An invisibility cloak just like the one Harry Potter used to creep out of Hogwarts could become a reality within five years.

But instead of using magic, researchers from Purdue University, Indiana are using ‘nanotechnology’ and ‘metamaterials’ along with Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

It works by bending light around itself like the flow of water around a stone, which would make both the electromagnetic cloak and the object inside hidden.

‘The whole idea behind metamaterials is to create materials designed and engineered out of artificial atoms, meta-atoms, which are smaller than the wavelengths of light itself,’ Professor Vladminr Shalaev said.

{ Daily Mail | Continue reading }

sculpture { Kevin Francis Gray, Face-off, 2007 | bronze, automotive paint, wood plinth }

A Kentucky judge has ruled that 141 online gambling domain names will be turned over to the commonwealth on November 17. A hearing is scheduled for that date whereby owners of the said domain sites must show up in person to show that their respective websites are blocking access to Kentucky residents. Website owners would not be permitted to have another party - including legal counsel - represent them on their behalf. (…)

Wingate said online casinos that don’t block access to their Web sites in Kentucky could be ordered to forfeit their domain names. Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear brought the suit claiming that these 141 online gambling websites were cutting into the economic well being of his state.

This decision is being seen as a dangerous precedent that could have serious ramifications for the Internet in general.

{ Gambling911 | Continue reading }

From gigahertz to bogomips, dot pitch to DPI, it’s hard to exist in the electronics age without getting bombarded by figures that are supposed to help you understand what, precisely, you’re getting for your money. But really, how many of us understand the implications of a few extra megahertz in the memory interface on a graphics card? A study released by the Journal of Consumer Research suggests it doesn’t really matter: everyone just wants bigger numbers. As the researchers found, it doesn’t even matter if those numbers don’t line up with personal experience, or even if they’re completely made up.

The research was focused on the gap between how we perceive an item based on experience, and how we view the item based on what we know about it. For example, we can have experience using a digital camera, and think it takes great pictures; in marketing jargon, this is termed a “hedonic preference,” which the authors parenthetically defined as “liking.” (Why they just didn’t use liking…). At the same time, we’re typically aware of specifications, such as megapixels.

Both of these should contribute to purchase decisions, and the authors set up a series of tests using students at a major Chinese university. The tests were designed to determine the relative weight of liking versus specs, based on the hypothesis that consumers will base their decisions on specifications when buying something.

{ Ars Technica | Continue reading }

{ Amazon.com }

{ The photograph on the right was doctored by the “beautification engine” of a new computer program that uses a mathematical formula to alter the original form into a theoretically more attractive version, while maintaining what programmers call an “unmistakable similarity” to the original. | NY Times | Continue reading }

Unique opportunity to buy a Northern European country: Iceland. (…)
PLEASE NOTE: GREENLAND AND Björk ARE NOT INCLUDED IN THIS AUCTION!

{ eBay | Continue reading }

related { The Icelandic government presented an emergency bill giving it sweeping powers over the nation’s banks, to save the country from financial ruin. }

Police could one day predict the surname of male suspects or victims of crime from DNA alone, British researchers said on Wednesday.

Scientists at Leicester University, where DNA fingerprinting was invented in 1984, said they had demonstrated that men with the same surname were highly likely to be genetically linked.

The finding could help genealogy researchers as well detectives investigating crimes using traces of DNA found in blood, hair, saliva or semen.

The technique is based on analyzing DNA from the Y chromosome that imparts maleness and which, like surnames, is passed down from father to son.

Not surprisingly, the likelihood of a good genetic match depends on the rarity of the name, with the most unusual names having the strongest links.

A study of 2,500 men found that on average there was a 24 percent chance of two men with the same surname sharing a common ancestor but this increased to nearly 50 percent when the surname was rare.

Over 70 percent of men with surnames such as Attenborough and Swindlehurst shared the same or near identical Y chromosome types.

{ Reuters | Continue reading }

related { Transportation Security Administration uses behavior detection at airports. Science behind data mining, behavior detection is questionable, group says. }

A humble fungus could help oil companies clean up their fuel to meet tightening emissions standards. The fungus, recently discovered in Iran, grows naturally in crude oil and removes the sulphur and nitrogen compounds that lead to acid rain and air pollution.

Worldwide, government are imposing increasingly severe limits on how much of those compounds fuels can contain. Oil producers are searching for more efficient ways to strip sulphur and nitrogen from their products.

The standard way to “desulphurise” crude oil involves reacting it with hydrogen at temperatures of 455 °C and up to 204 times atmospheric pressure (roughly 21 million pascals or 3000 psi). It achieves less than perfect results.

Micro-organisms able to metabolise sulphur and nitrogen have the potential to achieve the same endpoint under more normal conditions. In recent years a number of researchers have isolated desulphurising bacteria.

But Jalal Shayegan and his team at the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, Iran, have now discovered and isolated a fungus that appears able to remove sulphur from oil with greater efficiency.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading }

We don’t expect OPEC to aggressively defend oil prices above $60/b, since higher prices slow economic and demand growth, which are not in OPEC’s best interests. (…) The oil market is not a free market, since 55% of world oil supply is controlled by OPEC and Russia.

{ via Naked Capitalism | Continue reading }

A detailed analysis of powerplants in China by MIT researchers debunks the widespread notion that outmoded energy technology or the utter absence of government regulation is to blame for that country’s notorious air-pollution problems. The real issue, the study found, involves complicated interactions between new market forces, new commercial pressures and new types of governmental regulation.

China’s power sector has been expanding at a rate roughly equivalent to three to four new coal-fired, 500 megawatt plants coming on line every week, said Edward S. Steinfeld, associate professor of political science at MIT.

After detailed survey and field research involving dozens of managers at 85 power plants across 14 Chinese provinces, Steinfeld and his co-authors, Richard Lester (professor, nuclear science and engineering and director of the MIT Industrial Performance Center) and Edward Cunningham (doctoral candidate, political science) found that in fact most of the new plants have been built to very high technical standards, using some of the most modern technologies available. The problem has to do with the way that energy infrastructure is being operated and the types of coals being burned.

New market pressures encourage plant managers to buy the cheapest, lowest quality and most-polluting coal available, while at the same time idle expensive-to-operate smokestack scrubbers or other cleanup technologies. The physical infrastructure is advanced, but the emissions performance ends up decidedly retrograde.

{ MIT News | Continue reading }

Apparently, everybody loves clean coal. Barack Obama loves it and John McCain loves it. Joe Biden really loved it during his VP debate — and Sarah Palin loved it too. But here’s the problem. Clean coal is very much like a unicorn: it doesn’t exist. (…)

There are basically two meanings of “clean coal.” The first is new conventional coal plants, which can indeed be more efficient and cleaner than the awful old ones. But even the new ones are a disaster. New coal plants are “clean” in the same way that it’s “healthy” to switch from Marlboro Reds to Camel Lights.

The other meaning of “clean coal” is happy talk about futuristic coal plants that will capture and sequester carbon. I hope these arrive someday — truly I do — but at the moment they’re far beyond the engineering horizon.

{ World Changing | Continue reading }

{ Longer-lasting artificial eyes. An improved retinal implant stimulates neurons to restore sight. | Technology Review | Continue reading }

Most clocks just tell time, simply and reliably. Not the $1.8 million “time eater” unveiled at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge.

The masterpiece has no hands or digital numbers and it is specially designed to run in erratic fashion, slowing down and speeding up from time to time.

Inventor John Taylor used his own money to build the clock.

{ AP/CNEWS | Continue reading }

photo {William Eggleston }