Yep, they’re going there.

I may not completely enjoy the experience, but it’s an overdue move.

From the link:

Twitter is finally taking off the training wheels and moving into the world where real businesses tread with the launch today of its first advertising model .

The microblogging phenomenon has long avoided coming up with a business plan or even talking about one. Just last October, Twitter CEO Evan Williams told an audience at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that the company wanted to focus on developing the site , instead of on a business model.

But the time has come for Twitter to figure out how to make money over the long haul.

It’s a decision that makes the company look less like a grand hobby and more like an actual business , said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group.

But, will the masses revolt?

From the link:

Now that Twitter has begun to display ads–pardon me, Promoted Tweets–in users’ search results, the big question is how millions of loyal Twitter fans will respond. Reaction on the micro-blogging site has been muted thus far–more questions than commentary, actually–and it’s apparent that most users haven’t seen the new ads yet.

According to a blog post by Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, the ad program will be rolled out gradually, with Promoted Tweets (such as the Starbucks (SBUX) example below) appearing atop some Twitter.com search result pages.

Of course, the very idea of product-pitching tweets won’t sit well with a good number of Twitter users, who’ve grown accustomed to the ad-free (and unprofitable) service.

Here’s the latest from NASA on Eyjafjallajökull:

On Monday, April 19, 2010, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) instrument onboard NASA’s Terra spacecraft obtained this image of the continuing eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team

Hit the link for more information, a larger version of the image and additional posts with more images from the eruption.

I”ve been doing a lot of blogging about the SculptCAD Rapid Artist Project lately, and that involves artists creating digital sculpture using 3D modeling software and then printing the artwork with a 3D printer. These works were limited in size to something you could wrap your arms around.

This 3D printer is many orders of magnitude larger than any I’ve ever encountered. Very cool, and with very interesting potential uses.

From the second link:

An Italian inventor, Enrico Dini, chairman of the company Monolite UK Ltd, has developed a huge three-dimensional printer called D-Shape that can print entire buildings out of sand and an inorganic binder. The printer works by spraying a thin layer of sand followed by a layer of magnesium-based binder from hundreds of nozzles on its underside. The glue turns the sand to solid stone, which is built up layer by layer from the bottom up to form a sculpture, or a sandstone building.

The D-shape printer can create a building four times faster than it could be built by conventional means, and reduces the cost to half or less. There is little waste, which is better for the environment, and it can easily “print” curved structures that are difficult and expensive to build by other means. Dini is proving the technology by creating a nine cubic meter pavilion for a roundabout in the town of Pontedera.

Hit the second link for video of a 3D printer in action.

Hot from today’s inbox, news from SETI that tremendously expands the brainpower brought to bear on its massive collection of radio telescope data.

The release:

SETI Institute Announces Public Availability of Radio Telescope Signal Data in Latest Milestone for Director Dr. Jill Tarter’s 2009 TED Prize Wish to Enlist all Earthlings in Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., April 19 /PRNewswire/ — SETI Institute, an interdisciplinary scientific organization that explores the nature of life throughout the universe, announced that starting today it will make large quantities of astronomical radio telescope data accessible to astronomers and other scientists as part of an effort to build a global community of searchers for evidence of extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Today’s announcement represents the latest milestone in SETI Institute’s mission to facilitate mass collaboration in the search for civilizations beyond earth.  The radio telescope data will be released by setiQuest, a program formed in 2009 after SETI Institute Director Dr. Jill Tarter was awarded the 2009 TED Prize, whose benefits included $100,000 and the assistance of the global TED community to help realize her “One Wish to Change the World.”  Accepting the prize, Dr. Tarter asked the TED community to “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company.”

After months in development, the setiQuest program has reached the point where it is able to invite the global scientific community to access radio signal data collected by SETI Institute’s Allen Telescope Array (ATA).  Commissioned in 2007, the Allen array is operated jointly by SETI Institute and the University of California at Berkeley. It is a “Large Number of Small Dishes” (LNSD) telescope array designed to conduct surveys for both conventional radio astronomy by the university, as well as for SETI Institute’s research.

