Phiips has just announced that on end of February 2009, they will be introducing the world's first 21:9 aspect ratio TV, which will go on sale in Europe in Spring 2009. The 56" LCD TV features 3 sided ambilight, and an aspect ratio identical to a cinema screen. Below is the official press release from Philips. I will update this post as more info becomes available.

Philips premieres the ultimate home cinematic viewing experience with the Cinema 21:9 LCD TV

Philips breaks new ground in the realm of home entertainment with the world's first cinema-proportioned LCD television. Cinema 21:9 lets you enjoy movies as you would in the cinema and just as the director intended. Cinema 21:9 boasts a 56" screen that is shaped in the 21:9 aspect ratio, so movies in the 2.39:1 format completely fill the screen - exactly as you experience at the cinema. Complimentary three-sided Ambilight Spectra combines with the on-screen action to completely immerse you in the movie and deliver the ultimate home cinematic viewing experience.

Traditional LCD televisions compromise on this experience by distorting the picture to fill the screen - losing the full scope of the original shot - or by displaying the picture in letterbox format with black bars at the top and bottom. Cinema 21:9 solves these issues to give the viewer an uncompromised and absorbing cinematic viewing experience, never before available in the home.

Using highly advanced formatting technology, regular 16:9 content from sources such as TV broadcasts and games consoles is also adapted to fill the 21:9 screen.

Des Power, Senior Vice President Marketing Television, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, commented: "With our unique Cinema 21:9 we have developed a television which takes you as close to the experience that you enjoy at the cinema as you can get without buying a ticket. We believe that to really become absorbed in watching a film at home consumers are looking for a real cinematic viewing experience, so we have launched the world's first cinema-proportioned TV screen perfectly complemented by our immersive Ambilight technology."

He added, "Philips new Cinema 21:9 takes enjoying movies at home to an entirely new level, the advantages over a traditional 16:9 ratio screen in side by side comparisons are truly striking."

The Cinema 21:9 LCD TV will be available in spring 2009. More detailed product specifications will follow at the end of February 2009.

Commemorating the 100th anniversary of Cadillac, designer Loren Kulesus has floated a unique car, called the Cadillac World Thorium Fuel (also referred to as Cadillac WTF - giving a new meaning to this abbreviation), that will keep you mobile for 100 years and that too with no fuel and maintenance cost. It's amazing! Featuring modern technology and high-quality equipments, the concept car comes with an alternative mechanism for all the major organizations, keeping it in the working condition even if some part fails or stops functioning. Largely known as the Cadillac WTF, the vehicle includes 24 wheels with individual internal induction motors, which just needs to be regulated once in 5 years without adding or subtracting any material.

The vehicle not just flaunts modern technology, allowing highly intuitive handling characteristics, but it also makes use of Thorium as sustainable high-energy-yield power source. Moreover, the multiple scuttle devices - poisoning the sub-critical reaction in extreme conditions - makes the Cadillac WTF extremely safe and allows risk-free commuting for a century.

And for those of you who are wondering what is Thorium Fuel - Thorium is a radioactive metal, that supplies energy via a small PWR (Pressurised Water Reactor). To cut the story short, the battery uses fission energy derived from splitting Thorium Atoms to heat water, which then drives a small turbine and generate electricity. Bottom line is, car will have enough stored power to go on for 100 years, which time would probably not be extended even if the car is not used, due to the natural decay of the radioactive Thorium isotope which won't be controlled. However, the amount of Thorium present in a vehicle won't be large enough to cause any undesired accidents to happen... I think you get my drift.

In any case, this looks like quite a pretty perspective. Buying a car and run freely for 100 years without any fuel purchase and/or maintenance costs is totally mind blowing. Hope these things make it on the market soon, and win public acceptance, because, that is probably their hardest stumble on the way to success.

Listening to the early universe just got harder. A team led by Alan Kogut of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., today announced the discovery of cosmic radio noise that booms six times louder than expected.

The finding comes from a balloon-borne instrument named ARCADE, which stands for the Absolute Radiometer for Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Diffuse Emission. In July 2006, the instrument launched from NASA's Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, and flew to an altitude of 120,000 feet, where the atmosphere thins into the vacuum of space.

ARCADE's mission was to search the sky for heat from the first generation of stars. Instead, it found a cosmic puzzle.

"The universe really threw us a curve," Kogut says. "Instead of the faint signal we hoped to find, here was this booming noise six times louder than anyone had predicted." Detailed analysis ruled out an origin from primordial stars or from known radio sources, including gas in the outermost halo of our own galaxy. The source of this cosmic radio background remains a mystery.

