The camera was invented in the lab of Alyosha Molnar, Cornell assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and developed by a group led by Patrick Gill, a postdoctoral associate. Their working prototype, detailed online in the journal Optics Letters (July 6, 2011), is 100th of a millimeter thick, and one-half millimeter on each side. The camera resolves images about 20 pixels across -- not portrait studio quality, but enough to shed light on previously hard-to-see things.

"It's not going to be a camera with which people take family portraits, but there are a lot of applications out there that require just a little bit of dim vision," Gill said.

In fact, Gill, whose other research interests involve making sense of how the brain's neurons fire under certain stimuli, began this invention as a side project related to work on developing lens-less implantable systems for imaging brain activity. This type of imaging system could be useful as part of an implantable probe for imaging neurons that have been modified to glow when they are active.

Gill's camera is just a flat piece of doped silicon, which looks something like a tiny CD, with no parts that require off-chip manufacturing. As a result, it costs just a few cents to make and is incredibly small and light, as opposed to conventional small cameras on chips that cost a dollar or more and require bulky focusing optics.

The scientists call their camera a Planar Fourier Capture Array (PFCA) because it uses the principles of the Fourier transform, which is a mathematical tool that allows multiple ways of capturing the same information. Each pixel in the PFCA reports one component of the Fourier transform of the image being detected by being sensitive to a unique blend of incident angles.

While Fourier components themselves are sometimes directly useful, a bit of computation can also transform Fourier components into an image.

The scientists will continue working to improve the camera's resolution and efficiency, but they think their concept can lead to a myriad of applications. It could be a component in any cheap electronic system -- in devices that, for example, detect the angle of the sun or a micro-robot that requires a simple visual system to navigate.

Funding for this work was provided by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Institutes of Health.

Source: GlobalSpec

A lawsuit was filed on November 23rd 2011 US time, that could end the secret government that has ruled Western civilization for at least the past 300 years. The lawsuit claims that close to $1 trillion was stolen by, among others, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and the UN, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and the Italian government, Giancarlo Bruno and the Davos World Economic forum and others believed to include many of the owners of the US Federal Reserve Board. The lawsuit was filed in New York by Neil Keenan, acting as representative of the Dragon family, a reclusive group of wealthy Asian families. This filing is the result of extensive evidence gathering by international police and law-enforcement agencies including Interpol, the CIA, the Japanese Security Police, Eastern European secret services and has the backing of the Pentagon as well as the armed forces of Russia and China.

Benjamin Fulford interviews David Rockefeller about illuminati, asian opposition.

On November 13, 2007 Fulford received a tip that David Rockefeller was on his turf, and without hesitation Fulford arranged to meet with him to ask some questions. It is not odd for a reporter who's career has been filled with Financial News jobs, to sit down with the former head of Chase Bank, Except when its Benjamin Fulford and David Rockefeller. Earlier this year Benjamin Fulford interviewed Heizo Takenaka, a former finance minister in Japan and confronted him about "having sold the Japanese financial system over to the Rockefellers and Rothschilds." According to Fulford this interview made a lot of people angry. He says a professional assassin showed up and told him to accept a job of great importance or be killed. The following day Fulford claims to have been contacted by a powerful Asian Secret Society with more than 6 million members that have targeted the Illuminati. They asked Fulford to represent them, negotiate for them, and offered him protection in return. Benjamin Fulford was Asia-Pacific Bureau Chief for Forbes Magazine for seven years, until 2005 when he quit because of the "extensive corporate censorship and mingling of advertising and editorial at the magazine. 

The ultimate defendants in this legal action are believed to be the same cabal behind the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy and many other major international crimes.

This particular lawsuit was triggered by the illegal detainment of two Japanese citizens,  Akihiko Yamaguchi and Mitsuyoshi Watanabe, as well as the seizure of $134.5 billion in bonds they were holding in Italy on June 3, 2009. After the bonds were stolen, self-described 33rd degree Freemason Leo Zagami contacted this writer and said the Montecarlo P2 masonic lodge could cash the bonds with the help of Vatican banker Daniel Dal Bosco. This writer forwarded the information, via a member of the UK Royal family, to the dragon family who entrusted a further $1 trillion worth of similar bonds to the plaintiff Neil Keenan. Keenan then, after much negotiation, entrusted the bonds to Dal Bosco.

Dal Bosco subsequently absconded with the bonds and was followed 24-hours a day by various intelligence service agents to see what he would do with them. The Dal Bosco trail led to the Davos World forum, the UN, the Italian government and the Vatican, among other places. Following this, Keenan was approached by a who’s who of powerful figures including top Vatican officials, Wall Street bankers, European nobles and former US presidents, most offering him astronomical bribes to go away. He was also poisoned with ricin and nearly killed.

