.::. sungolog

Physicists 'record' magnetic breakthrough

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:11:41 -0500

The researchers found they could record information using only heat - a previously unimaginable scenario. They believe this discovery will not only make future magnetic recording devices faster, but more energy-efficient too.

The results of the research, which was led by the University of York’s Department of Physics, are reported in the February edition of Nature Communications.

York physicist Thomas Ostler said: “Instead of using a magnetic field to record information on a magnetic medium, we harnessed much stronger internal forces and recorded information using only heat. This revolutionary method allows the recording of Terabytes (thousands of Gigabytes) of information per second, hundreds of times faster than present hard drive technology. As there is no need for a magnetic field, there is also less energy consumption.”

The multinational team of scientists included researchers from Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, Japan and the Netherlands. Experimental work was carried out at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland, the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands.

Dr Alexey Kimel, from the Institute of Molecules and Materials, Radboud University Nijmegen, said: “For centuries it has been believed that heat can only destroy the magnetic order. Now we have successfully demonstrated that it can, in fact, be a sufficient stimulus for recording information on a magnetic medium.”

Modern magnetic recording technology employs the principle that the North pole of a magnet is attracted to the South pole of another and two like poles repulse. Until now it has been believed that in order to record one bit of information – by inverting the poles of a magnet – there was a need to apply an external magnetic field. The stronger the applied field, the faster the recording of a magnetic bit of information.

However, the team of scientists has demonstrated that the positions of both the North and South poles of a magnet can be inverted by an ultrashort heat pulse, harnessing the power of much stronger internal forces of magnetic media.

Provided by University of York

http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-02-physicists-magnetic-breakthrough.html

Photo

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 02:06:34 -0500

Organic shopping basket

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 01:00:43 -0500

Organic shopping basket

Gizmo!

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:05:24 -0500

Gizmo!

retreat from all sensory experience settle in neutrality begin anew

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:02:59 -0500

retreat from all sensory experience

settle in neutrality

begin anew

Photo

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:58:38 -0500

Yeast Experiment Hints at a Faster Evolution From Single Cells

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:54:37 -0500

Our ancestors were single-celled microbes for about three billion years before they evolved bodies. But in a laboratory at the University of Minnesota, brewer’s yeast cells can evolve primitive bodies in about two weeks.

The transition to multicellular life has long intrigued evolutionary biologists. The cells in our bodies have evolved to cooperate with exquisite precision. The human body has more than 200 types of cells, each dedicated to a different job. And a vast majority of the 100 trillion cells in our bodies sacrifice their own long-term legacy: Only eggs and sperm have a chance to survive our own death.

These demands for cooperation and sacrifice ought to make it hard for single-celled life to become multicellular. Yet animals, plants and other life forms have evolved bodies. “We know that multicellularity has evolved in different lineages at least 25 times in the history of life,” said William Ratcliff, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Ratcliff and his adviser, Michael Travisano, are experts in experimental evolution. They design experiments in which microbes can evolve interesting new traits within weeks.

“We were sitting in his office drinking coffee, talking about what would be the coolest thing you could do in the lab,” Dr. Ratcliff said. “O.K., the origin of life would be too hard. But other than the origin of life, what would be the coolest thing?” They decided it would be observing single-celled microbes evolving a primitive form of multicellularity.

The scientists designed an experiment with brewer’s yeast, which normally lives as single cells, feeding on sugar and budding off daughter cells to reproduce.

Dr. Ratcliff and his colleagues set up an experiment that might favor multicellularity in yeast. They reared lines of yeast, starting from a single cell, in 10 flasks of broth. They kept the flasks shaking for a day and then let the yeast settle. The scientists then took out a drop of the settled yeast cells and transferred it to a fresh flask, where the yeast could continue to grow. In this experiment, natural selection favored any new mutation that would let the yeast fall quickly. Yeast cells that were still floating high in the broth would not have a chance to be delivered to the next flask.