SETI Institute analyzes the ATA radio data in real time with special software to detect technological signals from a distant extra-terrestrial civilization.  The process is analogous to listening to one hundred million radios, each tuned to a different channel and attached to an antenna that is highly sensitive to just one millionth of the sky, to find faint signals.

To date, SETI Institute’s methods have focused on the search for what are called narrowband signals. One of the benefits of opening the ATA data to the global scientific community is to invite development of techniques to analyze broadband signals.

The radio telescope data will be made available through setiQuest’s website, www.setiquest.org, in the form of files containing streams of data samples from specific targets in space. Data can be accessed by registered participants in the setiQuest program.  SETI Institute hopes that by making the ATA data widely available, scientists around the world will develop new and innovative ways to process the massive quantities of radio signals streaming from space every second.

SETI Institute search programs have processed data in real time and discarded it shortly after the observation. They are capturing these new data sets to invite the public to expand the search. Now, setiQuest will provide a day’s worth of ATA data each week, and will leave the data on its website for up to six months.

While astronomers and specialists with experience in digital signal processing (DSP) may by the likely initial population of scientists and technologists with an interest in setiQuest, the program welcomes scientists and technologists of all disciplines.  Those interested in learning how they can be part of the setiQuest project can find more information at www.setiQuest.org.

For more details of the progress of Dr. Tarter’s TED Prize wish, visit http://www.tedprize.org/jill-tarter/.

About SETI Institute

The mission of SETI Institute is to explore, understand and explain the origin, nature and prevalence of life in the universe. At SETI Institute biologists, physicists, chemists, astronomers, ecologists, planetary scientists, geologists, engineers, technologists, and educators join forces in the quest to find life elsewhere. This includes the search for potentially inhabited planets in our Solar System and beyond, laboratory and field investigations of the origins and early evolution of life, and studies of the potential of life to adapt to future challenges on Earth and in space. For more information about SETI, visit www.seti.org.  For information about setiQuest, visit www.setiquest.org.

Source: TED Conferences

To date all the invisibility cloak tech blogging I’ve done has covered the rapid development of this branch of science. Here’s some virtual ink on the other side of the cloaking coin.

From the second link:

Since then, Baile Zhang and buddies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, have been busy looking for the weak point in this idea and now think they’ve found it. Today, they point out that carpet cloaks have a flaw that makes the objects within them detectable.

The problem, they say, is that isotropic cloaks cannot work perfectly. Here’s why. Light can be thought of as a series of wavefronts each with a certain amount of energy. Ordinarily, the direction of energy propagation is at right angles to these wavefronts.

However, in an invisibility cloak, this perpendicular relationship becomes distorted as the light waves are steered. That’s what an anisotropic material does. But an isotropic material cannot do this–the energy always propagates at right angles to the wavefronts. This limitation means that isotropic materials cannot hide objects in the way Pendry suggests.

Zhang and co go on to prove their assertion by tracing a ray that passes through the kind of isotropic carpet cloak that Pendry suggested. What they’ve discovered will shock carpet cloakers all over the world.

According to Zhang and buddies, carpet cloaks don’t hide objects, they merely shift them to one side by an amount that is just a bit less than they are high. Crucially the effect depends on the angle at which you are looking. So when illuminated at an angle of 45 degrees, an object 0.2 units tall appears laterally shifted by 0.15 units.

If Zhang and co are correct, this could be a substantial blow for isotropic carpet cloaking. It means that the carpet cloaking effect has a limited angle of view.

Very interesting idea and useful from a number of perspectives — as a snapshot of public interest at  set point in time, marketing, historical archive … well, you get the idea.

