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20070906 -- Seeing A Future For Invisibility
September 6, 2007 -- Seeing A Future For Invisibility
I’m sure there’ve been many times when you’ve wished you were invisible. Like when your boss is looking for “volunteers.” Or when your clueless friend is just begging to be pranked. I don’t need to know the details.
Well, physicists from Sweden and China have determined that it should be theoretically possible to design a container that would render its contents totally invisible. This non-magical invisibility box would be cylindrical in shape and would be made of special “metamaterials” whose intricate microscopic structure would force light to follow a specified path. If the tube’s wall were the ideal thickness, the scientists say, light would be guided around it, thus making the container…and whomever is inside…invisible. To “reappear,” one need only take apart the container…peeling away the wall of the tube one layer at a time.
Of course a few practical problems still need to be ironed out. First, the scientists haven’t ac...
评论(0) | 浏览(157) 2012-05-18 20:32
Chinese Bidder Says He Won’t Pay for Looted Bronzes
Chinese Bidder Says He Won’t Pay for Looted Bronzes
[img]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/03/03/world/asia/03auction.600.jpg[/img]
Regis Duvignau/Reuters
Two Qing dynasty bronze heads on display last month for an auction in Paris. Beijing says they rightfully belong to China.
By MARK McDONALD and CAROL VOGEL
Published: March 2, 2009
HONG KONG — A Chinese man’s assertion that he sabotaged the auction of two Qing dynasty bronzes at Christie’s in Paris last week handed Beijing a wry public-relations coup on Monday after it battled for months to block the sale.
A bronze rabbit head was one of two 18th-century Chinese relics from the Yves Saint Laurent estate auction in Paris.
The man, Cai Mingchao, a collector and auctioneer, said at a news conference in Beijing that he had submitted the two winning $18 million bids for the bronze heads of a rat and a rabbit on Wednesday, but that he had no intention of paying for them. He described himself as a consult
评论(0) | 浏览(431) 2012-05-18 20:30
20071107 -- Baby Spiders Really Take It Out of Moms
Baby Spiders Really Take It Out of Moms
Talk about maternal sacrifice. In a rather freakish twist of nature, baby spiders in some species completely devour their moms. And now researchers have discovered that the practice can get even stranger. Scientists from Israel’s Ben Gurion University wanted to know if spiders participate in cooperative group mothering, as some mammals and birds do. They investigated a species of spider from southern Africa known for maternal care and for communal living. The results appear in the journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology.
In some experimental nests, the researchers left a group of females intact but removed egg sacks from all but one of the mothers-to-be. In control groups there was only one female and her eggs. At the end of the study, they checked on the health of the spider babies. In those groups with multiple moms, more eggs successfully hatched and the brood was healthier overall. As for the moms? They were almost all sucked dry, le...
评论(0) | 浏览(172) 2012-05-18 20:28
China Blocks Coke Bid for Juice Maker
China Blocks Coke Bid for Juice MakerwritePost();
By DAVID BARBOZA
Published: March 18, 2009
SHANGHAI — China said on Wednesday that it had rejected a bid by the Coca-Cola Company to acquire one of the country’s biggest beverage makers for about $2.4 billion. The move blocked what would have been the biggest foreign takeover of a Chinese company and suggested Beijing is still uncomfortable with the idea of foreign ownership.
The ministry of commerce said the Coke’s bid to acquire the China Huiyuan Juice Company was rejected on antitrust reasons. The government said the deal would allow Coke to dominate a huge segment of the beverage market.
In a statement released Wednesday, the commerce ministry said it was worried that Coke would “set up some exclusive terms to restrict competition in the juice market,” drive up the consumer prices and squeeze out smaller beverage makers.
Trading in Huiyuan shares was halted early Wednesday in Hong Kong ahead of the announcement. The sh...
