Saturday, January 21, 2012
Santorum Hits Gingrich at Republican Presidential Debate
Santorum Hits Gingrich at Republican Presidential Debate
The disruptive future of printing
The disruptive future of printing
Will we all have printers like this in the future?
Printing solid objects is getting cheap and simpler, and the possibilities excite Bill Thompson
Imagine a school where a student could sketch out an idea for a new design of bicycle and not only draw it in 3D using a computer-aided design package but actually create a scale-model and test it out, using inexpensive materials and a special printer that they can build themselves in the classroom.
That's the vision put forward by Ben O'Steen, a software engineer with a social conscience who is thinking about the implications of a world where 3D printers are no longer just expensive prototyping systems for large companies but have fallen into the hands of the masses.
He has been inspired by the RepRap, a desktop 3D printer capable of printing plastic parts by extruding a heated thermoplastic polymer under computer control, which then sets as it cools and makes a usable object.
The RepRap project was started in 2005 by Adrian Bowyer, who teaches mechanical engineering at Bath University.
The schematics and all aspects are freely licensed for anyone to implement or adapt, and the current version, called "Mendel", can be built for around £350.
It makes objects from a cheap plastic made from corn starch, so is well within school budgets.
Future's here Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Bill Thompson3D printing will soon come up against laws made in a world of factories and machine tools, and the battle is likely to be even more intense than that over music and films”
The project has inspired thousands of people around the world, with websites dedicated to helping people make their own RepRap and get it working, and online schematics for objects from coat hangers to working whistles to models of Gothic cathedrals - that one is available at a website called the 'Thingiverse'
Although I'd come across the RepRap before it had always been an abstract idea, but seeing Ben talk - at a recent conference organised by the Open Knowledge Foundation - with such enthusiasm about its potential in education and elsewhere brought home its transformative potential, and made me realise that the future has already arrived, even if it is not yet widely distributed.
And while a technology that offers people the ability to manufacture complex objects at home or in the office is enormously disruptive, we can at least see this one coming.
Some writers of speculative fiction have already started engaging with it, including Bruce Sterling, in his lovely short story "Kiosk", and Cory Doctorow, whose novel "Makers" offers us an imagined world of printed objects and an emergent culture of 3D makers who directly challenge many of the core assumptions of industrial society.
I heard Ben speak about the RepRap, along with many other programmers, scholars and activists committed to making all kinds of information available to be freely used, reused, and redistributed, from "sonnets to statistics, genes to geodata" as their website puts it.
His talk was the highlight of the day for me, partly because he had brought a collection of props with him but also because his focus on real-world objects bridged the gap between the sometimes dry discussion of open databases and LinkedData and the day-to-day experiences of the vast majority of people whose lives don't revolve around technology.
As with so many advocates of free and open source solution, Ben and his friends are also planning to turn engagement into action by offering to help groups that want their own RepRap get off the ground by printing off the plastic parts needed to build your own.
Because one of the really exciting things about the RepRap is that it can make its own parts, or at least it can make the plastic ones - you can't yet print circuit boards or metal components - so once someone has one they can help to spread the technology.
Just as the easy availability of powerful computers, large hard drives and fast networks has exposed the inadequacies of copyright laws designed in an age when infringement required a printing press or a CD-burning factory, 3D printing will soon come up against laws made in a world of factories and machine tools, and the battle is likely to be even more intense than that over music and films.
Fortunately for those of us who believe in open data and an open society the intellectual ground for a remodelling of old forms of regulation is already being prepared by the Open Knowledge Foundation and others, so I'm slightly optimistic that we won't be arguing about the provisions of the "Digital Modelling Bill" in ten years time.
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Can a company live forever?
Can a company live forever?
In 1288, Stora Enso issued the first share ever granted in a company, giving a bishop an eighth of a copper mountain
The past few years have seen previously unthinkable corporate behemoths - from financial firms such as Lehman Brothers to iconic car manufacturers such as Saab - felled by economic turmoil or by unforgiving customers and tough rivals.
And do not put away the black garb yet - the pace of corporate funerals is set to pick up.
The average lifespan of a company listed in the S&P 500 index of leading US companies has decreased by more than 50 years in the last century, from 67 years in the 1920s to just 15 years today, according to Professor Richard Foster from Yale University.
Today's rate of change "is at a faster pace than ever", he says.
