Okay, Vaude and Afront wanted Harrison and Pohl, let’s have a look … nope, not looking hopeful on the Pohl front.
Author: Neal Asher
Loft Library A to D
Bus Slogan Generator
I do like this slogan generator which I picked up on over at Devil’s Kitchen. Just insert your own words and check out the results.
Loft Library C to G
Here’s a random shot of my loft library and you’ve got Cherryh to Gemmel, or rather Graves (there are a few none SFF books scattered through here). Seeing this I’m reminded of past reading joys, like the Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld books, the easy reading of Alan Dean Foster and the sadly missed David Gemmel. In fact every book here has been a reading pleasure. Books don’t get to stay on my shelves if they’re just mediocre. I’m guessing Bob Lock will quite like these shelves, as will Gary Gibson (not sure where I’ve put Stealing Light, Gary, but it will end up there). Nor do the numerous titles missing here that I read from the library.
I haven’t put every picture up because there’s loads of them, and I thought it might be fun to let you suggest a writer, then I’ll find the picture that covers that writer’s portion of the alphabet…
Book Cases Six
Book Cases Five
Here then is the collection of Kirby Ubben, who for some time has been threatening to bring his collection of my books over to England for signing, but now cannot afford the excess baggage charge. Interesting to see that he’s managed to obtain some books I thought virtually unobtainable. Nice one Kirby!
Book Cases Four
Here’s some seriously cool ones that make me very jealous. How lovely it would be to have that kind of space for book cases … well, I do, but have to climb up a ladder into the loft to get to them.
These belong to Petr Kotrle who is the Czech translator of my books. And in that respect he must be doing a good job since The Skinner won the Salamander there (an Academy Award) and Gridlinked was shortlisted.
Stem Cells.
I have to say that Obama took a little step upwards in my estimation when I read that he intends to take the religious right handcuffs off the stem cell researchers.
Stem cell research advocates have waited nearly eight years for the policy change President-elect Barack Obama has signaled he’ll make in the early days of his administration: lifting the restrictions imposed by President Bush on federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells.
And now it seems the FDA is approving trails for using stem cells to heal spinal cord injuries. A branch of research which is more than promising since the researchers have already used this technique to heal the spines of rats (listen to the animal rights protesters scream). This one has to be the first target to hit because, the moment the first cripple gets out of his wheelchair, it will tune down the loud objections of those ‘moralists’ with a direct line to their invisible friend in the sky.
But this stuff, objections or otherwise, is being pursued all across the world. Just the few I mention here are the tip of the iceberg and only today we hear about stem cell therapy being used on MS sufferers.
Not one of 21 adults with relapsing-remitting MS who had stem cells transplanted from their own bone marrow deteriorated over three years.
We very definitely need this research and it can be seen that moral objections will be falling by the wayside as researchers hack out a path to differentiating adult stem cells for such therapy, which has to be the ultimate goal.
Now, researchers at Northwestern University have found new evidence that hematopoietic stem cells, a type of adult stem cell derived from the bone marrow that gives rise to blood cells, are capable of undergoing more diverse transformations than previously thought and could be transformed into a wide variety of tissue types, not just blood cells.
Damn but it’s weird – every so often I discover my inner optimist.
Book Cases Three
Here’s a couple more for jealous appraisal. The first belongs to Mark Chitty and the second belongs to packrat54. Oh and, additionally, you can find Bob Lock’s one here.
LED Light.
Over in Crete, and probably at holiday destinations all over the world, you can buy lighters, with LED torches incorporated in them whose intensity is astonishing. You can also buy torches alone that utilize numerous LEDs, and throw out one hell of a beam of light powered by a set of batteries smaller than the collection of LEDs itself. I’ve seen keyrings with these things in, and know that some manufacturers produce them for home lighting. However, they haven’t caught on as yet, because of the ridiculous unit cost. But perhaps they will now:
The researchers have designed a bulb that is three times more energy efficient than today’s best offer and can cut lighting bills by 75 per cent. They are made using Gallium Nitride (GaN), a man-made substance used in LEDs (light emitting diodes). It is routinely used in bike lights, mobile phones and camera flashes.
But until now the production costs have been too expensive for widespread use in homes and offices – a single bulb would have cost £20. However, the researchers have found a cheaper technique to help manufacture the bulbs and manufacturers have begun work on production prototypes. The first units could hit shelves within two years. Professor Colin Humphrey, head of the centre, said: “This could well be the holy grail in terms of providing our lighting needs for the future.”
The bulbs are 12 times more efficient that conventional tungsten bulbs and three times more efficient than compact fluorescent “energy efficient” bulbs. They can burn for 100,000 hours and they illuminate instantly and can be dimmed, unlike energy efficient bulbs. If they were installed in every home and office the bulbs could cut the proportion of UK electricity used for lights from 20 per cent to 5 per cent a year.