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Friday, December 28, 2007
A First Person Account from Pakistan After Bhutto Assassinated
My mom, brothers and sister in law and I were shopping when I received a text from my father asking us to come to the hotel because he feared for our safety since Benazir Bhutto had been shot. I ran inside the store to tell my mother this, and as we were running out of building filled with small shops, all I saw was mass amounts of dust in the air and people running all over the place panicked. All I heard was people yelling and telling us not to go outside because people might be shooting in the streets and told us to just keep going upstairs. We all started running up the stairs and stopped on the second floor and I noticed that my mother was panicking and crying. I realized that my legs and hands were shaking and I felt a sense of helplessness that I can't even explain to you at this moment. I only kept thinking of the fires I had seen being set to markets in the past when there have been riots in the city and my only thought was that if this happened to this building, how were we going to escape.
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After another minute on the road and realizing that the main road to the hotel is the one where Benazir Bhutto was first attacked in October...and there will be chaos there as well...we decided that it was in our best interest to just be inside.
I am here right now, with my brothers, sister in law and mother. My father is with my grandmother and great aunt at their house. We are told that it is not safe to be at the hotel at this time since places with foreigners get targeted as well.
We have no idea how long we will be here...there is a strike in the city for three days, during which anything can happen...
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My legs and arms have stopped shaking and my heart is still beating. My chest feels tight.
I'll cry later.
We are safe, for now.
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WiTricity - Wireless Electricity Transmission
Various methods of transmitting power wirelessly have been known for centuries. Perhaps the best known example is electromagnetic radiation, such as radio waves. While such radiation is excellent for wireless transmission of information, it is not feasible to use it for power transmission. Since radiation spreads in all directions, a vast majority of power would end up being wasted into free space.
One can envision using directed electromagnetic radiation, such as lasers, but this is not very practical and can even be dangerous. It requires an uninterrupted line of sight between the source and the device, as well as a sophisticated tracking mechanism when the device is mobile.
The key: Magnetically coupled resonance
In contrast, WiTricity is based on using coupled resonant objects. Two resonant objects of the same resonant frequency tend to exchange energy efficiently, while interacting weakly with extraneous off-resonant objects. A child on a swing is a good example of this. A swing is a type of mechanical resonance, so only when the child pumps her legs at the natural frequency of the swing is she able to impart substantial energy.
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Still, for laptop-sized coils, power levels more than sufficient to run a laptop can be transferred over room-sized distances nearly omni-directionally and efficiently, irrespective of the geometry of the surrounding space, even when environmental objects completely obstruct the line-of-sight between the two coils. Fisher points out: "As long as the laptop is in a room equipped with a source of such wireless power, it would charge automatically, without having to be plugged in. In fact, it would not even need a battery to operate inside of such a room." In the long run, this could reduce our society's dependence on batteries, which are currently heavy and expensive.
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WiTricity is rooted in such well-known laws of physics that it makes one wonder why no one thought of it before. "In the past, there was no great demand for such a system, so people did not have a strong motivation to look into it," points out Joannopoulos, adding, "Over the past several years, portable electronic devices, such as laptops, cell phones, iPods and even household robots have become widespread, all of which require batteries that need to be recharged often."
As for what the future holds, Soljacic adds, "Once, when my son was about three years old, we visited his grandparents' house. They had a 20-year-old phone and my son picked up the handset, asking, 'Dad, why is this phone attached with a cord to the wall?' That is the mindset of a child growing up in a wireless world. My best response was, 'It is strange and awkward, isn't it? Hopefully, we will be getting rid of some more wires, and also batteries, soon.'"
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Fast Charging Breakthrough Battery
A new battery that can be recharged to 90 percent capacity in under five minutes and lasts 10 years will start shipping in March, Toshiba Corp. announced this week, hailing it as "a new energy solution" for cleaner transportation.
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Thursday, December 27, 2007
Amazing Child Prodigies
Alia Sabur is a well known American child prodigy. Born in February of 1989, Alia was one of the youngest people to ever enter college. She attended SUNY Stony Brook at 10 years old, and graduated summa-cum-laude at age 14. She had also received a black belt in Tae Kwon Do at the young age of 9. She was accepted to Drexel University to complete her Ph.D. degree at the age of 14 in the area of Material Science and Engineering. According to her website she had started walking and talking at 8 months old, and was reading full novels by age two. She also began writing around the same time. She had completed the entire elementary school curriculum by the end of kindergarten and completed the New York Stat math regents (grade 9) at eight years old. Alia is also considered a musical prodigy, performing Concerto No. 1 and beginning clarinet studies with Ricardo Morales in 2000 at age 11. In 2004 Alia was named the DDSEG (Department of Defense) Fellow, the youngest ever named.
Michael Kearney began to speak at the age of 4 months and by 6 months had a strong enough grasp on the English language to say to his pediatrician “I have a left ear infection.” Unfortunately, at a young age he was also diagnosed with ADD but of course this did not stop this child prodigy from achieving academic success. He finished high school at age 6, received an Associate of Science degree in geology at age 8, and a Bachelor’s degree in anthropology from the University of South Alabama at age 10, making him the worlds youngest university graduate. He received his first Master’s degree in biochemistry from Middle Tennessee State University at age 14. His thesis title was “Kinetic Isotope Effects of Thymidine Phosphorylase.” By taking a position at Vanderbilt University at age 16 Michael became the youngest person to teach at a college. To relax, Michael enjoys playing a few hands of Texas Hold’em Poker.
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IFPI: ISPs Should Block Torrent
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) is trying to convince European lawmakers that ISPs should take extreme measures to fight piracy. They suggest that ISPs should block access to websites such as The Pirate Bay, and block filesharing protocols, no matter what they’re being used for.
Yes, let's just expand on this concept... all phones should be tapped, just in case someone is doing something illegal, and actually make the call drop if they mention some trigger words such as "crime" and "bomb". Newspapers and blogs should also be censored, gotta make sure there's no sensitive information leaked...
Might as well go ahead and cut someone's electricity if they use too much, and make sure water is limited too. It's good for the environment, so let's just force it on people, and make sure to charge more too, to compensate the overhead of controlling it.
Meanwhile, gotta be certain sites in Tanzania adhere to US and EU laws. It's also probably a good idea to adjust the US constitution to biblical law, and make sure the EU also adopts that.
Wake up, people. The genie is out of the bottle, learn to live with it, embrace it and make the most of it.
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