According to Keenan “The roots of this case go back to between 1927 and 1938, when, under arrangements made between T.V. Soong (Finance Minister of China) and Henry Morgethau, Secretary of the Treasury, The United States Government purchased some 50 million ounces of silver and leased vast amounts of gold from the Nationalist Chinese Government, known as Kuomintang. For all the treasure handed in, certificates were given to those who surrendered their precious metals.”

Many of the bonds seized by Dal Bosco are backed with the Chinese gold taken by the Federal Reserve Board during those years and never returned to its legal owners.

Other bonds seized were Kennedy bonds. These bonds were backed by gold held in trust for the people of the planet and were supposed to be used to finance the economic development of the world. Instead they have mostly been stolen and misused by members of the cabal that has seized control of the Western financial system on behalf of private interests.

The original signatory to the Kennedy bonds was former Indonesian President Soekarno. Soekarno’s heir Dr. Seno Edy Soekanto has given Keenan power of attorney to return to their rightful owners the Kennedy bonds and other property allocated to the people of the world via something known as the global collateral accounts.

The lawsuit is only the first salvo in a legal battle to restore control of the global financial system to the people and governments of the world as well as the rightful owners of historical assets that have been seized by members of the banking cartel.

The lawsuit has been filed as Civil Action #8500 at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on November 23, 2011.

Background information on the problems with the global financial system

By Neil Keenan and Keith Scott.

The entire cause of the problem.

The United States is a private corporation owned by the British Crown (Rothchilds), the Bank of England (Rothchilds) and the Vatican (Rothchilds again). It was previously called the Virginia Company until 3/9/33 when it was dissolved by Roosevelt under the Emergency Banking Act. On 5/5/33 Congress elected to dissolve the Gold Standard and Sovereign Authority of the U.S. and all of its official capacities including government offices, departments and officers. The U.S. is a corporation, not a nation. The Federal Reserve is neither Federal, nor a Reserve. It is a private counterfeiting organization run by Jewish bankers who lend the money they print out of thin air at interest while we keep on paying these criminals to fleece the People.

That technology of theft and deception that has been exported from the United States through their promotion of this fraud as the paradigm of global finance is an obscenity that has set the seeds of its own destruction.

This has been compounded by the refusal of ordinary people to realize, know and understand that it is the duplicity of Governments and the deceit and endless greed of bankers that combined to simply fleece them like the apathetic sheep they are. Apathy and ignorance of the truth, creates belief in the lie. The truth is self-evident, but most people choose to neither hear it nor understand it. The debts of the Federal Reserve are the debts of a private corporation that is robbing the people of the United States.

The United States Dollar is a Federal Reserve Note and the obligations against the currency are the obligations of the Federal Reserve, not the people of the United States.

Understanding the History

1.  Between 1927 and 1938, under arrangements made between T.V.Soong (Finance Minister of China) and Henry Morgethau, Secretary of the Treasury, The United States Government purchased some 50 million ounces of silver and leased vast amounts of gold from the Nationalist Chinese Government, known as Kuomintang. During this period China was partly occupied by Japanese troops and there was the fear of China being overrun by the Japanese.

2.  For all the treasure handed in, certificates were given to those who surrendered their precious metals. The surrendered precious metals and gemstones were sent to the United States under a lease agreement made between T.V. Soong and Henry Morgenthau. The Certificates became the underlying funds of the Kuomintang and were good and accepted securities.

3. In 1934 a new Securities Act was promulgated in the United States, together with the Gold Act, which required all bullion gold and gold coin to be surrendered to the Federal Reserve, a private corporation chartered to operate as the Central Bank of the United States and to be the issuer of the currency known as the United States Dollar.

4.  Domestically owned gold was purchased. Foreign Gold held by the Treasury was also surrendered to the Federal Reserve, so, was leased to the Federal Reserve. This began the series 1934 Notes issued by the Federal Reserve. These have never been redeemed and the interest cost was met by further issuances of the 1934 series FRN’s.

5. These 1934 FRN’s guarantee the lease payments and to allow the Chinese Government to continue financially. These came under the control of the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Government in China from whom the Gold had been received.  Many were left in China when the Kuomintang had to flee to Taiwan. The Gold had been nationalized by the Kuomintang who moved much of the FRN’s (but not all) to Taiwan  which was built on these notes. These Notes were the underlying wealth of Taiwan and they were good for value as they were backed by gold.

6. During the war in China, most owners of the depository notes issued by Chinese Banks were killed by the Japanese, others later being killed by both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists, thus the Gold became property of the Nation, especially so, the Kuomintang. In Europe, Jews who had owned wealth were stripped of that wealth through various means and were then eliminated. The gold was taken either by stealth or by force, that is a reality of history.