In a matter of weeks, Dr. Ratcliff noticed, the yeast was sinking fast, forming a cloudy layer at the bottom of the flasks. He put the yeast under a microscope and discovered that most of it was no longer growing as single cells. Instead, the broth was dominated by snowflake-shaped clusters of hundreds of cells stuck together.

These were not clumps of unrelated cells, he found. When he isolated individual cells and let them grow, they formed new snowflakes. Instead of drifting away, newly budded yeast cells remained stuck to their parents. By staying stuck together, these yeast clusters fell faster than individual cells.

A single cell needs a few hours to grow to “adult” size, Dr. Ratcliff found. After it matures, its growing branches start to press against one another until they snap apart. These broken branches are yeast versions of plant cuttings: Each one grows into a snowflake of its own, which then snaps apart in turn.

Dr. Ratcliff also found that this new form of reproduction is possible only because some of the yeast cells make the ultimate sacrifice. Once a snowflake reaches adult size, a fraction of the cells commit suicide. “The cells that kill themselves act as weak links,” he said.

The scientists describe their experiments in a paper being published this week inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“This is a really interesting and important study,” said Richard Lenski, a biologist at Michigan State University and the editor of the paper. “It shows that a major transition in evolution — going from unicellular to multicellular life forms — might not be as hard to achieve as most biologists have long thought.”

Dr. Ratcliff suspects that the transformation of the yeast in his lab may offer hints about how animals and other lineages became multicellular hundreds of millions of years ago. “Forming clusters isn’t a freaky yeast thing,” he said. The closest single-celled relatives of animals, called choanoflagellates, also sometimes grow as clusters of cells.

Animals and plants did not evolve inside flasks, of course. But natural conditions could have favored clusters of cells. They might have been harder for predators to eat, for example. A cluster of cells might also be able to feed more efficiently in some cases.

Dr. Ratcliff and his colleagues are now examining 25 genomes of the evolved yeast, looking for the mutations that gave them snowflake bodies. Meanwhile, their yeast continues to evolve. Once the cells gain the ability to form snowflakes, they become better adapted to multicellular life. They snap off smaller branches, allowing them to reproduce faster.

Dr. Ratcliff would not go into detail about where the yeast evolution was going until he published the latest results. “We’re getting really interesting things happening now” was all he would say.

By CARL ZIMMER

beautiful

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:53:37 -0500

beautiful

I didnt do anything. The guy went on one date with me. And we tried hanging out 4-5 times and he canceled & had an excuse for all of em. I'm ignoring the rest of his texts. I'm so annoyed lol I was dressed and everything and he stood me up. oh and this excuse wasnt even a good one. He said "I was sleep" -____- so you dont text me til the next day? then tells me he was sleeping from 3pm - 10 pm . we were supposed to hang at 5 pm. Why are you just now texting me at 2pm the next day =_=

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:51:16 -0500

Damn that is very low of him. I guess he doesn’t have the face to tell you the truth. Was it one of those dates where you end up digging the guy a lot and he just disses you

Photo

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:37:07 -0500

Laptop Oven

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:33:39 -0500

Laptop Oven

The Four Branches of US Government

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 04:31:10 -0500

The Four Branches of US Government

Calendar Logic

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:50:06 -0500

Calendar Logic

S Giovanni Cena, Lorenzo Also, what the hell is going on in...

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:00:44 -0500

S Giovanni Cena, Lorenzo

Also, what the hell is going on in that scene?

There may appear to be some bias in this article but the facts presented do speak for themselves....

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:34:54 -0400

There may appear to be some bias in this article but the facts presented do speak for themselves. Sources are found via the links.

————————————————————————

The following is presented as an educational service of the Downsize DC Foundation. It contains startling facts that refute economic claims made by left-statists such as President Obama and Paul Krugman.

