Richard Leis

Month: April 2004

  • Hydrogen-Rich and Fancy-Free in 12 Seconds

    From the “mother” of all sources, a new device to reform hydrogen from gasoline has been developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richmond, Washington. What makes this reformer special is its ability to reform enough hydrogen to get a vehicle up and running in only 12 seconds. Reformer technology has been notorious for…

  • DNA 2.0

    The evolution of life over 3.5 billion years is such an awesome story that it threatens the power of several establishments. A small mind is a mind more easily controlled, and evolution does not suffer a small mind. We have entered the age of DNA 2.0 – the enhancement or replacement of nature’s DNA through…

  • Stupid Barrels Avoid Stupid Rodeo Clowns Who Drive

    You know those bright orange and white “bollards” placed on roads to direct traffic at construction sites? They are placed by construction workers, a task long considered to be quite dangerous. New robotic bollards have been developed that deploy themselves with the assistance of a human operator kept safely out of harm’s way. According to…

  • Saturn Approaches

    Cassini-Huygens has sent back another glorious image of its destination. In this image, Saturn is much larger and more detailed than previous images sent back by the probe. Soon the planet will loom so large that it will not fit completely into the image frame. There are just 62 days left before Cassini-Huygens is inserted…

  • The Columbia Hills on Mars

    The rover Spirit took a panoramic picture of its destination, the Columbia Hills.

  • The Next Revolutionary Change

    The Communications Revolution (including the Internet and, even more profoundly, the future Grid and Mesh) has brought us extraordinary change, but there is a less obvious revolution in the wings that I believe will be every bit as catastrophic in its impact on humanity. The coming Transportation Revolution will bring a decentralized and networked robotic…

  • The Prokaryotic, Eukaryotic, and Archaea Kingdoms

    I was interested to learn this morning that biologists no longer divide all life into two cellular kingdoms; they divide life into three kingdoms. When I took college biology as recently as the mid-1990s, teachers and textbooks were still stating that all life could be divided into the prokaryotic and eukaryotic cellular kingdoms (we belong…

  • Cold Fusion Returns?

    Fifteen years ago scientists from the University of Utah claimed to have created a fusion reaction at room temperature. I remember at the time that it was a major news story because it was a revolutionary breakthrough. There were promises of cheap energy on the horizon for every device and in every home and automobile.…

  • Pondering the Technological Singularity

    If there is such a thing as a Technological Singularity, I predict that there will be a general trend of accelerated change punctuated by sudden, massive, and far-reaching paradigm shifts that are too obvious for any rational person to explain away as anything other than a milestone on the way toward the Singularity. Some of…

  • Two Female Mice Produce Female Daughter

    I once read an article about the possibility of two males having a baby based on both their genetic material through future medical techniques. The article specifically stated producing a child from the genetic material of two females would be much more difficult, if not impossible. The impossible was born in Japan, a mouse named…

  • Recording Time and Space

    A Texas town is upgrading their police cars to include digital video feeds of activity that will eventually be sent wirelessly to headquarters for storage. The idea is to keep a video record of police activity for use as evidence in investigations and eventually in court. The public may also use the recording to support…

  • The Leis Theory of Friction

    All of today’s “problems” are the side effects of friction in the transfer of information. As friction is lessened through technology, these problems vanish. The Internet has opened up the dating pool from those in your general area to basically anyone in the world. In this sudden pool of 6.5 billion people there are many…

  • Opportunity Heading Toward Endurance Crater

    Mars

    The Path to ‘Endurance’Image credit: NASA/JPL/CornellRelease Date: 16 Apr 2004Image Caption excerpt: “This mosaic image from the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity’s panoramic camera provides an overview of the rover’s drive direction toward “Endurance Crater,” which is in the upper right corner of image. “Mission: Mars Exploration Rover (Opportunity) Target: Mars NASA recently decided to extend its…

  • The Trend, NOT the Details

    Most of the specific technologies, companies, and people I write about here on Frontier Channel will at most be a footnote in the history of some other technology, company, or person that transforms our world. Some may fizzle before they even get started, others will merge together, some will turn out to be hoaxes, and…

  • The Science of Telepathy

    There is little or no scientific evidence for a supernatural or extrasensory telepathic ability, despite claims to the contrary throughout human history. However, there is scientific proof that brain signals can be used to operate robotic arms via wires and extensive computing equipment, and there is little doubt that eventually such technology will be wireless…

  • Research Results for the Public

    The previous entry was based on a news story published on the Betterhumans website. The article includes a link to the study abstract published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Unfortunately, if you want to read the full text of the study, you need to be a subscriber. Subscriptions start at $49 a year…

  • Robots on the Brain

    Here is a link to videos of a new robot performing various activities. Of course I found it on Marshall Brain’s Robotic Nation Evidence blog. The robots are here, and they are planning to stay.

  • When Storms Collide

    Cassini Saturn PIA05386: Merging Saturnian Storms

    PIA05386: Merging Saturnian StormsImage Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science InstituteRelease Date: 08 Apr 2004Image Caption excerpt: “Three months before its scheduled arrival at Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft has observed two storms in the act of merging.”Mission: Cassini-Huygens Target: Saturn Cassini-Huygens is less than 80 days away from Saturn and has already sent back some breathtaking images of its target.…

  • Cholesterol and Life Extension

    High-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol is good for you. Low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol is not. Lipitor is a drug used by doctors to lower a patients LDL level, but this does not affect the level of HDL in the body. The first drug intended to increase HDL levels in the body, torcetrapib, has had a successful…

  • Jewelry for the Eyeball

    I once gave a speech in class about the future of Internet technology based on a (then) recent breakthrough in pairing neurons with a microchip. One classmate said he would shoot himself in the head before allowing anyone to put a microchip in his brain. The speech was supposed to last for twenty minutes; his…