In the past 5 years, no material has excited more interest from condensed matter physicists than graphene, a sheet of carbon only one atom thick. Electrons zing through the stuff in an unusual way, and they flow so easily that graphene could someday replace silicon and other semiconductors as the material of choice for microchips. Now, a team of physicists has taken a key step in fulfilling graphene’s promise as a hotbed of exotic physics by showing that the electrons within it can team up to behave like particles with a fraction of the electron’s charge.

The effect is called the fractional quantum Hall effect, and it’s an esoteric embellishment of an already esoteric phenomenon known as the Hall effect. Discovered in 1879, the Hall effect works like this: Suppose you take a horizontal bar of metal and apply a voltage from one end to the other. A current will run down the length of the bar. If you then apply a strong vertical magnetic field, the flowing electrons will experience a sideways shove that will cause them to crowd to the side of the bar as they go so that a voltage develops across the width of the bar too. Sideways Hall voltage increases in proportion to the strength of the magnetic field.

Things get weirder if the bar is made of semiconductor and is extremely thin top to bottom. In that case, the electrons can flow in only a few quantum channels that close one by one as the magnetic field increases. The Hall voltage climbs as the magnetic field increases in a series of even steps whose spacing is set by the electron’s charge. The discovery of that quantum Hall effect won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1985. Weirder still, if the slab of semiconductor is made very pure and cold, then the electrons can gang up to act like “quasiparticles” with fractional charges–say, 1/3 of an electron’s charge–adding more steps to the Hall-voltage stairway. That’s the fractional quantum Hall effect, which bagged a Nobel in 1988.

The fractional effect is a sign of very strong interactions among the electrons, a condition that can lead to a variety of surprising phenomena and which marks the conceptual frontier in condensed matter physics. Many physicists had hoped to see the fractional effect in graphene as proof that it would be an especially fruitful material to study. But they couldn’t be entirely sure it would appear. Because of the arrangement of the atoms in graphene, the electrons zip through less like ordinary massive particles that can stop and start and more like massless and always-moving particles of light. Nobody was sure such “relativistic” electrons would interact strongly enough to produce the effect, though several groups had looked for it. “It was the biggest disappointment in this really hot field, that it hadn’t been seen,” says Eva Andrei of Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey.

Fret no more, physicists. Andrei and her team have finally spotted electrons in graphene getting together in the right way. To do it, the team suspended micrometer-sized bits of graphene to avoid interference from the underlying substrate. The researchers then used a special arrangement of electrodes to keep from shorting out their own measurements, they report online this week in Nature. They observed quasiparticles with 1/3 an electron’s charge. In fact, Andrei says, the researchers saw the effect at higher temperatures and lower magnetic fields than are needed to see it in semiconductors, suggesting that the electrons in graphene interact especially strongly.

“It’s absolutely convincing,” says physicist Kostya Novoselov of the University of Manchester, U.K. “It definitely proves it’s reasonable to study electron-electron interactions in graphene.” Andrei says now that physicists have spotted this effect, they may see electrons in graphene joining together in completely new and even weirder ways. And if researchers can produce quasiparticles with charge 5/2, then in principle they could make a type of quantum computer that would work by braiding the particles’ paths together.

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A 6-year-old boy, who was feared adrift in a wayward homemade helium balloon, was found safe in his home after a massive search Thursday afternoon.

The discovery ended a nerve-racking four-hour chase and hunt that began because authorities and family members believed that Falcon Heene accidentally lifted off in the family’s silver saucer-shaped weather balloon when it became untethered from their Fort Collins back yard.

Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide watched on live TV and on the Internet as helicopter cameras tracked the balloon as it floated thousands of feet above rural Colorado before it softly crashed in a plowed field.

Swarming deputies soon reported that the boy was not on board.

“Be advised it’s empty … It’s empty,” an official announced on the Larimer County dispatcher radio.

That prompted a massive ground search, with law enforcement agencies retracing the balloon’s path in an effort to try and locate the missing boy.

Then, just after 4 p.m., a stunning announcement from the Larimer County sheriff.

“He’s at the house and he’s fine,” Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden told a throng of TV cameras and reporters. “He’s been hiding in a cardboard box in the attic above the garage.”

The sheriff said it’s not unusual to have missing children hide.

“They see all the commotion, they hear people looking for them, they get afraid that they’re going to be in trouble, so they hide,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many times this has happened over the course of my career.”

Falcon Comes Out Of Hiding; Heene Family Relieved

Falcon’s emotionally drained and relieved parents recounted their roller-coaster day before a bank of TV cameras, about an hour after the boy came out of hiding.

Richard Heene said the family thought Falcon has scrambled inside the weather balloon’s equipment compartment, because he told his 10-year-old brother “he was going to sneak inside.”

Falcon Heene explains why he was hiding from his family.

The family said they videotape all of their experiments, and they had video that showed Falcon climbing in the balloon before it took off.

While clutching a glow stick, the impish Falcon explained that he climbed up the rafters in the garage and hid there after his father chastised him for climbing into the balloon earlier in the day.

“He scared me, because he yelled at me,” the boy said in a high, thin voice. “So I went in the attic. I heard shouting. I didn’t want to come out very soon, or else he would yell at me. I thought I would get in trouble.”

The father explained that he barked at the boy to not climb in the lighter-than-air balloon because its outer skin is charged with a million volts of electricity to help steer it.

“It’s potentially dangerous if you get inside and the electricity comes on,” said Richard Heene, who said he feared his missing son might had been electrocuted in the runaway balloon.

“I’m really sorry I yelled at him,” Heene said as choked up and cradled his son in his arms. “He scared the heck out of us.”

When a reporter asked if the boy was “grounded” for his high-flying hoax, the parents said no.

“We don’t ground our children. But we’re going to talk to him,” the dad said.

Heene said the balloon wasn’t tethered properly, and “it was a mishap. I’m not going to lay blame on anybody.”

When authorities didn’t find the boy after the balloon crashed in a field, the father said: “That kind of tore me apart. The only thing I could think of was he had fallen out.”

Then, after hours of waiting inside the home for news, mom and dad learned their youngest son was alive.

“My legs got weak. I couldn’t even walk from one room to the next,” Richard Heene said. “How did it feel to see my son again? It was a relief and we’re going to watch him a lot closer.”

The parents repeatedly thanked the local police and sheriff’s departments — and even news helicopters — for searching for Falcon.

“You guys are great,” Richard Heene said.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the mother, Mayumi Heene, added.

Family, No Stranger To Publicity, Answers Tough Questions

The parents, who appeared with the boys in two episodes of the ABC TV reality show, “Wife Swap,” denied speculation that the chaotic misadventure — dubbed “Balloon Boy” in Internet reports — was a publicity stunt.

