Recommended Spider-Man 2 (Widescreen Special Edition)

AN “artificial sun,” an experimental nuclear fusion device to generate potentially infinite energy, will be built this spring in Hefei, capital of Anhui Province.

It will be the world's first such device. The aim is to use nuclear fusion to produce energy by extracting deuterium from seawater under enormous temperatures.

The fusion process would require temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius, making it equivalent to an artificial sun in terms of energy.

The full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in the east China province.

Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments are successful, China will become the first country to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, or “artificial sun,” experts said.

AP: Remote Control Device 'Controls' Humans

A special headset was placed on my cranium by my hosts during a recent demonstration at an NTT [Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp., Japan] research center. It sent a very low voltage electric current from the back of my ears through my head — either from left to right or right to left, depending on which way the joystick on a remote-control was moved.

I found the experience unnerving and exhausting: I sought to step straight ahead but kept careening from side to side. Those alternating currents literally threw me off.

The technology is called galvanic vestibular stimulation — essentially, electricity messes with the delicate nerves inside the ear that help maintain balance.

I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right. I was convinced — mistakenly — that this was the only way to maintain my balance.

The phenomenon is painless but dramatic. Your feet start to move before you know it. I could even remote-control myself by taking the switch into my own hands.

There's no proven-beyond-a-doubt explanation yet as to why people start veering when electricity hits their ear. But NTT researchers say they were able to make a person walk along a route in the shape of a giant pretzel using this technique.

It's a mesmerizing sensation similar to being drunk or melting into sleep under the influence of anesthesia. But it's more definitive, as though an invisible hand were reaching inside your brain.

Hollywood movie mogul STEVEN SPIELBERG has invented technology he calls “the future of cinema” - and he promises the new film experience will suck audiences into the heart of the action.

The SAVING PRIVATE RYAN director is working on advanced screening technology, but insists he is looking to build on the things that made cinema great in the past, rather than altering it forever.

He tells the Hollywood Reporter, “A good movie will bring you inside of itself just by the sheer brilliance of the director/writer/production staff.

”But in the future, you will physically be inside the experience, which will surround you top, bottom, on all sides.

“I've invented it, but because patent is pending, I can't discuss it right now.”

Pioneer has developed a nifty new way to draw and work with 3D images.

[. . .]

The user draws with a finger placed within a frame; the connected PC and software interpret the movement and put it on the screen. Apparently, the image itself appears in three dimensions without the need for special glasses.

[i]...[/i] There weren't enough discussions about science fiction. Technologies that are science fiction today will become constitutional questions before Roberts retires from the bench. The same goes for technologies that cannot even be conceived of now. And many of these questions involve privacy.

[. . .]

Recent advances in technology have already had profound privacy implications, and there's every reason to believe that this trend will continue into the foreseeable future. Roberts is 50 years old. If confirmed, he could be chief justice for the next 30 years.

[. . .]

Advances in genetic mapping continue, and someday it will be easy, cheap and detailed — and will be able to be performed without the subject's knowledge. What privacy protections do people have for their genetic map, given that they leave copies of their genome in every dead skin cell that they leave behind? What protections do people have against government actions based on this data? Against private actions?

Should a customer's genetics be considered when granting a mortgage, or determining its interest rate?

[. . .]

New technologies will be able to peer through walls, under clothing, beneath skin, perhaps even into the activity of the brain.