Professor Foster estimates that by 2020, more than three-quarters of the S&P 500 will be companies that we have not heard of yet.
So in a world where former titan General Motors was brought to its knees a couple of years ago, requiring a government cash injection to escape bankruptcy, it seems apt to ask: How long can a company survive?
Looking eastward
The implications can be enormous when large companies go under It is perhaps unsurprising that the country where people live the longest is also home to some of the oldest companies in the world.
In Japan, there are more than 20,000 companies that are more than 100 years old, with a handful that are more than 1,000 years old, according to credit rating agency Tokyo Shoko Research.
The list includes Nissiyama Onsen Keiunkan, a hotel founded in 705, which is thought to be the oldest company in the world.*
There is even a specific word for long-lived companies in Japanese: shinise.
So what is the key to their longevity?
"Japanese companies can survive for so long," according to Professor Makoto Kanda at Meiji Gakuin University, "because they are small, mostly family-run, and because they focus on a central belief or credo that is not tied solely to making a profit."
Local factors could be another key to their success, he says.
Shinise focus primarily on the Japanese market, from Kikkoman's products to small sake manufacturers, and they benefit from a corporate culture that has long avoided the mergers and acquisitions that are common among their Western counterparts.
"Those conditions must be sustained," says Professor Kanda. "Otherwise it will be a little bit difficult for them to continue live long."
Predicting the futureBut, of course, conditions do change - and what then?
Changing with the times is essential for companies that want to survive for a long time Although there are exceptions to every rule, the most important factor for survival is an emphasis on innovation and reinvention.
Nokia was a pulp manufacturer before it got into electricity and then mobile phones; at some point its brand name was even used on galoshes. Or take Berkshire Hathaway, which began as a textile mill in Rhode Island.
However, innovation for the sake of it is not the goal, says Vicki TenHaken, a professor of management at Hope College.
It is a focus on "little bets" that helps companies grow and keep up with the competition, she says.
In fact, the world's oldest limited liability corporation, the Finnish paper and pulp manufacturer Stora Enso, first started out as a copper mining company in 1288.
Now the company is looking into expanding into bio-energy and green construction materials, areas that it has spent several years developing.
"The next 40 years look very different from the 700 years behind us," says Stora Enso spokesman Jonas Nordlund, emphasising the company's desire to expand outside Europe in Brazil, China and Uruguay, as well as its investment in cross-laminated timber, a building material that sequesters carbon dioxide.
Balancing act
Research and development may be expensive, but it might help secure long-term survival Innovation in general is not always easy, however, especially for publicly listed companies that must balance the concerns of capital markets and shareholders, who demand quarterly profits and who are not necessarily interested in decades-long research projects.
"Research and development is always a delicate balance between maintaining a long-term view and remaining sensitive to short-term financial objectives," observes Mark Vergnano, executive vice president of innovation at DuPont.
Mr Vergnano cites DuPont's trove of more than 37,000 patents and its early history as a gunpowder manufacturer as proof of its commitment to innovation - but acknowledges that inventions are not enough to keep the company operating from day to day.
DuPont implemented a new rule in 2010 that mandated that 30% of revenue must come from innovations the company has created in the last four years - a move that could help reassure investors who might balk at the company's $2bn research and development budget.
The problems of living foreverYet even if a company can innovate and conditions do remain favourable, immortality does have its downsides.
For instance, there is no real proof that age makes a company any more profitable than younger companies. On the contrary, evidence from the stock market actually suggests that age could be a hindrance.
When GM filed for bankruptcy, the US government had to come to the rescue to prevent its downfall Of the 74 or so companies that have stayed in the S&P 500 for more than 40 years, only a dozen or so have managed to beat the average, according to a study by consultancy McKinsey.
In fact, if the S&P 500 were made up of only the companies that were part of the index in 1957, overall performance would have been some 20% worse.
"When a company has run its course it gets bought," says Professor Foster.
"This is a good thing, because if the economy stops changing then productivity would go away.
"All companies would like to think that they're going to be the Methuselah, but they're not."
When to die?Ms TenHaken agrees, although she also emphasises the toll that unplanned for or sudden deaths can have on surrounding communities - particularly her home of Michigan, which has seen its fair share of corporate funerals.
"I don't know that it's necessary to say that companies should live forever," she says.
"I think the tragedy is that companies die premature deaths. If a company dies too soon we have to ask what went wrong."