From the link:

Realizing the historic value of these commentaries and first-hand accounts, Google has begun archiving every tweet in what it calls “Replay”—a search function that presents in bar-chart-form the popularity of tweets through a period in time and lists associated tweets for you to browse chronologically.

To access Replay, perform a Google search, choose “Show options…” This reveals a toolbar on the left; click “Updates.” A graph will appear denoting the popularity of that phrase or keyword at that point in time. By hovering over the graph, you can zoom in to a more specific time of day and read the tweets that were sent in that time period.

Those opposing tobacco use would be very happy to see the plant somehow disappear from the planet. Failing that a global ban on smoking would suffice, I’m sure. And then there’s that pesky nicotine that addicted smokers and ex smokers crave. Hmm, what to do about that? Let’s attack the efforts that offer nicotine to people in a form other than tobacco products to save the children.

I don’t smoke cigarettes and never have, but I do smoke the occasional cigar and I have a pretty healthy collection of pipe tobacco aging gracefully so I do have something of a dog in the fight, but my libertarian side really gets worked up at all the nanny-statism and “we know what’s good for you” going on out there. With this November’s vote coming up wouldn’t it be an odd turn of events that it might be easier to smoke marijuana than smoke a bowl of G.L. Pease’s “Haddo’s Delight” in California?

Not to discount the possibility of kids being hurt by these products — that’s why the adults around those kids should act like adults and keep them out of reach — take a look at the amount of consumption required to start causing problems. If a kid can get into a product like this to that extent I’m going to bet nicotine poisoning is the least of that kid’s unconscious worries.

From the first link:

Tobacco company’s new, dissolvable nicotine products could lead to accidental poisoning

Candy-like appearance and flavorings may increase appeal to infants and youth

Boston, MA – A tobacco company’s new, dissolvable nicotine pellet–which is being sold as a tobacco product, but which in some cases resembles popular candies–could lead to accidental nicotine poisoning in children, according to a new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), the Northern Ohio Poison Control Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The researchers also say the candy-like products could appeal to young people and lead to nicotine addiction as well.

The study appears in an advance online edition of the journal Pediatrics on April 19, 2010 and will appear in a later print issue.

In 2009, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company launched a dissolvable nicotine product called Camel Orbs, which according to the company’s promotional literature contains 1 mg nicotine per pellet and is flavored with cinnamon or mint. The company also introduced Camel Strips (to contain 0.6 mg nicotine per strip) and Sticks (to contain 3.1 mg nicotine per strip).

It appears that the product is intended as a temporary form of nicotine for smokers in settings where smoking is banned. However, the potential public health effect could be disastrous, particularly for infants and adolescents, said Professor Gregory Connolly, lead author of the study and director of the Tobacco Control Research Program at HSPH.

Ingestion of tobacco products by infants and children is a major reason for calls to poison control centers nationwide. In 2007, 6,724 tobacco-related poisoning cases were reported among children five years of age and under. Small children can experience nausea and vomiting from as little as 1 mg of nicotine.

“This product is called a ‘tobacco’ product, but in the eyes of a 4-year-old, the pellets look more like candy than a regular cigarette. Nicotine is a highly addictive drug and to make it look like a piece of candy is recklessly playing with the health of children,” said Connolly.

The researchers computed, based on median body weight, how much nicotine ingestion would lead to symptoms of poisoning in children: A one-year-old infant could suffer mild to moderate symptoms of nicotine poisoning by ingesting 8 to 14 Orbs, 14 Strips or 3 Sticks; ingesting 10 to 17 Orbs, 17 Strips or 3 to 4 Sticks could result in severe toxicity or death. A four-year-old child could have moderate symptoms by ingesting 13 to 21 Orbs, 14 Strips or 4 Sticks and could suffer severe toxicity or death by consuming 16 to 27 Orbs, 27 Strips or 5 Sticks. The researchers report that a poison control center in Portland, Oregon, a test market for Orbs, reported a case in which a three-year old ingested an Orbs pellet.