7. The Kuomintang appointed guardians of this Gold and the securities issued by the United States; they are euphemistically known as the Dragon Family.  The Dragon Family is in fact an organization that operates between old families within China and Taiwan, and as such is above the political divide of the two independent Chinese Governments. Chinese are remarkable in this regard, that old family ties and functions supercede political arrangements which, though they might last for generations, are regarded as inconsequential over the passage of time to most Chinese. Attached to this is the wealth of several nations. The United States in support of the Kuomintang and resistance groups actually printed more of these FRN notes inside China itself. These operations were run by the CIA to buy loyalty of various factions in the fight against the communists, eventually being driven out into Burma around 1960. Largely due to the additional printing of these notes, the additional Notes were given in lieu of interest, but directed to specific persons and parties.

8  At the end of the World War II, with Communist and Kuomintang factions at war in China, the International Community and the Chinese assented to the Gold being placed under the overt control of Indonesian President Soekarno.  Soekarno then, on August 17, 1945, came to be known as M1 under United Nations Approval No. MISA 81704  “Operation Heavy Freedom. This was because much of the world’s gold had been delivered into Indonesia and the Philippines. Canada, Australia, Great Britain, India and other British Colonies sent their gold to the so called “impregnable Singapore”  The Japanese, as per the arrangements agreed to by Hirohito in the 1921 Pact Between Nations made in London, delivered much of this gold to Indonesia (Then a Dutch Colony) and to Philippines (Then a US Colony) into secret bunkers that had been mostly constructed by the Japanese between 1924 and 1945. This is why the Allied troops in Malaya had no air cover or sufficient supplies to that would have allowed them to resist the Japanese. Singapore had to fall so most of the global wealth could be “lost” into a secret system that made the gold standard redundant and fiat currencies a reality.

This gold was documented into accounts through the Swiss Commercial Bank Union Bank of Switzerland, placed under protection of the Swiss Attorney General, registered through the Swiss National Bank into the Bank for International Settlements International Collateral Combined accounts and then from within the BIS, blocked to form the Institutional Parent Registration Accounts of the Federal Reserve System.

Later President Marcos of the Philippines was appointed and held the position of M1 until 1987 and then the position was transferred to Dr. Ray C. Dam, in October of 1987, under Legal Decadency to Heir RCD1087 Far East Entire with formal Power of Attorney and Assignment of Indonesian Assets signed by Sarinah Soetiwi  (holder of the assets on behalf of the Nation of Indonesia as assigned by President Soekarno) in 1992, Dam’s authority later promulgated January 20, 1995. Dam proved to be impossible for the entire system to work with, (either because he refused to allow those who placed him in authority to steal, or because of his personal arrogance…. Difficult to know which is correct) and his authority over the Institutional parent registration Accounts set aside and the system reverted to the three Nations who had controlled these accounts since World war II, United States, Great Britain and France, who systematically and illegally subverted the established system since 1996.

9.  From this we can see that there are two functional operations. One was ownership and Depository control by the owners of the Gold and the other a control system set in place to administer and control the Collateral Combined Accounts as an independent Arbiter.  Ownership rights are held by the signatory to the Depository Accounts in Commercial Banks and Control Rights have been held by M1.

10. So it was, that the entire world supply of bullion and coinage gold was withdrawn and fiat currencies became the order of the day. However, underneath the notes and money issued by the Federal Reserve was the underlying wealth within a centralized system that Nations was intended to be used equitably, but Bankers determined they would use to raid national economies.

11.  In 1963, President John F. Kennedy entered into an Agreement with President Soekarno to provide the funds to allow the United States Treasury to print its own currency, thus subverting the “right” to print the currency held by the Federal Reserve. The Agreement would have transferred some 59,000 tons of gold to underpin this currency. The problem with this was that the US domestic currency would have then been backed by gold which would have been a violation of international agreements meant to stabilize currencies.  11 days after signing this agreement, President Kennedy was assassinated.  President Johnson the suspended EO11110 as issued by Kennedy and transferred the bullion to the Federal Reserve. The Green Hilton Agreement was not implemented until 1968 when Soekarno fell from office and when Global Trade made it imperative that the world have a Global Currency. As the Gold had been transferred to the US Treasury in 1968, a series of Bonds known as Kennedy Bonds were issued in order to honor the terms of the Green Hilton Agreement made between Kennedy and Soekarno, the 1968 terms of the gold delivery to the United States being different than made in 1934.  When after 30 years, interest had not been paid as promised, a reissue of the bonds in an increased number were issued as commemorative notes and were accepted by the owners of the Gold, the Dragon Family.

