“…engineers have produced a material that absorbs on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared, and far-infrared light that hits it — a development that promises to open new frontiers in space technology….”The reflectance tests showed that our team had extended by 50 times the range of the material’s absorption capabilities. Though other researchers are reporting near-perfect absorption levels mainly in the ultraviolet and visible, our material is darn near perfect across multiple wavelength bands, from the ultraviolet to the far infrared,”…”No one else has achieved this milestone yet.”…” Full Slice

or maybe art crime…

“Swiss artist and comedian Ursus Wehrli likes his artwork meticulously neat. For his popular book series, Tidying Up Art, Wehrli rearranges famous art pieces by the likes of Chagall and Picasso, extracting the work’s basic components and repositioning them in a perfectly organized way.

Wehrli’s latest book, The Art of Clean Up, skips famous artwork in favor of everyday life. A bowl of alphabet soup or a fallen pine tree branch get a well ordered revamp in the hands of Wehrli.” Full Slice

“…researchers…describe how a single cell genetically engineered to express green fluorescent protein (GFP) can be used to amplify the light particles called photons into nanosecond-long pulses of laser light…the first report of a successful biological laser based on a single, living cell…we wondered whether there was a fundamental reason why laser light, as far as we know, does not occur in nature or if we could find a way to achieve lasing in biological substances or living organisms…Not only did the cell-based device produce pulses of laser light as in the GFP solution experiment, the researchers also found that the spherical shape of the cell itself acted as a lens, refocusing the light and inducing emission of laser light at lower energy levels than required for the solution-based device. The cells used in the device survived the lasing process and were able to continue producing hundreds of pulses of laser light…”One of our long-term goals will be finding ways to bring optical communications and computing, currently done with inanimate electronic devices, into the realm of biotechnology. That could be particularly useful in projects requiring the interfacing of electronics with biological organisms….” Full Slice

The inventor of the vanadium redox flow battery is interviewed.

“…A combination of new software and human transcription called Blitzscribe allowed them to parse 200 terabytes of data to capture the emergence and refinement of specific words in Roy’s son’s vocabulary. (Luckily, the boy was an early talker.) In one 40-second clip, you can hear how “gaga” turned into “water” over the course of six months. In a video clip, below, you can hear and watch the evolution of “ball.”…” Full Slice.

“…One way to improve the efficiency of solar cells is to allow light to bounce around inside them, increasing the chances that it will be absorbed. One way to do this is to roughen the surface of a silicon cell, so that photons that enter the material tend to be reflected inside it. But by how much does this light trapping improve performance?…nanophotonics dramatically changes the game….” Full Slice

…for example, the beauty here.

“…The researchers’ spectroscopic study suggests that graphene grows in the form of tiny islands built of concentric rings of carbon atoms. The islands are strongly bonded to the iridium surface at their perimeters, but are not bonded to the iridium at their centers, which causes them to bulge upward in the middle to form minuscule geodesic domes. By adjusting the conditions as the carbon is deposited on the iridium, the researchers could vary the size of the carbon domes from a few nanometers to hundreds of nanometers across….” Full Slice

“In many biomedical applications, waveguides must interface directly with living cells and tissues, requiring the waveguide constituent to be biocompatible. Biodegradability is also desirable,”… “The use of a biocompatible, biodegradable polymer like silk to guide light opens up new opportunities in biologically based modulation and sensing along with an opportunity to integrate light delivery within living tissue.”…” Full Slice

“…Scientists in the field of structural DNA nanotechnology, including [researcher]’s team, have previously demonstrated that pre-fab DNA elements could be induced to self-assemble, forming useful nanostructural platforms or “tiles.” Such tiles are able to snap together—with jigsaw puzzle-piece specificity—through base pairing, forming larger arrays.

[researcher]’s work…responds to one of the fundamental challenges in nanotechnology and materials science, the construction of molecular-level forms in three dimensions. To do so, the team uses gold nanoparticles, which can be placed on single-stranded DNA, compelling these flexible molecular tile arrays to bend away from the nanoparticles, curling into closed loops or forming spring-like spirals or nested rings, roughly 30 to 180 nanometers in diameter….” Full Slice includes video

nature’s going by a descending frequency
modulo its playing of unenumerated instruments
shows a propensity towards sequential emanation

beauty selfselects

but the newtonian faeces, ever present
the neural cold
the low level phase change
far, far away, unpredictable, tantalizes, hypnotizes

…at least you don’t need to know Dutch to get an idea of what is being said here:

Autodealers in paniek

Autodealers zitten met de handen in het haar.

I’m afraid the link would do you no good.

I updated my post about Walter’s excellent shirt (http://baloney.com/archives/210), and believe I have identified all 51 robots.

Walter, of Fractal Fame, wore an excellent t-shirt to the Baloney gathering yesterday. It had the silhouettes of 51 different famous robots. Of course the Baloneys had to swarm around Walter and try to identify the various images. As we stared intently at his chest, he remarked “This must be how women feel”. We identified a few and insisted he send us a link to the shirt source (Click here to see because I’m about to copyright violate).

Here is the shirt image:

I can’t find a list of the robot names, so I’ve numbered the images and am hoping Baloney.Com readers will fill in the blanks:

NOTE: I believe I have identified all 51 robots on the shirt. They are listed here.