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'Fabbers' could launch a revolution

'Fabbers' could launch a revolution
Lindsay France/University Photography Hod Lipson, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, right, and engineering graduate student Evan Malone work with a Fab@Home machine in the Computational Synthesis Lab in Upson Hall Feb. 22. On the stage is a Lego tire duplicated by the Fab@Home. The Altair 8800, introduced in the early 1970s, was the first computer you could build at home from a kit. It was crude, didn't do much, but many historians would say that it launched the desktop computer revolution. Hod Lipson, Cornell assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, thinks a little machine he calls a Fab@Home may have the same impact. Some day, Lipson believes, every home will have a "fabber," a machine that replicates objects from plans supplied by a computer. Such machines could evolve from the 3-D printers currently used by industrial engineers for "rapid prototyping." Lindsay France/U. "Fabbing" a Lego tire. Provided The Lego tire on the vehicle.

4 Rare Earth Elements That Will Only Get More Important Sir William Crookes, a 19th century British chemist, once wrote that, "rare earth elements perplex us in our researches, baffle us in our speculations and haunt us in our very dreams." These weren't easy elements to isolate or to understand, and so there was a very long lag time between the discovery of the rare earths, and the discovery of practical uses for them. It didn't help that individual rare earth elements don't occur by their lonesome—they travel in packs. To get one, you have to mine all of them. At first, industry didn't even bother to separate out individual rare earths, instead using them in a blended alloy called mischmetal. This provided the first commercial applications, says Karl Gschneidner, senior metallurgist at the Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. Europium was the first isolated, high purity rare earth element to enter the public marketplace, in 1967, as a source of the color red in TV sets.

11 Predictions for the World in 2030 That May Sound Outrageous Today but not in the Future. - I Look Forward To All futurism is speculation. It's time someone made some claims. I've picked developments I honestly consider plausible. Here are my 11 predictions for the world of 2030. Alright, crystal ball time: 1. A tiny computer that fits in your ear, and translates what you hear into your own language? 2. Aubrey de Grey says: I think we have a 50% chance of achieving medicine capable of getting people to 200 in the decade 2030-2040. 3. The eradication of extreme poverty will happen in our lifetime. 4. Soil-based agriculture is so passé. 5. I'm sure you've dreamed it: Getting into a car, kicking your shoes off and leaning back with a good movie and a cold beer while your self-driven car takes you safely to your destination, without your having to worry about directions or pedestrians. 6. I actually think this is a conservative estimate. 7. Probably a lot sooner, actually. 8. 9. 10. Today, 90% of people in the UK and 80% of Americans live in cities, while in China only 46% do. 11.

How Nanotechnology Works There's an unprecedented multidisciplinary convergence of scientists dedicated to the study of a world so small, we can't see it -- even with a light microscope. That world is the field of nanotechnology, the realm of atoms and nanostructures. Nanotechnology i­s so new, no one is really sure what will come of it. Even so, predictions range from the ability to reproduce things like diamonds and food to the world being devoured by self-replicating nanorobots. In order to understand the unusual world of nanotechnology, we need to get an idea of the units of measure involved. As small as a nanometer is, it's still large compared to the atomic scale. In a lecture called "Small Wonders:The World of Nanoscience," Nobel Prize winner Dr. In this article, we'll learn about what nanotechnology means today and what the future of nanotechnology may hold. In the next section, we'll learn more about our world on the nanoscale.

Institute of Nanotechnology

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