12. From copies of Bank documents received by Neil Keenan, within the Green Hilton Memorial Agreement, the funds the amounts of gold and platinum are specified. These amounts of gold are certificated and the certificates and ledger copies with full and exact identification and recognition codes are available. These certificates are further proven by the bank reports, copies of which are now held by Neil Keenan. The truth of these instruments can be vigorously defended through documentation in our hands and further through interrogation of the Black Screens where the off ledger collateral is held, together with an interrogation of the grey and blue screens where we will find enormous fraud from the illegal use of these assets.

13. In the few documents we present with this complaint we can see that the assets have been deposited, the counter-assets created and presented to the depositors, the depositors have been cheated for over 70 years through the intentional and fraudulent failure of the Obligor to honor the Agreements.

14. In recent weeks we have come into possession of the books and records of the late President Soekarno, and all the codes and ledgers of the Global Accounts. The size of these accounts can be seen by reviewing the Collective Agreement between the Garuda Memorial Hilton Indonesia and the Green Memorial Hilton Geneva, established, structured and made operational between 1961 and final signature in 1972. Under this Agreement the assets of the international collateral combined were established and brought forward, then, within a short period of time misused to change the operating systems of banks.

15. Reviewing these books, we can now see that Banks set aside the notion of operating under the Charters they hold as banks, instead of being Banks they became like very poor casino operators and traders, selling what they do not own. The records in our possession, signed and registered by the receiving and managing commercial bank, show the underlying funds in numbers and amounts that stagger the imagination. The Green Hilton and Garuda Memorial Agreements demonstrate clearly the value of the global account system.

a)  Gold and Platinum Deposits ran into millions of tons.

b)  1934 series Federal Reserve System Bonds, Notes issued in 1928 , Kennedy Bonds ran into Quadrillions of US Dollars, Dragon Bonds are all recorded and acknowledged within the Green Hilton and Memorial Hilton Collective Agreements. Both Assets in the form of Bullion surrendered to the Global Accounts through the United States Government and then entrusted to a private corporation, the Federal Reserve System.

Source: http://benjaminfulford.typepad.com

Hybrid solar collectors combine photovoltaic solar cells that convert sunlight into electricity with a solar heater that provides warm water.

Roest built a prototype and also built an actual solar simulator that he used to test the efficiency of his prototype. There turned out to be considerable commercial interest in this solar simulator. This motivated Roest and a partner to start the TU Delft spin-off company Eternal Sun, so they could put the solar simulator on the market. Eternal Sun recently came out on top at the European finals of the BE.Project, a competition for student-entrepreneurs.

Solar collector

A hybrid solar collector is a combination of a photovoltaic solar panel and a thermal solar collector. The residual heat from the PV solar panel is used to heat water. The water flows through a system of pipes on a copper sheet. A great deal of heat is needed to heat the water in the pipes. That is why the solar collector has been fitted with a transparent cover that helps to retain the heat. Unfortunately, the material used in the PV solar cell degrades quickly under temperatures of around 120 degrees. As a result, its efficiency is reduced by around 20 per cent and it has a lifespan of between five and ten years.

For his graduation research as part of a Master's degree in Sustainable Energy Technology, Stefan Roest developed a new type of hybrid solar collector with increased electrical efficiency and a longer lifespan. For a start, Roest's solar collector does not require a transparent cover. The water flows through a large number of small aluminium channels directly under the solar panel instead of through copper tubing and a copper sheet. Consequently, less heat is required to heat the water sufficiently for household use. Roest also chose not to use a crystalline silicon PV solar panel, opting for a thin film solar panel instead. It is easier to draw heat from this type of solar cell. Getting rid of the cover meant that the heat of the solar panel could be limited to around 80 degrees.

An additional benefit of thin film solar panels is that these perform relatively well at high temperatures. At a temperature of 80 degrees, an efficiency loss of around 10 per cent occurs, instead of the 20 per cent in the case of crystalline silicon solar panels. Roest's hybrid solar collector has an estimated lifespan of 15 to 20 years.

Roest developed the new solar collector under the supervision of the professor of Photovoltaic Materials and Devices, Miro Zeman, who comments: "This innovative design could play an important role in the development of affordable and efficient hybrid systems for household use."

Solar simulator

Roest developed a special solar simulator to measure the efficiency of his prototype. Almost immediately, there was commercial interest in this simulator and the relevant technology was quickly patented by TU Delft. Roest and his partner Chokri Mousaoui have since introduced the simulator onto the market via their TU Delft spin-off company Eternal Sun. Eternal Sun recently came out on top in the European finals of the BE.Project competition for students from top universities with an innovative business case, which was organised by the technology consulting company BearingPoint. The Eternal Sun team has now grown to include six students and recent graduates, and five solar simulators have already been sold since January.