Many objects in the universe emit radio waves. In 1931, American physicist Karl Jansky first detected radio static from our own Milky Way galaxy. Similar emission from other galaxies creates a background hiss of radio noise.

The problem, notes team member Dale Fixsen of the University of Maryland at College Park, is that there don't appear to be enough radio galaxies to account for the signal ARCADE detected. "You'd have to pack them into the universe like sardines," he says. "There wouldn't be any space left between one galaxy and the next."

The sought-for signal from the earliest stars remains hidden behind the newly detected cosmic radio background. This noise complicates efforts to detect the very first stars, which are thought to have formed about 13 billion years ago -- not long, in cosmic terms, after the Big Bang. Nevertheless, this cosmic static may provide important clues to the development of galaxies when the universe was less than half its present age. Unlocking its origins should provide new insight into the development of radio sources in the early universe. 

"This is what makes science so exciting," says Michael Seiffert, a team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "You start out on a path to measure something -- in this case, the heat from the very first stars -- but run into something else entirely, something unexplained."

Seiffert and Kogut announced the findings today at the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Long Beach, Calif. Four papers describing ARCADE's results have been submitted to The Astrophysical Journal.

ARCADE is the first instrument to measure the radio sky with enough precision to detect this mysterious signal. To enhance the sensitivity of ARCADE's radio receivers, they were immersed in more than 500 gallons of ultra-cold liquid helium. The instrument's operating temperature was just 2.7 degrees above absolute zero.

This is the same temperature as the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, the remnant heat of the Big Bang that was itself discovered as cosmic radio noise in 1965. "If ARCADE is the same temperature as the microwave background, then the instrument's heat cannot contaminate the cosmic signal," Kogut explains.

The NASA-funded project includes scientists and engineers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; the University of California at Santa Barbara; the University of Maryland; and Brazil's National Institute for Space Research. More than a dozen high school and undergraduate students participated in the payload's development.

The balloon flight was conducted under the auspices of the Balloon Program Office at Wallops Flight Facility by the staff of the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility.

One of the most enduring questions is how life could have begun on Earth. Molecules that can make copies of themselves are thought to be crucial to understanding this process as they provide the basis for heritability, a critic More..al characteristic of living systems. Now, a pair of Scripps Research Institute scientists has taken a significant step toward answering that question. The scientists have synthesized for the first time RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely.

The work was published on Thursday, January 8, 2009, in Science Express, the advanced, online edition of the journal Science.

In the modern world, DNA carries the genetic sequence for advanced organisms, while RNA is dependent on DNA for performing its roles such as building proteins. But one prominent theory about the origins of life, called the RNA World model, postulates that because RNA can function as both a gene and an enzyme, RNA might have come before DNA and protein and acted as the ancestral molecule of life. However, the process of copying a genetic molecule, which is considered a basic qualification for life, appears to be exceedingly complex, involving many proteins and other cellular components.

For years, researchers have wondered whether there might be some simpler way to copy RNA, brought about by the RNA itself. Some tentative steps along this road had previously been taken by the Joyce lab and others, but no one could demonstrate that RNA replication could be self-propagating, that is, result in new copies of RNA that also could copy themselves.
In Vitro Evolution

A few years after Tracey Lincoln arrived at Scripps Research from Jamaica to pursue her Ph.D., she began exploring the RNA-only replication concept along with her advisor, Professor Gerald Joyce, who is also dean of the faculty at Scripps Research. Their work began with a method of forced adaptation known as in vitro evolution. The goal was to take one of the RNA enzymes already developed in the lab that could perform the basic chemistry of replication, and improve it to the point that it could drive efficient, perpetual self-replication.

Lincoln synthesized in the laboratory a large population of variants of the RNA enzyme that would be challenged to do the job, and carried out a test-tube evolution procedure to obtain those variants that were most adept at joining together pieces of RNA.

Ultimately, this process enabled the team to isolate an evolved version of the original enzyme that is a very efficient replicator, something that many research groups, including Joyce's, had struggled for years to obtain. The improved enzyme fulfilled the primary goal of being able to undergo perpetual replication. "It kind of blew me away," says Lincoln.
Immortalizing Molecular Information

The replicating system actually involves two enzymes, each composed of two subunits and each functioning as a catalyst that assembles the other. The replication process is cyclic, in that the first enzyme binds the two subunits that comprise the second enzyme and joins them to make a new copy of the second enzyme; while the second enzyme similarly binds and joins the two subunits that comprise the first enzyme. In this way the two enzymes assemble each other - what is termed cross-replication. To make the process proceed indefinitely requires only a small starting amount of the two enzymes and a steady supply of the subunits.

