Google OS: the end of the hard drive? Good luck with that.

Google today unveiled more details of Chrome OS, a lightweight, browser-based operating system for netbooks.

With a strong focus on speed, the Chrome OS promises nearly instant boot times of about 7 seconds for users to login to their computers.

“We want Google Chrome OS to be blazingly fast … to boot up like a TV,” said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google.

The first Chrome OS netbooks will be available in late 2010, Pichai said. It will not be available as a download to run and install. Instead, Chrome OS is only shipping on specific hardware from manufacturers Google has partnered with. That means if you want Chrome OS, you'll have to purchase a Chrome OS device.

Google is currently working with unnamed computer manufacturers to define specifications for these computers, which Pichai said will include larger netbook-style computers with full-size keyboards, large trackpads and large displays.

Chrome OS netbooks will not have traditional hard disk drives — they will rely on non-volatile flash memory and Internet-based storage for saving all of your data.

All the applications will be web-based, meaning users won’t have to install apps, manage updates or even backup their data. All data will be stored in the cloud, and users won’t even have to bother with anti-virus software: Google claims it will monitor code to prevent malicious activity in Chrome OS web apps.

“Chrome OS is a totally rethought computer that will let you focus on the Internet, so you can stop worrying about your computer,” according to a Google promotional video shown at the event, held at the Google campus in Mountain View, California.

via Google OS: the end of the hard drive? – CNN.com.

Dumb terminals are an old idea. Every so often some “new” technology tries to move us back in that direction, but the fact is, people don’t want to give up their hard drives.  1) Ownership is a fundamental human drive, and 2) we all know that a hard drive is way more reliable than an Internet connection.

The new miracle cure for injuries?

Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie has flown to Serbia for a novel form of treatment – placenta fluid is to be dripped on his injured ankle. Why is he doing this and will it work?

It is not unusual for sports starts to look for super cures for their injuries.

England footballer Wayne Rooney used an oxygen tent prior to the 2006 World Cup to help him recover from a broken foot and six years ago runner Paula Radcliffe rubbed oil from the belly of an emu to ease injuries sustained in a collision with a cyclist.

But the news that Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie is heading to Serbia to get placenta fluid applied to an ankle injury has astonished many.

The 26-year-old hurt his ankle while playing for the Dutch national side in a match against Italy.

He was left with torn ankle ligaments after a challenge 10 minutes into the contest.

Scans revealed a partial tear would keep him out of action for six weeks.

Rapid recoveries

But a Dutch journalist close to the national squad said he could be back in as little as four weeks if the treatment works.

TV and radio reporter Rob Fleur said a woman who specialises in the treatment had been recommended to Van Persie by former team-mates Dutch midfielder Orlando Engelaar and Serbian forward Danko Lazovic.

They both claim to have had rapid recoveries from similar injuries after travelling to Belgrade to see the specialist. …

via BBC News – The new miracle cure for injuries?.

More than powerful! German research computer QPACE is the most energy efficient in the world

At the 2009 Supercomputing Conference in Portland, Oregon (USA), the high-performance computer QPACE (QCD Parallel Computing on the Cell) was recognized today as the most energy-efficient supercomputer in the world. QPACE is at the head of the Green500 list, which provides a global ranking of energy-efficient supercomputers. QPACE was developed by an academic consortium of universities and research centers as well as the German IBM research and development center in Böblingen within the framework of a state-sponsored research association. Within the consortium, the development effort was led by the University of Regensburg, while the research centers DESY and Jülich also assumed central responsibilities. Additional members included the University of Wuppertal, the University of Ferrara (Italy), the University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy) as well as the companies Eurotech, Knürr, Zollner and Xilinx. The QPACE core team consists of approximately 20 researchers and developers.

QPACE was deployed mid 2009 with four racks each at the Research Center Jülich and at the University of Wuppertal. It is being used for the simulation of fundamental forces in elementary particle physics, especially in the research area of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). QCD describes, for example, how a proton is made up out of quarks and gluons. QPACE is being used by members of the Collaborative Research Center/ Transregio 55 “Hadron Physics from Lattice QCD,” which is located at the Universities of Regensburg and Wuppertal and supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Spokesperson of the research association is Prof. Dr. Andreas Schäfer; Principal Investigator of the QPACE project is Prof. Dr. Tilo Wettig. Both teach physics and perform research at the University of Regensburg.