High profile left-statists have made much of a recent survey from the National Federation of Independent Businesses. The survey lists the primary concerns of small business owners. Here are the top three …

Poor sales – 25%
Regulation – 19%
Taxes – 18%

People like Paul Krugman, point to the “poor sales” number as evidence that the economy is hampered by a lack of consumer demand. They assert that increased spending by politicians is needed to compensate for this, as proposed by the economic theories of John Maynard Keynes(pronounced Kines). But the following chart contradicts this theory (HT: Mark Perry, Carpe Diem blog):

The actual numbers on consumer spending instantly refute the Keynesian economic proposals favored by President Obama and Paul Krugman. There is no lack of “consumer demand.” Instead, consumer spending is at an all-time high. Why then do so many small business owners list “poor sales” as their chief concern?

Could it be because they need more sales in order to pay the increased burdens imposed upon them by The State? After all, 19% of business owners identify regulation as their biggest problem, and 18% name taxes. This means that a whopping 37% of the businesses surveyed cite one state-imposed cost or another as their main difficulty.

A perception that the burden of The State is increasing could easily lead someone to feel that sales are “poor,” even when consumer spending is at an all-time high.

Meanwhile, Professor Mark Perry has provided us with another chart showing us where the economy’s real problem lies. Spending by consumers and politicians booms, but private investment lags.

How can this be? Why aren’t investors rushing to take advantage of the surge in consumer spending? Isn’t it possible that businesses are failing to expand and hire because of UNCERTAINTY about the future costs of things like Obamacare, the new Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and other statist schemes that have either been passed or proposed? This suggestion certainly fits the available facts.

It seems to me that left-statists are guilty of massive special pleading. They want us to be concerned about uncertainty, but only when it comes to consumers, NOT when it comes to investors. They also want us to trust the policy descriptions of John Maynard Keynes, but ONLY when it suits their desire to expand The State, NOT when Keynes’s proposals would argueagainst what the politicians are doing. Here’s what Keynes really advocated …

Politicians should accumulate surpluses during good times in order to fund stimulus spending during bad times
Stimulus spending should NOT be funded through borrowing, because doing that robs capital from private investment and is therefore self-defeating
Stimulus spending needs to be self-liquidating – it needs to pay for itself!
Investor confidence is just as important as consumer confidence

But all of this is the exact opposite of what the statists do in Keynes’s name.

Left and right statists in Congress have all favored deficits in good times, and the left-statists in particular want to run even larger deficits during bad times. This is not what Keynes proposed. The left-statists cherry-pick Keynes’s arguments to fit their needs.

The left-statists in Congress have also failed to focus their “stimulus spending” on projects that will pay for themselves, preferring to use the money to bailout favored constituencies instead, such as government employee unions. This is the exact opposite of what Keynes proposed.

But, worst of all, the left-statists continue to tell us that more statist spending is needed to compensate for low consumer demand, even though consumer spending has completely recovered. Is it too much to suggest that the people who do this, like Paul Krugman and President Obama, are hypocrites and liars?

We think it’s time to start undoing this conspiracy of deceit, in which the establishment news media is also heavily complicit. The media has failed to tell Americans about the data and facts presented in this message, so we must step in to correct their error. Here’s the truth …

Consumer spending has completely recovered
But private investment lags because of the uncertainty caused by statist policies
This means that the statists in Washington need to start doing LESS, NOT MORE.

Please educate the public about the facts that demonstrate these claims …

Share this message with everyone you know
Ask your friends to share it with others too
And ask them to consider joining Downsize DC, by starting a free subscription to our email newsletter. They can do that here: https://secure.downsizedcfoundation.org/newsletter/

When all the powers that be lie, it’s up to you to tell the truth, and spread it far and wide.

Perry Willis
Vice President
Downsize DC Foundation

What is money?

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 20:58:00 -0400

Protests against the world’s financial institutions are growing, but do most people even know where money comes from?

We spend a lot of time thinking about money, one way or another. We think about how to get our hands on it, how to keep it safe and how to spend it. When we aren’t asleep, there’s a good chance that we’re paying attention to money. But while money is never far from our thoughts, there is something curious about our relationship with it. For all that we use it to get through the day, most of us don’t know what it is.