"This is the only case outside biology where molecular information has been immortalized," says Joyce.

Not content to stop there, the researchers generated a variety of enzyme pairs with similar capabilities. They mixed 12 different cross-replicating pairs, together with all of their constituent subunits, and allowed them to compete in a molecular test of survival of the fittest. Most of the time the replicating enzymes would breed true, but on occasion an enzyme would make a mistake by binding one of the subunits from one of the other replicating enzymes. When such "mutations" occurred, the resulting recombinant enzymes also were capable of sustained replication, with the most fit replicators growing in number to dominate the mixture. "To me that's actually the biggest result," says Joyce.

The research shows that the system can sustain molecular information, a form of heritability, and give rise to variations of itself in a way akin to Darwinian evolution. So, says Lincoln, "What we have is non-living, but we've been able to show that it has some life-like properties, and that was extremely interesting."
Knocking on the Door of Life

The group is pursuing potential applications of their discovery in the field of molecular diagnostics, but that work is tied to a research paper currently in review, so the researchers can't yet discuss it.

But the main value of the work, according to Joyce, is at the basic research level. "What we've found could be relevant to how life begins, at that key moment when Darwinian evolution starts." He is quick to point out that, while the self-replicating RNA enzyme systems share certain characteristics of life, they are not themselves a form of life.

The historical origin of life can never be recreated precisely, so without a reliable time machine, one must instead address the related question of whether life could ever be created in a laboratory. This could, of course, shed light on what the beginning of life might have looked like, at least in outline. "We're not trying to play back the tape," says Lincoln of their work, "but it might tell us how you go about starting the process of understanding the emergence of life in the lab."

Joyce says that only when a system is developed in the lab that has the capability of evolving novel functions on its own can it be properly called life. "We're knocking on that door," he says, "But of course we haven't achieved that."

The subunits in the enzymes the team constructed each contain many nucleotides, so they are relatively complex and not something that would have been found floating in the primordial ooze. But, while the building blocks likely would have been simpler, the work does finally show that a simpler form of RNA-based life is at least possible, which should drive further research to explore the RNA World theory of life's origins.

The paper is titled "Self-sustained Replication of an RNA Enzyme," and the work was supported by NASA and the National Institutes of Health, and the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology.

A recent study has revealed that the Milky Way, the galaxy which we form part of is actually larger, bulkier and spinning a lot faster than what astronomers previously thought. For decades, the Milky Way was considered to be the smaller sister of our neighbouring galaxy Andromeda, but this scenario has changed. By mapping the Milky Way in a more detailed, three-dimensional way, it was found that the galaxy is in fact 15% larger in breadth. More important, it is denser, with 50% more mass, making the galaxy now look like the fraternal twin of Andromeda, rather than its smaller sibling. The Milky way is also spinning faster at its centre, now the figure adjusted to 568,000mph (compared to the previous calculation of 492,000mph). What this means that the doomed collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda will happen even earlier than predicted. But don't worry, we're looking at about 2-3 Billion Years from now. So, no need to panic. I'm pretty sure that nobody reading this article will be there to live the experience.

You can download a high-resolution photo (2700x2700 pixels) from the images section of the site.

It is official now. According to a recent press release, 200 cars of the 8 wheeled electric car - Eliica - will be manufactured, each retailing for around US$ 255,000. Apart from having 8 wheels, this car is probably the only 8-wheel drive car in existence today. It has a 60KW (80bhp) motor in each wheel, for a total of 480KW (640bhp), can accelerate 0-100kmph in 4 seconds, has a top speed of 230mph (380kmph) and a range of 200 miles (320km) on one charge. The team is led by Dr. Hiroshi Shimizu, who has built the first ever electric car more than 20 years ago. The car is also in persuit of the record - surpassing 250mph (400kmph) via electric motors. Well, with 8 wheels it surely has a lot of traction! What's more to say? I believe pictures speak better than words! Enjoy.

In the first article dedicated to nanotechnology, I have decided to bring you one of the most promising functions of this technology - the nanocar. A group of researchers at the Faculty of Chemistry of the Rice University in Texas, leaded by Prof. James Tour (which thanks to this technology won the Feynman Prize for experimental nanotechnology this month), has constructed a nanocar, a fully operational car with a chassis, pivitong suspension system, rotating axles, 4 wheels and an engine powered by light or thermal energy, which is just 4 nanometers across. To put you in perspective ot this, if you had to park 20,000 of these nanocars side by side, they would occupy the same width as that of a human hair! As if this wasn't enough, the researchers have also built a nonotruck, capable of carrying payload, The reason for the development of such technology is simple - so that one day we can construct buildings and other large objects with molecular size vehicles.

