What they propose to do is use heat to generate work. By using this heat, they would essentially be cooling the device.
All that stuff about Brownian motion (essentially molecular collisions) is only relevant when the device is miniaturized to the molecular scale.
The article was about how large lecture classes in college do not teach the essential problem solving skills needed to develop a thorough understanding of science. They then said to tune in next time for some solutions.
I agree that a significant portion of the reactivity has to do with the electrons, however, many species with identical numbers of electrons have different reactivities based on their differences in the nucleus. For example, ammonia, NH3 is a weak base and nucleophile, while CH3- species is an extremely strong base. The main difference between these two species is that the carbon has one fewer proton in the nucleus.
The example I gave with deuterium was simply to show that nuclear structure does make a difference to the properties of a molecule. Even by your own example of positronium, there are differences in spectral lines between hydrogen and positronium which indicate that hydrogen and positronium have different energies between the HOMO and LUMO of the their associated orbitals. Yes the orbitals could be similar in shape much like a 1s and 2s orbital are similar, but that does not mean that they are identical, and will act in the exact same way.
Positronium acts chemically exactly like Hydrogen, because chemistry is based on the electron shell, not the actual atom inside (the different elements are all distinguished by how many electrons they have in orbit, as well how much or little they want to keep electrons.)
The different elements are all distinguished by the number of PROTONS in the nucleus of an atom. This is one of the most basic concepts in chemistry, and is the basis for the periodic table.
Additionally, the differences between hydrogen and deuterium (hydrogen with an extra neutron) can have significant effects on their reactivity. For example, if you drank nothing but D2O instead of H2O, you would die because of their differing physical properties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
A recent psychological study testing the taste of wine based on price has shown that if people are told that they are drinking a more expensive wine, they get more pleasure from the experience, even though it was the same wine.
I imagine that the reason why people think these cables sound better is for the same reason. So, it is likely that the people who think that the cables are better will derive more pleasure from listening to music using them. The cables may actually work better, just not for any technical reason.
A remake of the dune movie recently was released on youtube. Clocking at under 1 minute, I think it did the original movie (not book) justice.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rlIuMzuUE0
I imagine the expense of these systems will rapidly decrease as pattern recognition software gets better and the hardware gets cheaper allowing for more widespread adoption. (for example see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/)
As any organic chemist will tell you, the preferred conformation of carbon is tetrahedral. There is almost no strain in the bonding angles or lengths in a diamond lattice which leads to an extremely stable structure. The bonding pattern in diamonds is about as low in energy as you can get for carbon.
I understand that people enjoy having multifunctional devices, but at some point people are going to say, "Do I really need another phone, mp3 player, ect.?" If I already have an iphone, would I run off to replace it with a nintendo phone whose phone component I would never use?
Adding components increases the price, and if I am not going to use the phone, then I am essentially paying more for nothing. The PS3 is a good example of the problems of combining expensive and extraneous blue ray hardware with a game system, when most people already have a perfectly functional DVD player: an increase in price for little consumer value.
I don't think nintendo will go along this path, as they are reluctant to combine multiple devices together. The Wii doesn't even have DVD functionality simply because they did not want to pay royalties on every system sold.
I am currently studying for a PhD in chemistry, and have found that most of the students are American. However, from talking to people who previously worked in industry, it seems that you really need a PhD to climb the corporate ladder. From what I understand of engineering degrees, it is very easy to get a good job with a BS, making a PhD unnecessary unless you want to go into academia.
So yes, it does feel like PhD positions are being filled by foreign students, because most Americans do not need nor want to get a PhD in engineering, but please don't assume it is the same across all the sciences.
While no one can argue that google is a great tool for general web searches, the google-sponsored search within the main IU site is not really on the ball. Having access to a person familiar with the campus giving me a direct answer would be better than wading through pages of useless links to find any information at all. I'm not saying they should kill google altogether, but it would be nice to have a human alternative in aggravating situations when you just can't seem to find what you want.
There is a program called strokeit http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/ that allows you to use mouse gestures in any windows program. I find it useful if only for the ability to bypass clicking the tiny buttons on the top right corner of the window.
I am currently working towards a PhD in this subject. I think that the first thing to realize is that he has not yet made a motor. He has molecular ratchet as proof of concept towards a molecular motor.
In layman's terms this is how the ratchet works. First, the molecule is essentially a dumbbell with a ring around it. The ring can move freely back and forth across the dumbbell, but prefers to be at either end. The dumbbell can be bent only near one end, which prevents the ring from moving. The ring catalyzes the transition from bent to strait, to allow motion. The thing is, is that the ring needs to be next to the bend for a significant amount of time to unbend the dumbbell.