R.J. Reynolds claims that Orbs packaging is “child resistant,” but the researchers say adults could unknowingly leave the pellets out in the open where children could easily access them. The researchers also say that the candy-like appearance and flavoring and ease-of-use of the product could appeal to children.

###

“Unintentional Childhood Poisonings Through Ingestion of Conventional and Novel Tobacco Products,” Gregory N. Connolly, Patricia Richter, Alfred Aleguas Jr., Terry F. Pechacek, Stephen B. Stanfill, Hillel R. Alpert, Pediatrics, online April 19, 2010.

Harvard School of Public Health (http://www.hsph.harvard.edu ) is dedicated to advancing the public’s health through learning, discovery, and communication. More than 400 faculty members are engaged in teaching and training the 1,000-plus student body in a broad spectrum of disciplines crucial to the health and well being of individuals and populations around the world. Programs and projects range from the molecular biology of AIDS vaccines to the epidemiology of cancer; from risk analysis to violence prevention; from maternal and children’s health to quality of care measurement; from health care management to international health and human rights. For more information on the school visit:http://www.hsph.harvard.edu

This tech called pCubee is just amazing. If you have any experience in working with 3D scanned objects, the utility is obvious and possibilities are very exciting. This is the first generation of a brand new world in display.

From the link (and hit the link for video):

Researchers have developed a five-paneled LCD cube that gives users the appearance that something is inside, allowing them to rotate the unit and look at an object in three dimensions. Called pCubee, it’s the result of two years of work by students at the University of British Columbia.

“If it’s AutoCAD or 3D modeling objects, instead of looking at them on a regular desktop monitor, you can look at them inside the cube,” said Ian Stavness, a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia. He said that it could also be useful for museums to use for virtual showcases. The three-dimensional effect will only work, though, if 3D data for the object is available.

(Hat tip: SculptCAD)

Here’s the official announcement of the project:

SculptCAD Rapid Artists to Debut at Society of Manufacturing Engineers Rapid 2010 Conference and Exposition

Inaugural Sculpture Exhibit Will Showcase the Convergence of Art and Technology

DALLAS, TX–(Marketwire – April 12, 2010) –  SculptCAD Rapid Artists, an experimental project launched by SculptCAD, a provider of sculptural/CAD design and reverse engineering services, announced its upcoming debut at the 2010 Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) RAPID Conference and Exposition (SME RAPID 2010), to be held on May 18-20 at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, California. For the first time ever, SME RAPID 2010 will host an exhibit dedicated to the convergence of art and technology. Titled “Art’s Newest Medium: Rapid Prototyping Applied to Contemporary Visions of Sculpture,” the exhibit will feature the works of 15 SculptCAD Rapid Artists members who are exploring the use SculptCAD digital 3D modeling software to create art.

“This inaugural exhibit marks the first time that the SME RAPID Conference and Exposition has been open to fine art,” said Nancy Hairston, Founder and President of VanDuzen Inc. — the parent company of SculptCAD, and a SculptCAD Rapid Artists sculptor. “I applaud the vision of the SME RAPID 2010 conference leaders in welcoming SculptCAD Rapid Artists and its ground-breaking approach to art in the 21^st Century.”

“SME is always on the lookout for cutting-edge, rapid manufacturing applications to enhance the value of our program,” said Gary Mikola, SME show manager. “SculptCAD Rapid Artists is a perfect fit. We’ve received strong interest from registered attendees and participants, and as a result we’re also offering technical sessions that support the visual Contemporary Art Gallery.”

Launched in October 2009, SculptCAD Rapid Artists’ mission is to expose career fine artists, previously unfamiliar with digital techniques, to 3D software, 3D scanners, and Rapid Prototype (RP) output. Members of SculptCAD Rapid Artists include sculptors, painters, and installation artists who work in materials ranging from marble to rubber to wood. Using computer technology to fuel the creative process, SculptCAD Rapid Artists is challenging conventional perceptions of art in the physical realm.