Roest's affinity with solar energy goes back quite a while. In 2007, he was the team leader of the Nuon Solar Team that won the World Solar Challenge in Australia with the solar car Nuna4.

Source: ScienceDaily

The new technique will be immediately useful in further stem cell studies, and when perfected, could be used in stem cell therapies for a wide variety of conditions including cancers and immune ailments.

"There are further improvements that we need to make, but this takes us a significant step closer to the ultimate goal, which is to be able to take ordinary cells from a patient, induce them to become stem cells, and then use those stem cells to rebuild lost or diseased tissues, for example the patient's bone marrow," says Inder M. Verma, PhD, Irwin and Joan Jacobs Chair in Exemplary Life Science and American Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Biology at the Salk Institute Laboratory of Genetics. Verma is senior author of the report, which is published in the July edition of the journal Stem Cells.

Stem cell researchers have been racing towards this goal since 2006, when techniques for turning ordinary skin cells into induced pluripotential stem cells (iPSCs) were first reported. In principle, iPSCs mimic the embryonic stem cells (ESCs) from which organisms develop. Researchers now want to find the precise mixes and sequences of chemical compounds needed to coax iPSCs to mature into the tissue-specific stem cells of their choice. The latter are self-renewing, and can be transplanted into the body to produce the 'progenitor' cells that multiply locally and produce mature tissue cells.

However, researchers don't know yet how to induce iPSCs to become tissue-specific stem cells or mature tissue cells with high efficiency. "We've been producing these cells in quantities that are too low to enable them to be studied easily, much less used for therapies," says Aaron Parker, PhD, a former graduate student and now a postdoctoral researcher in Verma's lab. Parker is a co-lead-author of the paper, with Niels-Bjarne Woods, PhD, who was a postdoctoral researcher in the Verma lab at the outset of the project, and is now an assistant professor at Lund University in Sweden.

Like many other stem cell research laboratories, the Verma lab has been trying to find more efficient ways to turn iPSCs into blood-forming 'hematopoietic' stem cells (HSCs). These may be more valuable medically than any other tissue-specific stem cell, because they can supply not only oxygen-carrying red blood cells but also all the white blood cells of the immune system. "There would be an almost unlimited number of usages for true HSCs," says Verma.

For the present study, the research team sought to do a better job of mimicking the changing conditions that naturally direct ESCs to become HSCs in the womb. "We took seven lines of human ESCs and iPSCs, and experimented with different combinations and sequences of growth factors and other chemical compounds that are known to be present as ESCs move to the HSC state in a developing human," says Parker.

Applying cocktails of these factors, Parker and Woods and their colleagues induced the iPSCs and ESCs to form colonies of cells that bore the distinctive molecular markers of blood cells. With their best such cocktail they were able to detect blood-specific markers on 84% of their cells after three weeks. "That's a big jump in efficiency from what we saw in the field just a few years ago," says Parker.

The technique still has room for improvement. The researchers detected progenitor cells and mature cells from only one category or lineage: myeloid cells, which include red blood cells and primitive immune cells such as macrophages. "We didn't see any cells from the lymphoid lineage, meaning T-cells and B-cells," Parker says.

Another drawback was that the blood cell population they produced from ESCs and iPSCs contained short-lived progenitors and mature blood cells but no indefinitely renewing, transplantable HSCs. Their cocktail, they believed, either pushed the cells past the HSC state to the progenitor state too quickly, or made the maturing cells skip the HSC state entirely.

From this and other labs' results, the team hypothesized the existence of an intermediate, pre-hematopoietic type of stem cell, produced by ESCs and iPSCs and in turn producing HSCs. "We know that HSCs appear in a particular region of mammals during embryonic development, and our idea is that these pre-hematopoietic stem cells are there and are somehow made to mature into HSCs," says Parker. "So our lab is now going to focus on finding the precise maturation signals provided by that embryonic region to produce these true, transplantable HSCs."

Once that is done, researchers will need to make a number of further refinements to improve the safety of HSCs intended for human patients. "But we're now tantalizingly close to our ultimate goal," says Verma.

The other authors who contributed to the work were Roksana Moraghebi, of Lund University's Stem Cell Center; Margaret K. Lutz, Amy L. Firth, Kristen J. Brennand, W. Travis Berggren and Fred H. Gage of the Salk Institute Laboratory for Genetics; Juan Carlos Izpisúa Belmonte of the Salk Institute Gene Expression Laboratory; and Angel Raya of the Center of Regenerative Medicine in Barcelona, Spain.

Source: ScienceDaily

"We've created a memory device with the physical properties of Jell-O," says Dr. Michael Dickey, an assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research.

