CryoNet #33332 - #33335

CryoNet - Tue 15 Feb 2011

    #33332: expensive projects [John de Rivaz]
    #33333: Re: Cosmism / Kosmismus [Robin Helweg-Larsen]
    #33334: Scientists build first reprogrammable nanoprocessor [=?UTF-8?Q?Jonathan_Despr=C3=A9s?=]
    #33335: Cryonics calculator [marta sandberg]

Rate This Digest: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33332%2D33335

Administrivia

To subscribe to CryoNet, send email to:
    [email protected]
with the subject line (not message _body_):
    subscribe
To unsubscribe, use the subject line:
    unsubscribe
To post a message to CryoNet, send your message to:
    [email protected]
from the same address to which you are aubscribed.
Send questions, comments, or feedback to [email protected]
with "CryoNet" or "cryonics" somewhere in the Subject line.


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #33332
From: "John de Rivaz" <[email protected]>
Subject: expensive projects
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 11:08:31 -0000

Every so often people inside and outside of cryonics come up with grand schemes costing millions of dollars that they claim will revolutionise cryonics.

I wonder whether there has ever been anything this financially grand within cryonics that has advanced it and actually been paid for like this. 

I suspect that most advances have either been funded from fortuitous bequests, or the people proposing them have not asked for pay, but have just gone ahead and done it.

Many expensive things are not expensive because they represent wealth (eg buying premises or some big machine) but are expensive because they require lots of people to do little things, but which when combined produces the recommended result. Computer networks are being designed to produce these results, such as
http://www.astronomywa.net.au/whats-happening/news/news-archive/64-space-exploration/101-take-a-trip-to-the-galaxy-zoo
where lots of volunteers each add tiny effort to create a large result. If people were paid to do this as full time work, then that project may well cost millions of dollars.

I am not suggesting that this astronomy project maps directly to any of the cryonics projects proposed, but I observe that shouting for money is not  working now and suggest that it will not work in the future.

--
Sincerely, John de Rivaz:  http://John.deRivaz.com for websites including
Cryonics Europe, Longevity Report, The Venturists, Porthtowan, Alec Harley
Reeves - inventor, Arthur Bowker - potter, de Rivaz genealogy,  Nomad .. and
more

 Content-Type: text/html;

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33332

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #33333
Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2011 13:26:04 -0500
Subject: Re: Cosmism / Kosmismus
From: Robin Helweg-Larsen <[email protected]>

Cosmism is interesting for its ideas on life extension and practical
immortality, but that hardly justifies our embracing purely
speculative ideas as a way of broadening the acceptance of cryonics.

For example, the two examples that Jens cites for possible "alien
civilization" on Earth, though fascinating artifacts, have simpler
possible explanations.

>From Wikipedia:

"The Voynich manuscript author could also be a native of East Asia who
lived in Europe, or who was educated at a European mission.

The main argument for this theory is that it is consistent with all
statistical properties of the Voynich manuscript text which have been
tested so far, including doubled and tripled words (which have been
found to occur in Chinese and Vietnamese texts at roughly the same
frequency as in the Voynich manuscript). It also explains the apparent
lack of numerals and Western syntactic features (such as articles and
copulas), and the general inscrutability of the illustrations. Another
possible hint is two large red symbols on the first page, which have
been compared to a Chinese-style book title, inverted and badly
copied. Also, the apparent division of the year into 360 degrees
(rather than 365 days), in groups of 15 and starting with Pisces, are
features of the Chinese agricultural calendar (jie qi). The main
argument against the theory is the fact that no one (including
scholars at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing) could find any
clear examples of Asian symbolism or Asian science in the
illustrations.

In late 2003, Zbigniew Banasik of Poland proposed that the manuscript
is plaintext written in the Manchu language and gave a proposed
incomplete translation of the first page of the manuscript." (end
quote).


