according to Scientific American.

Whoops... Wrong link on the last one, even though it's informative anyway. This is the one I intended.

They still haven't come up with a good explanation of how space can have 0 curvature yet still be finite and unbounded.

Why do we continue to classify the shape of the Universe?

Because knowing more about the universe allows us to narrow down the possibilities of existence. For instance, if this new story is actually the case, it means that the universe is finite. So far there has been no real evidence that the universe is finite, leaving open the possibility that the universe is infinite. (i'm talking the universe here, not just our hubble volume)

If the universe is infinite, you necessarily have an infinite number of identical copies of you, living exactly the same life you are. You can even make a rough estimate about literally how far you are away from your nearest "twin". (s/he is 10^(10^28) metres away from you) Read the article at scientific american. It is online somewhere, but here is the abstract

See how physics is so closely tied to philosophy? That's why physics used to be called "natural philosophy". Knowing more about the universe allows us to...well, know more about the universe, and hence, the philosophical implications.

Knowledge is good.

cheers!

As some others have said, this technology has been around for a while now. Shazam were (iirc) the first to offer it in the UK. They charge 59p or about the same 99 cents. The Shazam service was covered in Scientific American in June 2003 and has been mentioned on /. a few times in the last year.

yes! Looking into this a little more, the time figure are close...

Perhaps this explains the jumps in evolution observed every 100,000 years or so.

from this article
"The time between magnetic reversals on the Earth is sometimes as short as 10,000 years and sometimes as long as 25 million years; the time it takes to reverse is only about 5,000 years."

Someone should look into this!

Get ready for a new body! Woohoo! :p

.

No, for HIGH speed, you've got to admire the notion of supercavitation, which lets you get torpedos to hypersonic speeds

--

For the 8-page, Scientific American introduction go here:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0007A73 5-759A-1CDD-B4A8809EC588EEDF&pageNumber=1&catI D=2

Mohammed Bah Abba received his Rolex Award For Enterprise on September 27, 2000. Here is the Scientific American write up from November 2000.

Looks like link this was going to be included in the article, but something got messed up. Sciam digital subscription required for the full article, unfortunately...

Scientific American: The Tyranny of Choice [ PSYCHOLOGY ]
Logic suggests that having options allows people
to select precisely what makes them happiest. But, as studies show, abundant choice often makes for misery

From what I am reading in the articles on the net, 100 feet can still create some serious, albeit localized damage. If this bad boy were to hit over the ocean, probably not much, but over land, it could cause serious local destruction. Anyone out there serious about their astronomy?

The Tunguska Blast over Siberia was an object about 100 meters in diameter. Sure it burned up in the atmosphere, but it was devastating to the ground anyway. This article also mentions that at about 50 meters, these rocks make it through the atmosphere and can do serious localized damage. So, since 100 feet converts to is 30.48 meters, this rock would more than likely to have an effect that we will notice on the ground.

For further reading, here is a site that has already compiled links and information And, of course, the Yahoo listings on Earth Impact information online.

InnerWeb

I'm not sure I understand, or agree.

Critical thinking is not about taking a contrary position just for the sake of doing so.

When one talks about critical thinking, definitions are often something like this. A good working definition is "regarding novel ideas with a dose of healthy scepticism."

It's about keeping your baloney detection kit handy. This can guard against getting taken by hoaxes.

Which was why I brought it up in this context.

John Nagle
Team Overbot

The vehicles had to navigate along a series of waypoints which were between 150 and 1000 feet apart. There was also a limitation on how far they could stray: the width of legal track between each set of waypoints was defined, and could be, apparently, as little as 10 feet.

My understanding is that DARPA deliberately made the course difficult, going under rock formations, around the occasional hairpin turn, and so forth, to make sure that the robots could really navigate.

Many of the health affects of coffee are not associated with caffeine. Some of the studies haven't separated caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee drinkers. Others that have done so, but noted no difference in benefits between the caffeinated and decaff coffee. The benefits come from other chemicals (sorry, tea drinkers).

Sciam has had very interesting articles about coffee, which get more into the science then this blurb. Sadly, the best one isn't free - so I'll link to the list of coffee articles.

Many of the health affects of coffee are not associated with caffeine. Some of the studies haven't separated caffeinated and decaffeinated coffee drinkers. Others that have done so, but noted no difference in benefits between the caffeinated and decaff coffee. The benefits come from other chemicals (sorry, tea drinkers).

Sciam has had very interesting articles about coffee, which get more into the science then this blurb. Sadly, the best one isn't free - so I'll link to the list of coffee articles.

You'll buy another one, and it will have the latest DRM. That's why they made television addictive.

Scientific American did a story about this a while ago...

Name That Tune

Maybe this is the same technology.

For some time now, television has troubled me. Recently, after reading this article in Scientific American, I've made the leap. My television was left on the road-side, and quickly snapped up by someone in need. I, however, find myself with a lot of time on my hands to do those things I've always intended to do. Losing weight, and excercising properly have long been goals that I'm now only starting to realize. My interpersonal communications have improved remarkably in the 2 months I've been without television. So, fellow slashdotters, I implore you, throw out your TV. Read more, live more, be happier. You can do it. I did!

No, no. Liquid nitrogen cutters.

Sorry, but you have to subscribe to read the whole article...

Regards Luke

So speed of operation is key, and the need for ruggedness follows from that: the more stable and well-shielded your sensors are, the less work the computers have to do to clean up the data before they can use it to make sense of the world looming before the racer. AFAIK, only one team (the Red Team) has built a high-speed gimbal in order to stabilize some of their sensors in all three axes against the jolts and jitter of a high-speed desert traverse. But will the gimbal itself be able to withstand the journey? Component endurance will be critical, and the race will in a very literal sense be a shake-out. Any team that has less than a month of rigorous desert testing under its belt by race day will have essentially no idea how well its racer will endure.

Top-of-the-line components are sometimes more fragile and often more buggy than standard COTS parts. So a big budget doesn't guarantee success by any means, and in truth not once of the competing teams has a big budget by DARPA standards. (The $5 million budget often attributed to the Red Team in lackadaisacal news accounts is spurious; that figure was tossed out early on as what would be required to field two vehicles and have spares for every critical part. Needless to say, the project quickly lowered its amibitions considerably.)

According to the rules, DARPA has no claim to the intellectual property developed by the GC teams. Based on my conversation with DARPA director Tony Tether, my hunch is that what DARPA gets out of this event is primarily PR and exposure to a part of the "fringe" engineering community that would not normally think of taking its out-of-the-box ideas to the DOD. Frankly it seems very unlikely that any GC vehicles we'll see this year could serve as the starting point for a standard DARPA contract program. But they will be exploring a much larger design space than DARPA could explore through its normal programs.

Nor is DARPA the only beneficiary. One very competent team pulled out early on because an Asian firm swooped in and paid it eight figures for its design. So there is one vehicle that is more likely to end up in the arsenal of South Korea, say, than in any Pentagon warehouse. Not exactly what DARPA expected, I imagine.

I just read an article in Scientific American about this. I'm not into robotics myself, but I'm curious: how much of the difficulty is due to the time it takes to process the input data (from cameras, lasers, etc.)? how much is from the necessary ruggedness of the components? how much difficulty comes from lack of funding for and access to top-of-the-line components? I'm also curious to see what DARPA plans to do with the winning vehicle, if there is a winner. Will they pay for, and then take, any vehicle that is innovative (for example, the motorcycle that can stand on its own)?. Kudos to DARPA for their clever method of conducting research--instead of tying funds up in someone's brainchild, they are allowing a lot of different ideas to proliferate.