Conventional electronics are typically made of rigid, brittle materials and don't function well in a wet environment. "Our memory device is soft and pliable, and functions extremely well in wet environments -- similar to the human brain," Dickey says.

Prototypes of the device have not yet been optimized to hold significant amounts of memory, but work well in environments that would be hostile to traditional electronics. The devices are made using a liquid alloy of gallium and indium metals set into water-based gels, similar to gels used in biological research.

The device's ability to function in wet environments, and the biocompatibility of the gels, mean that this technology holds promise for interfacing electronics with biological systems -- such as cells, enzymes or tissue. "These properties may be used for biological sensors or for medical monitoring," Dickey says.

The device functions much like so-called "memristors," which are vaunted as a possible next-generation memory technology. The individual components of the "mushy" memory device have two states: one that conducts electricity and one that does not. These two states can be used to represent the 1s and 0s used in binary language. Most conventional electronics use electrons to create these 1s and 0s in computer chips. The mushy memory device uses charged molecules called ions to do the same thing.

In each of the memory device's circuits, the metal alloy is the circuit's electrode and sits on either side of a conductive piece of gel. When the alloy electrode is exposed to a positive charge it creates an oxidized skin that makes it resistive to electricity. We'll call that the 0. When the electrode is exposed to a negative charge, the oxidized skin disappears, and it becomes conducive to electricity. We'll call that the 1.

Normally, whenever a negative charge is applied to one side of the electrode, the positive charge would move to the other side and create another oxidized skin -- meaning the electrode would always be resistive. To solve that problem, the researchers "doped" one side of the gel slab with a polymer that prevents the formation of a stable oxidized skin. That way one electrode is always conducive -- giving the device the 1s and 0s it needs for electronic memory.

The paper was published online July 4 by Advanced Materials. The paper was co-authored by NC State Ph.D. students Hyung-Jun Koo and Ju-Hee So, and NC State INVISTA Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Orlin Velev. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

NC State's Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering is part of the university's College of Engineering.

Source: Science Daily

KUALA LUMPUR, 22 November 2011 - The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal (Tribunal) entered its fourth and final day of hearing war crimes charge of Crimes against Peace against George W Bush (former U.S. President) and Anthony L Blair (former British Prime Minister) in Kuala Lumpur. For the first time a war crime charge has been heard against these two former heads of state in compliance with due legal process, wherein complaints from war victims had been received, duly investigated and formal charges instituted by the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission (Commission).
 
The Tribunal had decided the previous day that a prima facie case had been made out against both the accused. The Defence team presented their case and submission defending the accused. Some of the points submitted and argued are stated in the following paragraphs.

The Defence adopted their prior submissions and proceeded to raise additional grounds, relying additionally on the memoirs of the first and second accused. The Defence highlighted that as an amicus curiae, his function is to assist the Tribunal by raising points of law that are in doubt and to organise information or raise awareness of some aspect of the case that the Tribunal otherwise may miss.
 
No one knows what it is like to have the weight of the nation on his shoulders except a head of state. Both the accused, as former heads of state, took their nations to war. The question now is whether their actions amounted to the offence of Crimes against Peace. Did they ‘plan, prepared and invaded Iraq on 19 March 2003 in violation of the UN Charter’?
 
9/11 changed the world and cast it into a new atmosphere of fear. The world would be a different place. The Prosecution objected to the Defence attempts to show a video recording of the 9/11 attack, as there is no factual basis for the association of 9/11 with Iraq. The fact that the war occurred had been admitted. The war has taken its toll. The question is, was a crime committed by the accused. The Tribunal ruled that it has taken judicial notice (not having to tender evidence to established a fact) of the 9/11 attack and there was no need for the showing of the video.
 
The Defence submitted, that the first accused in his memoirs, on the issue of the absence of WMD, the accusation that ‘Bush lied, and people died’, would be illogical because he would not lead his nation to war on a lie which would be easily discernable after the war. 
 
The second accused in his memoir said that he understood the need for the 2nd UN resolution for political legitimacy but knew the difficulty in getting one due to the politics within the UN Security Council permanent members. And also that there was no UN resolution for the action in Kosovo. While the first accused was of the view that Saddam had not adhered to numerous UN Security Council resolutions.
 
There was a moral ground that many critics of the war do not appreciate. Liberating the people of Iraq from Saddam seems to be lost on the critics. The Defence also referred that the first accused had said that Saddam was a threat. Saddam had invaded two neighbours, Iran in the 1980s and Kuwait in the 1990s. He had killed his own people. Had used chemical weapons. Had links with terrorists. And Saddam was developing WMD. And after 9/11, Saddam was a threat that could no longer be ignored.
 
