Monday, June 30, 2003
Renaissance potters were nanotechnologists: Tiny metal particles give 15th century Italian ceramics lustre.
Coloured glazes in pottery samples from the Umbrian town of Deruta exploit the reflective properties of minute metal grains to give them a rich lustre, Bruno Brunetti of the University of Perugia and colleagues find.
At its peak in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the finely painted ceramics of the Deruta pottery industry were in demand all over Europe.
Glazes are basically thin films of coloured glass. Metal salts give colour to a glassy matrix produced by fusing sand alkalis such as soda in the heat of a kiln. Coloured glazes - such as blue-glazed stone carvings from the Middle East - have been around since at least 4500 BC.
Friday, June 27, 2003
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More than 2,000 individuals with incomes of $200,000 or more paid zero in federal income taxes in the year 2000, according to a report released by the Internal Revenue Service on Thursday.
The report shows the percentage of tax filers with $200,000 or more in income that escaped all income tax liability was at its highest since 1994, but still remained a very small group. The report was in the IRS 'Statistics of Income' bulletin.
A separate IRS report showed the average income tax rate paid by the 400 tax filers with the highest incomes in 2000 was 22.29 percent, up from 22.23 percent in 1999 but below a recent peak of 29.35 percent in 1993.
The numbers may raise questions about the effectiveness of the so-called Alternative Minimum Tax, a method of calculating an individual's tax liability aimed at ensuring wealthy people pay at least some income taxes.
The AMT was created in 1969 in response to worries some of the rich were managing to completely avoid taxes by using tax shelters. Then-Treasury Secretary Joseph Barr told Congress that 155 individuals with incomes of more than $200,000 paid no income taxes in 1966.
In 2000, that number was 2,328, up from 1,605 in 1999. Looked at as a percentage of all tax filers with incomes of $200,000 or more, the group amounted to only 0.084 percent. That's the highest percentage since 1994, when it was 0.102 percent of the $200,000 earners.
Adjusted for inflation since 1976, the number of non-payers was smaller, at only 464, the IRS said.
Taxes can be offset by several factors, including credits for state and local income taxes or foreign taxes paid or extraordinary losses from personal businesses, experts said.
Analysts worry though that the AMT, which is not indexed for inflation, will start to affect middle-income families in coming years unless it is overhauled.
William Beach, a senior fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, said the AMT performs 'extraordinarily poorly.'
'It has now leached into the upper middle class,' he said. Unless it is reformed, it could touch about 30 million tax filers by 2012, he said."
Dell damned, slammed for exposing prisoners to toxic hazards
Dell damned, slammed for exposing prisoners to toxic hazards: "THE SILICON VALLEY Toxics Coalition published an update on how companies deal with toxic chemicals from PCs and damns the Dell Corporation for allegedly exposing federal prisoners to risk compared to practices by its big competitor HP.
In the report, the Coalition examined ways the two firms recycle obsolete computers and other hardware, using HP's partnership with Micro Metallics in California and Dell's partnership with the Federal Prison Industry, UNICOR.
The Coalition dubs UNICOR's Atwater facility 'fortress UNICOR', and said it gave it only limited access to investigators, refusing health and safety visitors to inspect its site until it was too late.
But HP's Micro Metallics facility was a paragon of cooperation, the Coalition said."
Multinationals can't hide behind First Amendment
Multinationals can't hide behind First Amendment: "THE SUPREME COURT ruled yesterday that Nike can't use the US First Amendment which gives individual the right to free speech, meaning an activist can continue a court case alleging the boot vendor uses sweatshops to make its products.
Nike had wanted the Supreme Court to say that the First Amendment covers corporate advertising. And press releases.
The foot firm had the backing of forty media giants and also the American Civil Liberties Union in its appeal.
One of the judges in the case, Justice JP Stevens, claimed that the speech Nike was seeking a ruling on was a blend of commercial speech and debate."
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Sunday, June 22, 2003
AMD's Opteron: Does it measure up?
AMD's Opteron: Does it measure up?
In a piece about Itanium performance, Itanium gets publicity and praise for only "one" benchmark result, which wasn't even a new benchmark record. Opteron has broken a heap of benchmark records, yet you'd be hard pressed to find a mainstream IT news story that has reported commensurably on that event. Why?
Saturday, June 21, 2003
Saturday, June 14, 2003
Thursday, June 12, 2003
Friday, June 06, 2003
Thursday, June 05, 2003
Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Tuesday, June 03, 2003
Introduction to the Scientific Method
Introduction to the Scientific Method
The scientific method is the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world.
Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, "Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view." In summary, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of bias or prejudice in the experimenter when testing an hypothesis or a theory.
• Key Players in the Plame Affair