Memristor

So what's in store for electronics?

There is a new technology on the horizon that should greatly change electronic devices, especially computers. It is an excellent case of theoretical physics meeting practical reality. In 1971 (not all that long ago), a physicist name Leon Chua theorized that a fourth primary electronic device should exist based on symmetry. The first three devices are known as the resister, capacitor, and inductor. They help control voltage, current, charge, and flux. This fourth device Chua named "Memristor" to stand for memory resistor. This device was hypothesized to store changes in current. Who would have expected that a fundamental electronic device would be discovered today, a couple hundred years after electricity became widely studied.

Fast forward 37 years. At HP labs, Stanley Williams and co-authors Dmitri Strukov, Gregory Snider and Duncan Stewart were able to formulate a physics-based model of a memristor and build nanoscale devices in their lab that demonstrate all of the necessary operating characteristics to prove that the memristor was real. They created the world's first memristor switch, capable of storing 1s and 0s for electronic computing. With this invention,

"Engineers could, for example, develop a new kind of computer memory that would supplement and eventually replace today's commonly used dynamic random access memory (D-RAM). Computers using conventional D-RAM lack the ability to retain information once they are turned off. When power is restored to a D-RAM-based computer, a slow, energy-consuming "boot-up" process is necessary to retrieve data stored on a magnetic disk required to run the system."

Besides the change in computer components, HP predicts:

"As for the human brain-like characteristics, memristor technology could one day lead to computer systems that can remember and associate patterns in a way similar to how people do.

"This could be used to substantially improve facial recognition technology or to provide more complex biometric recognition systems that could more effectively restrict access to personal information.

"These same pattern-matching capabilities could enable appliances that learn from experience and computers that can make decisions."

HP says that by 2012, the first memristor devices will be on the market.

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

For the past few months I've been reading the abridged version of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin Classics). Its part of my new interest in history that has fueled my purchase, but the book tends to drag on in parts. So I'm torn between periods of boredom and periods of extreme fascination. Last night, I found one of the periods of extreme fascination.

Gibbon details how barbarian law differs from Roman law. It follows the fall of the Western Empire (~500 AD). My takeway was that with Roman law, while far from perfect, still had strong elements of a rule by law and at least a nod towards justice, rather than a rule by muscle. The barbarian law that took effect after Roman jurisprudence left. The barbarians worshiped strength, bravery, and fighting skills. When it came to law, what mattered was not evidence of a wrongful act, but your character. So, to be acquitted of a charge, you needed to have people stand up and vouch for your character. Depending on the severity of the crime, the more or less people that needed to vouch for your character.

And even if you committed a wrongful act, you could compensate those wrongly hurt with money and be done with it...even murder. So basically, a priced was levied on everyone's head. If you had enough gold, you could kill whomever you wanted, as long as you paid in gold.

In this one chapter, I found the evidence of the connections between several parts of Rand's politics as she described in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. The relationship between rule of muscle and mob rule. The relationship between rule by force and rule by faith. The relationship (or lack thereof) between rule of force and justice. The relationship between morality and politics. And why rule of force is morally evil...hence the description of this period as the "Dark Ages".

As others have said more eloquently then me, in order to understand politics today, you should study history. Here indeed is a great example.

Positive Discipline

Rational Jenn has a couple of really excellent articles about the Positive Discipline approach to parenting (here and here). She's convinced me to take a closer look.

Face it, its facebook time

After several years of talking to students about Facebook, I've finally joined. Its an experiment of sorts to see what values can be gained from the tool. Honestly, I've found myself looking at the website more often than I expected. Its very well designed and captures the interactions between friends in an intuitive manner. I understand why its so popular.

What really prompted me to join was when an old friend of Mat, whom I hadn't talked too in years, became friends with my wife through facebook in order to keep in touch with me. It made me realize the value of getting in touch with old friends. I have since connected with dozens of friends I hadn't heard from in years.

I have been a member of LinkedIn.com for a number of years, another social network, but focusing on professional contacts. I've made a conscious decision to seperate these two networks for the most part. For Linkedin, I include people I've worked with and many of my former and current students so I can help them with finding jobs and/or contacts for coming to my class to talk or potential research opportunities. In my facebook friends, I never connect to students and only occasionally with former business associates.

Both are great tools for keeping in touch with friends, associates, and acquaintances.