The Mars Society - To further the goal of the exploration and settlement of the Red Planet.
The Moon Society - An international nonprofit educational and scientific foundation formed to further the creation of communities on the Moon involving large-scale industrialization and private enterprise.
Space Frontier Foundation - seems to have projects for space colonization, missions to the Earth's moon, and so on. Looks like a large scale organization.
Space Access Society - activism for getting out of the NASA-only paradigm/reality.
Students for the Exploration and Development of Space - `... is dedicated to expanding the role of human exploration and development of space. We also seek to educate the public in such a way as to attain this goal. `
Space Studies Institute - `SSI's stated mission is: Opening the energy and material resources of space for human benefit by completing the missing technological links to make possible the productive use of the abundant resources in space.`
International Space University - `The International Space University provides graduate-level training to the future leaders of the emerging global space community at its Central Campus in Strasbourg, France, and at locations around the world. ` (mentions 'systems engineering' on the About page)
Space Settlement Institute - `The Space Settlement Institute is a non-profit association founded to help promote the human colonization and settlement of outer space. `
Cygo's Space Initiative - plan and conduct exploration missions to minor planets, build and mass produce (while in space) a multi-purpose interconnectable module, and to offer products and services using space and the materials therefrom.
Freeluna - `Freeluna.com is dedicated to the proposition that the colonization of outer space is critical for the long term survival of the human species, and that colonization of the moon and the exploitation of the moon's natural resources is one of the very best first steps in that incredible journey off planet.`... and when I first visited this page, I was visitor #3371. Yikes. Contact: Bill Clawson, wclawson@freeluna.com
Island One Society - associated with the Artemis society, seems to be mostly a resource-help site.
The Living Universe Foundation - `The Living Universe Foundation seeks to bring the galaxy alive with life from Earth, while healing the damage that humanity has already inflicted upon the Earth. We believe that expansion into space in the immediate future is a step towards accomplishing this aim.` turmith@yahoo.com --- This organization was inspired by the publication of a certain book. This is heavily related to Project Atlantis or Oceania (artifical floatin
What protocols do automated teller machines use to communicate with banks? And does anybody have their own schematics for building ATMs? HowStuffWorks has a video that goes inside ATMs and Wikipedia is informative re: the software aspects, but maybe there is more information out there?
Gravity is also a field that has both a magnitude and direction since it creates action.
Gravity is most certainly not some field. The standard model of physics allows for virtual particles that mediate the forces, which provides suitable explanation for how the force works rather than some simple field-based interpretation-- in the case of gravity there might be gravitons(*), and in the case of electromagnetic interactions there might be virtual photons. There is no all-knowing permeating field that is distributed throughout the universe. Due to the likes of scifi, my personal understanding of 'fields' has been hindered by thinking of "force fields" that block laser weapons (hah) which is definitely not what these fields are like.
Allow me to clarify: fields do not physically exist. However they are our own mathematical constructions. They may explain nothing of the nature of the force and interactions, but they are actually quite useful to determine magnitudes, directions, etc. Ironically, in another post I mentioned to somebody that "fields are not aether," when Maxwell actually came up with his theory of electromagnetism based off of aether-tubes as the field lines. He later decided to drop the aether-tubes interpretation and to accept purely the mathematics. Harsh of him? Anyway, gravity is not a field, but so far the results of its interactions can be predicted via field theory.
(*) 'Might be' is rather strong in this scenario. Virtual photons have not been observed, though acting as if they exist has proven tremendous success in quantum electrodynamics. Yet, we do not know how to make gravitons work as the mediator of gravity in our calculations, so 'might be' is not too far from any truth.
Nah, fields are mathematical formulations. Quantum field theory provides the virtual particles that more physically explain force interactions via probability amplitudes and so on. In fact, this is exactly what gave Feynman his quantum electrodynamics and subsequent Nobel prize (that he disliked).
Shortly after the birth of the Universe in the Big Bang, as the universe expanded the temperature fell below a critical value where a new type of field developed everywhere in the Universe (field, cmp. magnetic field around a magnet. Every point in space has a property: a measurable magnetic force and direction). We call this particular field the Higgs field. Some particles coupled to this field and the property they acquired is what we measure as mass. That is, particles are not solid in themselves but can be seen as a wave on a water surface. Although a wave moves no water from one side of a lake to another, it carries a lot of information: energy, momentum, amplitude, wavelength, etc. For particles mass is just another property acquired by interacting with the ever pervading Higgs field and that property we perceive as mass.
... but from what I hear of the culture there, there's very little emphasis on "open source".
Yeah, this reminds me of some post here or article somewhere else that pointed out that when medical technology goes more open source, there are going to be many gurus that pop up that have intense medical expertise, but the problem will be that they are using their own self-made equipment and so some people will be weary (as they should be) of seeking such 'experts'-- but this is good, since it will allow equipment innovation and the diffusion of medicine back into the hands of hackers.
