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The principle behind that is Nantenna.

this is fantastic!!!! waiting of somebody to make this happen since years The size of the gap is critical because it creates an ultra-fast tunnel junction between the rectenna's two electrodes, allowing a maximum transfer of electricity. The nanosized gap gives energized electrons on the rectenna just enough time to tunnel to the opposite electrode before their electrical current reverses and they try to go back. The triangular tip of the rectenna makes it hard for the electrons to reverse direction, thus capturing the energy and rectifying it to a unidirectional current. Impressively, the rectennas, because of their extremely small and fast tunnel diodes, are capable of converting solar radiation in the infrared region through the extremely fast and short wavelengths of visible light - something that has never been accomplished before. Silicon solar panels, by comparison, have a single band gap which, loosely speaking, allows the panel to convert electromagnetic radiation efficiently at only one small portion of the solar spectrum. The rectenna devices don't rely on a band gap and may be tuned to harvest light over the whole solar spectrum, creating maximum efficiency. Through atomic layer deposition, Willis has shown he is able to precisely coat the tip of the rectenna with layers of individual copper atoms until a gap of about 1.5 nanometers is achieved. The process is self-limiting and stops at 1.5 nanometer separation The size of the gap is critical because it creates an ultra-fast tunnel junction between the rectenna's two electrodes, allowing a maximum transfer of electricity. The nanosized gap gives energized electrons on the rectenna just enough time to tunnel to the opposite electrode before their electrical current reverses and they try to go back. The triangular tip of the rectenna makes it hard for the electrons to reverse direction, thus capturing the energy and rectifying it to a unidirectional current. Impressively, the rectennas, because of th

Old post from Luis brought back from graveyard..... At least two good ideas to put there: 1) tipping points prediction 2) planetary phases for trajectory transfer and probably many more if we think about it a bit more

Researchers in the US and UK say they have invented a new microscopy technique for imaging live tissue with unprecedented speed and resolution. The technique involves using the tiny tip of an atomic force microscope to tap on a living cell and analysing the resulting vibrations to reveal the mechanical properties of cell tissue. The team says that the technique could have widespread applications in medicine. However, another expert in the field suggests that the group has not demonstrated the superiority of the technique to those already available.

Putting together the picture of how climate works. An informative slide that shows which are the climatic subsystems that can undergo(/have undergone in the past) bifurcations (Lenton et al., 2008 PNAS).

Another great piece from "Ten Simple Rules" series by PLOSCB

Asimov's Foundation meets ACT's Tipping Point Prediction?

still, some interesting thoughts in there ... "Then you have the 50-year cycles of violence. Turchin describes these as the building up and then the release of pressure. Each time, social inequality creeps up over the decades, then reaches a breaking point. Reforms are made, but over time, those reforms are reversed, leading back to a state of increasing social inequality. The graph above shows how regular these spikes are - though there's one missing in the early 19th century, which Turchin attributes to the relative prosperity that characterized the time. He also notes that the severity of the spikes can vary depending on how governments respond to the problem. Turchin says that the United States was in a pre-revolutionary state in the 1910s, but there was a steep drop-off in violence after the 1920s because of the progressive era. The governing class made decisions to reign in corporations and allowed workers to air grievances. These policies reduced the pressure, he says, and prevented revolution. The United Kingdom was also able to avoid revolution through reforms in the 19th century, according to Turchin. But the most common way for these things to resolve themselves is through violence. Turchin takes pains to emphasize that the cycles are not the result of iron-clad rules of history, but of feedback loops - just like in ecology. "In a predator-prey cycle, such as mice and weasels or hares and lynx, the reason why populations go through periodic booms and busts has nothing to do with any external clocks," he writes. "As mice become abundant, weasels breed like crazy and multiply. Then they eat down most of the mice and starve to death themselves, at which point the few surviving mice begin breeding like crazy and the cycle repeats." There are competing theories as well. A group of researchers at the New England Complex Systems Institute - who practice a discipline called econophysics - have built their own model of political violence and

It's not the scientific activity described in the article that is uninteresting, on the contrary! But the way it is described is just a bad joke. Once again the results itself are seemingly not sexy enough and thus something is sold as the big revolution, though it's just the application of the oldest scientific principles in a slightly different way than used before.

Now this is an interesting hypothesis! Would make terraforming a bit easier 

Having an ocean on Mars would solve so many problems... btw, again this guy? Isabelle take a look at that : Tim Lenton is everywhere, last time he wrote half of our literature references on the tipping points study.

Love tip 3.. thats why I am at the ACT of course :) 3. Surround yourself with pros Surround yourself with people who are self-assured, and live life without comprising their core values. These people will rub off on you quickly. finally.. The world is already full of people who obey the status quo. But the people who don't give a fuck are the ones that change the world.

Engineer : Remember to tip 18%, everybody. Mathematician : Is that 18% of the pre-tax total, or of the total with tax? Physicist : You know, it's simpler if we assume the system doesn't have tax. Computer Scientist : But it does have tax.

his day to day research experience must be relatively unusual highlights include: - Bust size and hitchhiking: a field study. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18380130 'The effect of a joke on tipping when it is delivered at the same time as the bill' http://nicolas.gueguen.free.fr/Articles/JASP2002.pdf "Love is in the air": Effects of Songs With Romantic Lyrics on Compliance to a Courtship Request. http://nicolas.gueguen.free.fr/Articles/PsyMusic2010.PDF and the mostly confusing 'Presence of Various Figurines on a Restaurant Table and Consumer Choice: Evidence for an Associative Link.'

Now that's what I call applied science... will consider applying to his lab for a post-doc!

Albania is Lonely Planet's top country to visit in 2011. Ah! The ACT confirms its ability to detect trends and to be ahead of the curve.

they had seen the symbol b

this is for me..

Some news on our roots project. Are we mentioned? No.

This could be the killer application for Leopold: Keeping iCal and google calendar in sync and maybe there is even a lotus notes sync???

By attaching a diamond crystal to an AFM tip, researcher at New York City University managed to measure the heat flows at atomic levels in resistors. The method works due to a vacancy in the carbon lattice, two spots are empty of which one is filled with a nitrogen atom. The energy state of the vacancy is temperature dependent and can actually be read out spectroscopically.