First images of a carbon atom's electron clouds

The images were captured by  Igor Mikhailovskij 's team at the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, Ukraine.

The $150 Space Camera: MIT Students Beat NASA On Beer-Money Budget

The two students ( from MIT, of course ) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.

HTML5 Canvas Cheat Sheet v. 1.1

Author: Jacob Seidelin

video – more than just a tag

This article is written by  Paul Rouget , Mozilla contributor and purveyor of extraordinary Open Web demos.

Starting with Firefox 3.5, you can embed a video in a web page like an image.

This means video is now a part of the document, and finally, a first class citizen of the Open Web. Like all other elements, you can use it with CSS and JavaScript. Let’s see what this all means …

Juan Aréchaga: Las revistas científicas españolas y el fraude bibliométrico

 Son muchos los problemas que continúan teniendo nuestras publicaciones para competir internacionalmente , dice el autor.

El reciente informe 2008 Journal Citation Reports Science Edition ( JCR, Institute for Scientific Information, Thomson Reuters, 2009 ) ofrece algunas novedades de interés, como el incremento, más bien escaso, de revistas españolas entre las 6.598 seleccionadas ( 0,56 % del total ) y un nuevo parámetro bibliométrico, denominado 5-Year Impact Factor, que mejora notablemente ediciones precedentes. Con toda seguridad, el último JCR ha sido espoleado por su nuevo competidor, conocido como SCImago Journal & Country Rank, desarrollado íntegramente en España sobre la base de datos SCOPUS de la multinacional holandesa Elsevier. Así, este repertorio amplía su análisis ya a  16.033 revistas científicas y, entre ellas, 227 ( 1,4 % ) españolas...¡ No hay nada mejor que la competencia para renovar productos y servicios ! Pero, también, el 2008JCR dedica un espacio importante al tema de las auto-referencias ( no confundir con las autocitas de los propios autores, que esto es harina de otro costal ), un aspecto que suele pasar desapercibido para muchos, pero que merece una especial atención por su trascendencia en España.

The uncalculability of electron systems

The electric and magnetic properties of solids are impossible to calculate exactly: The complex interactions of the many electrons which underly these phenomena cannot be computed even by the most powerful classical computers. Here, the central task is to determine the ground state of the electrons moving in the field of the positively charged nuclei. The most widely used method for treating such systems is Density Functional Theory, which reduces the many-body problem to a single particle interaction. As Dr. Norbert Schuch, scientist in the theory division of Prof. Ignacio Cirac at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, and Prof. Frank Verstraete from the University of Vienna, report in Nature Physics ( DOI: 10.1038/NPHYS1370 ), there exist however fundamental limitations to the applicability of this theory. The scientists succeeded by using methods developed in Quantum Information Theory, demonstrating that these methods can give deep insights beyond the development of quantum computers.

Physicist Proposes Solution to Arrow-of-Time Paradox

The laws of physics, which describe everything from electricity to moving objects to energy conservation, are time-invariant. That is, the laws still hold if time is reversed. However, this time reversal symmetry is in direct contrast with everyday phenomena, where  it’s obvious that time moves forward and not backward .

For example, when milk is spilt, it can’t flow back up into the glass, and when pots are broken, their pieces can’t shatter back together. This irreversibility is formalized through the second law of thermodynamics, which says that entropy always increases or stays the same, but never decreases. This contrast has created a reversibility paradox, also called  Loschmidt’s paradox , which scientists have been trying to understand since Johann Loschmidt began considering the problem in 1876. Scientists have proposed many solutions to the conundrum, from trying to embed irreversibility in physical laws to postulating low-entropy initial states.

IBM eyes molecule 'anatomy' for future computers

IBM scientists have imaged the chemical structure of an individual molecule, increasing the possibility for creating electronic building blocks on the atomic and molecular scale.

Scientists In Zurich, Switzerland, have, for the first time, imaged the "anatomy," or chemical structure, of an individual molecule with "unprecedented" resolution, using noncontact atomic force microscopy (AFM), IBM said Thursday. Resolving individual atoms within a molecule has been a long-standing goal of surface microscopy, according to the computer company, which has a research and development program dating back to 1945.

Schoolgirl 'wanted to lose virginity before Large Hadron Collider caused end of world'

The girl, who is aged between 13 and 15, had heard rumours that particle accelerator under the Franco-Swiss border would bring about Armageddon when it was switched on last September. At the time leading scientists including Prof Stephen Hawking were forced to deny claims that the £4.4bn accelerator would generate a black hole capable of swallowing up the earth. In the event the collider kicked into life peacefully, although it has since been beset by technological problems. But police in Brisbane, Australia believe that the teenage girl was so scared by the doomsday speculation that she agreed to have under-age sex with a boy in their school lavatories. Her fears came to light after their sex acts were filmed by another boy at the school, with the footage circulated among pupils via their mobile phones. Police have launched an investigation  under child pornography laws , although The Courier-Mail newspaper reported that they did not expect to bring any charges.

