“Smart Cards” in a Surveillance Society: The Implanted Radio-Frequency Identification Chip
If incorporating personal details into an RFID (radio-frequency identification) chip implanted into a passport or driver’s license may sound like a “smart” alternative to endless lines at the airport and intrusive questioning by securocrats, think again. Since the late 1990s, corporate grifters have touted the “benefits” of the devilish transmitters as a “convenient” and “cheap” way to tag individual commodities, one that would “revolutionize” inventory management and theft prevention. Indeed, everything from paper towels to shoes, pets to underwear have been “tagged” with the chips. “Savings” would be “passed on” to the consumer. Call it the Wal-Martization of everyday life. RFID tags are small computer chips connected to miniature antennae that can be fixed to or implanted within physical objects, including human beings. While there are beneficial uses of RFID, some attributes of the technology could be deployed in ways that threaten privacy and civil liberties: RFID under the skin
15 Awesome Chemistry GIFs
You don’t need to watch Breaking Bad to know that chemistry is pretty awesome. Below, we explore our favorite 15 chemistry GIFs and the science behind them (when we could figure it out): Melting Metal With Magnets The Science: The copper wire has a significant amount of AC electricity running through it, causing it to act like a really strong electromagnet. Orange LED Light In Liquid Nitrogen The Science: When an LED is immersed in liquid nitrogen, the electrons lose a lot of thermal energy, even when the light isn’t turned on. Awesome Chemistry GIFs: Heating Mercury Thiocyanate Hydrogen Peroxide Catalyzed By Potassium Iodide
puter breakthrough: Code of life becomes data bank
Data could be stored in DNA for years. Photo: Phil Carrick Scientists in Britain on Wednesday announced a breakthrough in the quest to turn DNA into a revolutionary form of data storage. A speck of man-made DNA can hold mountains of data that can be freeze-dried, shipped and stored, potentially for thousands of years, they said. The contents are "read" by sequencing the DNA — as is routinely done today, in genetic fingerprinting and so on — and turning it back into computer code. "We already know that DNA is a robust way to store information because we can extract it from bones of woolly mammoths, which date back tens of thousands of years, and make sense of it," said Nick Goldman of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) in Cambridge. Advertisement "It's also incredibly small, dense and does not need any power for storage, so shipping and keeping it is easy." The letter sequence comprises the genome, or the chemical blueprint for making and sustaining life.
Lost pyramids spotted by space scientists - Technology & science - Science
Seventeen lost pyramids are believed to have been found in Egypt by a team of space archaeologists from Alabama, according to a report. Sarah Parcak and her team at a NASA-sponsored laboratory at the University of Alabama at Birmingham made the discoveries using a satellite survey, and also found more than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements in infrared images that show up buildings underground, BBC News reported. The BBC said that two of the suspected pyramids had been confirmed by initial excavations. "We were very intensely doing this research for over a year. She said it was likely that more buildings would be found. "These are just the sites [close to] the surface. "It just shows us how easy it is to underestimate both the size and scale of past human settlements," she added. She said the techniques she used were "an important tool" in working out where to focus excavations on the ground. "It gives us a much bigger perspective on archaeological sites.
Physicists May Have Evidence Universe Is A Computer Simulation
Physicists say they may have evidence that the universe is a computer simulation. How? They made a computer simulation of the universe. And it looks sort of like us. A long-proposed thought experiment, put forward by both philosophers and popular culture, points out that any civilisation of sufficient size and intelligence would eventually create a simulation universe if such a thing were possible. And since there would therefore be many more simulations (within simulations, within simulations) than real universes, it is therefore more likely than not that our world is artificial. Now a team of researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany led by Silas Beane say they have evidence this may be true. In a paper named ‘Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation’, they point out that current simulations of the universe - which do exist, but which are extremely weak and small - naturally put limits on physical laws. But the basic impression is an intriguing one.
10 Amazing electron microscope images
A scanning electron microscope (SEM) is a type of electron microscope that produces images of a sample by scanning over it with a focused beam of electrons. The electrons interact with electrons in the sample, producing various signals that can be detected and that contain information about the sample's surface topography and composition. Fly Blood cells Surface of a kidney stone Arthropod eye Fly eye Soybean cyst nematode and egg coloured image SEM chamber Pollen of grain Gold Spider SEM sample Snow crystal magnification