Greg Bear made an appearance on Jon Stewart's the Daily Show on June 21st 02007; Bear was mentioning that within five years he expects even high school students to be able to get their hands on the equipment required to do their own cell cultures, virus construction, etc. It will be an interesting time of development, though I can imagine why scientific instrument companies are scared senseless. Too bad they are not taking the open source approach: whichever company starts down that path would undoubtedly have an enormous influence in the future of med tech.
There are many places to obtain schematics, even USENET, though I have recently found (and liked) delabs/schematics.
For me it is Opera that has weird tab loading 'impairments'
Firefox:
1. open slashdot main page, middle click all links that look interesting to load in background,
No, Firefox does not "load in background" anything. It specifically loads the page immediately meaning you are unable to continue working on the page that you have assigned focus. And your problem sounds trivial, have you tried searching for tab focus ordering parameters, or clicking on the tabs you want via the vertical sidepanel list of tabs?
We are using programable lasers at our hospital too (well, kind of experimental). The programmable laser radiation doser may be successfully employed in rheumatology (arthritis, arthrosis), neurology (radiculitis, osteochondrosis), gynaecology (inflammation of adnexa), urology, in cases of pancreatonecrosis, pulmonary pathology, hepatitis, gastritis, trophic ulcer, dermatitis, eczema and other diseases.
Hey, quick question: does your hospital keep around anybody that knows lasers inside-and-out, or are they all closed source machines? Just wondering what sort of detailed information floats around hospitals, I suppose. Sometimes, I hear of labs that do not make their own machinery and consequently are "in the dark" when doing unknown procedures or updates to hardware.
Does anyone know where I can go to learn to build my own desktop lasers? I have found Sam's laser FAQ before, but surely there are other sources out there.
Really, the Opera web browser has allowed me to do great things throughout the internet, with hundreds of tabs open, and consequently more bookmarking being done, and session management, I do not know how productive I would be with Firefox alone. Commonly, when stranded on Firefox-only systems, I am burdened with odd tab loading impairments and generally limited to acting like I am doing literally one thing and one thing only-- no queuing up content or strands of thought, etc. Even with the hierarchical vertical tabbing enhancements through the TBE extension akin to iRider, my productivity seems to drop. So, I am glad to see more (good) publicity for Opera.
The idealized likelihood of any one particular person is one in 64 trillion different genetic combinations of mother and father chromosomes. And with 100 billion neurons being stimulated throughout childhood, how are we to say that birth order influences one particular variable that we measure with various psychology tests? There is an immense amount of complexity that we cannot yet isolate (ask the neuroscientists), even in estimating the likelihood of specific combinations of genes because of diffusion gradients, energy interaction dynamics of DNA, and all sorts of other phenomena that keep us guessing only in 'Idealized' cases-- birth order is nowhere near such an idealization, however.
Granted, most of these links are preliminary- check those deep databases, like over at PubMed Central, for those detailed reviews of the state of the art. And just for kicks, one last link which (still) impresses me.
Vat-grown, or printed, meat products are produced using the same basic techniques as other forms of printed tissue culture. Tissue engineering of this type was first developed for medical use in the production of autologous tissue for organ replacement. However this sort of tissue culture was soon found to be useful for the direct production of meat for food on spacecraft and habitats in deep space. See bioforgery.
To achieve the goal of meat production, muscle and other flesh cells are grown on a specially constructed biopolymer scaffold, which replicates the natural extracellular matrix found in living animals. This scaffold is generally printed using a rapid 3d printer device, although several other related techniques such as foaming and self-assembly are also used. Cultured cells are then implanted into the scaffolding, and these cells are induced to bind together into muscle-like or vascular tissue. Once the meat block, known as `slab', is established, the tissue is supplied with nutrients and allowed to grow by as much as 400% by volume before harvesting. To ensure the slab has a healthy texture it is stimulated into regular contractions, simulating exercise; the slab is attached at each end to strain gauges to measure the force of contraction. Each slab is connected to a generous supply of nutrient fluid often closely resembling blood.
Matter compilers in meat factories to produce foods. So, this looks like an interesting area of thought to explore further. Starting with cell culture techniques would be the smart thing to do, then confirming that we can identify particularly nutritious cells, and then working on some tissue growth techniques. Maybe this will start with burn victims?
Your problem-system is impossible to solve, I think. Therefore, looking at the fundamnetal aspects of the system (land, ownership, money, property) might provide more insights into possible solutions that will allow us to live. From this perspective, permanent residency could be replaced with assured residency and then move towards an understanding that we do not all have to permanently stay put in one place. Lots of people like to roam around, set up camp, mobile homes, etc.