“That’s horrible. After the crap that we just went through? No, no, no,” the weary father insisted. “We keep all our experiments to ourselves.”

Falcon said he thought hiding from everyone was part of the “Wife Swap” show and said in one interview that he hid “for the show.”

Not the least bit shy, he was eager to show how he climbed a pole into the rafters of the garage and hid out in a cardboard box for hours, playing with toys he had stashed in that area. He wasn’t at all concerned about all the attention he inadvertently created or the throngs of cameras taping his every move.

“I think it’s real weird. There’s like hundreds of them,” Falcon said, referring to the number of cameras.

Richard Heene said Falcon has always been adventurous, so they had feared the worst.

The father has been described by friends as a sort of “mad scientist.” He is a storm chaser and has a Web site, called The Psyience Detectives, which “investigates the mysteries of science and psychic phenomenon.”

While promoting “Wife Swap,” ABC promoted the Heene family as storm chasers who also “devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm.”

7NEWS meteorologist Richard Ortner described Heene as “very intelligent and wildly creative.” The Heenes are known to take their children along as they pursue bad weather across the country. Ortner accompanied the Heene family as they were storm chasing last year.

Richard Heene said he crafted the homemade weather balloon for experiments in his back yard. He had apparently been working on the balloon for some time.

“This sort of thing is normal for them,” neighbor Bob Licko said.

He said the “whole family was out there” working on the balloon Thursday morning. He said the balloon was supposed to be tethered and hover 20 feet in the air with no one on board.

Licko said he was leaving home when he heard a commotion in the back yard and saw two boys on the roof with a camera, talking about their brother.

“One of the boys yelled to me that his brother was way up in the air,” Licko said. The boy’s mother seemed distraught and his father was running around the house, Licko said.

Licko said he didn’t believe the Heenes planned a hoax.

“Based on what I witnessed in the back yard in the morning with the parents, I don’t think that’s the case,” Licko said. “They’re better actors than I thought they were if that’s the case.”

Sheriff’s Department Doesn’t Believe Story Was Hoax

The sheriff’s department said they don’t believe the incident was a hoax, either, and don’t plan on charging the Heenes for the huge use of resources in the massive search.

“We don’t want somebody in a situation, in an emergency, thinking about payment before safety. So, we’ll get our resources out and we’d rather be there and not be needed than be in a situation where somebody waited or we waited because of finances and someone’s life was unnecessarily put in jeopardy,” said Maj. Justin Smith with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office.

Volunteers who helped searched for the boy said they don’t feel it was a waste of time or resources and that it was the best ending anyone could hope for.

Smith said there have been no previous calls to the home and no previous indication of problems at the home.

“There’s nothing throughout and certainly nothing in the end that would indicate there would be any grounds for criminal charges,” Smith said.

Authorities said the boy’s home and neighborhood were immediately searched after the report of the runaway balloon and there was no sign of the boy, leading everyone to believe Falcon had climbed into the craft.

“Clearly one of my concerns when I heard that the boy was found after we searched the house twice was how did we miss him?” Alderden said. “I’m told we did a very thorough search of the house. They searched the attic. They searched the garage. But, apparently, somehow, the boy climbed up on top of this cabinet …”

Alderden said he didn’t have an estimate of how much the search for the boy cost.

The Colorado Army National Guard scrambled an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter and a Black Hawk UH-60 to try to rescue the boy, possibly by lowering someone to the balloon. The helicopter flights alone cost about $14,500.

Capt. Troy Brown said the Black Hawk helicopter was in the air for nearly three hours, and the Kiowa helicopter was airborne for about one hour. The Black Hawk costs about $4,600 an hour to fly, and the Kiowa is $700 an hour, Brown said.

The Great Balloon Adventure

The balloon was aloft for about two hours, traveling roughly 55 miles southeast over Colorado, pushed by light to moderate winds.

Authorities earlier described the large silvery craft as a sort of “flying saucer” weather balloon and said it reached an altitude of 15,000 feet before it began descending.

At one point, it was roughly 3,500 feet above the ground and moving an average of 30 mph. The balloon tipped precariously at times, with one side partially deflated.

The foil balloon lifted into the air from the family’s Fort Collins home at about 11:30 a.m. and landed about 2 miles northeast of Prospect Reservoir at 1:35 p.m., in Weld County. It was a journey that took the balloon through two counties and over homes and prairies dotted with ponds and towering trees.

The family called police and reported Falcon could not be found after the balloon soared into the sky. His older brother told his parents and authorities that he saw Falcon climb into a box attached to the bottom of the balloon and the balloon lifted off, Larimer County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kathy Messick said.

The balloon did have a box that carried batteries, Messick said. The box was attached to the aircraft and there was damage to the area where the boy was believed to have been.

“It was never intended for any more weight than the batteries that were in the compartment,” Messick said.

Lisa Eklund A black mass can been seen below and slightly to the left of the photo. Authorities are trying to determine if it something that fell from the balloon.

Authorities had thought for some time that the box had become detached before the balloon landed. Rescuers also worked on theory that the boy might have fallen from the balloon and were closely examining an amateur photo that showed a black mass below the balloon to determine if it was something that fell from the balloon. The photo was taken by Lisa Eklund as the balloon floated away from the boy’s neighborhood.

“We were sitting, eating, looking out where they normally shoot off hot air balloons. My husband said he saw something. It went over our rooftop. Then we saw the big round balloonish thing, it was spinning,” Eklund said.

After the balloon took off, there were sporadic reports on its location as it drifted with the wind over the flat Colorado countryside. The Federal Aviation Administration was called, and began tracking the balloon through reports from pilots and air traffic control operations that had been alerted to the situation.

Airtracker 7 located the balloon at 12:35 p.m., at about 8,000 feet in Weld County. It appeared to be slightly tilted at that time.

“The structure at the bottom of the balloon … is made of extremely thin plywood and won’t withstand any kind of a crash at all,” said Erik Nilsson, Larimer County Emergency Manager, as the balloon floated thousands of feet over farmland.

Deputies from Larimer and Weld counties tracked the balloon from the ground as it drifted in the skies. Authorities scrambled to work on a rescue mission, with one plan being the possibility of pilots of ultralight aircraft putting weights on the homemade craft to bring it down.

Experts had said it could remain airborne for up to 12 hours, although it was clearly deflated on one side by 1:25 p.m., and was descending to about 400 feet off the ground at 1:30 p.m.

When it landed, at 1:35 p.m., rescuers ran up and immediately surrounded it, grabbing on to the ropes that had tethered the balloon to the house and punching holes to deflate it. They then radioed the news, “Be advised, it’s empty. It’s empty.”