For a long time, in the world of supercomputers performance was solely associated with speed. This notion led to the development of computers that use enormous amounts of energy. Energy efficiency usually was ignored. Not until the advent of increased discussions about the scarcity of natural resources and energy over the past years did this aspect gain in importance for the development of supercomputers. Along with the Top500 list of the fastest computers, the Green500 list of supercomputers with the least energy use emerged as criterion for the rating and ranking of computer performance. Both lists are updated and presented twice a year at the international Supercomputing conference. The QPACE supercomputer comes in at place 110 on the TOP500 list and has a computing power of 55 teraflop/s.

The heart of QPACE is the IBM PowerXCell 8i processor, an enhancement of the Cell/B.E. processor, which originally was developed by Sony, Toshiba and IBM for the Sony PlayStation 3. With its nine processor cores, the chip can carry out a very large number of calculations simultaneously and at a high speed. The novel concept of QPACE consists of connecting processors by a network of programmable units, called Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), to an efficient scalable computer. Each of the QPACE installations in Jülich and Wuppertal can reach a maximum performance of 100 TeraFlops (double precision). That equates to 100 trillion (100,000,000,000,000) computing operations per second. As a result of the scalability of the network, it is in principle possible to increase the performance to the PetaFlops scale (one quadrillion operations per second).

- via EurekaAlert

via More than powerful! German research computer QPACE is the most energy efficient in the world.

New on-off ’switch’ triggers and reverses paralysis in animals with a beam of light

This tiny worm became temporarily paralyzed when scientists fed it a light-sensitive material, or “photoswitch,” and then exposed it to ultraviolet light.

In an advance with overtones of Star Trek phasers and other sci-fi ray guns, scientists in Canada are reporting development of an internal on-off “switch” that paralyzes animals when exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light. The animals stay paralyzed even when the light is turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the animals become unparalyzed and wake up. Their study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). It reports the first demonstration of such a light-activated switch in animals.

Neil Branda and colleagues point out that such “photoswitches” — light-sensitive materials that undergo photoreactions — have been available for years. Scientists use them in research. Doctors use light-sensitive materials and photoreactions in medicine in photodynamic therapy to treat certain forms of cancer. Those light-sensitive materials, however, do not have the reversibility that exists in photoswitching.

The JACS report describes development and successful testing of a photoswitch composed of the light-sensitive material, dithienylethene. The scientists grew transparent, pinhead-sized worms (C. elegans) and fed them a dithienylethene. When exposed to ultraviolet light, the worms turned blue and became paralyzed. When exposed to visible light, the dithienylethene became colorless again and the worms' paralysis ended. Many of the worms lived through the paralyze-unparalyze cycle. Scientists were not sure how the switch causes paralysis. The study demonstrates that photoswitches may have great potential in turning photodynamic therapy on and off, and for other applications in medicine and research, they indicate.

via New on-off ’switch’ triggers and reverses paralysis in animals with a beam of light.

Think they will get this to work in humans as well as nematodes? Who would you paralyze and why?

 

Developing ‘green’ tires that boost mileage and cut carbon dioxide emissions

A new generation of “green” automobile tires that can boost fuel efficiency without sacrificing safety and durability is rolling their way through the research pipeline. The new tires could help add an extra mile or two per gallon to a car’s fuel economy. That’s the topic of the cover story of the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News, (C&EN) ACS’ weekly newsmagazine.

C&EN Senior Editor Alexander Tullo explains that rolling resistance — the friction that tires encounter when rolling — are a major factor in a vehicle’s fuel economy. It can determine up to 20 percent of fuel economy. Overcoming it accounts for 4 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. For years, tire makers and their raw material suppliers have been eyeing lower rolling resistance as a way to boost fuel economy and promote a cleaner environment. But they have been thwarted by a principle in the tire world called the “magic triangle of tire technology.” It holds that an improvement to rolling resistance has to come at the expense of wet-road grip and durability.

That barrier is now falling, thanks to the development of new materials, including new forms of silica and nanomaterials. These new materials include a nanogel that improves abrasion resistance, grip and rolling resistance of tires as well as a newly-developed resin that helps tires retain air longer. But there’s a catch: Motorists still will have to keep tires properly inflated to take full advantage of the new technology, the article notes.

via Developing ‘green’ tires that boost mileage and cut carbon dioxide emissions.

Strange jello rain made entire town of Oakville, WA sick for months

Hmm…

Collaborative Music Project, in B flat

In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls, and developed with contributions from users.

