Discover Sigalon Valley - Where the Tags are the Topics

One of my all-time favorite Singer/Poets, Leonard Cohen is known across the world. What makes this documentary so fascinating is that it was shot before his first musical album in 1967. This is a documentary about a man on the brink of super stardom. He's confident – even arrogant, and completely captivating. Without any further waiting, Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen

Watch: Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Leonard Cohen

Det blev en liten prinsessa som föddes 04.26 den 23 februari. Det berätade en märkbart rörd och stolt prins Daniel på en pressträff på Karolinska universitetessjukhuset i morse.

Blues night at the White House, February 21, 2012. 

A North Carolina State University chemist has found a way to give DNA-based computing better control over logic operations.

His work could lead to interfacing DNA-based computing with traditional silicon-based computing.

The idea of using DNA molecules to perform computations is not new; scientists have been working on it for over a decade. DNA has the ability to store much more data than conventional silicon-based computers, as well as the potential to perform calculations in a biological environment — inside a live cell, for example. But the technology is still limited in terms of the ability to control when and where particular computations occur.

In DNA computing, logic gates are created by combining different strands of DNA, rather than by a series of transistors. The drawback is that DNA computation events normally take place in a test tube, where the sequence of computation events cannot be easily controlled with spatial and temporal resolution. So no one can tell them when or where to work, making it difficult to create sequences of computational events.

In a remarkable feat of micro-engineering, UNSW physicists have created a working transistor consisting of a single atom placed precisely in a silicon crystal.

The tiny electronic device, described today in a paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, uses as its active component an individual phosphorus atom patterned between atomic-scale electrodes and electrostatic control gates.

This unprecedented atomic accuracy may yield the elementary building block for a future quantum computer with unparalleled computational efficiency.

Until now, single-atom transistors have been realised only by chance, where researchers either have had to search through many devices or tune multi-atom devices to isolate one that works.

God is light. In all cultures, there’s an intimate association between illumination and divinity, between life and creation.
Light is color. Light is energy. It fuels life and it feeds the spirit. It inspires art, religion, and science. Light holds the secrets of the universe. For thousands of years, humanity has tried to unlock the mysteries of light in its’ search for the nature of God himself.
Light Fantastic explores the phenomenon that surrounds and affects nearly every aspect of our lives but one which we take for granted – light.
Part 1 – Let There Be Light
Greek and Arab scholars, and later Europeans such as Descartes and Newton all tried to understand light to gain a better understanding of God. Episode one shows how much of modern science’s origins came from the desire to penetrate the divine nature of light.
Part 2 – The Light of Reason
The second programme explores the link between the development of practical tools that manipulate light and the emergence of new ideas. For example, Galileo’s observation that the sun did not go around the earth, was made with a telescope that had been invented for Venetian soldiers and traders.
Part 3 – The Stuff of Light
Episode three charts the discovery of the true nature of light and its impact on the modern world. All of today’s technologies – electricity, mobile communications and our ability to illuminate the world 24 hours a day – stem from unravelling the mystery of light.
Part 4 – Light, The Universe and Everything
In the final programme Simon Schaffer finds that as more people were able to manipulate light, the more puzzling and tricky it became. This led to investigations into the strange relationship between light, the eye and the mind, and the development of new technology such as photography and cinema.
Watch: Light Fantastic

In deep, cold space, nearly a million miles from Earth, a giant telescope later this decade will scan for the first light to streak across the universe more than 13 billion years ago.

The 7-ton spacecraft, one of the most ambitious and costly science projects in U.S. history, is under construction for NASA at Northrop Grumman Corp.'s space park complex in Redondo Beach, Calif.

The aim is to capture the oldest light, taking cosmologists to the time after the big bang when matter had cooled just enough to start forming the first blazing stars in what had been empty darkness. Astronomers have long dreamed about peering into that provenance.

"It is the actual formation of the universe," said Alan Dressler, the astronomer at Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena who chaired a committee that proposed the telescope more than a decade ago.

In spite of numerous medical breakthroughs ranging from heart transplants to bypass surgery, cardiovascular disease still tops the list as the leading cause of death in developed countries. Key among the many problems that trouble our hearts is something called myocardial ischemia disease (MID), a condition that leads to reduced blood flow in the vessels of the heart and lower extremities and, frequently, corrective surgery. Now, University of Texas at Austin (UTA) biomedical engineer Aaron Baker and his research team have developed a method that may speed up the body's ability to grow new blood vessels (a phenomenon called angiogenesis), and best of all, no surgery is required. That's potentially great news for the nearly 27 million folks in the U.S. alone who chronically suffer from MID.