ABC.com The Heene family, as seen in a promotional picture for ABC’s “Wifeswap.” Falcon is the boy in the black jacket.

An investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board examined the craft about two hours after it landed. The investigator could be seen taking photos of the bottom of the craft and peering inside. Because the boy was never in the balloon, the NTSB said its investigation has now ended.

Balloon Diverts Flights At DIA

While the balloon was airborne, Larimer County fire dispatchers asked if Airtracker 7 could use an outside speaker to ask the boy if he had a valve to release helium.

“Is there a way to release some of the helium that this kid may know?” the dispatcher asked. “Maybe we can get him to lower it.”

There was no visible response from the balloon.

There was worry at one point that the balloon might drift into air traffic control corridors used by Denver International Airport, based on its current location and direction. Deputies alerted DIA air traffic controllers to warn them about letting aircraft fly through the area.

Flights heading to the north from DIA were diverted while the balloon was in the air. A DIA spokesman said flights were diverted for 15 to 20 minutes but airport operations were not affected.

The Colorado National Guard launched a Blackhawk helicopter and a smaller OH-58 Kiowa helicopter to try and intercept the balloon.

After it was confirmed no one was aboard the balloon, both Colorado Army National Guard helicopters returned to Buckley Air Force Base to refuel and prepare for search and rescue operations.

Airlife Denver — a medical helicopter — also joined in the search for the boy from the air.

Falcon Heene was out of school on Thursday because of teacher conferences at his school.

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FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A 6-year-old boy, who was feared adrift in a wayward homemade helium balloon, was found safe in his home after a massive search Thursday afternoon.

The discovery ended a nerve-racking four-hour chase and hunt that began because authorities and family members believed that Falcon Heene accidentally lifted off in the family’s silver saucer-shaped weather balloon when it became untethered from their Fort Collins back yard.

Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide watched on live TV and on the Internet as helicopter cameras tracked the balloon as it floated thousands of feet above rural Colorado before it softly crashed in a plowed field.

Swarming deputies soon reported that the boy was not on board.

“Be advised it’s empty … It’s empty,” an official announced on the Larimer County dispatcher radio.

That prompted a massive ground search, with law enforcement agencies retracing the balloon’s path in an effort to try and locate the missing boy.

Then, just after 4 p.m., a stunning announcement from the Larimer County sheriff.

“He’s at the house and he’s fine,” Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden told a throng of TV cameras and reporters. “He’s been hiding in a cardboard box in the attic above the garage.”

The sheriff said it’s not unusual to have missing children hide.

“They see all the commotion, they hear people looking for them, they get afraid that they’re going to be in trouble, so they hide,” he said. “I can’t tell you how many times this has happened over the course of my career.”

Falcon Comes Out Of Hiding; Heene Family Relieved

Falcon’s emotionally drained and relieved parents recounted their roller-coaster day before a bank of TV cameras, about an hour after the boy came out of hiding.

Richard Heene said the family thought Falcon has scrambled inside the weather balloon’s equipment compartment, because he told his 10-year-old brother “he was going to sneak inside.”

Falcon Heene explains why he was hiding from his family.

The family said they videotape all of their experiments, and they had video that showed Falcon climbing in the balloon before it took off.

While clutching a glow stick, the impish Falcon explained that he climbed up the rafters in the garage and hid there after his father chastised him for climbing into the balloon earlier in the day.

“He scared me, because he yelled at me,” the boy said in a high, thin voice. “So I went in the attic. I heard shouting. I didn’t want to come out very soon, or else he would yell at me. I thought I would get in trouble.”

The father explained that he barked at the boy to not climb in the lighter-than-air balloon because its outer skin is charged with a million volts of electricity to help steer it.

“It’s potentially dangerous if you get inside and the electricity comes on,” said Richard Heene, who said he feared his missing son might had been electrocuted in the runaway balloon.

“I’m really sorry I yelled at him,” Heene said as choked up and cradled his son in his arms. “He scared the heck out of us.”

When a reporter asked if the boy was “grounded” for his high-flying hoax, the parents said no.

“We don’t ground our children. But we’re going to talk to him,” the dad said.

Heene said the balloon wasn’t tethered properly, and “it was a mishap. I’m not going to lay blame on anybody.”

When authorities didn’t find the boy after the balloon crashed in a field, the father said: “That kind of tore me apart. The only thing I could think of was he had fallen out.”

Then, after hours of waiting inside the home for news, mom and dad learned their youngest son was alive.

“My legs got weak. I couldn’t even walk from one room to the next,” Richard Heene said. “How did it feel to see my son again? It was a relief and we’re going to watch him a lot closer.”

The parents repeatedly thanked the local police and sheriff’s departments — and even news helicopters — for searching for Falcon.

“You guys are great,” Richard Heene said.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” the mother, Mayumi Heene, added.

Family, No Stranger To Publicity, Answers Tough Questions

The parents, who appeared with the boys in two episodes of the ABC TV reality show, “Wife Swap,” denied speculation that the chaotic misadventure — dubbed “Balloon Boy” in Internet reports — was a publicity stunt.

“That’s horrible. After the crap that we just went through? No, no, no,” the weary father insisted. “We keep all our experiments to ourselves.”

Falcon said he thought hiding from everyone was part of the “Wife Swap” show and said in one interview that he hid “for the show.”

Not the least bit shy, he was eager to show how he climbed a pole into the rafters of the garage and hid out in a cardboard box for hours, playing with toys he had stashed in that area. He wasn’t at all concerned about all the attention he inadvertently created or the throngs of cameras taping his every move.

“I think it’s real weird. There’s like hundreds of them,” Falcon said, referring to the number of cameras.

Richard Heene said Falcon has always been adventurous, so they had feared the worst.

The father has been described by friends as a sort of “mad scientist.” He is a storm chaser and has a Web site, called The Psyience Detectives, which “investigates the mysteries of science and psychic phenomenon.”

While promoting “Wife Swap,” ABC promoted the Heene family as storm chasers who also “devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm.”

7NEWS meteorologist Richard Ortner described Heene as “very intelligent and wildly creative.” The Heenes are known to take their children along as they pursue bad weather across the country. Ortner accompanied the Heene family as they were storm chasing last year.

Richard Heene said he crafted the homemade weather balloon for experiments in his back yard. He had apparently been working on the balloon for some time.

“This sort of thing is normal for them,” neighbor Bob Licko said.

He said the “whole family was out there” working on the balloon Thursday morning. He said the balloon was supposed to be tethered and hover 20 feet in the air with no one on board.

Licko said he was leaving home when he heard a commotion in the back yard and saw two boys on the roof with a camera, talking about their brother.

