I think this may be an important development. My intuition tells me that Lisi is really on to something here, that we'll be hearing lots more about this, and if his predictions are verified when Large Hadron Collider comes online next year, physics will never be the same. ~ rj

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An impoverished surfer has drawn up a new theory of the universe, seen by some as the Holy Grail of physics, which has received rave reviews from scientists. - Garrett Lisi, 39, has a doctorate but no university affiliation and spends most of the year surfing in Hawaii, where he has also been a hiking guide and bridge builder (when he slept in a jungle yurt)...

Lisi's inspiration lies in the most elegant and intricate shape known to mathematics, called E8 - a complex, eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points first found in 1887, but only fully understood by mathematicians this year after workings, that, if written out in tiny print, would cover an area the size of Manhattan. ...   more »

Just a few years ago, the lush coral reefs off Indonesia's Bali island were dying out, bleached by rising temperatures, blasted by dynamite fishing, and poisoned by cyanide.

Now they are coming back, thanks to an unlikely remedy: electricity. ...   more »

Berkeley -- When University of California, Berkeley, astrophysicist George Smoot received the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics a year ago, his dreams for spending his $700,000 share of the prize ran far beyond purchasing a sporty car or a new home.

Instead, he wanted to create a lasting center where he and other scientists - in particular, young postdoctoral researchers - could tackle cosmic questions whose solutions would be worthy of future Nobel Prizes.

That dream, the Berkeley Center for Cosmological Physics (http://bccp.lbl.gov/), has now become reality, with a $500,000 endowment gift from Smoot and additional gifts totaling $8.1 million. These gifts include $1.5 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and $5.5 million in private gifts and other support for endowed chairs at the center and for postdoctoral and graduate student support. UC Berkeley physics professor Saul Perlmutter, who, like Smoot, is also a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has also contributed to the center, using a portion of his 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize to seed a fund for future research that, with the addition of other funds, will total approximately $600,000. ...

Smoot, the center's director, and UC Berkeley plan to raise at least $4 or 5 million in endowment on top of this $8.1 million to ensure an ongoing center with resident postdoctoral fellows and scholars at UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab, an active visitors program, educational outreach to K-12 science teachers and several collaborative international workshops on cosmology each year. ...   more »

"An ambitious project to create an accurate computer model of the brain has reached an impressive milestone," writes today's Technology Review. "Scientists in Switzerland working with IBM researchers have shown that their computer simulation of the neocortical column, arguably the most complex part of a mammal's brain, appears (emphasis added) to behave like its biological counterpart. By demonstrating that their simulation is realistic, the researchers say, these results suggest that an entire mammal brain could be completely modeled within three years, and a human brain within the next decade..."

The article goes onto to share the response of Christof Koch from Caltech who calls the 10 year target of modeling the human brain "ridiculous." Despite the fantastic progress to date I agree with Christof on this. ...   more »

#1.Steve Jobs
Chairman and CEO, Apple

During the first two decades of his remarkable 30-year career, the Apple Inc. founder twice altered the direction of the computer industry. In 1977 the Apple II kicked off the PC era, and the graphical user interface launched by Macintosh in 1984 has been aped by every other computer since. Along the way Jobs conceived of "desktop publishing," gave the world the laser printer, and pioneered personal computer networks. As a side gig he bankrolled Pixar, which fostered the development of the technology and a brand-new business model for creating computer-animated feature films.

Since returning to Apple in 1997, he has changed the dynamics of consumer electronics with the iPod, and persuaded the music industry, the television networks, and Hollywood to distribute their wares with the iTunes Music Store. With his hugely successful Apple Stores, he gave the big-box boys a lesson in high-margin, high-touch retailing. And this year, at the height of his creative and promotional powers, Jobs orchestrated Apple's entry into the cellular telephone business with the iPhone. ...   more »

Optimism exists on a continuum in between confidence and hope. Let me take these in order.