The Piri Reis map is more straightforward: it was created in 1513,
i.e. 21 years after the First Voyage of Columbus, by the Turkish
admiral and cartographer Piri Reis. Again, from Wikipedia:

"In the map's legend, Piri inscribed that the map was based on about
twenty charts and mappae mundi. According to Piri, these maps included
eight Ptolemaic maps constructed during the era of Alexander the
Great, an Arabic map of India, four newly drawn Portuguese maps from
Sindh, Pakistan and a map by Christopher Columbus of the western
lands. From Inscription 6 on the map:

    "From eight Jaferyas of that kind and one Arabic map of Hind
[India], and from four newly drawn Portuguese maps which show the
countries of Sind [now in modern day Pakistan], Hind and A in [China]
geometrically drawn, and also from a map drawn by QulA<nbA< [Columbus]
in the western region, I have extracted it. By reducing all these maps
to one scale this final form was arrived at, so that this map of these
lands is regarded by seamen as accurate and as reliable as the
accuracy and reliability of the Seven Seas on the aforesaid maps." "

Robin Helweg-Larsen

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33333

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #33334
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 04:04:01 +0100
Subject: Scientists build first reprogrammable nanoprocessor
From: =?UTF-8?Q?Jonathan_Despr=C3=A9s?= <[email protected]>

http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/science-scope/scientists-build-first-reprogrammable-nanoprocessor-from-nano-tools/6725/

Five decades ago, physicist Richard Feynman thought of building tiny
computers from atoms and molecules. In theory, the smaller we could
make electronic components, the more memory the computer chip would
have.

Researchers at Harvard University might have brought us that much
closer to controlling matter on the atomic level. Harvard scientists
announced the world's first prototype of a reprogrammable circuit made
with nanowire transistors.

Technically, the nano-circuit could shrink the design of modern
electronics and bring on a whole new class of small sensors and
consumer gadgets. It would change how electronics are produced. But
here, the scientists proved that it is feasible to make nanoprocessors
with a bottoms-up approach, a way of building electronics by starting
at the molecular level.

The idea is to get the nanowires to self-assemble from atoms to make a
microchip. The atoms and molecules re-organize themselves into more
complex structures, the same way life assembles.

In this case, the Harvard researchers got the reprogrammable
nanoprocessor to perform basic arithmetic and logical functions. It's
an energy saver too. Once the chip is programmed, it doesn't require
any extra electrical power to store memory.

Charles Lieber, a Harvard professor, said in a statement:

This work represents a quantum jump forward in the complexity and
function of circuits built from the bottom up, and thus demonstrates
that this bottom-up paradigm, which is distinct from the way
commercial circuits are built today, can yield nanoprocessors and
other integrated systems of the future.

The researchers published their results in the journal Nature.

The applications of microprocessors are endless: high-performance
materials, sustainable chemistry, energy production and storage,
information processing, miniaturized engineering, healthcare and the
environment. Circuits built at the atomic level might soon be used to
build a new generation of smaller, faster electronics.

It seems inevitable. The computer chips keep getting smaller and smaller.

"A decade ago, the transistors that make up integrated circuits were
being built at a scale of 500 nanometers; today, the latest PCs
contain Intel chips with transistors only tens of nanometers across.
IBM is already planning to print circuitry on the 30-nanometer scale
using new ultra lithography," according to a report put out by The
Institute of Physics.

A scientist at MITRE, who worked with the Harvard folks, said:

Because of their very small size and very low power requirements,
these new nanoprocessor circuits are building blocks that can control
and enable an entirely new class of much smaller, lighter weight
electronic sensors and consumer electronics.

If you're still curious about how the nanoprocessor was made, you can
check out the details in  Nature. The Harvard nanoprocessor is
exciting news, as it shows that it is possible to build computer parts
from nano tools and showed that it can be programmed to do math.
Building the computer components this way is very different than the
way your laptop and smart phone are made. In this system, the
nanowires were stitched together to make a programmable microchip.

However, the scientists would have to make the nanoprocessor on a
large scale, for it to infiltrate the electronics space. Hopefully, we
won't have to wait another 50 years, before the famed physicist's
dream of building nanocomputers is achieved. We're getting there...
slowly. On the upside, the researchers do claim the process is
scalable.

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33334

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message #33335
From: marta sandberg <[email protected]>
Subject: Cryonics calculator
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:53:06 +0800

--_51fee9d8-955e-42cc-881b-cb4d68ec1b67_


There is a web site called www.cryonicscalculator.com that allows you to play around with your own ideas of what the odds are you will be re-awakened.
 
I found it entertaining, and thought provoking.
 
Click on 'Quick look at the left hand side of the webpage to get to the spread sheet and then click on the blue 'Click to Edit' button at the top right hand, then enter your own guesses in the yellow squares. The answer is shown in the yellow square 
 
It's easier to do than to explain.
 
Just mess around and enjoy
 
Long life,
 
Marta 		 	   		  
--_51fee9d8-955e-42cc-881b-cb4d68ec1b67_

 Content-Type: text/html; charset="Windows-1252"

[ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] 

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=33335

----------------------------------------------------------------------

End of CryoNet Digest
*********************