Digital sculptures created by SculptCAD Rapid Artists members benefit the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts (Arts Magnet) in Dallas. Many of the participating artists are alumni of Arts Magnet. All exemplify an innovative spirit consistent with the contemporary vision of the extraordinary Dallas Arts District.

At SME RAPID 2010, Nancy Hairston will give a Fine Arts track presentation titled, “Rapid Artists – Experiment in Artists Immersed in Rapid Technologies for the First Time.” Scheduled on May 19 at 10:00 a.m., Nancy’s presentation will report on the potential that SculptCAD Rapid Artists is unleashing.

About SculptCAD Rapid Artists
SculptCAD Rapid Artists is an experimental project launched by SculptCAD, a leading provider of sculptural/CAD design and reverse engineering services. Dedicated to the creation of fine art, SculptCAD Rapid Artists’ mission is to explore and expand the use of computer technology to design and produce works of sculpture utilizing 3D software, 3D scanning, and 3D printing. Artists can create having freedom from the constraints of physical media, and can make art faster using digital tools. Digital also offers artists the ability to make multiple versions and editions of their work, print art on-demand, and enable collectors to purchase and download art online. SculptCAD Rapid Artists was founded in October 2009 and is based in Dallas, Texas. For more information about how SculptCAD Rapid Artists is changing perceptions of art in the physical world, visit http://www.sculptcadrapidartists.com.

About SculptCAD
SculptCAD specializes in time compression technologies for 3D design and manufacturing. These technologies include reverse engineering, 3D visualization, 3D modeling, rapid prototyping, rapid manufacturing, digital sculpting and CAD surfacing. SculptCAD serves a number of industries including fine art, housewares, medical, aerospace, packaging, product and toy manufacturing, and inspection. SculptCAD is a division of VanDuzen Inc., a rapid digital solutions company. Based in Dallas, Texas, VanDuzen is the parent company of two other divisions: MedCAD andVouch Software.

About Nancy Hairston
President & CEO, VanDuzen Inc.
Ms. Hairston brings 17 years of experience as a traditional sculptor and digital technologist to the pursuit of integrating 3D technologies in the creation and manufacture of sculptural products. Receiving a BA in Sculpture from Loyola University in New Orleans, Ms. Hairston began a career in 3D modeling with Alias | Wavefront / Silicon Graphics , in 2000, Ms. Hairston joined SensAble Technologies, and was instrumental in designing and implementing the “rapid” digital product development process between the United States and Asia for major American manufacturers. She founded VanDuzen Inc. in 2002, whose divisions – SculptCAD and MedCAD – work with major manufacturers to develop a variety of products, from toys to housewares to medical devices using Rapid technologies. In 2009, VanDuzen Inc. developed Vouch Software, which detects safety hazards in children’s products. VanDuzen Inc. is based in Dallas, Texas.

About The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME)
Founded in 1932, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (www.sme.org) is the premier source for manufacturing knowledge, education and networking. Through its many programs, events and activities, SME connects manufacturing practitioners to each other, to the latest technology and the most up-to-date processes spanning all manufacturing industries and disciplines, plus the key areas of aerospace and defense, medical device, motor vehicles, including motorsports, oil and gas and alternative energy. A 501(c)3 organization, SME has members around the world and is supported by a network of technical communities and chapters worldwide.

Hit this link for all posts on the SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project.

Now this is some fascinating research on carbon nanotube properties.

From the link:

“For the first time, fields of study relating both to cold atoms and to the nanoscale have intersected,” Lene Vestergaard Hau tells PhysOrg.com. “Even though both have been active areas of research, cold atoms have not been brought together with nanoscale structures at the single nanometer level. This is a totally new system.”

