Good News!

Five Technologies Set to Change The Decade
Josh Wolfe, 01.07.09, 06:40 PM EST
(from www.forbes.com)

Amazing, new technologies will be woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Here are five.

In the coming decade, we will see some amazing new technologies that will affect our lives to such an extent that we will wonder how we ever lived without them.

As transistors continue to shrink, nanoscale devices will be built into more objects on the path toward ubiquitous computing and might even be integrated into fabric, yielding "smart clothing" that continuously monitors our health. If scientists manage to build quantum computers, they will take information processing to a whole new level. As the Internet becomes more widespread and mobile, the real world and virtual worlds will become increasingly intertwined. As pharmaceutical companies struggle with competition from generics, biotech drugs will define the decade. And better batteries will finally allow for practical electric cars, while flexible digital displays might replace our daily newspapers.

These are all exciting prospects. Here are five extensions and applications of these technologies that we feel have a good combination of scientific breakthrough and commercial potential.

Building-Integrated Photovoltaics

It's easy to tap into solar power if your construction materials--from roofing to siding to exterior facades--have built-in solar cells to create cost-efficient, aesthetically pleasing self-powered buildings. Building-integrated photovoltaics, or BIPV, is poised to change the face of construction, energy and urban planning in the coming decade.

UNC scientists turn human skin cells into insulin-producing cells

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have transformed cells from human skin into cells that produce insulin, the hormone used to treat diabetes. The breakthrough may one day lead to new treatments or even a cure for the millions of people affected by the disease, researchers say.

Spiritual Healing and Psychotherapy

by Daniel J. Benor, MD

Spiritual healers have been known for bringing about unusual cures throughout recorded history. Until recently, modern medicine has viewed such reports with great scepticism. They are often attributed to placebo reactions, spontaneous remissions of symptoms of ordinary illnesses, remissions of 'hysterical' symptoms, or even to naive exaggerations or deliberate charlatanism.

Becca's Note: This is an article from the UK. There are a couple of abbreviations in it that I didn't know the meanings of, so I looked them up: "NHS" stands for National Health Service. "ME" is myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS).

Could spiritual healing actually work?
By Dr DANNY PENMAN
Last updated at 14:42 03 October 2006

Healer Ruth Kaye is employed by the NHS
Once dismissed as hokum, new evidence is forcing doctors to accept the power of spiritual healing. Click here to see why the laying on of hands may not be quackery after all:

This is a very interesting video explaining possible real life time travel.

10 Interesting - - and Weird - - Physical Theories
By Andrew Zimmerman Jones, About.com

There are a lot of interesting theories in physics. Matter exists as a state of energy, while waves of probability spread throughout the universe. Existence itself may exist as only the vibrations on microscopic, trans-dimensional strings. Here are some of the most interesting theories, to my mind, in modern physics (in no particular order, despite the enumeration).

Wave Particle Duality

Researchers Discover New States Of Electrons That Behave Like Light
ScienceDaily (July 27, 2008) — A team of researchers at Princeton University's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center has observed electrons moving through a crystal of bismuth metal behaving like light.

This discovery, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and detailed in today's edition of the journal Science, could lead to new kinds of electronic devices.

Untangled Quantum Quirk Is Significant Step Toward Quantum Computing
ScienceDaily (June 15, 2008) — Quantum computing has been hailed as the next leap forward for computers, promising to catapult memory capacity and processing speeds well beyond current limits. Several challenging problems need to be cracked, however, before the dream can be fully realized.

Paper Discusses Circuitry For Quantum Computing
ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2002) — ANN ARBOR -- The next radically different means of information processing will be quantum computing, which researchers say will use the principles of quantum mechanics to perform complex calculations in a fraction of the time needed by the world’s fastest supercomputers.