So, when the ring is next to the bend, it can straiten it temporally to move across. When it is far away, it can no longer move across the bend, and since the second binding site is far away from the bend, it is stuck there. If you have two dumbbells looped end-to-end with one ring, then you would have a molecular motor. The ring is acting as "Maxwell's Daemon" to allow movement across the system.
I am currently working towards a PhD in a simmilar field. Let me tell you why I find this exciting. If you take a look at the article in Nature, you'll find that the switch is significantly different than those we see today. It is simply one molecule with an on-off state. This is the first time that a synthetic moleculular machinge has been incorporated into a working memory storage device. Rather than having to lithograph every junction, the molecules simply bind to the silicon wires to create a memory device.
Working towards devices from much smaller molecular parts, rather than wittling large blocks of material, has been demonstrated to be a feasible next step in miniturization of electronics.
There was a time when it was popular among chemists to believe that every chemical compound possible had already been synthesized by nature. This has been all but disproven in the chemical literature by many novel synthetic chemicals.
While evolutionary mechanics are beautiful for creating a streamlined and efficient system, it has its limits. Biological organisms are hindered by lack of resources. While the things they do with carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are unrivaled by any modern synthetic chemical techniques, there are many reactions that are all but impossible in biological systems due to the need for catalysts made from rare metals or extreme temperatures. Nature can't work with carbon nanotubes because it does not have any to work with.
So what I am trying to say is that evolutionary systems are limited by the starting basis set, and expanding beyond that is impossible without an outside source.
Slashdot Mirror
There are plenty of 16 year olds that can handle college. But, the problem is there are not many 20 year olds that can handle the real world.
They will start offering DLC content before the game comes out.
Do you want to know what the secret to humor is timing.
Games have trouble with timing if the player is in control, and not the comedian.
What they propose to do is use heat to generate work. By using this heat, they would essentially be cooling the device. All that stuff about Brownian motion (essentially molecular collisions) is only relevant when the device is miniaturized to the molecular scale.
Space has been mathballed?
The article was about how large lecture classes in college do not teach the essential problem solving skills needed to develop a thorough understanding of science. They then said to tune in next time for some solutions.
It seems like it would be hard to enforce jurisdiction in space when we don't even have jurisdiction 10 miles off our coastline.
I agree that a significant portion of the reactivity has to do with the electrons, however, many species with identical numbers of electrons have different reactivities based on their differences in the nucleus. For example, ammonia, NH3 is a weak base and nucleophile, while CH3- species is an extremely strong base. The main difference between these two species is that the carbon has one fewer proton in the nucleus.
The example I gave with deuterium was simply to show that nuclear structure does make a difference to the properties of a molecule. Even by your own example of positronium, there are differences in spectral lines between hydrogen and positronium which indicate that hydrogen and positronium have different energies between the HOMO and LUMO of the their associated orbitals. Yes the orbitals could be similar in shape much like a 1s and 2s orbital are similar, but that does not mean that they are identical, and will act in the exact same way.
Positronium acts chemically exactly like Hydrogen, because chemistry is based on the electron shell, not the actual atom inside (the different elements are all distinguished by how many electrons they have in orbit, as well how much or little they want to keep electrons.)
The different elements are all distinguished by the number of PROTONS in the nucleus of an atom. This is one of the most basic concepts in chemistry, and is the basis for the periodic table.
Additionally, the differences between hydrogen and deuterium (hydrogen with an extra neutron) can have significant effects on their reactivity. For example, if you drank nothing but D2O instead of H2O, you would die because of their differing physical properties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water
A recent psychological study testing the taste of wine based on price has shown that if people are told that they are drinking a more expensive wine, they get more pleasure from the experience, even though it was the same wine.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/15/america/wine.php
I imagine that the reason why people think these cables sound better is for the same reason. So, it is likely that the people who think that the cables are better will derive more pleasure from listening to music using them. The cables may actually work better, just not for any technical reason.