“One of the boys yelled to me that his brother was way up in the air,” Licko said. The boy’s mother seemed distraught and his father was running around the house, Licko said.

Licko said he didn’t believe the Heenes planned a hoax.

“Based on what I witnessed in the back yard in the morning with the parents, I don’t think that’s the case,” Licko said. “They’re better actors than I thought they were if that’s the case.”

Sheriff’s Department Doesn’t Believe Story Was Hoax

The sheriff’s department said they don’t believe the incident was a hoax, either, and don’t plan on charging the Heenes for the huge use of resources in the massive search.

“We don’t want somebody in a situation, in an emergency, thinking about payment before safety. So, we’ll get our resources out and we’d rather be there and not be needed than be in a situation where somebody waited or we waited because of finances and someone’s life was unnecessarily put in jeopardy,” said Maj. Justin Smith with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office.

Volunteers who helped searched for the boy said they don’t feel it was a waste of time or resources and that it was the best ending anyone could hope for.

Smith said there have been no previous calls to the home and no previous indication of problems at the home.

“There’s nothing throughout and certainly nothing in the end that would indicate there would be any grounds for criminal charges,” Smith said.

Authorities said the boy’s home and neighborhood were immediately searched after the report of the runaway balloon and there was no sign of the boy, leading everyone to believe Falcon had climbed into the craft.

“Clearly one of my concerns when I heard that the boy was found after we searched the house twice was how did we miss him?” Alderden said. “I’m told we did a very thorough search of the house. They searched the attic. They searched the garage. But, apparently, somehow, the boy climbed up on top of this cabinet …”

Alderden said he didn’t have an estimate of how much the search for the boy cost.

The Colorado Army National Guard scrambled an OH-58 Kiowa helicopter and a Black Hawk UH-60 to try to rescue the boy, possibly by lowering someone to the balloon. The helicopter flights alone cost about $14,500.

Capt. Troy Brown said the Black Hawk helicopter was in the air for nearly three hours, and the Kiowa helicopter was airborne for about one hour. The Black Hawk costs about $4,600 an hour to fly, and the Kiowa is $700 an hour, Brown said.

The Great Balloon Adventure

The balloon was aloft for about two hours, traveling roughly 55 miles southeast over Colorado, pushed by light to moderate winds.

Authorities earlier described the large silvery craft as a sort of “flying saucer” weather balloon and said it reached an altitude of 15,000 feet before it began descending.

At one point, it was roughly 3,500 feet above the ground and moving an average of 30 mph. The balloon tipped precariously at times, with one side partially deflated.

The foil balloon lifted into the air from the family’s Fort Collins home at about 11:30 a.m. and landed about 2 miles northeast of Prospect Reservoir at 1:35 p.m., in Weld County. It was a journey that took the balloon through two counties and over homes and prairies dotted with ponds and towering trees.

The family called police and reported Falcon could not be found after the balloon soared into the sky. His older brother told his parents and authorities that he saw Falcon climb into a box attached to the bottom of the balloon and the balloon lifted off, Larimer County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Kathy Messick said.

The balloon did have a box that carried batteries, Messick said. The box was attached to the aircraft and there was damage to the area where the boy was believed to have been.

“It was never intended for any more weight than the batteries that were in the compartment,” Messick said.

Lisa Eklund A black mass can been seen below and slightly to the left of the photo. Authorities are trying to determine if it something that fell from the balloon.

Authorities had thought for some time that the box had become detached before the balloon landed. Rescuers also worked on theory that the boy might have fallen from the balloon and were closely examining an amateur photo that showed a black mass below the balloon to determine if it was something that fell from the balloon. The photo was taken by Lisa Eklund as the balloon floated away from the boy’s neighborhood.

“We were sitting, eating, looking out where they normally shoot off hot air balloons. My husband said he saw something. It went over our rooftop. Then we saw the big round balloonish thing, it was spinning,” Eklund said.

After the balloon took off, there were sporadic reports on its location as it drifted with the wind over the flat Colorado countryside. The Federal Aviation Administration was called, and began tracking the balloon through reports from pilots and air traffic control operations that had been alerted to the situation.

Airtracker 7 located the balloon at 12:35 p.m., at about 8,000 feet in Weld County. It appeared to be slightly tilted at that time.

“The structure at the bottom of the balloon … is made of extremely thin plywood and won’t withstand any kind of a crash at all,” said Erik Nilsson, Larimer County Emergency Manager, as the balloon floated thousands of feet over farmland.

Deputies from Larimer and Weld counties tracked the balloon from the ground as it drifted in the skies. Authorities scrambled to work on a rescue mission, with one plan being the possibility of pilots of ultralight aircraft putting weights on the homemade craft to bring it down.

Experts had said it could remain airborne for up to 12 hours, although it was clearly deflated on one side by 1:25 p.m., and was descending to about 400 feet off the ground at 1:30 p.m.

When it landed, at 1:35 p.m., rescuers ran up and immediately surrounded it, grabbing on to the ropes that had tethered the balloon to the house and punching holes to deflate it. They then radioed the news, “Be advised, it’s empty. It’s empty.”

ABC.com The Heene family, as seen in a promotional picture for ABC’s “Wifeswap.” Falcon is the boy in the black jacket.

An investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board examined the craft about two hours after it landed. The investigator could be seen taking photos of the bottom of the craft and peering inside. Because the boy was never in the balloon, the NTSB said its investigation has now ended.

Balloon Diverts Flights At DIA

While the balloon was airborne, Larimer County fire dispatchers asked if Airtracker 7 could use an outside speaker to ask the boy if he had a valve to release helium.

“Is there a way to release some of the helium that this kid may know?” the dispatcher asked. “Maybe we can get him to lower it.”

There was no visible response from the balloon.

There was worry at one point that the balloon might drift into air traffic control corridors used by Denver International Airport, based on its current location and direction. Deputies alerted DIA air traffic controllers to warn them about letting aircraft fly through the area.

Flights heading to the north from DIA were diverted while the balloon was in the air. A DIA spokesman said flights were diverted for 15 to 20 minutes but airport operations were not affected.

The Colorado National Guard launched a Blackhawk helicopter and a smaller OH-58 Kiowa helicopter to try and intercept the balloon.

After it was confirmed no one was aboard the balloon, both Colorado Army National Guard helicopters returned to Buckley Air Force Base to refuel and prepare for search and rescue operations.

Airlife Denver — a medical helicopter — also joined in the search for the boy from the air.

Falcon Heene was out of school on Thursday because of teacher conferences at his school.

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The National Institute for Computational Sciences’ (NICS’s) Cray XT5 supercomputer—Kraken—has been upgraded to become the first academic system to surpass a thousand trillion calculations a second, or one petaflop, a landmark achievement that will greatly accelerate science and place Kraken among the top five computers in the world.

