HackingTheUniverse

You are browsing the archives of 2009 October.

High resolution ultrasound scans and greatly improved sonal imaging may become possible because of a technique using metamaterials to create a hyperlens that can focus sound to a fraction of its wavelength.
Acoustic Hyperlens Could Sharpen Ultrasound Imaging - [ieee.org]
In the past few years, researchers have created artificial materials known as metamaterials, which bend [...]

It has been said that “without hardware, software is nothing, but without software, hardware is something.” And you can even make an argument that some level of logic can be built into hardware simply because it must have some kind of ordered structure on many levels: time and space, atomic, molecular, chemical, even simple shape. [...]

Most discusssions of ethics in AIs or robots involve implanting some kind of code of behavior into the system that ensures the kind of behavior that we would agree with. Asimov’s three laws of robotics are an example of this type of “ethical governor”.
Since the definition of intelligence implies some reasoning ability and at least [...]

This thoroughly researched paper by Dave Dittrich at the University of Washington, reflects on how malware and cyber criminals have evolved their techniques and activites over recent years. Hybrid combinations of penetration methods make it more difficult to defend against the malware and good use of social engineering increases the success percentage.
Nugache [...]

VASIMR is a high powered plasma engine being developed by Ad Astra Rocket Company in Houston. The VAriable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket is a drive that creates propulsion by expelling ionized hyrdrogen plasma and uses superconductors to increase the strength of the magnetic field involved and maximize thrust.
VASIMR - [adastrarocket.com]
The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket [...]

Henri Poincare was born in Nancy, France in 1854 and was a mathematician, physicist and philosopher. He may be best known for posing a theoretical problem in topology called “the Poincare Conjecture” which is a problem in topology about how a sphere can be defined by dealing with the characteristics of a three dimensional manifold. [...]