Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Since it is Earthday we note some evidence that some feedback loops in nature may not have the right sign. It may be that a tropical rainforest may increase its carbon dioxide production as temperature rises. yikes We've visited his site before, but it is timely to mention the Canadian scientist David Suzuki, who has become Canada's most prominent spokesperson on climate change. 6:57:09 AM     Now that most of the press is a subsidiary of the executive branch of the government it is good that Paul Krugman continues to point out the economic follies proposed by one of the parties (not that the other party has real suggestions). 6:45:51 AM     Pillcams have been around for awhile, but they are mostly battery and tend to be on the very large size. The RF System Lab in Japan has developed a pillcam that gets it power via induction. They use 2.4GHz (I would worry about their choice of frequency) and the 23mm by 9 mm pill is mostly empty. 400,000 pixels at 30fps should give a fairly crisp view and there are even better CCDs in this size range and much improvement will happen in the future. If it is safe I would assume that this could revolutionize endoscopy. (thanks for pointing this out Rich!) 6:36:54 AM     As a kid I built a solar furnace with a 12" square fresnel lens from Edmunds. It was quite an effective little furnace. It turns out Alltronics offers larger lenses - up to 38 by 50 inches. Edmunds offers a 35" diameter model. Lenses of this size are really dangerous - about a kilowatt on a very bright day. Still .... 6:11:40 AM     Speaking of interesting, but perhaps dangerous things ... amateur magneforming ... This guy uses a non-trivial capacitor bank to form a magnetic field strong enough to change the dimensions of coins. 6:11:20 AM

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