Q&A: Gaza Conflict

BBC Posted a Q&A on the Gaza conflict. Below are some of the questions. Click the Article Heading for the answers:

Three weeks after it began its offensive in the Gaza Strip, Israel announced a unilateral ceasefire, followed hours later by Hamas announcing a one-week ceasefire. The BBC News website looks at the background to the conflict and what the ceasefire means.

Why has Israel declared a ceasefire and what are its terms?

How did Hamas react?

Why did the Israelis launch their 27 December offensive?

Why did Hamas not renew the ceasefire?

Why does Hamas fire missiles into Israel?

What casualties have the Hamas rockets caused?

What have been the effects of the Israeli blockade?

What is the history of this small strip of land?

How did Hamas come to control Gaza?

News: One step closer to true color eink

Researchers at the university of Toronto are working with eink that changes color. Traditional "color" eink screens are actually composed of independent red, green and blue micro capsules. Effectively reducing the resolution to 1/4 that of it's monochrome counterparts. This technology would allow true color eink. Read more about it by clicking the heading.

News: X-rays emitted from ordinary Scotch tape

No, it's not an April Fool's joke. (I checked the date of the article) MS NBC reports that scientists have discovered that ordinary Scotch tape can produce X-Rays. Though don't worry about exposure it can only occur in a vacuum the presence of air somehow nullifies the X-Ray production.

Read about it here

News: Laser light switch toggles beam up to 100 billion times a second

clipped from www.nytimes.com Engineers Make Leap in Optical Networks Published: October 27, 2005 SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 26 - A team of Stanford electrical engineers has discovered how to switch a beam of laser light on and off up to 100 billion times a second with materials that are widely used in the semiconductor industry. The group used a standard chip-making process to design a central component of optical networking gear that is potentially more than 10 times as fast as the highest-performance commercial products available today. The communications industry now uses costly equipment to transmit data over optical fibers at up to 10 billion bits a second. Researchers, however, are already experimenting with optically linked computers in which components may be located on different sides of the globe. Cheap optical switches would also make it possible to create data superhighways inside computers and reorganize them for better performance.

News: Content sensitive image resizing

This one's is pretty impressive. A group of scientist came up with an algorithm for resizing an image. The idea is to stretch or shrink the image while maintaining the image's main focus. Unlike standard non-uniform stretching or contracting, which leads to distortion, this method allows the subject to stay uniform while modifying the contents of an image. The image is treated a lot like an MP3. What MP3 does for compression is it removes sounds that people cannot ordinarily hear and thereby makes the file size significantly smaller. Click heading for video. I've also added a link to the internet resources section, on the right, to a web based application based on this algorithm.

News: 10 Times Longer Battery Life

Stanford materials scientist Yi Cui has found a way to create a silicone anode. Scientists knew that this material would create, at least theoretically, an enormous 10 fold increase in charge capacity but they were never able to achieve it. The problem was the silicone anode would crack or degrade due to extreme expansion. That was overcome by creating a an anode out of silicone nanowires. The space between the nanowires would allow for the expansion to take place without the anode cracking. (See picture above) As always, click heading for full article.

News: I can finally eat KFC

For quite some time I've been boycotting KFC because of their inhumane treatment of chickens prior to slaughter. I can happily say that Both KFC, their parent company(Yum!) and Tyson have instituted a policy for humane treatment of their chicken. I'm not too sure about Tyson's policy but you can read about it in this pdf.

Yum! is also the parent company of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Long John Silver's and A&W. Click heading for full story.

News: Running on Water

Here are two stories about two, apparently different, Japanese car manufacturers that claimed to have produced vehicles that run on good ol' H2O... I'm not so sure..

Vehicle 1

The problem with this vehicle is, although it seems great.. where are they getting the hydrogen from? There is no talk about using electricity to extract hydrogen. The paperwork that the company files even claims it runs on compressed hydrogen. How do they generate the Hydrogen and if they generate it in the vehicle is the compression done on the spot? Although it works with hydrogen, based on what I've seen, I would classify this vehicle as a steam vehicle. If they can prove that the hydrogen is derived from the water.. then we're talking.

Vehicle 2

The problem I have with this vehicle is how does it generates electricity from water. How? We all know how to generate electricity from hydrogen, which in and of itself it's hard enough. The second problem is you also need electricity to separate the hydrogen from the water (As far as I know). If you keep using and generating electricity.. what's left to fuel the vehicle? I'm not a physicist and can't do the math.. but I think somethings up here.. If I'm not mistaken, every time you convert energy from one form to another some energy gets expelled... something gets used up. I don't know. Though I would love to know how these two vehicles really work.

News: 256 GB on a Sheet of Paper?

In 2006, in Banglore India, a student has discovered a way to store 256GB of information on a single A4 sheet of paper (Roughly the size of a standard sheet of paper). The application paves the way for CD/DVD/Blu-Ray less info. Imagine the cost/benefit relationship. Not to mention the accessibility and storage capacity vs size. Imagine a standard business card housing an artist's portfolio or a film director's card housing movie clips. Click the title for the full story.

News: Laser Light Switch

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 26 - A team of Stanford electrical engineers has discovered how to switch a beam of laser light on and off up to 100 billion times a second with materials that are widely used in the semiconductor industry. (Read More)

This means that there will be a way to make light based computers and networks. The possibility to run multiple computers together at a speed that would seem like it's one machine. There are systems of arrays set up with multiple computers that share processing power. Imagine if the network and communication in the machine were all based on light. This would change the way computers work all together. It reminds me of the nervous system where you have impulses that are electrical until they reach the synapse and are converted to chemical and back again. I wonder how light will be converted into a storage medium. I'm sure they have implemented a procedure but I wonder if there is something more efficient. Right now you can get a network that runs on fiber optics. I think we need to move this inside the machine and this is what this article is all about.

News: Blue Rose

In 2004 an Australian company Florigene and the Japanese company, Suntory, created the first blue rose. I have to say I wouldn't call it a blue rose but if you happen to stumble upon a bluer rose then let me know about it. If I do I'll post it here. Ultimately the idea is to be able to buy one, but first we need to find it. The picture below is from Florigene's news article at the link that is referenced.