Managed by the University of Tennessee (UT) for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the system came online Oct. 5 with a peak performance of 1.03 petaflops. It features more than 16,000 six-core 2.6-GHz AMD Istanbul processors with nearly 100,000 compute cores.

In addition, an upgrade to 129 terabytes of memory (the equivalent of more than 13 thousand movies on DVD) effectively doubles the size of Kraken for researchers running some of the world’s most sophisticated 3-D scientific computing applications. Simulation has become a key tool for researchers in a number of fields, from climate change to materials.

“At over a petaflop of peak computing power, and the ability to routinely run full machine jobs, Kraken will dominate large-scale NSF computing in the near future,” said NICS Project Director Phil Andrews. “Its unprecedented computational capability and total available memory will allow academic users to treat problems that were previously inaccessible.”

For example, understanding the mechanism behind the explosion of core-collapse supernovas will reveal much about our universe (these cataclysmic events are responsible for more than half the elements in the universe). Essentially three phenomena are being simulated to explore these explosions: hydrodynamics, nuclear burning or fusion, and neutrino transport, said UT astrophysicist Bronson Messer.

At the terascale, or trillions of calculations per second, Messer and his team were forced to simulate the star in 1-D as a perfect sphere and with unrealistic fusion physics. “Now, however, we are getting closer to physical reality,” said Messer. “With petascale capability, we can simulate all three phenomena simultaneously with significant realism. This brings us closer to understanding the explosion mechanism and being able to make meaningful predictions.”

From the physical makeup of the universe to the causes of global warming to the roles of proteins in disease, Kraken’s increased computing muscle will reach far and wide.

As the main computational resource for NICS, the new system is linked to the NSF-supported TeraGrid, a network of supercomputers across the country that is the world’s largest computational platform for open scientific research.

The system and the resulting NICS organization are the result of an NSF Track 2 award of $65 million to the University of Tennessee and its partners to provide for next-generation high-performance computing (HPC). The award was won in an open competition among HPC institutions vying to guarantee America’s continued competitiveness through the next generation of supercomputers (systems greater than 10 teraflops and into the petascale).

“While reaching the petascale is a remarkable achievement in itself, the real strides will be made in the new science that petascale computing will enable,” said Thomas Zacharia, NICS principal investigator, professor in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Tennessee and deputy director for science and technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “Kraken is a game changer for research.”

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The National Institute for Computational Sciences’ (NICS’s) Cray XT5 supercomputer—Kraken—has been upgraded to become the first academic system to surpass a thousand trillion calculations a second, or one petaflop, a landmark achievement that will greatly accelerate science and place Kraken among the top five computers in the world.

Managed by the University of Tennessee (UT) for the National Science Foundation (NSF), the system came online Oct. 5 with a peak performance of 1.03 petaflops. It features more than 16,000 six-core 2.6-GHz AMD Istanbul processors with nearly 100,000 compute cores.

In addition, an upgrade to 129 terabytes of memory (the equivalent of more than 13 thousand movies on DVD) effectively doubles the size of Kraken for researchers running some of the world’s most sophisticated 3-D scientific computing applications. Simulation has become a key tool for researchers in a number of fields, from climate change to materials.

“At over a petaflop of peak computing power, and the ability to routinely run full machine jobs, Kraken will dominate large-scale NSF computing in the near future,” said NICS Project Director Phil Andrews. “Its unprecedented computational capability and total available memory will allow academic users to treat problems that were previously inaccessible.”

For example, understanding the mechanism behind the explosion of core-collapse supernovas will reveal much about our universe (these cataclysmic events are responsible for more than half the elements in the universe). Essentially three phenomena are being simulated to explore these explosions: hydrodynamics, nuclear burning or fusion, and neutrino transport, said UT astrophysicist Bronson Messer.

At the terascale, or trillions of calculations per second, Messer and his team were forced to simulate the star in 1-D as a perfect sphere and with unrealistic fusion physics. “Now, however, we are getting closer to physical reality,” said Messer. “With petascale capability, we can simulate all three phenomena simultaneously with significant realism. This brings us closer to understanding the explosion mechanism and being able to make meaningful predictions.”

From the physical makeup of the universe to the causes of global warming to the roles of proteins in disease, Kraken’s increased computing muscle will reach far and wide.

As the main computational resource for NICS, the new system is linked to the NSF-supported TeraGrid, a network of supercomputers across the country that is the world’s largest computational platform for open scientific research.

The system and the resulting NICS organization are the result of an NSF Track 2 award of $65 million to the University of Tennessee and its partners to provide for next-generation high-performance computing (HPC). The award was won in an open competition among HPC institutions vying to guarantee America’s continued competitiveness through the next generation of supercomputers (systems greater than 10 teraflops and into the petascale).

“While reaching the petascale is a remarkable achievement in itself, the real strides will be made in the new science that petascale computing will enable,” said Thomas Zacharia, NICS principal investigator, professor in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Tennessee and deputy director for science and technology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “Kraken is a game changer for research.”

Start uga_filter:

Solar Roads are the future power houses of the world. We all know that there are many million miles of roads built in the world, what if all those roads were able to harness sun’s energy?

Well, considering the massive network of roads and highways, a huge amount of power would be generated even if solar panels with just 15% efficiency are used. These roads could also have embedded LED lights in them which can provide navigation to the travelers and tell them about any road blockages due to accidents etc. These roads would also be able to re-route the entire traffic.

US Department of Energy recognized the huge potential in this concept and gave a $100,000 contract to a company named “Solar Roadways”. The firm will build a prototype 12 x 12 feet solar panel which could be fixed into roads.

If this experiment turns out to be successful then who knows one day we forget about Nuclear or any other energy and just rely on Solar Roads because they have a huge potential.

See the video below for some detailed information.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3PeSm6_hTE

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Solar Roads are the future power houses of the world. We all know that there are many million miles of roads built in the world, what if all those roads were able to harness sun’s energy?

Well, considering the massive network of roads and highways, a huge amount of power would be generated even if solar panels with just 15% efficiency are used. These roads could also have embedded LED lights in them which can provide navigation to the travelers and tell them about any road blockages due to accidents etc. These roads would also be able to re-route the entire traffic.

US Department of Energy recognized the huge potential in this concept and gave a $100,000 contract to a company named “Solar Roadways”. The firm will build a prototype 12 x 12 feet solar panel which could be fixed into roads.

If this experiment turns out to be successful then who knows one day we forget about Nuclear or any other energy and just rely on Solar Roads because they have a huge potential.