As more and more companies look set to take their final bow, the real question for those who are left may not be how to survive, but when to die.
*There is some debate over the oldest company designation. There is an older organisation, Ikenobo Kadokaia, which was founded in Kyoto in 587 AD. However, its stated purpose is the promotion of traditional floral arranging, which is not necessarily commercial in nature.
The Big Winner of the Great Recession Is … Large Corporations
The Big Winner of the Great Recession Is …
The recent recession has been the most brutal since the Great Depression and has caused enormous hardship for many American families, as well as immense financial problems for governments around the world. As a result, it’s hard to see the downturn that began at the end of 2007 as anything but a catastrophe. With household incomes generally lower and poverty rates significantly higher than they were 10 years ago, it’s easy to feel that everything is falling apart. But amid the wreckage, there are some success stories that are vitally important for the recovery and the future prosperity of America.
The big winners of the recent Great Recession have been the largest U.S. corporations. This isn’t simply because they are greedy and rapacious, or because they can steamroller everything in their path. Rather, it reflects the fact that they are in a position to use the recession as a positive opportunity to restructure and become more efficient, while government, small businesses and most American households are forced by circumstances to play defense.
In every economic system, there have to be occasional corrective phases, where inefficient and uncompetitive businesses and services are eliminated, costs are lowered, and ground is cleared for new growth. But not every part of the economy is equally well positioned to do this. Government usually has to worry first about unemployment. It therefore tries to preserve current jobs and existing businesses, rather than focusing on restructuring government services to make them more effective or reforming social programs to lower their long-term costs. Most households and many small businesses give top priority to immediate concerns in a recession, because they have to respond to the short-term pain rather than the potential for long-term gain.
(More: What S&P’s Downgrades Mean for the Euro’s Future)
The organizations that have the resources to think about the future and position themselves accordingly are typically the largest corporations. Sure, some big companies have failed – most notably banks – but most have been able to take advantage of reduced labor costs and low interest rates to boost their productivity at the same time that they are strengthening their balance sheets. Consider the following:
Labor costs are down while productivity is up. The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that quarterly productivity in manufacturing rose 5%, while unit labor costs declined 5.1%. Basically, as companies shut down their least successful business operations, they are left with the most efficient and productive ones. Moreover, wages are not keeping pace with inflation right now. In fact, adjusted for inflation, they are down 2.3% from a year ago, the biggest such decline since 1948. The overall result is that companies are getting more from their workers without having to pay them more.
Top companies are able to refinance their debt at low interest rates. The Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing has made plenty of money available at low interest rates. Giant corporations with excellent credit ratings can therefore restructure their balance sheets any way they want – boosting cash on hand or locking in long-term borrowing exceptionally cheaply. As a result, the value of corporate balance sheets has risen by 28% since late 2009. Much of the needed refinancing has now been completed, although some companies, such as GM and Ford, still have big bond offerings coming up.
(VIDEO: The 99ers: The Real Lives of the Long-Term Unemployed)
Money is rolling in. Higher productivity, moderate labor costs and restructured balance sheets combine to make companies more profitable. In fact, corporate profits are now at a peak in dollar terms and close to an all-time high as a percentage of GDP. Overall, profits have more than doubled since 2000, while stock prices are actually lower than they were 12 years ago. What that means is that lots of great stocks are now cheap by historical standards.
Corporate cash holdings are immense. Nonfinancial companies are taking in hundreds of billions of dollars more than they need to fund current operations. Total cash reserves at U.S. corporations total more than $2 trillion, close to a 50-year high in relative terms. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the companies with lots more cash on hand than they need are paying ample dividends. Oil giant Chevron, with $20 billion in cash, now offers a 3.1% yield. Chipmaker Intel, with $15 billion, now pays 3.3%. And health-care conglomerate Johnson & Johnson, with $30 billion, yields 3.5%. (I give a longer list of companies that are likely to grow dividends here.)
In part, these huge cash reserves reflect the uncertainty corporate executives feel about whether to expand right now. Demand is still soft, government policy on taxes and regulations is confused, and risks of a currency collapse in Europe are impossible to gauge. As a result, many U.S. companies are simply hunkering down and hanging onto their money until the picture gets clearer.
