New nanotech breakthroughs have enabled IBM to measure magnetic fields at an atomic level and to build transistor-like switches from a single molecule. IBM Corp. has demonstrated how to perform certain computer functions on single atoms and molecules, a discovery that could someday lead to processors the size of a speck of dust, the company said Thursday. Researchers at IBM’s Almaden Research Center in California developed a technique for measuring magnetic anisotropy, a property of the magnetic field that gives it the ability to maintain a particular direction. Being able to measure magnetic anisotropy at the atomic level is a crucial step toward the magnet representing the ones or the zeroes used to store data in binary computer language. In a second report, researchers at IBM’s lab in Zurich, Switzerland, said they had used an individual molecule as an electric switch that could potentially replace the transistors used in modern chips. The company published both research reports in Friday’s edition of the journal Science. The new technologies are at least 10 years from being used for components in commercial products, but the discoveries will allow scientists to take a large step forward in their quest to […]
Families now stuffing backpacks and greeting the children’s new teachers face a crisis that makes falling test scores and rising college costs dull by comparison. Ten years and billions of dollars into the fight against childhood fat, it’s clear that the campaign has been a losing battle. According to a report released last week by the research group Trust for America’s Health, one third of kids nationwide are overweight now; other stats show that the percentage of children who are obese has more than tripled since the 1970s. Now, experts are worrying about the collateral damage, too: A 2006 University of Minnesota study found that 57 percent of girls and 33 percent of boys used cigarettes, fasting, or skipping meals to control their weight and that diet-pill intake by teenage girls had nearly doubled in five years. Last year, nearly 5,000 teens opted for liposuction, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons-more than three times the number in 1998, when experts first warned of a ‘childhood obesity epidemic.’ ‘We’ve taken the approach that if we make children feel bad about being fat or scare them half to death, they’ll be motivated to lose excess weight,’ says Joanne Ikeda, […]
NEW YORK — The prevalence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD) is higher and stages of disease are more advanced than has previously been reported, according to findings from the Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease initiative. And contrary to common beliefs, smoking is not the only factor contributing to COPD prevalence, the investigators report in The Lancet. The research group, led by Dr. A. Sonia Buist at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, examined the prevalence of COPD and its risk factors in adults who were at least 40 years old and were living in 12 cities on 5 continents. More than 9,000 subjects were interviewed, and test results were obtained from 8,775. Stage II COPD or higher in 10.1 percent overall, 11.8 percent for men and 8.5 percent for women. The prevalence increased with age, usually affecting fewer than 5 percent of individuals in their 40s — up to 47 percent of men 33 percent of women age 70 and older. The prevalence also varied widely by location, Buist’s group notes. Six sites reported COPD rates of at least 10 percent for stage II to IV disease. The prevalence ranged from 5.9 percent in […]
Excavations at a 6,000-year-old archeological mound in northeastern Syria called Tell Brak are providing an alternative explanation for how the first cities may have grown. Archeologists have thought cities generally began in a single small area and grew outward — but evidence indicates that the urban area at Tell Brak was a ring of small villages that grew inward to become a city. The finds, reported Friday in the journal Science, provide insight into political development in the region. ‘Urbanism does not appear to have originated with a single, powerful ruler or political entity,’ said archeologist Jason Ur of Harvard University, who led the research. ‘Instead, it was the organic outgrowth of many groups coming together.’ The city, whose name is unknown, was in the ancient empire of Mesopotamia, which encompassed what is now southern Iraq and northern Syria. The city of Uruk in southern Iraq was thought to have been the oldest city in the world, but discoveries at Tell Brak suggest that it may have developed at the same time. Legend holds that the great leader Gilgamesh built Uruk. That story has long served as a model for the development of early cities. […]
September 1, 2007 BAGHDAD — It’s bigger than Saddam’s palace and, with a cinema, gym and pool, is the safest and smartest place to live in Iraq… Baghdad is a city of ruins – of burnt-out homes, of shops wrecked by suicide bombs, of the crumbling shells of Saddam-era palaces and ministries destroyed by smart bombs in the US invasion of 2003. There is one notable exception. It is probably the only big new building project in the capital in the past four years. It is the new US Embassy on the west bank of the Tigris which the contractors will transfer to the US Government officially today. A towering wall renders the huge new embassy almost invisible from ground level. For security reasons the State Department has refused all requests for media tours – promising instead to release pictures of the interior at some later date. The only way to view it is from the roof of the Babylon hotel, across the river. What you can see through the haze of heat and pollution is a complex of two dozen smart new dun and grey blocks set in 104 acres (42 hectares) of grounds ringed […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