I am confident that the acceleration and expanding purview of information technology will solve within twenty years the problems that now preoccupy us. -- Consider energy. We are awash in energy (10,000 times more than required to meet all our needs falls on Earth) but we are not very good at capturing it. That will change with the full nanotechnology-based assembly of macro objects at the nano scale, controlled by massively parallel information processes, which will be feasible within twenty years. Even though our energy needs are projected to triple within that time, we'll capture that .0003 of the sunlight needed to meet our energy needs with no use of fossil fuels, using extremely inexpensive, highly efficient, lightweight, nano-engineered solar panels, and we'll store the energy in highly distributed (and therefore safe) nanotechnology-based fuel cells. Solar power is now providing 1 part in 1,000 of our needs, but that percentage is doubling every two years, which means multiplying by 1,000 in twenty years.

Almost all the discussions I've seen about energy and its consequences (such as global warming) fail to consider the ability of future nanotechnology-based solutions to solve this problem. This development will be motivated not just by concern for the environment but also by the $2 trillion we spend annually on energy. This is already a major area of venture funding.

Consider health. As of just recently, we have the tools to reprogram biology. This is also at an early stage but is progressing through the same exponential growth of information technology, which we see in every aspect of biological progress. The amount of genetic data we have sequenced has doubled every year, and the price per base pair has come down commensurately. The first genome cost a billion dollars. The National Institutes of Health is now starting a project to collect a million genomes at $1,000 apiece. We can turn genes off with RNA interference, add new genes (to adults) with new reliable forms of gene therapy, and turn on and off proteins and enzymes at critical stages of disease progression. We are gaining the means to model, simulate, and reprogram disease and aging processes as information processes. In ten years, these technologies will be 1,000 times more powerful than they are today, and it will be a very different world, in terms of our ability to turn off disease and aging. ...   more »

I recommend viewing this short 30-second video about the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) "Give One Get One" project. See the previous article posted to SCIY for more details about this very worthy project.  ~ ronjon

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One learning child. One connected child. One laptop at a time.

Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in the United States and Canada. During this time, you can donate the revolutionary XO laptop to a child in a developing nation, and also receive one for the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. ...

Kim and I just placed our order for this. Not only is $200 of it tax deductible, but T-Mobile is also giving you one year of complimentary HotSpot WiFi access with your order, more than a $350 value! I highly recommend this amazing, state of the art computer.  ~ ronjon   more »

I can vouch for John Todd's research. I knew him back in the 70's and was impressed then with the quality of his work. His "Eco Machines" are the outcome of 30 years of research and trial and error experimentation. ~ ronjon

Social responsibility, sustainability, and 'natural capitalism' are becoming new models for governments and corporations in the 21st century...

The ECO Machine - a wastewater treatment system that naturally treats sewage and industrial waste to re-use quality. An important consideration as fresh water becomes one of the most important commodities in the new millennium...ECO Machines bring advanced wastewater treatment technology, and unsurpassed aesthetic, economic, and environmental advantages to companies, communities, and resorts both at home and internationally.

ECO Machines accelerate nature's own water purification process. Unlike chemical-based systems, ECO Machines incorporate helpful bacteria, fungi, plants, snails, clams, and fish that thrive by breaking down and digesting organic pollutants, pollutants that normally deprive the water of oxygen. This clean, simple approach efficiently transforms high-strength industrial wastewater and sewage into water clean enough to be recycled for reuse. ...   more »

I'm reading this book now and am quite impressed by it. Highly recommended!

~ ronjon

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I have often wondered about the interface of key Buddhist concepts and major scientific ideas. This book is the result of that long period of thinking and of the intellectual journey of a Buddhist monk from Tibet into the world of bubble chambers, particle accelerators, and fMRI. ...   more »

The Lifeboat Foundation Guardian Award is annually bestowed upon a respected scientist or public figure who has warned of a future fraught with dangers and encouraged measures to prevent them. This year's recipient is Dr. James Martin. The award is in recognition of the achievements of his Future of Humanity Institute in studying global catastrophic risks and impacts of future technologies. ...   more »