There’s no guarantee, of course, that the U.S. economy will continue to get better. Recent small improvements could suddenly be reversed – for example, by upheaval in Europe that leads to a worldwide double-dip recession. But at least most U.S. businesses are in better shape than they were a couple of years ago. And once a sustainable recovery does get under way, the companies that have been able to make the most of the recession’s opportunities are likely to prosper in the years to come.
North Korea’s Runaway Sushi Chef Remembers Kim Jong Un
North Korea’s Runaway Sushi Chef Remembers Kim Jong Un
Kenji Fujimoto is easy to recognize, if only because of the trademark disguise he has been wearing for the past decade or so. The long-time sushi chef to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, Fujimoto has been laying low since returning to his native Japan in 2001, moving house frequently and wearing a variety of head gear and dark sunglasses to avoid any unwanted attention. Indeed, Kenji Fujimoto’s name is not actually Kenji Fujimoto: that is the nom de plume he has been writing under since his first book, I Was Kim Jong Il’s Chef was published in 2003.
Despite his efforts, Fujimoto does not exactly blend in with the black-clad office crowd making their way home in the purplish light of a Tokyo dusk. Sporting a silver goatee, a blue scarf wrapped snugly around his skull and blue-tinted sunglasses, the middle-aged chef-turned-author walks past Tokyo Station with a battered brown leather briefcase in hand. In a country fixated on the behavior of its secretive nuclear-armed neighbor, Fujimoto’s years of proximity to North Korea’s first family have gained him a regular spot on Japanese television, particularly in the month since the death of the Kim Jong Il on Dec. 17.
(READ: After Kim Jong Il — a look at the Kim family tree.)
Why? Fujimoto is one of the few people outside the regime’s inner circle to have been tight with the Great Leader’s heir apparent, Kim Jong Un. So tight, he says, that he insisted to his publisher that his fourth book, Successor of the North: Kim Jong Un be published on Oct. 10, 2010 – the day he predicted, through a complicated formula having to do with Kim Jong Il’s penchant for baccarat and the number 9, that Kim would name his youngest son as the next leader of North Korea.
The announcement was made to the world that day, but Fujimoto says it was years earlier, on Jong Un’s 9th birthday, that the boy’s future came into focus. “Kim Jong Il gave him a song as a birthday gift,” he says over dinner at a Sichuan restaurant in central Tokyo. The song, whose title translates as “Sound of Footsteps,” made it clear that Jong-Un, not either of his older brothers, was the chosen one.
Fujimoto, who first moved to North Korea in 1982 and started working for Kim Jong Il in 1988, did not meet Jong Un until the boy was 7. Until then, he says, neither he nor the majority of the officials in Kim Jong Il’s entourage had even seen his two younger sons, Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Chul. (Fujimoto has never met Kim’s eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, who is estranged from his family and lives in Macau.) Their initial greeting was tense, the former chef recalls. He put out his hand, but the young Jong Un left him hanging, staring sharply up at him as if he were “one of the notorious Japanese Imperial soldiers.” Eventually, at the urging of his father, Jong Un gave Fujimoto a limp handshake.
Nevertheless, not long after, Fujimoto was chosen to be one of the boys’ regular companions, and would play with the brothers and other kids in the family every day. From that early age, he says, “Jong Un was always the leader. He decided what to play. He always spoke for the group.” And Jong Chul, who Fujimoto describes as having a “warm heart” and being “non-aggressive,” was happy to let his younger brother take the lead. “If I was their father, I would have chosen Kim Jong Un too,” he says.
Fujimoto has high hopes for the young leader’s tenure in one of the world’s most isolated and impoverished nations. In Successor of the North: Kim Jong Un, he describes how the teenager would, unbeknownst to his father, come to Fujimoto’s room to bum an Yves Saint Laurent cigarette from the chef. (The book includes a small photograph of one of the cigarette packs.) During one of these clandestine smoke breaks, Jong Un reportedly wondered aloud how, while he was enjoying rollerblading and horseback riding on the family compound , the North Korean people were faring. “He can lead North Korea in a good direction,” Fujimoto says. “What his grandfather Kim Il Sung couldn’t do, and what his father Kim Jong Il couldn’t do, will be done by Kim Jong Un… I believe he will choose a path of change and reform.” When asked about reports that he would closely follow the policy of his father, Fujimoto says, flatly, “You are wrong.”
