Australian (ASX) Stock Market Forum

The Science Thread

I found the full text of Cambells Biochar machine on line.

It isn't a dead duck at all. At least not overseas. It would be interesting to see how how the current buyers of this technology view the process. I suspect it does make excellent practical sense outside of a strictly current profit making model.


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I checked out the Bio Char industry a bit further and came across this very sophisticated and seemingly successful process for transforming organic waste into high quality soil improvement product.

Impressive.

 
There is also an Australian Company that appears to travel around producing bio char at various sites and marketing the products.

 
100 years on



there are 400 year-old windows in Europe exhibiting similar flow

but...

The idea that glass is a liquid is a common misconception. Glass is actually classified as an amorphous solid. This means that, while it has a disordered atomic structure similar to liquids, it does not flow or change shape under normal conditions like a liquid would.

The notion that glass flows over time comes from observations of very old glass windows, which often appear thicker at the bottom than at the top. However, this is primarily due to the manufacturing processes used in the past, where glass was not uniformly thick. Over centuries, the glass may settle slightly due to gravity, but this is not indicative of glass behaving like a liquid.

In summary, glass is a solid with unique properties, and it does not flow in the way liquids do under normal conditions.
 
Early days and as it stands only one patients evolving results but; but what results. These Neuralink implants are a new chapter.... godspeed to all involved in this work.
from the AFR

Meet the Australian beating Elon Musk in the battle for the brain​

This neurologist has built technology allowing humans to control machines with just their thoughts. Now he’s racing Tesla’s founder to take it to the masses.


Not long after we sit down for lunch, Tom Oxley asks me if I have watched the Netflix sci-fi series Black Mirror.
I have, in fact, just finished bingeing the latest series, which centres on dystopian tales of transferable human consciousness and brain implants.
As a world-leading pioneer in brain-computer interface (BCI) systems, Canberra-born Oxley has been working on these concepts his entire career, and he is clearly excited the technology’s potential has made its way into popular culture. His take on the future is less sinister than the world-ending scenarios depicted in Black Mirror.

There is the potential for brain-computer interface to overcome the physical limitations with how our brain talks to the world,” Oxley says, his enthusiasm disguising any jet lag he may be feeling after landing in Sydney from New York just a few hours ago.
The reason that [Jeff] Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, [Mark] Zuckerberg and Sam Altman are all talking about this is there is a view that the capacity for BCI to carry humans to another level is there. It sounds sci-fi, but it’s very real, and it is coming in our lifetime.”
It is heavy stuff for a sunny day ..... The technology Oxley has developed enables people to use their thoughts to control a digital device, changing the lives of severely paralysed patients. This could potentially help millions of people, but he says there are also broader applications in a possible future where we could, for example, think our lunch orders or conduct this interview telepathically.

Oxley, 44, is an interventional neurologist who oversaw the technology’s development in Melbourne. In 2012, he co-founded Synchron, the company that is the vehicle for making his radical vision a reality, then moved to the United States with his wife and two children in 2015 because that is where the funding is.
Synchron, which raised $US75 million in 2022, is now looking to raise more than double that in a new round to fund a large-scale clinical trial which will form the base of its submission to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take the technology to market.

Tech billionaires Gates and Bezos have invested in the company, which has developed a chip that is implanted via a blood vessel on the surface of the brain. Oxley calls it a “joystick for your body” which allows users who cannot speak or move their limbs to use thoughts to control a personal device via Bluetooth.
His closest competitor is Musk’s neuroscience start-up, Neuralink. The day we have lunch, Bloomberg has published a story saying Neuralink is raising $US500 million ($780 million) at a valuation of $US8.5 billion. “That’s an Elon valuation,” Oxley quips.

He does not feel threatened by Musk, despite his access to capital and influence over the Trump administration. Synchron has a five-year head start on trials in humans and uses a less-invasive procedure which is similar to the placement of stents for the heart, rather than cutting through a skull.
“Those [US] investors are now close to a 100-times return on that investment that all the Australian VCs passed on.”
“In the ’60s, Bruce McLaren was asked how was he possibly going to compete with Ferrari. He said, ‘If we had all the money Ferrari had, we wouldn’t be focused.’ That’s an interesting way to look at it,” Oxley says, referring to the New Zealand racing driver who founded Formula One giant McLaren.

We’re way out in front. We started our clinical program in Melbourne in 2019 and Neuralink started five years later in 2024. They are raising $1 billion, but you can’t buy your way through these timelines because you have to show safety.”

Manhattan-based Oxley is in Australia to see his family (his father is former diplomat and top trade negotiator Alan Oxley) and meet local investors.

While Synchron received various Australian government grants, he was unable to get Australian investors on board when the company was in its infancy. “The feeling was too much risk, too long, too hard. Within six months of being in New York we had our first deal done, and those investors are now close to a 100-times return on that investment that all the Australian VCs passed on,” he says.
... Oxley tells me about his life-long long obsession with the human brain.
“I fell in love with the brain at school. In 2006, I read about brain-computer interfaces in a Nature article. That was the moment when I was like holy ****, this is going to be world-changing. I had this excitement bubbling in the back of my head about this new plumbing technique to get to the brain,” he says.

His parents’ globe-trotting careers meant Oxley had lived in Geneva, New York and Singapore while growing up, but the family had settled back in Melbourne where he trained to be a doctor at Monash Medical School.