A remake of the dune movie recently was released on youtube. Clocking at under 1 minute, I think it did the original movie (not book) justice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rlIuMzuUE0
I think current VR systems tend to be a bit expensive, but they are around. Disney Quest has quite a few VR attractions. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisneyQuest/
Also, Carnegie Mellon has a course where you build VR games. http://www.etc.cmu.edu/bvw/
I imagine the expense of these systems will rapidly decrease as pattern recognition software gets better and the hardware gets cheaper allowing for more widespread adoption. (for example see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/)
As any organic chemist will tell you, the preferred conformation of carbon is tetrahedral. There is almost no strain in the bonding angles or lengths in a diamond lattice which leads to an extremely stable structure. The bonding pattern in diamonds is about as low in energy as you can get for carbon.
I understand that people enjoy having multifunctional devices, but at some point people are going to say, "Do I really need another phone, mp3 player, ect.?" If I already have an iphone, would I run off to replace it with a nintendo phone whose phone component I would never use? Adding components increases the price, and if I am not going to use the phone, then I am essentially paying more for nothing. The PS3 is a good example of the problems of combining expensive and extraneous blue ray hardware with a game system, when most people already have a perfectly functional DVD player: an increase in price for little consumer value. I don't think nintendo will go along this path, as they are reluctant to combine multiple devices together. The Wii doesn't even have DVD functionality simply because they did not want to pay royalties on every system sold.
I am currently studying for a PhD in chemistry, and have found that most of the students are American. However, from talking to people who previously worked in industry, it seems that you really need a PhD to climb the corporate ladder. From what I understand of engineering degrees, it is very easy to get a good job with a BS, making a PhD unnecessary unless you want to go into academia. So yes, it does feel like PhD positions are being filled by foreign students, because most Americans do not need nor want to get a PhD in engineering, but please don't assume it is the same across all the sciences.
A neat toy that I found is the Microsoft Physics Illustrator for Tablet PC. This application lets you draw physics diagrams, and then animates them. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?Fa milyID=56347faf-a639-4f3b-9b87-1487fd4b5a53&displa ylang=en
While no one can argue that google is a great tool for general web searches, the google-sponsored search within the main IU site is not really on the ball. Having access to a person familiar with the campus giving me a direct answer would be better than wading through pages of useless links to find any information at all. I'm not saying they should kill google altogether, but it would be nice to have a human alternative in aggravating situations when you just can't seem to find what you want.
There is a program called strokeit http://www.tcbmi.com/strokeit/ that allows you to use mouse gestures in any windows program. I find it useful if only for the ability to bypass clicking the tiny buttons on the top right corner of the window.
Also, the molecule that is essentially the basic carbon backbone is called adamantane.
I am currently working towards a PhD in this subject. I think that the first thing to realize is that he has not yet made a motor. He has molecular ratchet as proof of concept towards a molecular motor.
d f/nature05452.pdf
In layman's terms this is how the ratchet works. First, the molecule is essentially a dumbbell with a ring around it. The ring can move freely back and forth across the dumbbell, but prefers to be at either end. The dumbbell can be bent only near one end, which prevents the ring from moving. The ring catalyzes the transition from bent to strait, to allow motion. The thing is, is that the ring needs to be next to the bend for a significant amount of time to unbend the dumbbell.
So, when the ring is next to the bend, it can straiten it temporally to move across. When it is far away, it can no longer move across the bend, and since the second binding site is far away from the bend, it is stuck there. If you have two dumbbells looped end-to-end with one ring, then you would have a molecular motor. The ring is acting as "Maxwell's Daemon" to allow movement across the system.
Here's a link to the actual journal article if you care to read: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7127/p
I am currently working towards a PhD in a simmilar field. Let me tell you why I find this exciting. If you take a look at the article in Nature, you'll find that the switch is significantly different than those we see today. It is simply one molecule with an on-off state. This is the first time that a synthetic moleculular machinge has been incorporated into a working memory storage device. Rather than having to lithograph every junction, the molecules simply bind to the silicon wires to create a memory device. Working towards devices from much smaller molecular parts, rather than wittling large blocks of material, has been demonstrated to be a feasible next step in miniturization of electronics.
There was a time when it was popular among chemists to believe that every chemical compound possible had already been synthesized by nature. This has been all but disproven in the chemical literature by many novel synthetic chemicals.
While evolutionary mechanics are beautiful for creating a streamlined and efficient system, it has its limits. Biological organisms are hindered by lack of resources. While the things they do with carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen are unrivaled by any modern synthetic chemical techniques, there are many reactions that are all but impossible in biological systems due to the need for catalysts made from rare metals or extreme temperatures. Nature can't work with carbon nanotubes because it does not have any to work with.
So what I am trying to say is that evolutionary systems are limited by the starting basis set, and expanding beyond that is impossible without an outside source.