Category Archives: Science

A Graphene Discoverer Speculates on the Future of Computing

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Nobel laureate Konstantin Novoselov, considers exciting uses for graphene and other materials
January 23, 2015 |By Katia Moskvitch

In 2010 two physicists at Manchester University in the U.K. shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on a new wonder material: graphene, a flat sheet of carbon just one atom thick. Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, both Russian émigrés, discovered the material by applying plain old sticky tape to simple graphite.

Graphene is highly conductive and transparent and is also the strongest material known to science. One day it couldrevolutionize electronics. Novoselov tells us about the possibilities of this 2-D material and how it could transform the industry.

What does graphene mean for the future of computing?
It is certain that silicon will be used for transistors—semiconductor devices that are the building blocks of modern computers—for at least the next five to 10 years. But people are already thinking about possible alternative materials and technologies to replace silicon when it will fail to deliver for increasingly smaller and smaller transistors. A graphene transistor is one of the alternatives.

I’m also looking into other one-atom-thick 2-D materials that were obtained soon after graphene and at heterostructures based on those 2-D crystals. Potentially they can provide an alternative to silicon technologies, but here we’re talking about completely new architecture rather than just introducing a new material into the system. It’s hard to predict how it will develop because when you introduce one new material into a process, it’s already quite a complicated step, and if you want to change the whole architecture, it requires years of research. That’s why research should start now if we want to achieve something like that in 10 years’ time.

What do you think computers of the future could look like?
Computers are much more than just a display, interface and software: they are mainly about computing power and microprocessors—also known as the central processing unit [CPU], or the “brain” of a computer. In the future, we’ll probably expand the parallel computations, utilizing microprocessors with larger number of cores, when several CPUs will be working together on the same chip, enabling the computer to perform many more tasks with a much greater overall system performance. At the same time more specialized computers will start to appear because the cost won’t be so prohibitive anymore.

Do you think that in the future we will still think in terms of separate entities called computers?
Microprocessors will still exist. You won’t get rid of them. How parallel the computations can be and how many computers will be linked into a large network, into a cloud, that’s a different question. And with advances in telecommunications, with the speed getting higher and higher, it’s much easier to link many computers into a large network. That’s definitely what we’ll see more and more of. We’re seeing it already now, when a lot of our data is stored not on our desktop but in the cloud—and cloud computations will be more and more popular. But the basis will still be microprocessors and electronics and the current architecture. Click link below for full article.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-graphene-discoverer-speculates-on-the-future-of-computing/

Posted by F. Sheikh

 

 

Your files are encrypted, to get the key to decrypt files you have to pay 500 USD

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 A must read article in NYT, How my mom got hacked.

“MY mother received the ransom note on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. It popped up on her computer screen soon after she’d discovered that all of her files had been locked. “Your files are encrypted,” it announced. “To get the key to decrypt files you have to pay 500 USD.” If my mother failed to pay within a week, the price would go up to $1,000. After that, her decryption key would be destroyed and any chance of accessing the 5,726 files on her PC — all of her data — would be lost forever.

Sincerely, CryptoWall.

CryptoWall 2.0 is the latest immunoresistant strain of a larger body of viruses known as ransomware. The virus is thought to infiltrate your computer when you click on a legitimate-looking attachment or through existing malware lurking on your hard drive, and once unleashed it instantly encrypts all your files, barring access to a single photo or tax receipt.

Everyone has the same questions when they first hear about CryptoWall:

Is there any other way to get rid of it besides paying the ransom? No — it appears to be technologically impossible for anyone to decrypt your files once CryptoWall 2.0 has locked them. (My mother had several I.T. professionals try.)”

“So what can we all do to protect ourselves? Keep our computers backed up on an independent drive or by using a cloud backup service like Carbonite, take those software update and “patch” alerts seriously and, most of all, Beware the Attachment. (Remember: Brand-name businesses like J. Crew or Bank of America will rarely send you an attachment.)”

Click link below for full article

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/opinion/sunday/how-my-mom-got-hacked.html?ref=international

Posted by F. Sheikh

2104: Of Empire and Umpire

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( Dawn) An interesting commentary on messy politics of Pakistan.

It is a tale of two narratives. One of a popular leader sweeping to a capital overcome with sleaze and corruption to sweep out the old and bring in the naya. With him were masses whose votes were stolen, who were tired of being governed by the Lords of Misrule. With hope in their hearts and fervour in their eyes they followed a man of unimpeachable honesty and character; a man who, to them, embodies all that is good and in whom they vested all their hopes and dreams.