While Fujimoto stops short of calling Jong Un bright — “he’s not the intelligent type,” he says — he clearly had a soft spot for the kid. Under increasing state surveillance, the chef decided to leave North Korea permanently in 2001. The day before, he had a bad fall off a horse. Jong Un, who was 18 at the time, called to check on him. He insisted his childhood buddy come to a nearby guesthouse in Pyongyang where he and some friends were having a get together. “I ran over there,” recalls Fujimoto, and saw that Jong Un was drinking a bottle of expensive vodka with some of his favorite basketball players from the national team. Jong Un knew Fujimoto was leaving for Japan the next day, as he regularly did to get supplies for his kitchen. “You’re coming back, right?’” Fujimoto says he asked. He told him he would. “Then he ordered me, ‘Come back.’”
Fujimoto tears up at the recollection. “I lied to him,” he says, wiping at his eyes under his glasses. “I had already made up my mind to stay in Japan… Whenever I think about that it makes me cry.” He did, however, get a last souvenir: Kim Jong Un had been looking through old photos at the guesthouse with his friends, and gave Fujimoto an old black and white photo of himself as a young boy. Jong Un told him that he could have it, but he “could never show it to the public.” The photo – a grainy headshot of a smiling Un – graces the cover of Fujimoto’s last book.
The Bigger Ball Drops Faster — and Other Myths of Physics
The Bigger Ball Drops Faster — and Other Myths of Physics
Our minds are filled with folk science — and it gets in the way of real learning
Paul's latest book is Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives.
Seasons are caused by the earth’s distance from the sun. Motors and other machines use up energy. A heavier ball falls faster than a lighter one. If these propositions sound right to you, that’s only natural — they’re examples of folk science, widely-shared but faulty assumptions about how the physical world works. The prevalence and the tenacity of such beliefs poses a dilemma for science educators and for anyone who would like to claim a worldview closer to Issac Newton’s than Conan the Barbarian’s: how do we get rid of notions that hold so much intuitive appeal? Learning researchers are investigating just where these folk ideas come from and developing surprising new ways to counter them.
(MORE: Paul: What Your Eyes Say About Who You Are)
One thing is clear from the outset: traditional teaching methods don’t do much to uproot folk beliefs. Students in conventional classrooms listen to the correct explanation, read it in a textbook and may even produce it on an exam, but their bedrock assumptions remain untouched. In A Private Universe, a classic 1987 film produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Harvard graduates are shown offering patently false explanations for common natural events. The problem with conventional science instruction, according to cognitive scientist Susan Carey, is that it assumes that its goal is to fill a gap in a student’s knowledge — when really the issue “is not what the student lacks, but what the student has, namely alternative conceptual frameworks for understanding the phenomena covered by the theories we are trying to teach.” In order to persuade students to embrace new and more accurate ideas about how the world operates, science teachers need to find out which “alternative conceptual frameworks” — myths — they already hew to. To that end, researchers have developed student surveys that can help instructors identify the beliefs their pupils have when they walk through the classroom door. These surveys show the same handful of misconceptions showing up again and again, espoused by strong students as well as weak ones.
Another promising approach is to directly confront individuals with the differences between their understanding and the correct one: to “offend the student’s intuition,” in the words of University of Wyoming astronomy professor Tim Slater. In a study to be published next month in the journal Learning and Instruction, scientists from the University of Pittsburgh asked one group of students to compare a diagram of their own inaccurate conception of the body’s circulatory system to an accurate drawing; a second group was required simply to explain the correct version. The students who engaged in a “confrontation” with the facts, the investigators reported, were more likely to acquire a valid mental model and a deeper understanding of the material. Researchers are now developing a variety of ways of presenting students with disconfirming evidence, such as live demonstrations, online videos, computer simulations, animated visualizations and interactive tutoring programs tailored to the student’s particular misconceptions.
(MORE: Paul: How Your Dreams Can Make You Smarter)
A third intriguing possibility is suggested by an experiment conducted by Laura-Ann Petitto and Kevin Dunbar of Dartmouth University. Two groups — one made up of advanced physics students, the other of students with very little knowledge of the subject — were shown a pair of films depicting two balls of apparently different masses falling from above and hitting the ground. The first film, which the authors called the Newtonian movie, showed the balls hitting the ground at the same time (as they would in reality.) The second clip, dubbed the naive movie, showed the larger and presumably heavier ball hitting the ground first. The students watched these films while having their brains scanned by an fMRI machine. The scans revealed that both groups recognized the naive scenario — but only the advanced students’ brains showed activation patterns that indicated an effort to suppress that knowledge. In other words, the difference between the two groups lay in their capacity to suppress inaccurate information.