It took the team 8 years to build the cars, and one of the most difficult parts was to attach the buckyballs (C₆₀ Fullerenes) to the vehicle. The research was time consuming because one of the targets is to have these nanovehicles capable of self assembly, and thus production in extremely high scale would be possible. The target is that within a few decades several of these vehicles' descendants (something like 10²³ or more vehicles) could be used to build skyscrapers from nanoparticles, all working in an orchestrated mode. This will work as with the same concept of the heam molecules in blood, wich each molecule carrying one Oxygen atom to the cell and a carbon dioxide atom back to the lungs. Several hundreds of billions of these atoms allow complex life forms like humans and at the extreme the blue whale, to be able to survive.

The way the nanomachines will be able to build complex structures is by mimicking the action of enzymes, which in their own way are nature's nanomachines, capable of building very complex proteins and molecules. The same principle will be utilized for complex assemblies required.

Another interesting point about the nanovehicles are that they can be powered by either heat or light. By just heating the surface that the nanocars where on, the team managed to make the nanocars move in a straight line untill they hit an object. The light motion works on the principle of photo activation. In both cases, a arm at the side of the nanocar rotates freely, pushing the nanocar forward with each revolution by using the surface as a fulcrum, sort of like a pedal hitting on a surface. Another form of motion is that of nanoworms, in which the molecules wiggle on the surface in a back and forth way when light is shone unto them.

Nanotechnology is a branch of science that is expanding at an imporessive speed Technology as we know it today will recieve a radical change in the future, and we will start looking at life in a much different way. In this blog section, I will post all the relevant and informative topics on this hot science, and hopefully, other members in the site will follow course. As always, I'll try to make my blogs and articles easy to understand for the majoity of people, however, for this blog, a basic knowledge of physics and chemistry is required in order to understand the articles. Nonetheless, feel free to contact me if you have problems with grasping some facts. Do so via the comments section after each blog entry, so that other users will see your question and have access to my feedback. Enjoy.

Creative Labs, a company that is always on the edge of technology when it comes to multimedia products, has launched a teaser about Zii, claiming that Stemcell computing (whatever it might mean) is going to change everything as we know it (check image below). Whatever it is, you might want to register for further news by going on www.zii.com or www.creative.com. Let's hope it is really some sort of revolutionary new technology, not just a marketing ploy to launch a new gaming console (does it remind you of any console in particular?).

After having given the issue it's fair share of thinking, and trying to dig up what all this could be about, I leave the console option open, however I am also considering the that the Zii could well be an add-on card based on the Cell processor - a branch (stem) of the Cell processor - therefore - Stemcell. The IBM PowerXCell 8i processor (or a similar CPU, in single or multi-unit configuration) will allow super-computing power to the normal desktop PC (and who knows... maybe even a notebook). This would work somewhat like the nVIDIA Tesla add-on cards/systems. The system could allow for new unexplored territory for the standard computing, typically - enhanced decoding for multi video streams in HD for HD TV reception (picture in picture split screen... etc. - will marry well with that hi-def TV you just got for Christmas). It would probably also allow high quality video stream upscaling (for DVD and Youtube/internet videos) for the PC. It could also boost gaming performace, both where it comes to graphics and also in sound. Probably there would be different models, targeted at different audiences/market segments, like it has always been with many other Creative products. 

It could appear as different devices/add-ons, typically:

• A PCI-e add-on card for desktop PCs
• A USB add-on for notebooks/PCs
• A totally dedicated HTPC
• A gaming console???

In the meantime, we welcome your comments on what you think this new product is going to be.

Just hot off the press - the British Royal Navy is now operating their nuclear weaponry control system with Windows - immediately bringing to mind pictures like the one below:

For a full resolution image, go to the Photos section and download file from there.

Jokes apart... The British Royal Navy is ustilising Windows XP and 2000 in the submarine systems. The project is codenamed SMCS-NG (Submarine Command System Next Generation), and takes control over sensor and weapon control applications. The major reason for this move was that software was available off-the-shelf and at a very affordable price, not to mention that the implementation of the system proved to be very quick. Another advantage is that hardware required to run these operating systems is also cheap and widely available, although we can rest assured that they used extremely rugged and resistant hardware for the job.

For those of you who have security in mind - the UK parliament has stated that the use of Windows is low risk and the systems run in an isolated mode - thus there is practically no chance of an outside cyber-attack starting the end of the world .