Viva La Relativity!

100 years after his “miracle year,” it’s no exaggeration to say that Einstein changed the world. The 2005 celebrations have reminded us of his genius, his wit, his generosity and his influence.

Site – http://www.seedmagazine.com

Science Faces ‘Dangerous Times’

Fundamentalism is hampering global efforts to tackle climate change, according to Britain’s top scientist. In his final speech as president of the Royal Society, Lord May of Oxford will say scientists must speak out against the climate change “denial lobby”. He will warn core scientific values are “under serious threat from resurgent fundamentalism, West and East”. “Sadly, for many, the response is to retreat from complexity and difficulty by embracing the darkness of fundamentalist unreason.”

Site – http://news.bbc.co.uk

The New DayQuil (and NyQuil) Blows … A Lot

Great just when I get a cold I hear this. The makers of the new NyQuil and DayQuil have taken out one of its best ingredients due to its use in making crystal meth. There is a recommendation to try Tylenol Cold & Flu Day/Night with pseudoephedrine which I am going to do tonight.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that for the past year (perhaps even longer), grocery stores and pharmacies have been keeping cold products in glass cases, requiring you to hunt down someone with a key that can get the product for you. The problem is that many of the popular over-the-counter cold medications contained a decongestant called pseudoephedrine, and it was a high-theft item because of it’s ability to be used to create crystal meth.

Site – http://superrob.blogspot.com

George Bush, Meet Reality

I know … I know … I hate politics too. But as much as I hate politics, I hate George W. Bush more.

President Bush’s speech this morning at the Naval Academy is a reflection of his stubborn, narrow-vision approach to governing. More and more, what he says is devoid of reality. To listen to Bush is to enter a dreamworld.

Site – Reality, George Bush; George Bush, Meet Reality

It’s… Profitmón!

From Pokémon to Full Metal Panic, the anime industry is doing everything the rest of show biz isn’t: embracing technology, coddling fans—and making a killing.

Site – http://www.fortune.com

Optics and Nanotubes (2 articles)

Brighter Nanotubes

Light-emitting carbon nanotubes could find uses in telecommunications, lighting, and high-performance computers. Carbon nanotubes are renowned for their strength, small diameter, and stunning electronic properties. They may be a key element in memory and processing chips of the future. Now researchers have made carbon nanotube devices with another highly promising quality: the ability to emit light. In the past, light-emitting carbon nanotubes were very inefficient at converting electrons into photons — so inefficient that finding applications for them seemed a distant possibility. But in recent findings, announced last week in Science, IBM researchers fabricated nanotube devices that were around 1,000 times more efficient than previous ones at emitting light.

Site – http://www.technologyreview.com

Nanopillars Reverse Optical Behaviour

Scientists in the UK and Russia have succeeded in fabricating a material that has a negative permeability at visible wavelengths. The development is important because it could lead to so-called “left-handed�? materials which exhibit a negative refractive index and function as a perfect lens.

Site – http://www.nanotechweb.org

New Research Reveals That Thoughts Affect Genes

Groundbreaking scientific studies find that genes can be turned on and off by environmental signals – including thoughts, feelings and emotions – from outside the cell.

Site – http://www.quantumbiocommunication.com

Hacking Swing: Translucent Windows

All Java windows are absolutely rectangular, so you can forget about creating a nice Winamp-like window for your Swing app, right? Wrong. In this excerpt from Swing Hacks, authors Joshua Marinacci and Chris Adamson show how you can use some imaging trickery to create arbitrarily shaped windows with Swing.

Site – http://www.onjava.com

Solving Sudokus In Java

Sudokus are really interesting puzzles that were brought to my attention to someone here at work. They are great puzzles that really make you think. I found a blog posting about a program written in Java that will solve these tricky puzzles.

Site – http://jroller.com

SOA: Buzzworld Whiplash or Real Meat?

James Gosling (inventor of Java) has a great article on his blog about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

There are a lot of corporations, analysts, consultants, experts, “experts” and pundits saying a lot of things about SOA, without a lot of consistancy about the meaning of the term. When you expand the acronym to “Service Oriented Architecture” you get a pretty good, but broad, picture. The Wikipedia definition is one of the better ones out there. In most descriptions, SOA has become a broad cellectiom of techniques that go far beyond just architecting systems as services.

Site – http://blogs.sun.com

Quake 2 In Java

A company named Bytonic has been sucessful in porting Quake 2 entirely to Java. On the site they show that the Java Quake 2 (Jake 2) can run up to 85% of the speed of the original C version. This is great because it shows that professional production quality games can be written entirely in Java. The entire source code is available through SourceForge. There is even a JNLP (Java Network Launching Protocol) Web Start version of Jake 2 which allows you to play the game online.

Site – http://www.bytonic.de

Japanese Researchers Developing Robot To Train Doctors

A research team involving Nagoya University presented the prototype at the launch of the International Robot Exhibition, a four-day event bringing together 200 robot manufacturers and related firms.

Site – http://www.physorg.com/news8584.html