I mean, we know what it can do. We know how much we have, more or less. We know what things cost and so we have some idea of what we can afford at any given moment. When we start thinking about the future, how long we might live and how much money we’ll need, we tend to want to think about something else. But money itself escapes our calculations. For the most part we don’t think to ask where it comes from or what it is, in itself. The advantages of having money and the consequences of having none loom so large that we seldom stop to wonder about money as such.

Today is as good a day as any to explain where money comes from and why it matters. On Thursday, the Bank of England announced another £75 billion of “quantitative easing”. If you don’t know what that means or vaguely think it has something to do with “printing money”, it is probably because you don’t know what money is. All will be revealed in what follows. OK. Are you ready to know where money comes from, to know the truth jealously guarded from the dawn of recorded time?

Money is lent into existence by banks

There’s nothing complicated going on behind the scenes. The great secret is that there isn’t really much of a secret. Yet the truth about money eludes us for most of the time.

The economist and ironist JK Galbraith once wrote that “the process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled. When something so important is involved, a deeper mystery seems only decent”. Offered the unadorned truth, stripped of any technocratic flim-flam, we can scarcely believe it. It seems preposterous that money should have such humble origins, as though it is beneath money’s dignity that it should begin life at a banker’s keystroke.

The truth about money creation is a bit like the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, when it turns out that there is no all-knowing wizard, only an old man behind a curtain, making things up as he goes along. It’s a lot like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in fact. Frank Baum’s book is a parable about currency reform, written at the height of the struggle in America between the architects of corporate finance and those who wanted the money supply to be controlled by the public. The 1939 film adaptation brought the story to a vast new audience, but somewhere along the line, the author’s original point was somehow lost. I know, that such a thing could happen in Hollywood, of all places.

So, banks create money through the act of lending it. They don’t have to limit themselves to lending out the money deposited with them. In fact, they can end up lending huge multiples of the money they hold in reserve. When they authorise a loan or extend credit in the form of an overdraft, the money is conjured out of nowhere. The banks then receive interest on the loan. The interest is how banks make their profits, so they want to lend out as much as possible for as long as possible, even if the lending is unsustainable in the long run. This is what Chuck Prince was getting at when he said in July 2007 that “when the music stops, in terms of liquidity, things will be complicated. But as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing”.

As the authors of Where Does Money Come From?, a handy guide to money creation published by the New Economics Foundation, point out, banks prefer to lend money against existing collateral. As a result they have a really bad record when it comes to supporting start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises that want to expand or innovate. But they are brilliant at inflating bubbles in commercial and residential property. Perhaps mindful that the money they lend out has an immaterial quality, bankers crave the solidity of bricks and mortar.

Intelligent conversations, not riots

I said earlier that the Bank of England has announced another round of quantitative easing. Quantitative easing (QE) occurs when central banks create new money and use it to buy interest-bearing assets. So far QE in Britain has been used to buy government and corporate bonds. This has supported asset prices and relieved the pressure on the other banks. The banks exchange assets of uncertain value for cash backed by the credit of the government.

If you think it’s a little odd that one national institution, the Bank of England, is buying bonds issued by another, the Treasury, you’re right, it is. The government doesn’t want you to think too hard about it, in case we start thinking that they, like the wonderful wizard, are making things up as they go along and hoping for the best.

No one is claiming that finance and economics aren’t complicated. But this shouldn’t blind us to the fact that they both rest on a cardinal simplicity - the money-creating power of banking institutions. Those who profit from this underlying simplicity have had no great desire to enlighten the public. Their control of the money supply has never been subject to democratic debate. It is doubtful that this control would survive any such debate. As protesters gather in the world’s financial districts, I hope they will be able to bring reform of the banking system out of the shadows.

The established order can cope with riots. It cannot cope with a reasonable conversation about the role of the banks in misallocating capital and creating crises.

Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, has already indicated that some of the money conjured up by the Bank of England should find its way to small and medium-sized businesses, in a tacit admission that the financial sector in its current form cannot adequately support productive industry. Private and unaccountable control of the money supply - the very archetype of unconstitutional privilege - has failed and this failure is bringing misery to millions around the world.

A discussion began in the spring of this year in North Africa, about the society and economy we want. Europe and North America are now joining in. The problems we face are complicated, it’s true, but they are not as complicated as some would like to make out. We will begin to see how to solve them when we have a clear understanding of the fundamentals of social organisation, including the origins and nature of money.

It is an understanding that those who are currently powerful would rather we didn’t have. After all, as another great American ironist, Walter Karp, put it, “usurped power is only secure as long as it remains unregarded”. For too long, the banks have shaped the laws of economic exchange in private. Even in the midst of a debt crisis their privilege has so far evaded our understanding. It is time that it became the object of our steady and patient attention.

Dan Hind has worked in publishing since 1998 and is the author of two acclaimed books: The Return of the Public and The Threat to Reason. He is this year’s winner of the Bristol Festival of Ideas prize.

Prohibit Prohibition

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 12:09:09 -0400

Quote of the Day: “That which we call sin in others is experiment for us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

To prohibitionists of all kinds, the ends justify the means, even if those means include murder.

I realized this while watching the Ken Burns 3-part documentary Prohibition, which debuted last week. During Alcohol Prohibition, the Federal State deliberately poisoned alcohol supplies to discourage drinking. As many as 10,000 died.

The callousness of Prohibitionists continues to this day…

Drug Prohibitionists cheer on Mexico’s Drug War, whose death toll has likely passed 40,000 over five years
Drug Prohibitionists also don’t care about the suffering of sick people; breaking a campaign promise, President Obama is cracking down on medical marijuana dispensaries even in states where they’re legal.
Gun Prohibitionists in the BATF and Justice Department conducted last year’s Operation Fast and Furious, a “sting” operation in which the feds facilitated the traffic of guns to drugs lords in Mexico, which in turn were used in the killing of a border patrol agent and perhaps 200 Mexicans

In short, prohibitionists are responsible for more evil than they hope to prevent!

That’s because…

Alcohol isn’t evil
Drugs aren’t evil
Guns aren’t evil

Whether they are dangerous, or lead to evil consequences, depend on how you use them.

Jim Babka explained this in March, 2009 in “The Two Prohibitions.” Here’s an updated version of his argument…

Drug prohibition and gun prohibition are the same issue.

Now, you might think drugs are bad. You might believe them to be so harmful that you’d never use them. But you probably expect the politicians to keep their hands off your firearms.

On the other hand, you may think guns are evil. You might believe they’re so dangerous that you’d never own one. But you think you have every right to choose what substances you take into to your own body.

Both positions are correct. Guns and drugs are both dangerous to people who don’t use them prudently. But prohibition laws mean that no one is allowed to use them prudently. And the one form of prohibition ends up being used as a justification for the other…

We think it’s time to put the special pleading aside. Drug prohibition and gun control aren’t two separate issues — they are the same issue, and should be governed by the same principle. The only thing that should be prohibited is government prohibition in all its forms.

We don’t need to renew the Assault Weapons Ban, nor to ship money to Mexico so they can fight the war on drugs.

What we need is less state coercion, not more.

Downsize DC! That’s the winning formula here.

The politicians should end drug prohibition. That will defund the Mexican cartels (and the Taliban in Afghanistan too), then they won’t be able to buy the guns. It would also reduce violent crime here at home and remove much of the supposed justification for gun prohibition.

If you agree with this Prohibit Prohibition message, please use our free Educate the Powerful System to ask Congress to end prohibition.