The videos can be played simultaneously — the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.

View here: http://www.inbflat.net/

Inside Info on the upcoming Google ‘Super’ Phone, due 2010

The debate over Droid v. iPhone rages on, but lots more Android surprises are on the way. Get ready for the Google Phone. It’s no longer a myth, it’s real.The next “super” Android device will almost certainly be a HTC phone that’s much thinner than even the Droid or iPhone – The Dragon/Passion. This is the phone the senior Android guys at Google are now carrying around and testing, at least as of a couple of weeks ago. If you’re willing to give up the Droid’s keyboard, the Dragon/Passion is going to be a really cool phone. It should be fully available very soon.

But it isn’t the Google Phone. Everything up until now has just been a warm up to the Google Phone.

Way more interesting are the rumors we’ve been hearing for months about a pure Google-branded phone. Most of our sources have unconfirmed information, which we describe below. But there are a few things we have absolutely confirmed: Google is building their own branded phone that they’ll sell directly and through retailers. They were long planning to have the phone be available by the holidays, but it has now slipped to early 2010. The phone will be produced by a major phone manufacturer but will only have Google branding (Microsoft did the same thing with their first Zunes, which were built by Toshiba).

There won’t be any negotiation or compromise over the phone’s design of features – Google is dictating every last piece of it. No splintering of the Android OS that makes some applications unusable. Like the iPhone for Apple, this phone will be Google’s pure vision of what a phone should be.

That’s it for confirmed, super-high confidence information, which frankly isn’t a whole lot more than we all heard back in late October. But we also have a few more details as well that we’ve gathered from a number of sources. Everything that follows we still consider to be just well-sourced rumors:

One source told us that HTC, a Taiwanese company, is building the new Google phone, but we think that information is incorrect. We have some fairly good information that suggests Google is working with a Korean phone manufacturer on the Google phone – LG or Samsung (we mentioned this on CrunchGear earlier this week). Samsung has multiple parts in the iPhone and could be pressured by Apple not to work with Google, which says LG is the more likely partner for Google. So rumors like this one may be much more important than they first appear. But either way, the best information we have right now points directly at Korea as the birthplace of the Google Phone.

- via TechCrunch

Taking a page out of Apple’s “we control the customer experience” playbook, Google reportedly wants to produce a handset that will be completely dictated by the team in Mountain View. Details about the phone are incredibly thin. There’s no word on what kind of specs the handset would have, but potential manufacturers for the phone, according to Arrington, include LG and Samsung. A major advertising campaign introducing the phone could reportedly start as early as January 2010.

Google will reportedly sell its phone directly to customers as well as through retailers. That suggests the search giant may not have a network partner on board, and would sell unsubsidized phones instead. Phones sold outside of the carrier system means the Google phone could cost as much as $500, and would have to run on a SIM-friendly GSM networks such as AT&T and T-Mobile.

While a carrier-free Google phone would be an unusual move in the age of exclusivity contracts, it’s not unheard of. Handset makers such as RIM and Palm sell unlocked versions of their smartphones through Amazon and other retailers.

The suggestion that the phone will not be tied to a specific carrier, backs up a previous assertion by Northeast Securities analyst Ashok Kumor who made similar claims last month after Google’s “design partners” filled him about the phone, according to the Street.com.

- via pcworld

Apple was similarly strict about branding, but was not licensing the core operating system freely to other suppliers. Still, Google so far has crafted an unusual strategy in several ways. It created a new “open” mobile operating system that is available on a “Linux” style licensing model. It is making that operating system available to any manufacturer that wants to use it, as Microsoft did. It has what appears to be an especially close working relationship with Verizon to develop Android devices and applications, similar in some ways the “exclusive” deals hot devices typically have been offered. And it may be crafting a “demonstration” model that resembles the way Apple integrated all elements of the experience in the iPhone, perhaps as a way of spurring such thinking by other Android suppliers. To some extent, though, the move is in one way only a highly-integrated approach to crafting devices with some lead orientation, such as “Twitter” phones, or “navigation” phones or “email” phones or “Skype”  phones. Presumably a Google-branded device would go the furthest yet in optimizing user experience for Google apps.