See the video below for some detailed information.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3PeSm6_hTE

Start uga_filter:

Biomolecular computers, made of DNA and other biological molecules, only exist today in a few specialized labs, remote from the regular computer user. Nonetheless, Tom Ran and Shai Kaplan, research students in the lab of Prof. Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute’s Biological Chemistry, and Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Departments have found a way to make these microscopic computing devices ‘user friendly,’ even while performing complex computations and answering complicated queries.

Shapiro and his team at Weizmann introduced the first autonomous programmable DNA computing device in 2001. So small that a trillion fit in a drop of water, that device was able to perform such simple calculations as checking a list of 0s and 1s to determine if there was an even number of 1s. A newer version of the device, created in 2004, detected cancer in a test tube and released a molecule to destroy it. Besides the tantalizing possibility that such biology-based devices could one day be injected into the body – a sort of ‘doctor in a cell’ locating disease and preventing its spread – biomolecular computers could conceivably perform millions of calculations in parallel.

Now, Shapiro and his team, in a paper published online August 3 in Nature Nanotechnology, have devised an advanced program for biomolecular computers that enables them to ‘think’ logically.

The train of deduction used by this futuristic device is remarkably familiar. It was first proposed by Aristotle over 2000 years ago as a simple if…then proposition: ‘All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.’ When fed a rule (All men are mortal) and a fact (Socrates is a man), the computer answered the question ‘Is Socrates Mortal?’ correctly. The team went on to set up more complicated queries involving multiple rules and facts, and the DNA computing devices were able to deduce the correct answers every time. At the same time, the team created a compiler – a program for bridging between a high-level computer programming language and DNA computing code. Upon compiling, the query could be typed in something like this: Mortal(Socrates)?. To compute the answer, various strands of  DNA representing the rules, facts and queries were assembled by a robotic system and searched for a fit in a hierarchical process. The answer was encoded in a flash of green light: Some of the strands had a biological version of a flashlight signal – they were equipped with a naturally glowing fluorescent molecule bound to a second protein which keeps the light covered. A specialized enzyme, attracted to the site of the correct answer, removed the ‘cover’ and let the light shine. The tiny water drops containing the biomolecular data-bases were able to answer very intricate queries, and they lit up in a combination of colors representing the complex answers.

Prof. Ehud Shapiro’s research is supported by the Clore Center for Biological Physics; the Arie and Ida Crown Memorial Charitable Fund; the Phyllis and Joseph Gurwin Fund for Scientific Advancement; Sally Leafman Appelbaum, Scottsdale, AZ; the Carolito Stiftung, Switzerland; the Louis Chor Memorial Trust Fund; and Miel de Botton Aynsley, UK. Prof. Shapiro is the incumbent of the Harry Weinrebe Chair of Computer Science and Biology.

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Biomolecular computers, made of DNA and other biological molecules, only exist today in a few specialized labs, remote from the regular computer user. Nonetheless, Tom Ran and Shai Kaplan, research students in the lab of Prof. Ehud Shapiro of the Weizmann Institute’s Biological Chemistry, and Computer Science and Applied Mathematics Departments have found a way to make these microscopic computing devices ‘user friendly,’ even while performing complex computations and answering complicated queries.

Shapiro and his team at Weizmann introduced the first autonomous programmable DNA computing device in 2001. So small that a trillion fit in a drop of water, that device was able to perform such simple calculations as checking a list of 0s and 1s to determine if there was an even number of 1s. A newer version of the device, created in 2004, detected cancer in a test tube and released a molecule to destroy it. Besides the tantalizing possibility that such biology-based devices could one day be injected into the body – a sort of ‘doctor in a cell’ locating disease and preventing its spread – biomolecular computers could conceivably perform millions of calculations in parallel.

Now, Shapiro and his team, in a paper published online August 3 in Nature Nanotechnology, have devised an advanced program for biomolecular computers that enables them to ‘think’ logically.

The train of deduction used by this futuristic device is remarkably familiar. It was first proposed by Aristotle over 2000 years ago as a simple if…then proposition: ‘All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.’ When fed a rule (All men are mortal) and a fact (Socrates is a man), the computer answered the question ‘Is Socrates Mortal?’ correctly. The team went on to set up more complicated queries involving multiple rules and facts, and the DNA computing devices were able to deduce the correct answers every time. At the same time, the team created a compiler – a program for bridging between a high-level computer programming language and DNA computing code. Upon compiling, the query could be typed in something like this: Mortal(Socrates)?. To compute the answer, various strands of  DNA representing the rules, facts and queries were assembled by a robotic system and searched for a fit in a hierarchical process. The answer was encoded in a flash of green light: Some of the strands had a biological version of a flashlight signal – they were equipped with a naturally glowing fluorescent molecule bound to a second protein which keeps the light covered. A specialized enzyme, attracted to the site of the correct answer, removed the ‘cover’ and let the light shine. The tiny water drops containing the biomolecular data-bases were able to answer very intricate queries, and they lit up in a combination of colors representing the complex answers.

Prof. Ehud Shapiro’s research is supported by the Clore Center for Biological Physics; the Arie and Ida Crown Memorial Charitable Fund; the Phyllis and Joseph Gurwin Fund for Scientific Advancement; Sally Leafman Appelbaum, Scottsdale, AZ; the Carolito Stiftung, Switzerland; the Louis Chor Memorial Trust Fund; and Miel de Botton Aynsley, UK. Prof. Shapiro is the incumbent of the Harry Weinrebe Chair of Computer Science and Biology.

Start uga_filter:

Scientists prevented age-related changes in the hearts of mice and preserved heart function by suppressing a form of the PI3K gene, in a study reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

“The study provides evidence that delaying or preventing heart failure in humans may be possible,” said Tetsuo Shioi, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study and assistant professor of medicine at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine in Kyoto, Japan.

“Advanced age is a major risk factor for heart failure. One reason is that aging increases the chance of exposure to cardiovascular risk factors. However, natural changes due to aging may also compromise the cardiovascular system.”

According to the American Heart Association, 5.7 million Americans have heart failure, and nearly 10 out of every 1,000 people over age 65 suffer heart failure every year.

Shioi and his colleagues studied elderly mice genetically engineered to suppress the activity of one form of the PI3K gene, which is a part of the insulin/IGF-1signaling system that helps regulate the lifespan of cells.

A variation of PI3K, known as the p110? isoform, plays an important role in tissue aging. Suppressing the isoform’s activity in the roundworm C. elegans extends its life. And in fruit flies, suppression prevents the age-dependent decline of heart function.

The Japanese researchers compared aged mice with a functional p110? to aged mice with suppressed p110? and found that mice with the suppressed gene had:

• improved cardiac function;
• less fibrosis (fibrosis causes the heart to lose flexibility);
• fewer biological markers of aging; and
• a pattern of cardiac gene expression like that of younger mice.