Hau is the Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Applied Physics at Harvard University. Along with colleague J.A. Golovchenko, and graduate students Anne Goodsell and Trygve Ristroph, who are in her lab at Harvard, Hau was able to set up an experiment that allows for the observation of capture and field ionization of cold atoms. Their work can be found in Physical Review Letters: “Field Ionization of Cold Atoms near the Wall of a Single Carbon Nanotube.”

And:

“When the electron is pulled in, it goes through a tunneling process,” Hau explains. “It has to go through areas that are classically forbidden. The process is quantum mechanical. We can observe the interaction of the atom and the nanotube as the electron is trying to tunnel, and this offers us a chance to peek at some of the interesting dynamics that happen at the nanoscale.”

Another possibility is that this combination of cold atoms with nanoscale structures could lead to new states of matter. “Since we now know how to suck atoms into orbit at such high spin rates, it could lead to a new state of cold-atomic matter that could be super interesting to study,” Hau points out.

Practical applications?:

Practically, this new system has potential as well. “We could make very sensitive detectors,” Hau says. “Things like ‘atom sniffers’ that detect trace gases could be an application for this work. Additionally, the possibility of single nanometer precision means super high spatial resolution. This system could be used in interferometers — interferometers built on a single chip and based on cold atoms, which would be of importance for navigation, for example.”

For the raw material, here’s the release the linked article sprung from.

… is already giving me a headache.

The conceit behind the patent app is a pair of glasses you attach an iPhone, iPod or similar Apple device to watch video in high-def equivalent 3D. Just imagine the neck strain of having the weight of an iPhone resting on the bridge of your nose for an extended period of time, not to mention the eyestrain.

I wonder if this patent application entered the system on April 1, or maybe Navin Johnson is now an Apple engineer.

(All blockquotes are from the first link.)

Here’s a look at an illustration of the concept:

And here’s a little more detail:

Apple has filed a patent application for electronic video spectacles that will allow wearers to watch films in 3D on the inside of the glasses. Fans have already nicknamed the gadget iSpecs.

Users would attach their iPhone, iPod, or other device to the spectacles, which have a special lens that can split the image into two frames — one for each eye — and then project the image onto the spectacles. The two images would create a stereoscopic effect since they would appear to have been taken from slightly different angles, and this would simulate 3D.

According to the patent application (number 20100079356) the images would be equivalent to high definition in quality, and sensors inside the spectacles would detect the precise location of the wearer’s eyes to ensure the image is projected at exactly the right place and is comfortable to watch.

I do space images fairly often, here’s an image from space of the ash from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano eruption in Iceland:

Caption: NASA’s Terra satellite flew over the volcano on April 16 10:45 UTC (6:45 a.m. EDT) and the MODIS instrument captured a visible image of Eyjafjallajökull’s ash plume (brown cloud) stretching from the UK (left) to Germany (right).

Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response Team

Here’s a link to the release with more information on the image.

I can’t remember when this Joe Sparks creation was a big thing on the web, but I do know it was an entire epoch or two back from the net of today. I can also tell how far back it was by the state of my Radiskull and Devil Doll, “Now it’s time to kick it,” t-shirt.

Here’s episode one, “I am the Radiskull”

I’m sure this is not news to all of us Main Streeters out there. The stories I’ve been hearing from small business owners are just incredible. People with impeccable credit histories having credit lines slashed to almost nothing, companies offering payment plans never before considered only to find the customers still unable to meet the soft terms and enough accounting tricks to try and deal with the facts on the ground to make your head spin. Nope, the recovery still hasn’t made it to Main Street.

From the link:

The economy may be showing halting signs of recovery, but the turnaround hasn’t reached Main Street yet: A pair of recent small business surveys found that most owners are skeptical or downright gloomy about their business prospects this year.

“Something isn’t sitting well with small business owners,” Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist of the National Federation of Independent Business, said in a written statement accompanying the latest edition of his organization’s monthly “Small Business Optimism” report. “Poor sales and uncertainty continue to overwhelm any other good news about the economy.”