This finding offers a clue as to why metacognitive skills like focus, attention and self-control are so key to learning. Sometimes, learning something new requires ignoring what we already know — and not just in science. It takes mental strength and flexibility, for example, to let go of the syntax of our native tongue and adopt instead the patterns of a foreign language or to set aside the attitudes of the present and imagine life from the perspective of historical figures. We may never get rid of our inner ignoramus, but we can train it to stay quiet.
Paul, the author of Origins, is at work on a book about the science of learning. The views expressed are solely her own.
The Weird Ways Gender Ratios Affect Dating, Spending, Saving—and the Size of Your Engagement Ring
The Weird Ways Gender Ratios Affect Dating, Spending, Saving—and the Size of Your Engagement Ring
Men are known to go to great lengths—and great expense—to impress women. This is most obviously the case when the male population outnumbers that of females, and laws of supply and demand kick in.
A new report from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management finds that men are prone to spend more, save less, and even be willing to go into debt when they believe women are scarce in their neck of the woods:
“What we see in other animals is that when females are scarce, males become more competitive. They compete more for access to mates,” says Vladas Griskevicius, an assistant professor of marketing at the Carlson School and lead author of the study. “How do humans compete for access to mates? What you find across cultures is that men often do it through money, through status and through products.”
(MORE: How 401(k)s Make Many Americans Poorer)
In the study, entitled “The Financial Consequences of Too Many Men: Sex Ratio Effects on Savings, Borrowing, and Spending” and set to be published next month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, volunteers read stories indicating that the local population had either more men or more women. Then, they were asked how much money they’d save each month from their paycheck, and how much they’d be likely to spend using credit cards when they don’t have enough cash for immediate expenditures.
Men, it seems, turn into spendthrifts when women are in short supply. When women are scarce, savings rates for guys drop 42%, and dudes say they’re willing to borrow 84% more each month via credit cards.
For a real-life example of this phenomenon, USA Today points to a pair of communities in Georgia:
In Columbus, Ga., where there are 1.18 single men for every single woman, the average consumer debt was $3,479 higher than it was 100 miles away in Macon, Ga., where there were 0.78 single men for every woman.
The study indicates that the ratio of the sexes isn’t likely to affect how women spend money. But it does have an impact on women’s expectations regarding how much cash a guy will spend to woo the ladies. When women hear that guys outnumber girls, they expect men to drop more money on dates, Valentine’s gifts, and engagement rings. Griskevicius, the report’s lead author, explains that women know that being outnumbered puts them in the driver’s seat:
“When there’s a scarcity of women, women felt men should go out of their way to court them.”
(MORE: Is It a Bad Idea to Friend a Co-worker on Facebook?)
I’d love to see how varying sex ratios change the likelihood of how often men and women go to the gym.
Brad Tuttle is a reporter at TIME. Find him on Twitter at @bradrtuttle. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.
Andrew Sullivan Is Wrong About Obama's Liberal Critics
Andrew Sullivan Is Wrong About Obama's Liberal Critics
'Weak-Kneed' Obama Killed Public Option - New Book
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Scots turn Cuban weed into 'gold' - Marabu Carbon
Scots turn Cuban weed into 'gold'
Could the collapse of the Soviet bloc lead to more efficient electric cars and cheaper rum?
Engineers at the University of Strathclyde have found a way of turning a Cuban weed into one of the world's most sought-after substances.
Their work has paved the way for cleaner drinking water for Latin America and mobile phones that only need recharged every three months.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
World IPv6 launch day set to aid net address switchover
World IPv6 launch day set to aid net address switchover
Internet firms carried out a successful trial of the new net address system last June
Leading internet firms have set 6 June as the World IPv6 launch day.
IPv6 is the new net address system that replaces the current protocol IPv4, which is about to run out of spaces to allocate.
Web companies participating in the event have pledged to enable IPv6 on their main websites from that date.
The Internet Society, which made the announcement, said the day represented "a major milestone" in the deployment of the standard.
Facebook, Google, Microsoft Bing and Yahoo are the inaugural web firms involved.
