The 94 Elements Project - 2 minute trailer

94 Elements is a new web-based global filmmaking project, exploring our lives through the lens of the elements. 
There are 94 naturally occurring elements, from Hydrogen to Plutonium. Together they make up everything in the world. The stories of the elements are intimately connected to the stories of our own lives.
Everything we use and create is made from them. Our own bodies are mostly made from just 6 of the elements.
They affect our lives in countless ways, and their stories reveal our relationship with our resources and the patterns of our economies.
The project is creating a collection of unique human stories by award-winning filmmakers and the best emerging filmmaking talent about the endless ways the elements touch our daily lives.
Each filmmaker will create an authored 4-7 minute film around a way we extract or use one element. The films are surprising and moving human stories involving the elements – this is not about science, but about our human relationships with our natural resources.
Become part of the project: indiegogo.com/94elements
Visit the project website: 94elements.com

Il transistor fatto di un solo atomo rappresenta il limite fisico della Legge di Moore?

 In un articolo pubblicato poco meno di tre mesi fa su Nature Nanotechnology un gruppo di ricercatori (University of New South Wales, Purdue University,  University of Melbourne) ha sperimentato il più piccolo transistor mai costruito. Lo straordinario risultato, che rappresenta di fatto il capolinea della Legge di Moore, è stato possibile utilizzando un atomo di Fosforo. 

Cinquant'anni fa nessuno poteva immaginare quale cambiamento epocale avrebbe portato l'introduzione del transistor. Ora, spostando le dimensioni dell'elettronica su scala atomica stiamo attraversando un secondo cambiamento epocale. La Legge di Moore afferma che il numero di transistor di cui sono composte raddoppia ogni 18 mesi, parallelamente alle prestazioni delle CPU. L'ultimo chip della Intel ("Sandy Bridge") utilizza 2.3 miliardi transistor entro un raggio di 32 nanometers. Un singolo atomo di Fosforo, per contro, è largo appena 0.1 nanometri. Il transistor mono-atomico ha però una rilevante limitazione: deve essere mantenuto a - 391 gradi Fahrenheit (-196 gradi Celsius).

A single-atom transistor

Martin Fuechsle, Jill A. Miwa, Suddhasatta Mahapatra, Hoon Ryu, Sunhee Lee, Oliver Warschkow, Lloyd C. L. Hollenberg, Gerhard Klimeck, Michelle Y. Simmons [Nature Nanotechnology 7, 242–246 (2012) doi:10.1038/nnano.2012.21 Published online: 19 February 201] 

Abstract

The ability to control matter at the atomic scale and build devices with atomic precision is central to nanotechnology. The scanning tunnelling microscope can manipulate individual atoms and molecules on surfaces, but the manipulation of silicon to make atomic-scale logic circuits has been hampered by the covalent nature of its bonds. Resist-based strategies have allowed the formation of atomic-scale structures on silicon surfaces, but the fabrication of working devices—such as transistors with extremely short gate lengths, spin-based quantum computers and solitary dopant optoelectronic devices—requires the ability to position individual atoms in a silicon crystal with atomic precision. Here, we use a combination of scanning tunnelling microscopy and hydrogen-resist lithography to demonstrate a single-atom transistor in which an individual phosphorus dopant atom has been deterministically placed within an epitaxial silicon device architecture with a spatial accuracy of one lattice site. The transistor operates at liquid helium temperatures, and millikelvin electron transport measurements confirm the presence of discrete quantum levels in the energy spectrum of the phosphorus atom. We find a charging energy that is close to the bulk value, previously only observed by optical spectroscopy.