Those dreams vary from a wish for a Pakistan where merit triumphs over nepotism, to a desire for low fuel prices and a working education system. Fuelled by this passion, they reached the capital where, despite repression and brutality, they held the course. Sure, they may not have gotten the PM to resign, despite hundreds of twitter hashtags and internet memes, but they awakened the nation.

But here’s another story.

This is a tale of an Empire that, after seeing its power and privilege threatened by an emerging civilian disposition, struck back. They’d done it before, but this time a coup was impractical and a memo(gate) not devastating enough. Thus they chose an approach that they were all too familiar with; that of using proxies.

Chosen for the purpose were Imran Khan and Tahirul Qadri, who willingly played the parts the hidden scriptwriter wrote for them. And why wouldn’t they? After all, the happy ending they were promised was one in which their common enemy floundered after being fingered by the Umpire, paving the way for them to gain the power and justice that they were respectively denied.

Luckily, reality is relative. One can believe, as one does, whatever one chooses to. And certainly there is plenty of evidence to support either narrative, or plenty of holes you can poke in each story provided you are willing to suspend credulity and disbelief.

But here’s the thing: both stories can be simultaneously true. This deepest of states does not use a proxy that is not capable of delivering, and our political classes have never been shy of seeking help from any quarter that offers it. For full article click link below.

http://www.dawn.com/news/1154440/2014-of-empire-and-umpire

 Posted by F. Sheikh

Do scientists’ beliefs influence science’s settled content?

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The Genius And Faith of Faraday And Maxwell ( The New Atlantis)

Yet, science does not exist in a vacuum, and studies in the sociology, history, and philosophy of science often emphasize how scientists’ broader beliefs and practices influence their work, and thus the way that science develops. Some scholars even argue (if not entirely convincingly) that scientists’ beliefs influence science’s settled content.

The strict separation we commonly observe between a researcher’s scientific ideas and his or her “personal beliefs” is a modern, and even recent, norm. From antiquity through the Scientific Revolution, science was viewed as a form of philosophy, and many of the thinkers we have retroactively dubbed “scientists” freely intermingled their speculation about the natural world with theological, philosophical, and mathematical writings, often expending a great deal of their scholarly time and energy on religious study. Kepler’s seventeenth-century laws of planetary motion, for example, seem to his modern readers like needles of scientific inspiration buried in a haystack of theological speculation. Newton and Boyle likewise intermingled physics and philosophical theology without apparent hesitation.

By the nineteenth century, however, natural philosophy had become more natural and less philosophy. Theology and natural science were substantially separated. Apologetic natural theology — arguing that God can be deduced from nature — was now mostly for the theologians. The language of physics had become measurement and mathematics, and the objective of science had become a description of the world of nature in its own terms, rather than through the purposes of a Creator. As a result, it is tempting to read the science of that era as if it were completely independent of the religious commitments of its practitioners. But it wasn’t.

Because Victorian scientists are of interest to us mostly owing to their scientific contributions, their religious beliefs tend to be treated as incidental conformities to the conventions of the day — as if these figures were proto-rationalists and proto-materialists who, without the benefit of our full present enlightenment, had not completely shaken off the superstitions of an earlier age. This caricature is demeaning and mistaken, as can be illustrated by the lives and ideas of two men who were arguably the greatest physical scientists of their time, and among the greatest of all time: Michael Faraday (1791–1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879).

The two men had very different backgrounds. Faraday was English; Maxwell Scottish. Faraday was the son of a blacksmith of limited means; Maxwell’s father had inherited a substantial estate and hardly needed to practice the law in which he had been trained. Faraday had only a basic, grade-school education; Maxwell had the finest education available. Faraday was one of the most popular scientific lecturers of his day; Maxwell gained a poor reputation in the classroom. Faraday knew practically no formal mathematics; Maxwell was one of the finest mathematicians of his time. Faraday’s research became dominant for experimentation in electricity and magnetism; Maxwell’s for electromagnetic theory. One experience they had in common: both were committed Christians. Yet even here fascinating contrasts existed between the religious traditions to which they belonged and the ways their spiritual commitments influenced and strengthened their science. Click link below for full article;

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-genius-and-faith-of-faraday-and-maxwell

Posted by F. Sheikh