评论(0) | 浏览(147) 2012-05-18 20:26
Twenty years after Tiananmen
Silence on the square
May 28th 2009 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition
Outside the Communist Party, memories of the 1989 massacre get hazy
AMONG journalists at a Chinese newspaper, there has been some surprising talk of publishing a story to mark the 20th anniversary on June 3rd and 4th of the massacre of hundreds of Beijing citizens by Chinese soldiers. One journalist even told his colleagues he would be ready to go to jail for doing so. But such bravado, especially if it proves more than rhetoric, is likely to be rare. For many in China the nationwide pro-democracy protests of 1989 and their bloody end have become a muddled and half-forgotten tale.
This does not stop the Communist Party worrying about the issue. It fears that the efforts of even a small number of people to keep memories alive could be destabilising. The most senior official to serve jail time for his role in the Tiananmen Square unrest, Bao Tong, has been escorted by se...
评论(0) | 浏览(189) 2012-05-18 20:22
20070521-- Non-Pristine House May Be Healthful
May 21, 2007 Non-Pristine House May Be Healthful
You’ve probably heard that exposing kids to a certain amount of dirt and germs when they’re young can make them less prone to allergies later in life. Now comes news that bacterial toxins can do the same. Endotoxin is a protein that’s shed by certain bacteria when they’re damaged or dead. Which sounds unpleasant. But researchers at the Arizona Respiratory Center in Tucson have found that kids who grow up in houses with plenty of endotoxin are actually less likely to develop eczema or wheezing by the age of 3. Their results are being presented this week at the American Thoracic Society conference in San Francisco.
Musty homes with leaking walls are a likely harbor for endotoxins. But so are houses with carpeting…or those that are more than 30 years old. But perhaps you shudder at the thought of you and your loved ones tiptoeing through toxins on the path to good health. Then you might be interested in another study being presented at...
评论(0) | 浏览(236) 2012-05-18 20:09
Property in America: Commercial break
Property in America
Commercial break
Apr 23rd 2009
From The Economist print edition
Disaster looms in yet another asset class
GENERAL GROWTH PROPERTIES (GGP) and the Great Basin Bank do not have a lot in common. One is America’s second-largest mall owner, the other a small bank in Elko, Nevada. But both shut their doors within a day of each other this month because of their exposure to commercial property, the most threatening in a line-up of suspect asset classes.
Alamy
[img]http://media.economist.com/images/20090425/1709FN3.jpg[/img]
Vegas fashion victim
GGP filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on April 16th. Its assets, which include the Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas (pictured) and South Street Seaport in New York, are high-quality and continue to generate decent income. Its financing structure is what got it into trouble. GGP found that it simply could not roll over its debts because of a lack of liquidity.
GGP’s difficulties were not unexpected. It was carrying...
评论(0) | 浏览(197) 2012-05-18 20:04
Is This the Future of the Digital Book?
Slipstream
Is This the Future of the Digital Book?writePost();
By BRAD STONE
Published: April 4, 2009
PLENTY of authors dream of writing the great American novel.
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[img]http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/05/business/05stream_190.jpg[/img]
Noah Berger for The New York Times
Bradley Inman is starting Vook, a platform for e-books that will combine text, video and social networking.
Bradley Inman wants to create great fiction, dramatic online video and compelling Twitter stream — and then roll them all into a multimedia hybrid that is tailored to the rapidly growing number of digital reading devices.
Mr. Inman, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, calls this digital amalgam a “Vook,” (vook.tv) and the fledgling company he has created with that name just might represent a possible future for the beleaguered book industry.
Publishing, of course, is feeling the same chronic pain as other media businesses, with layoffs,...
评论(0) | 浏览(135) 2012-05-18 20:00
Baidu’s Gain May Be China’s Loss if Google Departs
Baidu’s Gain May Be China’s Loss if Google Departs
SHANGHAI — If Google pulls out of China because of concerns over government controls, this country could be left with just one major Internet search engine: Baidu.com.
评论(0) | 浏览(165) 2012-05-18 19:59
Saving the World, Without U.S. Consumers
Saving the World, Without U.S. Consumers
By The Editors
Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Shoppers at a Best Buy in Los Angeles.
评论(0) | 浏览(186) 2012-05-18 19:59