 

DART 2012: 6th International Workshop on Information Filtering and Retrieval (Call for papers)

6th International Workshop on Information Filtering and Retrieval: novel distributed systems and applications.
Satellite Event of KDIR 2012


Short presentation
Nowadays users are more and more interested in information rather than in mere raw data.
The huge amount of accessible data sources is growing rapidly. This calls for novel systems providing effective means of searching and retrieving information with the fundamental goal of making it exploitable by humans and machines.
DART focuses on researching and studying new challenges in distributed information filtering and retrieval. In particular, DART aims to investigate novel systems and tools to distributed scenarios and environments. DART will contribute to discuss and compare suitable novel solutions based on intelligent techniques and applied in real-world applications.
Information Retrieval attempts to address similar filtering and ranking problems for pieces of information such as links, pages, and documents. Information Retrieval systems generally focus on the development of global retrieval techniques, often neglecting individual user needs and preferences.
Information Filtering has drastically changed the way information seekers find what they are searching for. In fact, they effectively prune large information spaces and help users in selecting items that best meet their needs, interests, preferences, and tastes.
These systems rely strongly on the use of various machine learning tools and algorithms for learning how to rank items and predict user evaluation.

Submissions
DART 2012 is aimed at putting together practitioners and researchers working on pervasive and intelligent access to distributed information, multimedia, and web services. Authors should submit an original paper in English, carefully checked for correct grammar and spelling, using the on-line submission procedure. The submission must have up to 13 pages otherwise it will be rejected without review. Please check the paper formats page so you may be aware of the accepted paper page limits.
The guidelines for paper formatting provided at the conference web ought to be used for all submitted papers. The preferred submission format is the same as the camera-ready format. Please check and carefully follow the instructions and templates provided. Each paper should clearly indicate the nature of its technical/scientific contribution, and the problems, domains or environments to which it is applicable.
Papers that are out of the workshop scope or contain any form of plagiarism will be rejected without reviews. Please read INSTICC's ethical norms regarding plagiarism and self-plagiarism.

Remarks about the on-line submission procedure:
1. A "double-blind" paper evaluation method will be used. To facilitate that, the authors are kindly requested to produce and provide the paper, WITHOUT any reference to any of the authors. This means that is necessary to remove the authors personal details, the acknowledgements section and any reference that may disclose the authors identity.
LaTeX/PS/PDF/DOC/DOCX/RTF format are accepted.
2. The web submission procedure automatically sends an acknowledgement, by e-mail, to the contact author. After the reviewing process is completed, the contact author (the author who submits the paper) of each paper will be notified of the result, by e-mail. The authors are required to follow the reviews in order to improve their paper before the camera-ready submission.

Publications
The workshop proceedings will be published in a workshop proceedings book and on CD-ROM support, under an ISBN reference. Also, all papers presented at the workshop venue would be available at the SciTePress Digital Library
The corresponding-authors will be notified at all time, for the submission, notification, and confirmation on the attendance. Submitting a paper to the workshop means that, if the paper is accepted, at least one author should attend the conference to present the paper and should then register to the conference with a workshop fee.

Topics of interest:
- Web Information Filtering and Retrieval
- Web Personalization and Recommendation
- Web Advertising
- Web Agents
- Web of Data
- Semantic Web
- Linked Data
- Semantics and Ontology Engineering
- Search for Social Networks and Social Media
- Natural Language and Information Retrieval in the Social Web
- Real-time Search
- Text categorization

Important dates
Paper Submission: June 21, 2012
Authors Notification: July 10, 2012
Final Paper Submission and Registration: July 24, 2012
Workshop days: October 5-6, 2012

Chairs
Cristian Lai
CRS4, Center of Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia. Pula, Cagliari - Italy - email: clai [at] crs4 [dot] it
Giovanni Semeraro
Dept. of Computer Science. University of Bari, Aldo Moro. Bari - Italy - email: semeraro [at] di [dot] uniba [dot] it
Alessandro Giuliani
DIEE, Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. University of Cagliari. Cagliari - Italy - email: alessandro [dot] giuliani [at] diee [dot] unica [dot] it

Attraversamenti pedonali, piste ciclabili e consigli per pedoni e automobilisti.