Some have seen the brutality of war while many are fortunate to have experienced peace. In any event the Defence urged the Tribunal to evaluate the evidence and return a verdict of non-guilty.
 
Prosecution in their reply stated that everyone has a right to lead unmolested lives governed by law. And in the case before the Tribunal that law is international law. We have to adhere to treaties and conventions that govern international relations. From the documents tendered the first accused had conducted himself in manner that showed that he had decided to invade Iraq long before 2003. And this is also evident from his memoir, which amounts to an admission.
 
In a criminal trial such as this, there are two elements that need to be proven. The actus rea (the act), which was the war, which is an accepted fact. The mens rea (intention) is shown clearly from the planning and preparation as early as November 2001 when he had asked his Secretary of Defence to draw up plans for the invasion of Iraq.  And that in September 2002, the Defence Secretary had informed the first accused, who was the commander in chief that it would take six months to mobilise for invasion. On 4 November 2002, the UN resolution 1441 was passed and the invasion was launched on 19 March 2003. On 17 March 2003 the first accused stated “…Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict, commenced at a time of our choosing”. And on 19 March, the ‘shock and awe’ campaign called Operation Iraqi Freedom was launched.
 
The same is true of the second accused who had attacked Iraq. And that he had planned and prepared to invade since 1998. The reason is to bring freedom to the Iraqi people from Saddam through the use of military action.
 
There are 40 UN Security Council Resolutions against Israel but no action is taken. But Saddam had not adhered to 16 resolutions and Iraq is invaded. This is gangsterism.
 
This is a historic moment for the Tribunal to hear the distance drums of war rumbling even today due to the actions of the first and second accused. War criminals have to be dealt with, convict Bush and Blair as charged. A guilty verdict will serve as a notice to the world that war criminals may run but can never ultimately hide from truth and justice.

 
The Verdict

The Tribunal deliberated over the case and decided unanimously that the first accused George W Bush and second accused Anthony L Blair have been found guilty of the Crimes against Peace.

The second accused at the material time as heads of state launched an invasion on Iraq on 19 March 2003. The charge was duly served in accordance with the Charter of the Commission. The accused did not appear and an amicus curiae was appointed.
 
The evidence showed that as far back as 15 September 2001 the accused had planned to invade Iraq. Documents showed that this plan was conveyed by the first accused to the second accused. The accused had attempted to seek he UN approval for invasion. On 2 November 2002, UN Security Council Resolution 1441 did not authorise the use of force against Iraq.   Weapons investigators had confirmed that there were no WMD. It was also established that the Iraq had no WMD. Iraq was not posing any threat to any nation at the relevant time that was immediate that would have justified any form of pre-emptive strike.
 
Humanitarian intervention was not a basis for the invasion. The UN Security Council must authorise any use of force. An individual state cannot replace the UN in deciding the use of force. The 9/11 attack did not show any connection with Iraq but instead the US had used this as a pretext to invade Iraq. Invasion to effect regime change has no legal basis under international law.
 
The Evidence showed that the drums of wars were being beaten long before the invasion. The accused in their own memoirs have admitted their own intention to invade Iraq regardless of international law. Unlawful use of force threatens the world to return to a state of lawlessness. The acts of the accused were unlawful. 
 
The charge is proven beyond reasonable doubt. The accused are found guilty. The Tribunal orders that the names of the 2 convicted criminals be included in the war register of the KL War Crimes Commission. And the findings of this Tribunal be publicised to all nations who are signatories of the Rome Statue.
 
Despite all the facts both the accused had nevertheless invaded Iraq. A detailed written judgment will be published at a later date.
 
The trial was held in an open court from November 19-22, 2011 at the premises of the Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW) at 88, Jalan Perdana, Kuala Lumpur.

Further Information
 
For further information, please contact:
 
Dato’ Dr Yaacob Merican
Secretary General of the KLWCC Secretariat
Tel: +6012-227 8680
 
Ms Malkeet Kaur
Media Representative of KLWCC
malkeet@dbook.com.my
Tel: +6012-3737 886
 
The Tribunal Members

Dato’ Abdul Kadir Sulaiman
Dato' Zakaria Yatim (Recused)
Tunku Sofiah Jewa
Prof Salleh Buang
Mr Alfred Lambremont Webre
Prof Emeritus Datuk Dr Shad Saleem Faruqi
Prof Niloufer Bhagwat (Recused)

The Prosecution

Prof Gurdial S Nijar
Prof Francis Boyle 
Mr Avtaran Singh
 
Amicus Curiae (appointed Defence team)

Mr Jason Kay
And 3 other counsels.
 