Capital expenditures remain near record lows, sales are still weak, and credit lines are hard to find, according to the around 950 business owners NFIB surveyed in March. While job cuts have slowed, few businesses say they plan to hire new workers within the next three months.

I blogged on this very topic back in late December, and now the SEC is cracking down hard. As one  financial industry insider quoted in the second link says, “This is big.”

From the second link:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc was charged with fraud on Friday by U.S. securities regulators in the structuring and marketing of a debt product tied to subprime mortgages.

The Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit alleges that Paulson & Co, a major hedge fund run by the billionaire John Paulson, worked with Goldman in creating the collateralized debt obligation, and stood to benefit as its value fell, costing investors more than $1 billion.

Fabrice Tourre, a Goldman vice president who the SEC said was principally responsible for creating the product, was also charged with fraud.

Paulson has not been charged. “Goldman made the representations here to the investors, Paulson did not,” SEC enforcement chief Robert Khuzami said on a conference call.

Goldman said in a press release that the SEC’s charges are completely unfounded in law and fact and it will vigorously contest them.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, marks a dramatic expansion of regulatory efforts to hold people and companies responsible for activity that contributed to the nation’s financial crises. It also comes as lawmakers in Washington debate sweeping reform of financial industry regulation.

I’ve run a number of posts on the SculptCAD Rapid Artists Project, and there’s some interesting news from this week — this past Monday Jerome Weeks covered the project for his National Public Radio/KERA show Art&Seek.

From the second link:

Each year, the Society of Manufacturing Engineers presents RAPID, a trade show for all kinds of 3D imaging, prototyping and printing. The society wanted to encourage artistic applicants — a new avenue for the industry to explore — and approached Hairston, who had spoken at RAPID several times. SME just wanted to call for any “artistic” prototypes to be submitted, but Hairston wanted to engage working professional fine artists to take a step into the engineering field — no math skills needed. Hairston’s would be more of a curated show.

HAIRSTON: “I thought the most interesting way to attract artists is to make the case why this is a good business decision. It definitely compresses the time. And you know, it’s a new medium. It stretches them out and gives them a challenge.”

Nancy Hairston (left) and Ginger Fox at SMU’s Rapid Prototyping Lab: Pay no attention to the sign behind them

Hope you’ve already taken care of the unpleasant chore of federal income taxes. If you want to see some frazzled people, head to the largest post office branch in your city or town between around 10 p.m. and midnight to see all those very last minute filers. Of course with electronic filing that little bit of yearly Americana is probably heading toward extinction.

I’ve been pretty gloomy on the economy for a while, but I agree with this quote:

“We’ve had a phenomenal run in asset classes across the board,” says Dan Greenhaus, chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak + Co., an institutional trading firm in New York. “If Obama was a Republican, we would hear a never-ending drumbeat of news stories about markets voting in favor of the President.”

But a major aspect of my economic mindset over the last couple of years is things aren’t really better on the ground at Main Street, so I also agree with this quote from Jon Chait:

I think the interesting question right now is not whether the economy is due for strong growth, but whether and when that growth will create rising living standards. The recovery from the 1991 recession took years before it began producing wage gains. The recovery from the 2001 recession basically never produced real wage gains — essentially all the gains went into corporate profits and gains for the very rich. Moreover, there’s very little consensus as to why that happened. So we have no idea to what extent growth and higher productivity will create conditions that people have any reason to recognize as real growth.

A gorgeous galaxy:

Hubble has snapped a spectacular view of M 66, the largest “player” of the Leo Triplet, and a galaxy with an unusual anatomy: it displays asymmetric spiral arms and an apparently displaced core. The peculiar anatomy is most likely caused by the gravitational pull of the other two members of the trio.