Due settimane fa, a Pordenone, osservavo i semafori per le bici accanto a quelli per i pedoni e pensavo a quando (se) riuscirò a vederli a Cagliari. E ripensavo a quando andavo in Facoltà in bici, negli ultimi due anni di Università, e a tutti gli sportelli di auto schivati per un pelo... Bhé, credo proprio di essere stato fortunato. Non vedo l'ora che Cagliari si doti di piste ciclabili protette. A me Pordenone è sembrata una città a misura di bici, ma il professor Ruggero Da Ros, docente di fisica a Sacile (PD) sulla mobilità per pedoni e ciclisti ha posto alcune domande al Comune di Pordenone. In particolare: "Chiedo se ci sono dei progetti riguardo alle piste ciclabili perché arrivare in bicicletta in centro a Pordenone è un'avventura"). Le domande (e le risposte dell'Assessore all'Ambiente Nicola Conficoni) sono in un video che ho scovato nell'ottimo sito del Comune di Pordenone dedicato alle domande dei cittadini.
Ho già citato Ruggero Da Ros nel post: "Come calcolare i consumi di casa nostra (standby compresi)? Ce lo spiega Karin Bertolussi" e ci siamo accorti di aver riflettuto entrambi sugli attraversamenti pedonali: Sacile: bene i 30 km/h, ma eliminiamo le strisce (L'Azione, 24 aprile 2012) e Strisce e semafori a Londra (Linguaggio Macchina, 26 febbraio 2012).
Ruggero Da Ros mi segnala anche una ricerca condotta da 18 Automobile Club europei, descritta nel sito: Pedestrian Crossing, che contiene anche i consigli dell'ACI per i pedoni:

• Non attraversare la strada a sorpresa
• Fai attenzione ai veicoli su tutte le corsie, comprese quelle più lontane (dal lato opposto)
• Metti sempre in conto possibili errori dei conducenti

e per i conducenti:

• Dai sempre la precedenza ai pedoni, sia che provengano da destra che da sinistra
• Non sorpassare veicoli che rallentano, frenano o si arrestano improvvisamente
• Metti in conto possibili errori dei pedoni

Andrea Mameli 2 maggio 2012 - nella foto: Marco Mameli alle prese con un attraversamento protetto (Londra, febbraio 2012)

Pedestrian Crossing (1948) British Public Information Films. Public Information Film from 1974 starring Frank Thornton & Larry Martyn.

Foresta fossile di 10 mila km quadrati scoperta sotto due miniere di carbone negli Usa.

L'hanno chiamata la Pompei della botanica: è la foresta fossile, scoperta nei pressi di due miniere di carbone nello stato dell'Illinois. Si tratta della più grande foresta fossile, risalente a un periodo uniforme, mai trovata: circa 10 mila km quadrati.
Bill DiMichele, paleontologo del Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History di Washington e i suoi colleghi Howard Falcon-Lang (Università di Bristol), John Nelson e Scott Elrick (Illinois State Geological Survey), Phil Ames (Peabody Coal Company) hanno pubblicato gli esiti della loro scoperta cinque anni fa su Geology (rivista della Geological Society of America): “Ecological Gradients Within a Pennsylvanian Mire Forest”  
Abstract
Pennsylvanian coals represent remains of the earliest peat-forming rain forests, but there is no current consensus on forest ecology. Localized studies of fossil forests suggest intermixture of taxa (heterogeneity), while, in contrast, coal ball and palynological analyses imply the existence of pronounced ecological gradients. Here, we report the discovery of a spectacular fossil forest preserved over ∼1000 ha on top of the Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) Herrin (No. 6) Coal of Illinois, United States. The forest was abruptly drowned when fault movement dropped a segment of coastal mire below sea level. In the largest study of its kind to date, forest composition is statistically analyzed within a well-constrained paleogeographic context. Findings resolve apparent conflicts in models of Pennsylvanian mire ecology by confirming the existence of forest heterogeneity at the local scale, while additionally demonstrating the emergence of ecological gradients at landscape scale.

P.S. Ho trovato un'altra Pompei botanica in un articolo pubblicato su PNAS nel 2011: Permian vegetational Pompeii from Inner Mongolia and its implications for landscape paleoecology and paleobiogeography of Cathaysia. Ma erano solo mille metri quadri di foresta. Dieci volte più piccola di quella scoperta da Bill DiMichele.

Andrea Mameli www.linguaggiomacchina.it 1 maggio 2012

• Four Square Miles of Carboniferous Forest Discovered
• A 300 Million Year Old Pennsylvanian Age Mire Forest

Musica, elettricità e bobine di Tesla.

