Foresight Board Welcomes Lawrence Lessig, Amory Lovins, Christopher Hook:  "The new advisors will join a stellar group including Stewart Brand, Global Business Network; Jamie Dinkelacker, Ph.D., Advisor to NanoBusiness Alliance; Doug Engelbart, Ph.D., Bootstrap Institute; John Gilmore, Electronic Frontier Foundation; Prof. Arthur Kantrowitz, Dartmouth College; Ray Kurzweil, Kurzweil Technologies; Prof. Marvin Minksy, MIT; and Peter Schwartz, Global Business Network."
  6:32:27 PM    

USB phone sets: Interesting collection of handsets and desksets for pc-based phones, $50-90.  4:29:15 PM    

UC Berkeley Nano-Engineering:  Arun Majumdar has a group investigating nano materials for conversion of waste heat to electricity:  a Nano Thermal program, and Superlattices in particular.  11:37:56 AM    

Engineers Work on 'Smart' Bridges, Roads: "Though still unfinished, the Star City bridge is already loaded with 770 finely tuned sensors, 28 data-collection boxes and a central unit called the brain. Together, they make up what Shoukry says is the smartest bridge in the world.  "Smart" bridges and roads that communicate with their makers through built-in sensors are becoming more common as engineers worldwide try to determine whether long-held construction assumptions are correct or whether there are better ways to build.  ..

West Virginia's demonstration projects have yielded results. On the Corridor H project, the state learned that concrete slabs 20 feet long are prone to crack, while those 15 feet are not. The state of Pennsylvania, which had problems with cracks on Interstate 81, is changing its slab length based on those results, Roush says. "

  12:58:07 AM