The unusual spiral galaxy, Messier 66, is located at a distance of about 35 million light-years in the constellation of Leo. Together with Messier 65 and NGC 3628, Messier 66 is the member of the Leo Triplet, a trio of interacting spiral galaxies, part of the larger Messier 66 group. Messier 66 wins in size over its fellow triplets — it is about 100 000 light-years across.

Be sure to hit the link up there for an absolutely humongous version of the image. Here’s some additional background.

A graphene two-fer this evening. This news is another important finding toward commercializing graphene.

The release:

With support, graphene still a superior thermal conductor

Super-thin material advances toward next generation applications

		IMAGE: A one-atom thick sheet of graphene (highlighted in the circular window) on top of a silicon dioxide support proves to be an excellent thermal conductor, according to new research published… Click here for more information.

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (4/8/2010) – The single-atom thick material graphene maintains its high thermal conductivity when supported by a substrate, a critical step to advancing the material from a laboratory phenomenon to a useful component in a range of nano-electronic devices, researchers report in the April 9 issue of the journal Science.

The team of engineers and theoretical physicists from the University of Texas at Austin, Boston College, and France’s Commission for Atomic Energy report the super-thin sheet of carbon atoms – taken from the three-dimensional material graphite – can transfer heat more than twice as efficiently as copper thin films and more than 50 times better than thin films of silicon.

Since its discovery in 2004, graphene has been viewed as a promising new electronic material because it offers superior electron mobility, mechanical strength and thermal conductivity. These characteristics are crucial as electronic devices become smaller and smaller, presenting engineers with a fundamental problem of keeping the devices cool enough to operate efficiently.

The research advances the understanding of graphene as a promising candidate to draw heat away from “hot spots” that form in the tight knit spaces of devices built at the micro and nano scales. From a theoretical standpoint, the team also developed a new view of how heat flows in graphene.

When suspended, graphene has extremely high thermal conductivity of 3,000 to 5,000 watts per meter per Kelvin. But for practical applications, the chicken-wire like graphene lattice would be attached to a substrate. The team found supported graphene still has thermal conductivity as high as 600 watts per meter per Kelvin near room temperature. That far exceeds the thermal conductivities of copper, approximately 250 watts, and silicon, only 10 watts, thin films currently used in electronic devices.

		IMAGE: Boston College physicist David Broido worked with colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin and France’s Commission for Atomic Energy to determine why graphene maintains its superior thermal conductivity… Click here for more information.

The loss in heat transfer is the result of graphene’s interaction with the substrate, which interferes with the vibrational waves of graphene atoms as they bump against the adjacent substrate, according to co-author David Broido, a Boston College Professor of Physics.

The conclusion was drawn with the help of earlier theoretical models about heat transfer within suspended graphene, Broido said. Working with former BC graduate student Lucas Lindsay, now an instructor at Christopher Newport University, and Natalio Mingo of France’s Commission for Atomic Energy, Broido re-examined the theoretical model devised to explain the performance of suspended graphene.

“As theorists, we’re much more detached from the device or the engineering side. We’re more focused on the fundamentals that explain how energy flows through a sheet graphene. We took our existing model for suspended graphene and expanded the theoretical model to describe this interaction that takes place between graphene and the substrate and the influence on the movement of heat through the material and, ultimately, it’s thermal conductivity.”

In addition to its superior strength, electron mobility and thermal conductivity, graphene is compatible with thin film silicon transistor devices, a crucial characteristic if the material is to be used in low-cost, mass production. Graphene nano-electronic devices have the potential to consume less energy, run cooler and more reliably, and operate faster than the current generation of silicon and copper devices.

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Broido, Lindsay and Mingo were part of a research team led by Li Shi, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, which also included his UT colleagues Jae Hun Seol, Insun Jo, Arden Moore, Zachary Aitken, Michael Petttes, Xueson Li, Zhen Yao, Rui Huang, and Rodney Ruoff.

The research was supported by the Thermal Transport Processes Program and the Mechanics of Materials Program of the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, and the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science.