Una bobina di Tesla modificata, per accompagnare la musica con potenti scariche elettriche. È il Singing Tesla Coils, utilizzato per esempio dal gruppo musicale ArcAttack e per suonare modulando le scariche elettriche. Durante i loro concerti un musicista/stuntman indossa una tuta con Gabbia di Faraday per ripararsi dalle scariche a 500 mila V.
L'11 agosto 2011, in occasione del festival Ars Electronica di Linz (Austria) la Tesla Orchestra, fondata due anni prima da Ian Charnas nella Case Western Reserve University (Usa), dispone delle più grandi bobine di Tesla del mondo. La bobina di Tesla è il trasformatore risonante ideato dal fisico serbo Nikola Tesla circa un secolo fa.
Il termine Singing Tesla Coil è stato coniato nel 2007 da David Nunez, coordinatore degli eventi "Dorkbot" (incontri fra artisti, scienziati, studenti e persone interessate all'uso creativo della tecnologia) in Texas: The singing Tesla coils cnet.com (March 10, 2007). Ma c'è anche chi la bobina musicale se la costruisce, come Daniel Eindhoven, giovane inventore olandese, il quale ha creato un modello da 170 mila V Audio Modulated Solid State Teslacoil V2.0.

Andrea Mameli www.linguaggiomacchina.it 30 aprile 2012

Tracce di DNA di virus antichi nel genoma umano. Uno studio pubblicato su PNAS

Più del 90% del genoma di ogni mammifero è dedicato a funzioni tuttora sconosciute. Questa porzione del materiale genetico, chiamata "materia oscura", contiene pezzi di DNA che provengono da antichi virus. Sono stati scoperti migliaia di questi virus integrati nel DNA umano e i più antichi risalgono all'era dei dinosauri. L'articolo più recente, pubblicato alcuni giorni fa su PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), frutto di ricerche condotte all'Università di Oxford, nel Rega Institute in Belgio e nel centro di ricerca Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center di New York. I ricercatori hanno analizzato il genoma di 38 mammiferi (gatti, topi, pipistrelli, elefanti, delfini e Homo Sapiens).
Per Robert Belshaw (Dipartimento di Zoologia dell'Università di Oxford), coordinatore della ricerca: "Sospettiamo che questi virus siano stati indotti a fare una scelta: mantenere il loro tipico comportamento da virus e diffondersi tra gli animali oppure entrare stabilmente nel genoma degli ospiti. Una storia che continua ininterrottamente da oltre 100 milioni di anni."

Testo e foto: Andrea Mameli, blog www.linguaggiomacchina.it 29 aprile 2012

Env-less endogenous retroviruses are genomic superspreaders
Gkikas Magiorkinisa, Robert J. Giffordb, Aris Katzourakisa, Joris De Ranterc, Robert Belshawa
Edited by Stephen P. Goff, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York, NY, and approved March 30, 2012 (received for review January 19, 2012)
Abstract
Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) differ from typical retroviruses in being inherited through the host germline and therefore are a unique combination of pathogen and selfish genetic element. Some ERV lineages proliferate by infecting germline cells, as do typical retroviruses, whereas others lack the env gene required for virions to enter cells and thus behave like retrotransposons. We wished to know what factors determined the relative abundance of different ERV lineages, so we analyzed ERV loci recovered from 38 mammal genomes by in silico screening. By modeling the relationship between proliferation and replication mechanism in detail within one group, the intracisternal A-type particles (IAPs), and performing simple correlations across all ERV lineages, we show that when ERVs lose the env gene their proliferation within that genome is boosted by a factor of ∼30. We also show that ERV abundance follows the Pareto principle or 20/80 rule, with ∼20% of lineages containing 80% of the loci. This rule is observed in many biological systems, including infectious disease epidemics, where commonly ∼20% of the infected individuals are responsible for 80% of onward infection. We thus borrow simple epidemiological and ecological models and show that retrotransposition and loss of env is the trait that leads endogenous retroviruses to becoming genomic superspreaders that take over a significant proportion of their host's genome.