Krukes krok

We haven't seen much of the promised semantic web yet. Some time ago a new internet service was launched that could help change that. Twine combines intelligent software able to pick up meaning from web page entries with a kind of social network where members bookmark interesting web content and tag it to one or more established 'twines'. I have tried it out, and although there is a long way to go, I still think its a step in the right direction. I suggest you try it out!

Enormous progress is being made in myriads of areas in medical science. I would love to follow all of it, but that is clearly not possible. News media are helpful in the way that they are professionals in rating news value, but it is not always easy to set important breakthroughs apart from small incremental progress. I have a few areas that I try to follow more closely than others. Parkinson's, MS, Ankylosing spondylitis (known as Bechterew's disease), AIDS and Alzheimer's disease for instance. And particularly cancer. Cancer is now the the disease that removes most years from the mean expected life span in Norway, and I expect the same is true in most of developed countries at least. It is also the area with most activity and constant reports on discoveries and breakthroughs. This weeks biggest story would seem to be about multiple sclerosis (MS). This story even made the norwegian broadcasting's evening news. See http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2008-10-22-multip...

Solar power is poised to be one of the important power sources of the future. Growth is already substantial, and within the next five years the increase will be nearly five-fold. Solar cells are however still very expensive and not at all very efficient. Both may change within this same time span. I recently read about a nanotechnology "paint" that was being developed and which could significantly increase the effect of solar cells. Today's solar cells only convert a slim specter of radiation into electricity. This means that much of the sun rays goes unused even when they hit a solar cell. The new paint simply transform some of this radiation into the frequencies that are easily exploited by the solar cells. The technique seems very appealing to me since it can be employed with existing solar cell plants and without expensive production. I also read that production capacity is now growing faster than the demand for solar cells. This implies that prices for solar cells wi...