The Charge

Crimes Against Peace filed against George W Bush (former President of the U.S.) and Anthony L Blair (former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) wherein they are charged as follows:

The Accused persons had committed Crimes against Peace, in that the Accused persons planned, prepared and invaded the sovereign state of Iraq on 19 March 2003 in violation of the United Nations Charter and international law.

The Tribunal will adjudicate and evaluate the evidence presented on facts and law as in any court of law. The judges of the Tribunal must be satisfied that the charge is proven beyond reasonable doubt and deliver a reasoned judgement. The verdict and the names of the persons found guilty will be entered in the Commission’s Register of War Criminals and publicised worldwide.
 
“WHY is it that the murder of one man is considered a criminal act whereas the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent people committed in wars, is not considered so?" -- Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia

Source: http://www.mathaba.net/support

The five panel tribunal unanimously decided that Bush and Blair committed genocide and crimes against peace and humanity when they invaded Iraq in 2003 in blatant violation of international law.

The judges ruled that war against Iraq by both the former heads of states was a flagrant abuse of law, act of aggression which amounted to a mass murder of the Iraqi people.

In their verdict, the judges said that the United States, under the leadership of Bush, forged documents to claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

They further said the findings of the tribunal be made available to members of the Rome Statute and the names of Bush and Blair be entered into a war crimes register.

Both Bush and Blair repeatedly said the so-called war against terror was targeted at terrorists.

Lawyers and human rights activists present here say the verdict by the tribunal is a landmark decision. And the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Foundation said it would lobby the International Criminal Court to charge former US president George Bush and Former British prime minister Tony Blair for war crimes.

Source: presstv.ir - Author: Mahi Ramakrishnan, Press TV, Kuala Lumpur

With power plants usually located far from where the electricity they produce will actually be consumed, this can add up to a lot of wasted power. A weave of metallic nanotubes known as armchair quantum wire (AQW) is seen as an ideal solution as it can carry electricity over long distances with negligible loss, but manufacturing the massive amounts of metallic single walled carbon nanotubes required for the development of this "miracle cable" has proven difficult. Now researchers have made a pivotal breakthrough that could make the development of such a cable possible.

Armchair quantum wire gets its name from the metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCN) of which it is made. These SWCNs are dubbed armchairs due to their unique shape, and while they are great at carrying current, they can't yet be made on their own. They are currently grown in batches with other kinds of nanotubes and have to be separated out - not an easy task given that a human hair is 50,000 times larger than a single nanotube.

Rice University chemist Andrew R. Barron, graduate student Alvin Orbaek and undergraduate student Andrew Barrons, are carrying on work instigated by the late Rice professor, nanotechnology pioneer and Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, whose dream was of an energy efficient grid that he predicted would provide solutions to many of the world's energy problems.

Working towards this ultimate goal, the team has found a way to take small batches of individual nanotubes and make them dramatically longer. They say that ideally, long armchair nanotubes could be cut, re-seeded with catalyst and re-grown indefinitely, potentially making the development of a cable that will make an efficient electric grid of the future possible.

The technique involves chemically attaching an iron/cobalt catalyst to the ends of nanotubes and then fine-tuning the temperature and environment in which amplification could occur. Barron says refining the process has taken years but the researchers' efforts are now paying off with up to 90 percent of the nanotubes in a batch now able to be amplified to significant lengths. They say that, although the latest experiments focused on SWCNs of various chiralities (ie. they lack an internal plane of symmetry), they feel the results would be as great, and probably even better, with a batch of pristine armchairs.

According to Barron, the key was finding the right balance of temperatures, pressures, reaction times and catalyst ratios to promote growth and retard etching. While initial growth took place at 1,000 degrees Celsius, the researchers found the amplification step required lowering the temperature by 200 degrees, in addition to adjusting the chemistry to maximize the yield. Barron and his team are continuing to fine-tune their process and hope that by summer's end they can begin amplifying armchair nanotubes with the goal of making large quantities of pure metallics.

"What we're getting to is that sweet spot where most of the nanotubes grow and none of them etch," Barron said.

Orbaek hopes the team's breakthrough will eventually lead to a single furnace to grow nanotubes from scratch, cap them with new catalyst, amplify them and put out a steady stream of fiber for cables.

"What we've done is a baby step," he said. "But it verifies that, in the big picture, armchair quantum wire is technically feasible."

The Rice University research team's work is detailed in a paper published online by the American Chemical Society journal Nano Letters.

Source: Gizmag

The Charge of Crimes Against Peace was filed against George W Bush (former President of the U.S.) and Anthony L Blair (former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) wherein they were charged of having committed Crimes against Peace, in that the Accused persons planned, prepared and invaded the sovereign state of Iraq on 19 March 2003 in violation of the United Nations Charter and international law.