“This study showed that aging of the heart can be prevented by modifying the function of insulin and paves the way to preventing age-associated susceptibility to heart failure,” Shioi said.

The researchers concluded that PI3K’s role in cardiac aging involved regulating other points further downstream in the insulin/IGF-1signaling pathway, which resulted in changes in how insulin acted in heart cells. The biological mechanism by which suppressing the gene’s activity improved the survival of the mice remains unclear.

“The heart failure epidemic in the United States and many other countries is due, in part, to our aging population,” said Mariell Jessup, M.D., an American Heart Association spokesperson and professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “Aging humans experience a slow but gradual loss of heart cells and a host of other cellular and sub-cellular abnormalities which make the remaining cells contract less efficiently. Thus, this early work in a mouse model, clarifying the role of PI3K in cardiac aging, could ultimately allow scientists to understand if human hearts are similarly influenced.”

Co-authors are: Yasutaka Inuzuka, M.D.; Junji Okuda, M.D.; Tsuneaki Kawashima, M.D.; Takao Kato, M.D.; Shinichiro Niizuma, M.D.; Yodo Tamaki, M.D.; Yoshitaka Iwanaga, M.D., Ph.D.; Yuki Yoshida, M.D., Ph.D.; Rie Kosugi, M.D., Ph.D.; Kayo Watanabe-Maeda, M.D., Ph.D.; Yoji Machida, M.D., Ph.D.; Shingo Tsuji, Ph.D.; Hiroyuki Aburatani, M.D., Ph.D.; Tohru Izumi, M.D., Ph.D.; and Toru Kita, M.D., Ph.D.

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Scientists prevented age-related changes in the hearts of mice and preserved heart function by suppressing a form of the PI3K gene, in a study reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

“The study provides evidence that delaying or preventing heart failure in humans may be possible,” said Tetsuo Shioi, M.D., Ph.D., senior author of the study and assistant professor of medicine at Kyoto University Graduate School of Medicine in Kyoto, Japan.

“Advanced age is a major risk factor for heart failure. One reason is that aging increases the chance of exposure to cardiovascular risk factors. However, natural changes due to aging may also compromise the cardiovascular system.”

According to the American Heart Association, 5.7 million Americans have heart failure, and nearly 10 out of every 1,000 people over age 65 suffer heart failure every year.

Shioi and his colleagues studied elderly mice genetically engineered to suppress the activity of one form of the PI3K gene, which is a part of the insulin/IGF-1signaling system that helps regulate the lifespan of cells.

A variation of PI3K, known as the p110? isoform, plays an important role in tissue aging. Suppressing the isoform’s activity in the roundworm C. elegans extends its life. And in fruit flies, suppression prevents the age-dependent decline of heart function.

The Japanese researchers compared aged mice with a functional p110? to aged mice with suppressed p110? and found that mice with the suppressed gene had:

• improved cardiac function;
• less fibrosis (fibrosis causes the heart to lose flexibility);
• fewer biological markers of aging; and
• a pattern of cardiac gene expression like that of younger mice.

“This study showed that aging of the heart can be prevented by modifying the function of insulin and paves the way to preventing age-associated susceptibility to heart failure,” Shioi said.

The researchers concluded that PI3K’s role in cardiac aging involved regulating other points further downstream in the insulin/IGF-1signaling pathway, which resulted in changes in how insulin acted in heart cells. The biological mechanism by which suppressing the gene’s activity improved the survival of the mice remains unclear.

“The heart failure epidemic in the United States and many other countries is due, in part, to our aging population,” said Mariell Jessup, M.D., an American Heart Association spokesperson and professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “Aging humans experience a slow but gradual loss of heart cells and a host of other cellular and sub-cellular abnormalities which make the remaining cells contract less efficiently. Thus, this early work in a mouse model, clarifying the role of PI3K in cardiac aging, could ultimately allow scientists to understand if human hearts are similarly influenced.”

Co-authors are: Yasutaka Inuzuka, M.D.; Junji Okuda, M.D.; Tsuneaki Kawashima, M.D.; Takao Kato, M.D.; Shinichiro Niizuma, M.D.; Yodo Tamaki, M.D.; Yoshitaka Iwanaga, M.D., Ph.D.; Yuki Yoshida, M.D., Ph.D.; Rie Kosugi, M.D., Ph.D.; Kayo Watanabe-Maeda, M.D., Ph.D.; Yoji Machida, M.D., Ph.D.; Shingo Tsuji, Ph.D.; Hiroyuki Aburatani, M.D., Ph.D.; Tohru Izumi, M.D., Ph.D.; and Toru Kita, M.D., Ph.D.

Start uga_filter:

I want metal robot legs. I actually can’t think of anybody who doesn’t want them. Imagine being able to run 50 miles an hour or slam dunking on 30 foot baskets. That’s why I’m excited that they’re here. Honda makes them and hopefully soon I’ll be able to buy them.

That’s right, Honda, who is famous for making cars and motorcycles is going into robotics. This isn’t the first time they market a product that is out of the mainstream for them. They manufacture airplanes, watercraft, atv’s, lawnmowers, and generators. Remember they also built Asimo the robot.

That’s where it all begins with Asimo, and now that technology is going to be used in devices meant to aid people with walking problems. Using lessons learned in robotic legs and simulating human walking Honda has developed 2 systems and has put them in use around their assembly plants to improve productivity while reducing injury risks. The main purpose for these2 systems is to boost your natural abilities. They are designed to help people who can walk increase the weight they can move and reduce injuries in lifting or moving heavy objects. Honda factory workers building cars and vans use them to move heavy parts.

I can’t wait until I can get a pair or even better a full Mech-Suit so I can be the coolest guy on my block.

To use the legs, you just slip on the shoes and adjust the seat. Then motors move the frame and seat position while lithium-ion batteries keep the system powered for about two hours. While they still aren’t the legs I dream of giving me above human strength, they are a step in the right direction. Plus now I know when I become a crotchety old man I’ll be able to walk without a walker or assistant. I can’t wait until I can get a pair or even better a full Mech-Suit so I can be the coolest guy on my block.

Who doesn’t want Robot Legs? These Japanese factory workers are lucky enough to have them!

