Has CoD had its chips?

Personally, I'll be ditching the queue for MW and joining the  ranks for Battlefield 3.
Why?
Frostbite has got me well and truly hooked. The gameplay footage is having the same effect on me that the Killzone 2  had all those many moons ago.

One more puzzle in the construction of The Soft-Machine

(Nanowerk Spotlight) Surface energy is ubiquitous in nature and it plays an important role in many scientific areas such as for instance surface physics, biophysics, surface chemistry, or catalysis. Prior to the area of nanotechnology it has been impractical to consider utilizing surface energy as an energy source because there are few molecules or atoms involved in the surface interaction and the density of surface energy is low. Now, however, due to the lower power consumption requirements of nanoscale devices and the higher specific surface area for nanomaterials it appears attractive to use surface energy at the nanoscale
Check out Nanowerk for full story

nanotechnology 101b The best primer for beginners.

Neuroscience & the Brain

WHAT: The Society for Neuroscience's Annual Meeting, Neuroscience 2011, Nov. 12-16 at the Washington Convention Center. The event will include more than 16,000 study abstracts on new discoveries in aging, stress, mental illness, learning, disease, and more.

In addition to a working press room and press conferences, registered media will have access to special events on the intersection of brain science and society, such as the law, the obesity epidemic, and economics. For more details on the latest research being presented in your area of interest, download the Preliminary Program and register atwww.sfn.org/pressroom.

PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS :

This year's "Dialogues between Neuroscience and Society" features economist and author Robert Shiller in a discussion of behavioral economics. Shiller's work has addressed the influence of psychological factors on economic decision-making and the impact of group dynamics on financial markets.

Presidential Special Lectures feature:

• Cornelia I. Bargmann, PhD, Rockefeller University, will address how genes and the environment interact to generate flexible behaviors.
• Mu-Ming Poo, PhD, University of California, Berkeley and Institute of Neuroscience, Chinese Academy of Sciences, will discuss brain chemicals called neurotrophins and their role in development, plasticity, cognition, and behavior.
• Ann M. Graybiel, PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will address research on the brain circuit connecting the cortex and the basal ganglia, which is important in decision-making and adaptive behaviors; its dysfunctions underlie Parkinson's and Huntington's disease and other neuropsychiatric disorders.
• Andrew P. Feinberg, MD, MPH, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a pioneer in epigenetics, will discuss new genome-scale approaches to observing and understanding common diseases such as cancer, autism, and psychiatric disease.

WHEN: Nov. 12-16

WHERE: Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C.

Source: Society for Neuroscience

Anonymous Broadcast

cyber-activists react to increase in arrests from search for Alister Cloud. #Anonymous

Despite a recent major initiative to capture Alister Cloud, the UK's most wanted cyber-militant remains free.

Alister Cloud was not amongst to 20 arrests across the UK, USA and Netherlands of people suspected of cyber attacks. 14 of the arrested are suspected of being members of Anonymous.

Police anb MI5 have called in the help of ISOC, the EU run top level  Information Security Operations Centre to join a task force code named 'Operation Cloud'.

After draft copies of the 'Operation Cloud' briefing document handed out to all agents involved in the search for Alister Cloud were leaked, all electronic communications from and between members of the task force have been stopped.

Those chapters referring to the 'Dark Web' are particularly interesting. This is the name given to the forums and discussion groups where 'hacktivists' and cyber-militants communicate and share news, information and resources. According to 'Operation Cloud'  Alister Cloud has no association with any known group and yet he is capable of the  most sophisticated illegal access to servers and websites considered impenetrable by any known hacking tools.

The 'Dark Cloud' is buzzing with Bloggers and forum members in dispute about how Alister Cloud should be handled. Indications are the arguments about how to deal with the intensified search for Alister Cloud, seems to fall into three camps. These can basically be divided by well organised activists, small cyber-militant cells and individuals.

Those groups who wish to recruit him into a more organised attack on corporate and political targets

Those groups who are feeling increased pressure and arrests of members wanting him to be apprehended by police to take the heat of them.

Those people who fully support Alister and hope he continues to give 'Operation Cloud' the run around.

Nanotechnology 104 Interfacing biology with electronic nanotechnology

.
'Biological sensing' 'tissue engineering'

And I bet you thought the nanoparticles inside Alister was 'way-out' sci-fi.
I keep saying the technology to develop nanoparticles that live happily inside you and improve some aspect of your physiology or neural functioning is not that far away.

Nanotechnology in delivering antibodies and treating illness.

Nanotechnology that targets specific cells and interacts with them?
The nanoparticles inside Alister work in the same way.
It's just a matter of modifying the function of the particles to interface with cells permanently.

MI5 and Police search for hacker in North Finchley.