- via TMCnet

… don’t get too excited just yet, because we’ve heard all this before.  Late last month, Scott Moritz over at TheStreet.com reported (based on the word of an analyst at Northeast Securities) pretty much the same thing: that Google was planning to build its own phone with the help of a third-party manufacturer. That rumor was quickly batted down by Google’s own head of Android development, Andy Rubin, who told CNET that “we’re not making hardware … we’re enabling others to build hardware.” There’s also a lot of skepticism about whether Google would run the risk of undercutting its hardware partners—again, like HTC, LG, Samsung, and Motorola—by producing its own, competing branded phone. But who knows? Maybe Google will stay true to its word by not “making hardware,” but go ahead and let another company build an all-Google Android phone.

- via Yahoo.com

Quantum computer slips onto chips

Researchers have devised a penny-sized silicon chip that uses photons to run Shor’s algorithm – a well-known quantum approach – to solve a maths problem.

The algorithm computes the two numbers that multiply together to form a given figure, and has until now required laboratory-sized optical computers.

This kind of factoring is the basis for a wide variety of encryption schemes.

The work, reported in Science, is rudimentary but could easily be scaled up to handle more complex computing.

Shor's algorithm and the factoring of large numbers has been a particular case used to illustrate the power of quantum computing.

Quantum computers exploit the counterintuitive fact that photons or trapped atoms can exist in multiple states or “superpositions” at the same time.

For certain types of calculations, that “quantum indeterminacy” gives quantum computers a significant edge.

While traditional or “classical” computers find factoring large numbers impracticably time-consuming, for example, quantum computers can in principle crack the problem with ease.

That has important implications for encryption methods based on factoring, such as the “RSA” method that is used to make transactions on the internet more secure.

…

Optical computing has been touted as a potential future for information processing, by using packets of light instead of electrons as the information carrier.

But these packets, called photons, are also endowed with the indeterminate properties that make them quantum objects – so an optical computer can also be a quantum computer.

In fact just this kind of photon-based quantum factoring has been accomplished before, but the ability to put the heart of the machine on a standard chip is promising for future applications of the idea.

“The way people used to make this kind of circuit consumed square metres of laboratory space and took graduate students many months to align,” said Jeremy O’Brien, the University of Bristol researcher who led the work.

“Doubling the complexity of the circuit often times turns it from being a difficult task to a practically impossible one, whereas for us to double the complexity it’s really straightforward,” he told BBC News.

The Bristol team’s approach makes use of waveguides – channels etched into the chips that provide a path for the photons around the chips like the minuscule wires in conventional electronics. …

via BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Quantum computer slips onto chips.

ESP Trainer App

The ESP trainer was developed under a NASA program by Russell Targ at Stanford Research Institute.

We have found that people are able to improve their ESP scores by using a machine just like this and get in touch with the part of themselves that is psychic. This is often called a clairvoyant ability, and can enhance your life in many surprising ways.

The player is presented with four colored squares. For each trial, one has been selected at random by the ESP Trainer. Your task is to choose the correct square.

If you succeed, you will hear a chime, feel a vibration, and see a large color picture. Otherwise, the system lights up the correct square, and you proceed with the next trial. The score indicator at the top counts the number of correct choices. Words of encouragement appear as you achieve the scoring levels of 6, 8. 10, 12 or 14 hits. After 24 trials you may begin a new game.

The game offers multi-sensory feedback, reinforcement, and an opportunity to Pass, meeting all the requirements needed for learning this skill. ESP Trainer improves your ability to recognize your intuitive impressions, and it can bring you to a level of intuitive awareness beyond anything you've experienced before.

The purpose of the trainer is to allow you to become aware of what it feels like when you psychically choose the correct square. When you don't have that special feeling, we encourage you to press the Pass button. (So this is not a “forced choice” test.)

In a year long NASA program with 145 subjects (under Contract 953653 NAS7-100) many were able to significantly improve their scores. Four of the subjects improved their scores at the hundred-to-one level or better. This approach has been used with surprising success on Wall Street. But of course, past results are no guarantee of future performance.

Because you are learning a new skill, slower is better than faster.

If you find yourself frequently scoring 12 or more, write to the developer: Contact Russell Targ

This game can provide the first steps toward experiencing and developing the psychic abilities hidden within us all.

via ESP Trainer by Russell Targ espresearch.com.

I’m getting close to getting a 3GS iPhone … but I haven’t done it yet because I don’t want to switch to AT&T. People really hate AT&T and in my own tests of a friend’s 3GS, the reception was pretty bad compared to my reception with Sprint.