El agujero negro más lejano tiene una galaxia enorme a su alrededor

El agujero negro más lejano que se conoce, un objeto supermasivo situado a 12.800 millones de años luz de la Tierra, tiene alrededor una galaxia tan grande como nuestra Vía Láctea, algo sorprendente en el universo primitivo tan joven ( sólo 840 millones de años después del Big Bang ), dicen los científicos.  La galaxia y el agujero negro, que tiene al menos mil millones de veces más materia que el Sol, debieron formarse muy rápidamente en el cosmos primitivo , dice Tomotsugu Goto ( Universidad de Hawai ), líder de esta investigación, en la que participan, además, cuatro astrofísicos de instituciones japonesas. De hecho, las observaciones se realizaron en agosto del año pasado con el gran telescopio nipón Subaru, ubicado en el observatorio de Mauna Kea ( Hawai ), sobre todo para probar un nuevo sensor ( CCD ) avanzado instalado en una de sus cámaras.

Rafael Cadenas agradece Premio FIL de Literatura

El poeta venezolano recibirá el reconocimiento dotado con 150 mil dólares que busca destacar al autor que haya aportado una valiosa obra de creación, en cualquier género literario

Luego de que el jurado decidió que el poeta venezolano Rafael Cadenas sea quien se lleve el Premio FIL de Literatura en Lenguas Romances 2009, el vate agradeció la distinción vía telefónica.

Cadenas, quien recibirá el galardón dotado con 150 mil dólares en el marco de la Feria Internacional del Libro de Guadalajara, el 28 de noviembre próximo, manifestó que tiene muchas cosas que agradecerle a México y dijo estar muy contento con el Premio.

Autor de una obra marcada por una continua meditación sobre la relación entre ética, lenguaje y poesía, el escritor sudamericano nacido en Barquisimeto en 1930, aseguró en entrevista, desde Caracas, que lo que  brota ahora en mí es la palabra gracias .

Cadenas también habló de su relación con México y sus autores y recordó que su obra completa está publicada en el Fondo de Cultura Económica, que este día se sumó a las felicitaciones para este autor.

El acta del jurado, que fue leída por Gustavo Guerrero, destacó a Cadenas como  una de las voces más reconocidas de la poesía latinoamericana contemporánea .

Señaló que su obra  encarna hoy para los más jóvenes el horizonte de una palabra que se aleja del lirismo tradicional y trae consigo el imperativo de darle voz a aquello que, de otro modo, ya no encuentra espacios para decirse en nuestra época .

Dotado con 150 mil dólares y convocado por la Asociación Civil del Premio de Literatura Latinoamericana y del Caribe Juan Rulfo, el Premio FIL de Literatura en Lenguas Romances busca reconocer a un escritor que haya aportado una valiosa obra de creación, en cualquier género literario.

AAAI Fall Symposium - Nov. 5 - 7, 2009 - Arlington, VA

Complex Adaptive Systems and the Threshold Effect: Views from the Natural and Social Sciences

Most interesting phenomena in natural and social systems include constant transitions and oscillations among their various phases. Wars, companies, societies, markets, and humans rarely stay in a stable, predictable state for long. Randomness, power laws, and human behavior ensure that the future is both unknown and challenging. How do events unfold ? When do they take hold ? Why do some initial events cause an avalanche while others do not ? What characterizes these events ? What are the thresholds that differentiate a sea change from a non-event ?

Complex Adaptive Systems have proven to be a powerful tool for exploring these and other related phenomena. We characterize a general CAS model as having a large number of self-similar agents that:

1. utilize one or more levels of feedback;
2. exhibit emergent properties and self-organization; and
3. produce non-linear dynamic behavior.

Advances in modeling and computing technology have led not only to a deeper understanding of complex systems in many areas, but they have also raised the possibility that similar fundamental principles may be at work across these systems, even though the underlying principles may manifest themselves differently.

Econophysicist Predicts Date of Chinese Stock Market Collapse

The Shanghai Composite Index was supposed to burst before July 27 but didn't. A few days after that deadline, however, it dropped by 20 percent. Coincidence ?.

Last month, we looked at a prediction that the Shanghai Composite stock market index was about to crash. The forecast was made by a team lead by the econophysicist Didier Sornette at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, who has made a study of economic bubbles and how they burst. His thinking is that bubbles are the result of some kind of feedback mechanism that creates faster-than-exponential growth. This kind of growth rate is straightforward to measure, and so bubbles should be easy to identify. In July, he and his buddies pointed out that the Shanghai Composite stock market index was following exactly this kind of trend. But they also made an extraordinary prediction. They said that this bubble would burst between July 17 and 27.

IBM looks to DNA to sustain Moore's Law

Low concentrations of triangular DNA origami bind to wide lines on a lithographically patterned surface. Credit: PRNewsFoto/IBM.

As chip geometries get infinitesimally small, IBM is looking to DNA to make the manufacture of future chips feasible. On Monday, IBM researchers and collaborator Paul W.K. Rothemund, of the California Institute of Technology, announced an advancement of a method to arrange DNA origami structures on surfaces compatible with today's semiconductor manufacturing equipment.  The cost involved in shrinking (chip) features to improve performance is a limiting factor in keeping pace with Moore's Law and a concern across the semiconductor industry,  said Spike Narayan, a manager in the Science & Technology division of IBM Research, in a statement. Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, states that the number of transistors that can be placed on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. For more than four decades, chip manufacturers have been able to consistently shrink chip geometries, allowing Moore's Law to remain on track.

