…regardless of how you feel about the war in Iraq, if you say you “support the troops” you need to do more than install a car magnet.

Here is a way to directly benefit those who have been severely injured in their military service:

Follow the link by clicking on the image to get more information about this project, and if you feel it is worthy, donate.

Magnets stick to metal. True support requires sticking to something more.

Technorati Tags: general, recommended reading

In an interesting case of similar advances being made almost simultaneously in two different places:

Quantum Cascade Lasers Key To Handheld Gas And Liquid Sensors
—
Tiny Infrared Laser Holds Promise As Weapon Against Terror

A “quantum cascade laser” sounds like some kind of technobabble from Star Trek, but it is the real deal. However, unlike what we see on Star Trek or other television shows, sensors that can detect and identify an arbitrarily wide range of substances do not exist. Much of the development of chemistry in the early days even up until recently has been focused on the identification of unknown substances and ultimately, their molecular structure.

The parallel development discussed in the two articles linked above is in the area of lasers. Again, contrary to popular perception, a laser cannot be changed to any color you like, and the color, or wavelength, of the light coming out of the laser is important when the light is used in a detection system, because certain wavelengths are needed to detect certain chemicals. There are some lasers, such as dye lasers, that can be tuned to different wavelengths within a limited range, but these are large systems that are very awkward to deal with, including coping with toxic and carcinogenic materials that usually have to be pumped in a recirculating system so the dye does not overheat and degrade more quickly, and after all the effort involved the power of the resulting laser beam is very low.

A tunable laser that is small, portable, and powerful will be very important in developing sensors for many different materials, as is discussed in the articles above.

In another development involving lasers, this time in the field of biology, carbon nanotubes, a hot topic in solid state science for well over a decade, apparently can be modified to stick to cancer cells, creating a way for lasers to be used to literally burn the cancer out without affecting the normal cells surrounding the cancer:

Nanotube-Laser Combo Selectively Targets Cancer Cells, Study Shows

This is possible using a technique similar to the one used by the anti-cancer “smart bomb” recently announced, by adding certain chemical structures to the outsides of the molecule you want to attach to the cancer cell, like puzzle pieces those structures lock onto the corresponding structures that exist on the cancer cells but not healthy cells. The recent spate of developments in this field show the huge progress that has been made in chemical synthesis in the past few years.

In the chemical and biological engineering fields we may be benefiting from a similar acceleration to that seen over the last three decades in electronics. Each advance enables two or more other developments, which then provide the foundation for others, increasing the rate of technological progress at an almost exponential rate.

Technorati Tags: science, science & technology, technology

Yesterday I went to Lucerne, Switzerland. I did the tourist thing and took photos, a few of which are below. It was cloudy for most of the day, which provides a good light for photos in cases where you want to avoid high contrast, but it keeps the colors from being as vivid as they are in life. I have many other photos I may touch up a bit before posting them.

Click on any of the thumbnails to see a larger image.

Here was my first view of the center of town. The specks in the sky are not a defect of the camera, they are birds:

And here is looking in the other direction down the river, taken from the bridge that can be seen in the first photo:

The prominent building here that looks like a church may not be one. A plaque on the side (assuming my interpretation of the German is even close) says it is a school:

Many buildings had painted facades. This one has both German and French written on it:

This building was a little more flamboyant:

Despite being historically neutral, Switzerland does have a military history. One of the main sources of income for Lucerne from the 15th to at least the 18th century were from the “Swiss Guard” mercenaries they supplied for wars throughout Europe. Incidentally, these mercenaries were not volunteers. The Swiss Guards at the Vatican are a modern vestige of that martial past.

Another reminder of that past is in the remnants of the wall that protected Lucerne. Here is a tower in that wall, on the side that faces the city. I do not know if the clock was originally installed when the tower was built:

A view along the wall from inside one of the towers:

Here is how the wall descends down to the river as viewed from the last tower before the one at the riverside:

And here is how the town the wall was built to defend looks from the same tower:

There are two museums in Lucerne that have fairly extensive collections of works by Picasso. I was able to see them, but as is usual and expected in museums, photos were not allowed. We had some other, more “interesting” experiences in museums there that I’ll write about later, along with some other observations and possibly putting up a few more photos, after I clean them up a bit.

Technorati Tags: letters from Europe, Lucerne, photos, Switzerland