But maybe that's where we're heading. I remember a sci-fi story where the ultimate retirement was plugging you in to a terminal with a feeding tube for your you physical body and letting you live out the rest of your life like that, plugged into your ultimate fantasy. I'll bet a good percentage of people would like that easy life.
Personally, that sort of life sounds rather dull. I agree. Transportation is pretty bleak when you view it more as a prison, trapped in your vehicle, etc. So maybe making it less necessary for work and the operation of civilization would be useful, imagine the sort of optimizations we can engineer. Then travel can be more liberal and less the resource trap that is today.
You can order all the goods and services you want with your computer, but eventually someone's going to have to drive that stuff over to your house, which will be pretty hard to do with "no car at all."
Imagine some network of underground tubes that might be able to do this. Though shipment transportation might logistically work best in our current individual trucking units. On top of this, we can also consider alternatives like personal fabrication, or more jokingly perhaps catapults.
This is what I think... There won't be cars in the future. There will only be personalised vehicles to transport each individual. Roads, the larger they are, will not allow single vehicles. There has to be two or more (depending on the road) vehicles required to travel together. Probably the smallest road will allow individual vehicles to travel by themselves. As more vehicles travel together the overall fuel consumption will decrease and fuel efficiency will increase. Individual vehicles will be able to break off from this combined unit as they reach their destinations.
Even with "emission free" cars, you still expend the energy to move the car to being with. Getting rid of pollution is an important goal, but the ultimate goal should be to conserve the environmental resources required to produce and operate cars. By creating a city in which cars are less necessary, you reduce the energy consumption of the average citizen, even after you factor in the energy required to operate the 24-hour mass transit systems.
Just an interesting tidbit here: "It's things like cars that take people out of public spaces and make a community less safe." Arcosanti, an interesting experimental town supposedly as an alternative to urban sprawl.
Argument that car-free is too expensive.
An interesting problem in #5975908:
1) People like cars. Tell them they can't use thier cars anymore, and you're liable to be voted out of office.
2) If you get rid of cars, you have to have an alternative system of transportation in place. Unfortunately, the only place to PUT that system will many times be where the roads are now. Result: you can't build the system until the cars are gone, and you can't get rid of the cars until the system is ready!
The real car of the future may in fact be no car at all. Might it be possible that there are methods of living that do not require us to live distantly from useful and necessary services? Looks like we can get services to our computer fairly well, right?
In this case, the Wikipedia fabrication article is rather useful. And as for the images from the article, it would be especially nice if we could do tagging in order to identify the machinery. What are they using? And how can we design similar machines?
Slashdot Mirror
What protocols do automated teller machines use to communicate with banks? And does anybody have their own schematics for building ATMs? HowStuffWorks has a video that goes inside ATMs and Wikipedia is informative re: the software aspects, but maybe there is more information out there?
Allow me to clarify: fields do not physically exist. However they are our own mathematical constructions. They may explain nothing of the nature of the force and interactions, but they are actually quite useful to determine magnitudes, directions, etc. Ironically, in another post I mentioned to somebody that "fields are not aether," when Maxwell actually came up with his theory of electromagnetism based off of aether-tubes as the field lines. He later decided to drop the aether-tubes interpretation and to accept purely the mathematics. Harsh of him? Anyway, gravity is not a field, but so far the results of its interactions can be predicted via field theory.
* Warning: gravity is only a theory,
* Open questions in quantum gravity,
* Resources,
* Open questions in physics,
* What's wrong with loop quantum gravity?
(*) 'Might be' is rather strong in this scenario. Virtual photons have not been observed, though acting as if they exist has proven tremendous success in quantum electrodynamics. Yet, we do not know how to make gravitons work as the mediator of gravity in our calculations, so 'might be' is not too far from any truth.
Greg Bear made an appearance on Jon Stewart's the Daily Show on June 21st 02007; Bear was mentioning that within five years he expects even high school students to be able to get their hands on the equipment required to do their own cell cultures, virus construction, etc. It will be an interesting time of development, though I can imagine why scientific instrument companies are scared senseless. Too bad they are not taking the open source approach: whichever company starts down that path would undoubtedly have an enormous influence in the future of med tech.
There are many places to obtain schematics, even USENET, though I have recently found (and liked) delabs/schematics.
Does anyone know where I can go to learn to build my own desktop lasers? I have found Sam's laser FAQ before, but surely there are other sources out there.
Really, the Opera web browser has allowed me to do great things throughout the internet, with hundreds of tabs open, and consequently more bookmarking being done, and session management, I do not know how productive I would be with Firefox alone. Commonly, when stranded on Firefox-only systems, I am burdened with odd tab loading impairments and generally limited to acting like I am doing literally one thing and one thing only-- no queuing up content or strands of thought, etc. Even with the hierarchical vertical tabbing enhancements through the TBE extension akin to iRider, my productivity seems to drop. So, I am glad to see more (good) publicity for Opera.