Future-proofEvery device connected to the internet is assigned an internet protocol (IP) address, which is a string of numbers that allows other devices to recognise where data comes from or should be sent to.
The IPv4 system has approximately four billion IP addresses.
The growth in the number of smartphones, PCs and other web devices and services meant that net regulator Icann had already handed out its last IPv4 sets to regional registries.
At the time it said businesses needed to start preparing themselves for a switch to the IPv6 standard, which offers more than 340 trillion trillion trillion addresses.
To put that number in context BBC Future Media blogged last year that if "every man, woman and child on Earth had a billion devices each with an IPv6 address, you haven't even come close to scratching the surface of the number of addresses available".
Experts say the new system should ensure there are enough addresses for the foreseeable future.
Problem solvingIPv6 is incompatible with IPv4, so the transition has required old hardware to be replaced or updated.
Internet service providers (ISP) taking part have promised that by the launch date they will have enabled at least 1% of their fixed line subscribers to visit IPv6-enabled websites. The ISPs involved include the US firms AT&T and Comcast, and the Dutch firm XS4all.
The home networking equipment manufacturers Cisco and D-Link say they aim to enable IPv6 on all their home router products by the date.
And Akami and Limelight - two firms that help improve third parties' delivery of content over the net - have also promised to allow their customers to join the list of firms participating in the scheme by enabling the new protocol throughout their infrastructure.
Amsterdam-based RIPE NCC, which allocates IP addresses in Europe, the Middle East and parts of Asia, said: "Operational experience and measurements on World IPv6 Launch will help content providers and ISPs to identify and rectify any potential problems with delivering services."
Facebook's vice president of infrastructure engineering, Jay Parikh, added: "Last year's industry-wide test of IPv6 successfully showed that the global adoption of IPv6 is the best way to keep web devices communicating in the future.
"Permanently enabling IPv6 is vital to keeping the internet open and ensuring people stay connected online as the number of web users and devices continue to grow."
Sunday, January 15, 2012
IBM researchers make 12-atom magnetic memory bit
IBM researchers make 12-atom magnetic memory bit
The groups of atoms were built using a scanning tunneling microscope
Researchers have successfully stored a single data bit in only 12 atoms.
Currently it takes about a million atoms to store a bit on a modern hard-disk, the researchers from IBM say.
They believe this is the world's smallest magnetic memory bit.
According to the researchers, the technique opens up the possibility of producing much denser forms of magnetic computer memory than today's hard disk drives and solid state memory chips.
"Roughly every two years hard drives become denser," research lead author Sebastian Loth told the BBC.
"The obvious question to ask is how long can we keep going. And the fundamental physical limit is the world of atoms.
"The approach that we used is to jump to the very end, check if we can store information in one atom, and if not one atom, how many do we need?" he said.
Below 12 atoms the researchers found that the bits randomly lost information, owing to quantum effects.
A bit can have a value of 0 or 1 and is the most basic form of information in computation.
"We kept building larger structures until we emerged out of the quantum mechanical into the classical data storage regime and we reached this limit at 12 atoms."
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
Sebastian Loth Research lead authorAs a scientist [I] would totally dig having a scanning tunnelling microscope in every household”
The groups of atoms, which were kept at very low temperatures, were arranged using a scanning tunnelling microscope. Researchers were subsequently able to form a byte made of eight of the 12-atom bits.
Central to the research has been the use of materials with different magnetic properties.
The magnetic fields of bits made from conventional ferromagnetic materials can affect neighbouring bits if they are packed too closely together.
"In conventional magnetic data storage the information is stored in ferromagnetic material," said Dr Loth, who is now based at the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science in Germany.
"That adds up to a big magnetic field that can interfere with neighbours. That's a big problem for further miniaturisation."
Other scientists thought that was an interesting result.
"Current magnetic memory architectures are fundamentally limited in how small they can go," Dr Will Branford, of Imperial College London, told the BBC.
"This work shows that in principle data can be stored much more densely using antiferromagnetic bits."
But the move from the lab to the production may be some time away.
"Even though I as a scientist would totally dig having a scanning tunnelling microscope in every household, I agree it's a very experimental tool," Dr Loth said.
Dr Loth believes that by increasing the number of atoms to between 150 to 200 the bits can be made stable at room temperature. That opens up the possibility of more practical applications.
"This is now a technological challenge to find out about new manufacturing techniques," he said.
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