Security Forces Patrol the North Circular Road.

Last Tuesday evening, North Finchley became host to an incident straight out of a spy novel when MI5 and armed police, supported by a top of the range, hi-tech, surveillance helicopter, were in pursuit of a teenager who, reports state, hacked into and disabled military grade security software in a computer, surveillance control vehicle and an unmanned military surveillance drone.
MI5 somehow managed to track down the hacker and confirm his presence in a North Finchley house occupied by students from Middlesex University. The suspect, Alister Cloud, 16, managed to detect the interception and escape.
Police later confirmed they received several calls from Finchley residents complaining about trespassers in their gardens.
Claire Bowlby, granddaughter of General Bowbly (retired) stated Alister Cloud must have found and disabled the military security app on her laptop when he offered to find out why it was working so slowly. Her parents, both army officers have since made a formal complaint about this intrusion of privacy.
Suzie Emerson and Claire Bowlby, students at the Finchley house, stated Alister has come to London from Glasgow in search of his missing mother, nano-scientist Professor Julia Cloud. Whether this is a cover, or if Alister really is searching for his mother is not known.
A spokesperson from ISOC, the Government Information Security Operations Centre, was unable to explain how a 16 year old somehow managed to evade roadblocks, a multi-million pound surveillance helicopter fully equipped with the latest  cameras and imaging technology and an undisclosed number of police and MI5 officers.
The spokesperson confirmed the hacks were high level and very sophisticated and suspect that intercept or jamming devices were used to 'disappear' the suspect from any visual or electronic detection.
They suspect Alister Cloud may have had help from the Situationists, a cyber-activist group. 
ISOC is asking companies and government departments  to monitor their networks and security arrangements.
Because of the possible link to the Situationists, a Joint Task Force has been set up made up of MI5, American NSA agents and is supported by ISOC.


Reported by Max Lipsey
Freelance Journalist.

Nanotechnology 103 - First stage of Soft-Machine Manufacture

Professor Cloud developed the prototype designs for the Soft-Machine and introduced fixed-fluid computing into the model built with a synthesis of noble elements in a semi-stable state.
It is often forgotten that the Soft-Machine outfit is primarily liquid. A steady flow of data determines the state of the Soft-Machine in any given moment. the liquid has an inbuilt default state of 'fabric' so it can be worn when not in use.
For more information check relevant pages on http://www.softmachine.net

Nanotechnology 102. Nanoscale manufacturing

These early films demonstrate some of the technologies used by Centauri Science Foundation in manufacturing the base frames of nanoparticles.

Anti-matter 101

Nanotubes 101

Nanotechnology 101

Latest Sony Tablet Video.

Watch "Sony S1 & S2 Tablet - Two will - Episode 2 - Official Commercial" on YouTube

Will nanotechnology revolutionize medicine?

There's an excellent article in Techtoggle. Here's an brief extract. Check out the site (link below)
Scientists are working now to create nanostructures that serve as new kinds of drugs for treating cancer, to engineer nanomaterials for use as artificial tissues that would replace diseased kidneys and livers, and even repair nerve damage, and to integrate nanodevices with the nervous system to create implants that restore vision and hearing, and build new prosthetic limbs

Link to full article here; 

The emergence of the nanoparticle.

Here's an article in New Scientist describing the workings of an "Automated DNA sequencing machine"

The production of the nanoparticles absorbed by Alister involved several stages of 'manufacture' one of them being 'multiplex automated genome engineering', or MAGE.

Another stage of the production of the nanoparticles was 'mechanosynthesis; the engineering molecular scale components.

The third stage was the synthesis of a wholly new synthetic organism with the following properties:

The nanoparticles survival was dependent upon information or rather 'data' from a 'host' in the form of electromagnetic energy to survive.the nanoparticles could evolve - adapt to the host environment as long as that environment was one of data flow - for nutrition and for information about its environment. The nanoparticles communicated with other members and interacted with its environment.

Inside computers, the particles congregated in and around memory and the processor. In Alister, the particles moved through his brain and central nervous system, where the bulk of the data processing activity took place.

There is some debate about how 'aware' the particles are. The particles were built to communicate and naturally exhibit collective behaviour. This collective behaviour includes gathering and sharing of data about the condition of their environment and subsequently how best to protect and survive in it. This means that individually the particles can identify threats and use the host system to send alerts to both other particles and the host body, to generate defence mechanism. These defence mechanisms may be production of anti-bodies, faster neural connections and physical reactions or the blocking of abnormal 'infectious' signals in the system.

Evolution machine: Genetic engineering on fast forward      

The environmental cost of technology.

Malaysian rare earths refinery under a cloud

It's not easy extracting the rare elements used to make our phones, readers and computers