We encourage you to make your own argument, in your own words. However, if you need some words to get you started, use some of the lines from this Dispatch (above). And…

If you have friends who agree that Prohibition should be Prohibited, tell them about Downsize DC! Encourage them to follow us…

On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/downsizedc
And Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/DDCDispatch

James Wilson
Policy Research Director
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

D o w n s i z e r - D i s p a t c h

the New and Old meet

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 02:22:22 -0400

the New and Old meet

mysticplaces: Giant’s Causeway, Ireland | Amateria, Myst III:...

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 21:32:14 -0400

mysticplaces:

Giant’s Causeway, Ireland | Amateria, Myst III: Exile

Should Congress Impeach the President?

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:17:21 -0400

Quote of the Day: ”It isn’t illegal if the President does it.” — Richard M. Nixon

We have re-launched a campaign to impeach the President. The sample letter below will explain why we have done this.

WARNING: Those who maintain partisan loyalties may wrongly believe we are pursuing this campaign for partisan reasons, or out of personal animosity for the President. Nothing could be further from the truth. We want to make this clear …

Our organization is legally non-partisan, and temperamentally ANTI-partisan.
We distrust all political parties, and all politicians.
We take NO position for partisan political reasons, for the simple reason that we have NO partisan political loyalties, AT ALL.

Instead, we are doing this because we think the legal situation requires it. The sample letter below will explain in more detail. But … out of respect for those who may disagree … we are placing this campaign on the “Heresies” page on our website. As always, you are a free to disagree with us, and to tell us you disagree.

On the other hand, if you strongly support our position, you may want to help us notify the media about it (see more details below the sample letter).

The hardwired portion of this campaign’s letter to Congress reads …

Please begin impeachment proceedings against the President.

I have added the personal comments that follow. Assuming you agree with our position, you may copy or edit my comments to send your own letter to Congress…

I’m asking you to impeach the President because I believe he is guilty of murder. The President ordered the military to kill an English-speaking, natural-born American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki (ah-law-key), using a drone missile.

This is illegal. No citizen can be harmed by any agent of the state except through the application of legal due process (Fifth Amendment). President Obama violated this requirement. This makes him a murderer.

The only legal redress available when the President becomes a criminal, is impeachment by Congress. Therefore, the rule of law requires that you make use of this procedure now.

You may think that the President deserves the benefit of the doubt in this case, just because he is the President. I believe the exact opposite.

With great power comes great responsibility. The President must be held to an even higher standard, precisely because he is the President, and exactly because he has so much power over the lives of others. No person with the power to order missile attacks on individuals can operate free from the strong constraints of legal due process.

Remember, the President, and every other agent of the state, including all members of the military, were required to presume that Awlaki was innocent. The President assumed otherwise, and took upon himself the powers of a vigilante, making himself the judge, jury, and executioner (Separation of Powers).

The President has failed to honor his legal and moral obligations, so now the responsibility falls on you. You must use the impeachment process to prosecute the President for murdering an American citizen.

I well understand that the thought of this action must make you squeamish. I understand that you operate in a hypocritical and lawless environment, where citizens are held to high legal standards, but politicians are allowed to get away with anything and everything (except perhaps posting naked pictures of themselves). I understand that nearly all members of Congress violate the law, especially the Constitution, nearly every day. But this situation is unique …

* An American citizen has been murdered
* Congress, for once, is not complicit in the crime
* So this is Congress’s chance to be on the right side of the law for a change
* Democrats can show that they aren’t partisan hypocrites by leading the charge
* And Republicans can show that they’re through excusing wanton criminality in the name of national security

I am waiting to see if the political class will hold itself to the same standards you constantly apply to “mere citizens.” The President has confessed to murder. Impeach him.

END LETTER

You can send your own impeachment letter to Congress here.

This morning, during the 9 AM hour, DownsizeDC.org issued a press release to thousands of media outlets.

Your contribution can help us send more releases.

Perry Willis
Vice President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.

P.S. A call for the impeachment of any President is considered by many to be an overt partisan act. But it’s NOT in this instance. DownsizeDC.org President, Jim Babka, explains why on our blog.

D o w n s i z e r - D i s p a t c h