A coincidence of errors: Critical exponent for the quantum Hall transition

One of the most studied problems in the last twenty years is the integer quantum Hall effect, which describes the response of electrons confined in two-dimensions to a strong perpendicular magnetic field: The electrons move in circular orbits that fill bands, called Landau levels, and the Hall conductance ( i.e., the conductance perpendicular to an induced current ) of the electrons is quantized.

Like any phase transition, the change of the Hall conductance between quantized values ( as the electrons are moved between Landau levels by an external voltage or magnetic field ) can be described by a critical exponent, ν. Both numerical calculations and experiment agree fairly well about the value of ν.

But as Keith Slevin at Osaka University and Tomi Ohtsuki at Sophia University, both in Japan, argue in a Rapid Communication appearing in Physical Review B, this may be because of a coincidence of errors. Namely, numerical calculations have so far ignored Coulomb interactions between electrons, which should in fact be important, while the experimentally measured value of ν is based on approximations.

Quarks, gluons and corroborating E = mc2

It's taken more than a century, but Einstein's celebrated formula E = mc² has finally been corroborated, thanks to a heroic computational effort by French, German and Hungarian physicists. A brainpower consortium led by Laurent Lellouch of France's Centre for Theoretical Physics, using some of the world's mightiest supercomputers, have set down the calculations for estimating the mass of protons and neutrons, the particles at the nucleus of atoms.

Escuela Franco-Venezolana de Nanotecnología 2009 ( ENANO2009 ) del 2 al 6 de noviembre de 2009 en Caracas y Choroní, Venezuela

Contacto

http://www.redvnano.org/congreso/contactanos.html

La Red Venezolana de Nanotecnología está ayudando a organizar la Escuela Franco-Venezolana de Nanotecnología 2009 ( ENANO2009 ) del 2 al 6 de noviembre de 2009 en Caracas y Choroní ( Venezuela ), bajo el patrocinio de:

• FONACIT
• Programa de Cooperación de Postgraduados ( PCP )
• Embajada de Francia en Caracas
• Fundación IDEA
• Academia de Ciencias Físicas, Matemáticas y Naturales
• Universidad Central de Venezuela

Para el primer día del evento ( 2/11/09 ) se ha programado una jornada en la Fundación IDEA ( Caracas, Venezuela ) en la cual varios investigadores presentarán los desarrollos obtenidos fruto de la cooperación franco-venezolana en nanociencia y nanotecnología, gracias al apoyo de las herramientas de cooperación científica entre estos dos países.

El Comité Organizador de la ENANO2009 también ha programado sesiones de cursos, charlas y carteles del 3 al 6 de noviembre de 2009. Esta segunda parte de la Escuela tendrá lugar en Choroní, Edo. Aragua. Las sesiones van dirigidas a estudiantes e investigadores sensibles al desarrollo de estos conocimientos en Venezuela.

Se programarán además mesas de trabajo sobre aspectos asociados al programa de doctorado interinstitucional de nanotecnología que la Red se encuentra promoviendo, la cooperación nacional e internacional en actividades de I+D+i dirigidas a atender los problemas de interés nacional, la definición de mecanismos que faciliten la comunicación entre el sector científico, productivo y la sociedad en general.

Formalismo de Keldysh (Keldysh Technique)

This technique provides the correct evaluation of the quantum mechanical average of an observable. It means that there is not any assumption about the final system state whenever we perform the above mentioned average. As a consequence, it is a suitable tool to study small systems in contact with macroscopic systems which are in "different" thermodynamic equilibrium states.

See the original Keldysh's papers:

• L. V. Keldysh, ZhEFT 47, 1515 (1964)
• L. V. Keldysh, Soviet Physics JEPT 20, 1018 (1965)

Drop in world temperatures fuels global warming debate

Official government measurements show that the world's temperature has cooled a bit since reaching its most recent peak in 1998. That's given global warming skeptics new ammunition to attack the prevailing theory of climate change. The skeptics argue that the current stretch of slightly cooler temperatures means that costly measures to limit carbon dioxide emissions are ill-founded and unnecessary. Proposals to combat global warming are "crazy" and will "destroy more than a million good American jobs and increase the average family's annual energy bill by at least $1,500 a year," the Heartland Institute, a conservative research organization based in Chicago, declared in full-page newspaper ads earlier this summer. "High levels of carbon dioxide actually benefit wildlife and human health," the ads asserted.

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show

Scientists in Israel have demonstrated that it is possible to fabricate DNA evidence, undermining the credibility of what has been considered the gold standard of proof in criminal cases. The scientists fabricated blood and saliva samples containing DNA from a person other than the donor of the blood and saliva. They also showed that if they had access to a DNA profile in a database, they could construct a sample of DNA to match that profile without obtaining any tissue from that person. “You can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate could perform this.”