The idealized likelihood of any one particular person is one in 64 trillion different genetic combinations of mother and father chromosomes. And with 100 billion neurons being stimulated throughout childhood, how are we to say that birth order influences one particular variable that we measure with various psychology tests? There is an immense amount of complexity that we cannot yet isolate (ask the neuroscientists), even in estimating the likelihood of specific combinations of genes because of diffusion gradients, energy interaction dynamics of DNA, and all sorts of other phenomena that keep us guessing only in 'Idealized' cases-- birth order is nowhere near such an idealization, however.
* Wikipedia linked me to this re: birth order and intelligence.
* Judith Harris on birth order and related psychology.
Just before Google's index is poisoned with this article's mention of 'technolust' (you know, in case anybody cares) I thought it might be nice to pull up at least one (odd) result which seems to be about new paperless writing options. This is related to freenode.net's #electronic's elite01's paperless typewriter as well as my own project notes on my website.
Here's an important list of science databases. Don't forget CiteSeer, PubMed Central, Google Scholar, Science Direct, American Chemical Society, Institute of Physics, IEEE, EBSCO Host, etc. Also, an older discussion might be useful, and this one and online science information portals.
The RobotWisdom timeline is an interesting find and illustrates nicely our progress in information representation.
Five minutes of thoughtful searching brought up useful, important information for anybody willing to take these sciences and technologies seriously. The National Institute of Health (NIH) stem cell page has some paper abstracts as well as listed universities with programs in these United States (and some online resources). Useful sources of information at this bibliography re: human reproductive cloning, at Boston University and this one. CiteSeer popped up the paper on nuclear transfer / human cloning. Apparently there's at least one dedicated research foundation out there.
Granted, most of these links are preliminary- check those deep databases, like over at PubMed Central, for those detailed reviews of the state of the art. And just for kicks, one last link which (still) impresses me.
Would be very useful, Google. Maybe one of those nifty "email new search results" to give us heads up on potentially destructive politics?
Nutrient film techniques (txt)
Hyperaccumulators bibliography
Hydroponic farm plan (aquafarm)
Aquaculture bibliography
Why is the food outlook gloomy? (txt)
Setting up a hydroponic herb garden
Spider: the future of farming
Artificial meat production-- ah, this looks useful:
Matter compilers in meat factories to produce foods. So, this looks like an interesting area of thought to explore further. Starting with cell culture techniques would be the smart thing to do, then confirming that we can identify particularly nutritious cells, and then working on some tissue growth techniques. Maybe this will start with burn victims?
Artificial cells, tissues, organs compilation,
Background notes on tissue engineering,
Engineering human tissue (paper),
An odd government website,
Obligatory Wikipedia article linkage,
Organ printing,
This source is claiming lab-grown meat in five years,
Fetal farming (what?),
New-Harvest.org for bringing cultivated meat closer to reality,
Your problem-system is impossible to solve, I think. Therefore, looking at the fundamnetal aspects of the system (land, ownership, money, property) might provide more insights into possible solutions that will allow us to live. From this perspective, permanent residency could be replaced with assured residency and then move towards an understanding that we do not all have to permanently stay put in one place. Lots of people like to roam around, set up camp, mobile homes, etc.
* Asimov's Caves of Steel
*
are all that seem to be the main contestants that match your books.
Personally, that sort of life sounds rather dull. I agree. Transportation is pretty bleak when you view it more as a prison, trapped in your vehicle, etc. So maybe making it less necessary for work and the operation of civilization would be useful, imagine the sort of optimizations we can engineer. Then travel can be more liberal and less the resource trap that is today.
Telepresence. See the Wikipedia telepresence article.
"We must imagine a future without cars."
Designing a city without any cars.
Orson Scott Card on 'walking neighborhoods' (I first thought he was talking of some scifi idea, such as moving neighborhoods, haha.)
Carfree (?)
Monorail Opportunity in Seattle, Washington (1998)
From #19302663:
Also, from #10313790:
Creating car free cities dupe with >1k comments.
Post #5975896 gets it right:
Just an interesting tidbit here: "It's things like cars that take people out of public spaces and make a community less safe."
Arcosanti, an interesting experimental town supposedly as an alternative to urban sprawl.
Argument that car-free is too expensive.
An interesting problem in #5975908:
Apparently Venice is not the solution, either. ...
Small steps needed to make the change.
Pipes from Futurama? Or maybe, dare it be said,
The real car of the future may in fact be no car at all. Might it be possible that there are methods of living that do not require us to live distantly from useful and necessary services? Looks like we can get services to our computer fairly well, right?
In this case, the Wikipedia fabrication article is rather useful. And as for the images from the article, it would be especially nice if we could do tagging in order to identify the machinery. What are they using? And how can we design similar machines?
"When will we grant ourselves the right to travel?" - And it looks like we need it ASAP.