Start uga_in_feed Ending uga_in_feed: Start uga_track_user Start uga_get_option: ignore_users uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'www.humacon.org,humacon.org', 'account_id' => 'UA-10399907-2', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => false, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => true, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: ignore_users (1) Start uga_get_option: max_user_level uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'www.humacon.org,humacon.org', 'account_id' => 'UA-10399907-2', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => false, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => true, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: max_user_level (8) Tracking user with level Ending uga_track_user: 1 Calling preg_replace_callback: ]*?)href\s*=\s*['"](.*?)['"]([^>]*)>(.*?) Start uga_preg_callback: Array Get tracker for full url Start uga_track_full_url: www.theweeklyconstitutional.com/news/our-world/289 Start uga_is_url_internal: www.theweeklyconstitutional.com/news/our-world/289 Start uga_get_option: internal_domains uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'www.humacon.org,humacon.org', 'account_id' => 'UA-10399907-2', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => false, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => true, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: internal_domains (www.humacon.org,humacon.org) Checking hostname www.humacon.org Checking hostname humacon.org Ending uga_is_url_internal: Get tracker for external URL Start uga_track_external_url: www.theweeklyconstitutional.com/news/our-world/289 Start uga_get_option: track_ext_links uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'www.humacon.org,humacon.org', 'account_id' => 'UA-10399907-2', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => false, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => true, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: track_ext_links (1) Tracking external links enabled Start uga_get_option: prefix_ext_links uga_options: array ( 'internal_domains' => 'www.humacon.org,humacon.org', 'account_id' => 'UA-10399907-2', 'enable_tracker' => true, 'track_adm_pages' => false, 'ignore_users' => true, 'max_user_level' => '8', 'footer_hooked' => true, 'filter_content' => true, 'filter_comments' => true, 'filter_comment_authors' => true, 'track_ext_links' => true, 'prefix_ext_links' => '/outgoing/', 'track_files' => true, 'prefix_file_links' => '/downloads/', 'track_extensions' => 'gif,jpg,jpeg,bmp,png,pdf,mp3,wav,phps,zip,gz,tar,rar,jar,exe,pps,ppt,xls,doc', 'track_mail_links' => true, 'prefix_mail_links' => '/mailto/', 'debug' => true, 'check_updates' => true, 'version_sent' => '1.6.0', 'advanced_config' => true, ) Ending uga_get_option: prefix_ext_links (/outgoing/) Ending uga_track_external_url: www.theweeklyconstitutional.com/news/our-world/289 Ending uga_track_full_url: /outgoing/www.theweeklyconstitutional.com/news/our-world/289 Adding onclick attribute for /outgoing/www.theweeklyconstitutional.com/news/our-world/289 Ending uga_preg_callback: Ending uga_filter:

I want metal robot legs. I actually can’t think of anybody who doesn’t want them. Imagine being able to run 50 miles an hour or slam dunking on 30 foot baskets. That’s why I’m excited that they’re here. Honda makes them and hopefully soon I’ll be able to buy them.

That’s right, Honda, who is famous for making cars and motorcycles is going into robotics. This isn’t the first time they market a product that is out of the mainstream for them. They manufacture airplanes, watercraft, atv’s, lawnmowers, and generators. Remember they also built Asimo the robot.

That’s where it all begins with Asimo, and now that technology is going to be used in devices meant to aid people with walking problems. Using lessons learned in robotic legs and simulating human walking Honda has developed 2 systems and has put them in use around their assembly plants to improve productivity while reducing injury risks. The main purpose for these2 systems is to boost your natural abilities. They are designed to help people who can walk increase the weight they can move and reduce injuries in lifting or moving heavy objects. Honda factory workers building cars and vans use them to move heavy parts.

I can’t wait until I can get a pair or even better a full Mech-Suit so I can be the coolest guy on my block.

To use the legs, you just slip on the shoes and adjust the seat. Then motors move the frame and seat position while lithium-ion batteries keep the system powered for about two hours. While they still aren’t the legs I dream of giving me above human strength, they are a step in the right direction. Plus now I know when I become a crotchety old man I’ll be able to walk without a walker or assistant. I can’t wait until I can get a pair or even better a full Mech-Suit so I can be the coolest guy on my block.

Who doesn’t want Robot Legs? These Japanese factory workers are lucky enough to have them!

Start uga_filter:

University of Florida chemists have pioneered a method to tease out promising molecular structures for capturing energy, a step that could speed the development of more efficient, cheaper solar cells.

“This gives us a new way of studying light-matter interactions,” said Valeria Kleiman, a UF associate professor of chemistry. “It enables us to study not just how the molecule reacts, but actually to change how it reacts, so we can test different energy transfer pathways and find the most efficient one.”

Kleiman is the principal investigator in the research featured in a paper set to appear Friday in the journal Science.

Her work focuses on molecules known as dendrimers whose many branching units make them good energy absorbers. The amount of energy the synthetic molecules can amass and transfer depends on which path the energy takes as it moves through the molecule. Kleiman and three co-authors are the first to gain control of this process in real time. The team demonstrated that it could use phased tailored laser pulses — light whose constituent colors travel at different speeds — to prompt the energy to travel down different paths.

“What we see is that we control where the energy goes by encoding different information in the excitation pulses,” Kleiman said.

Researchers who now test every new molecular structure for its energy storage and transfer efficiency may be able to use what Kleiman called a new spectroscopic tool to quickly identify the most promising structures for photovoltaic devices.

“Imagine you want to go from here to Miami, and the road is blocked somewhere,” she said. “With this process, we’re able to say, ‘Don’t take that road, follow another one instead.’”

The other authors of the Science paper are Daniel Kuroda, C.P. Singh and Zhonghua Peng. The research was supported by UF and the National Science Foundation.

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University of Florida chemists have pioneered a method to tease out promising molecular structures for capturing energy, a step that could speed the development of more efficient, cheaper solar cells.

“This gives us a new way of studying light-matter interactions,” said Valeria Kleiman, a UF associate professor of chemistry. “It enables us to study not just how the molecule reacts, but actually to change how it reacts, so we can test different energy transfer pathways and find the most efficient one.”

Kleiman is the principal investigator in the research featured in a paper set to appear Friday in the journal Science.

Her work focuses on molecules known as dendrimers whose many branching units make them good energy absorbers. The amount of energy the synthetic molecules can amass and transfer depends on which path the energy takes as it moves through the molecule. Kleiman and three co-authors are the first to gain control of this process in real time. The team demonstrated that it could use phased tailored laser pulses — light whose constituent colors travel at different speeds — to prompt the energy to travel down different paths.

“What we see is that we control where the energy goes by encoding different information in the excitation pulses,” Kleiman said.

Researchers who now test every new molecular structure for its energy storage and transfer efficiency may be able to use what Kleiman called a new spectroscopic tool to quickly identify the most promising structures for photovoltaic devices.

“Imagine you want to go from here to Miami, and the road is blocked somewhere,” she said. “With this process, we’re able to say, ‘Don’t take that road, follow another one instead.’”

The other authors of the Science paper are Daniel Kuroda, C.P. Singh and Zhonghua Peng. The research was supported by UF and the National Science Foundation.

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