Before starting studying neurology, Oxley took a year off to go travelling. During that time he landed a meeting with Geoffrey Ling, a neurologist and US Army colonel who was a central figure in the investment the United States was making into brain computer interfaces at a time when the technology was still new.
“I was trying to figure out what PhD I would do, and I just shot out 200 emails randomly to people who looked interesting, and he wrote back to me,” Oxley says. He caught a bus to Washington for the meeting that would change his life.

Oxley’s grandfather was Major-General Sandy Pearson, who commanded Australian Forces during the Vietnam War, and Oxley has been a major in the Australian Army himself. Ling and Oxley bonded over their shared military background, but it was Oxley’s thesis on using a catheter to make brain-computer interface safer and simpler that caught the American’s attention.
Oxley walked away from the meeting with $US1 million in funding. It was a surprise breakthrough that enabled him to return to Melbourne, start his neurology training and set up a laboratory. He co-founded his company with Rahul Sharma, a medical school friend and expert in heart medicine, a field in which the kind of technology Oxley hoped to deploy in the brain – such as catheters – was far more advanced.
“He loved the heart, I love the brain,” Oxley says. “At school we would talk about the explosion in heart technology but with the brain, it was lagging.”

While Oxley was not a professor or a senior academic yet, he had the resources to be his own boss and the support of people such as his PhD supervisor and mentor Terry O’Brien at Melbourne University, who introduced him to the people he needed to get the funding, and Nick Opie, Synchron’s third co-founder. They started hand-building devices that were tested on animals.

The first human trials took place in Melbourne in 2019, followed by six in the United States. A tiny prosthesis called a Stentrode was implanted next to the brain’s motor cortex, enabling the recipients to use vision and the power of direct thought to do daily tasks such as sending emails, conducting online banking and shopping. Unlike Synchron’s competitors, the technology bypasses the need to cut into the skull and insert electrodes directly into the brain.

The device transmits signals wirelessly to a receiver that sits just under the skin in the chest and feeds them into a computer.
A video demonstration released last month shows one of Synchron’s first recipients, a Melbourne man named Rodney who has a neurodegenerative disease called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), feeding his dog, playing music and turning on a fan and other devices in his home by mentally scrolling through an interface plugged into his brain. Importantly, he can also communicate with his family and others around him.
“When I was an intern I met a father of three who had a stroke and could move his eyes only. I just thought, how can there be no other treatment option here,” Oxley recalls.

..... there is little time to take in the view as he launches into an explanation of how BCI could become as commonplace as the pacemaker in years to come.

If you look at when the car came along and people called it a horseless carriage that was dangerous and unnatural. Then the plane came along, a seemingly crazy thing at the time. I think BCI is going to be in that category,” he says.

“After my presentation, I walked up to Bezos and said, ‘would you invest?’ He said, ‘yes’.”
One scenario is a world where the adoption of BCI becomes as common as LASEK eye surgery to correct vision, and people have satellites in their brains connecting them to AI which can automatically pick up thoughts and complete a user’s to-do list without them being conscious of it.

Oxley says the technology also raises a world of complex ethical issues. “There are major ethical considerations to think about, cognitive sovereignty and cognitive freedom,” he says. Oxley disagrees with a thesis being pushed by Musk and Neuralink that BCIs are critical to help humans align with artificial intelligence by increasing the bandwidth between people and computers.

Oxley says this does not make sense as human cognition still remains biologically constrained and people think at a snail’s pace compared with AI. “AI safety depends on governance and oversight, not plugging into our brains.”

This is all still a long way off and for now, the focus is on the healthcare applications for the technology.

Millions of people globally have some sort of neurological condition that impairs their hands and ability to control a personal device. This includes people with a motor neurone disease, cerebral palsy, stroke or severe arthritis. Morgan Stanley says the total addressable market for the technology is $US400 billion in the United States alone.

Oxley says there are about seven companies, including Musk’s Neuralink, developing BCI, but he wants to be the first to scale it commercially. If he gets it right, he says, the implants could be as scalable as a pacemaker or Cochlear implant.

“It takes 15 years to build an electronics implantable company and there is a feeling that whichever company scales first will have a data ascendancy in the same way that Tesla developed theirs through the use of their AI and their data,” he says.

China is also investing heavily in BCI and there are potential national security issues as some believe it could be used to unlock potential defence applications, such as making fighter jet pilots respond faster.

Synchron’s success will hinge on the crucial next phase of clinical trials, the key to eventually securing FDA approval in what would be one of the biggest developments in med-tech in decades.

Having well-known backers helps. Oxley recalls how nervous he was meeting with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos: “I pitched them both. It was very intimidating. At Bezos’ MARS conference, I got invited to present. After my presentation, right before lunch, I walked up to him and said, ‘would you invest?’ He said, ‘yes’.”

We end .... he has an afternoon of investor meetings before heading to Melbourne for the weekend to see relatives and watch a game of footy.

His trip to Australia is relatively short. There is too much to do back in New York. As we wrap up, Oxley explains why he veered off a traditional academic pathway to a corporate one. He realised early on in his career, this was the only way to make a big difference and to see an idea through to commercialisation and have it make an impact on millions of lives.

“My father always had a global mindset and a fascination with the US economy and the US opportunity. So I have always felt that pull to be an entrepreneur. I’ve always been fascinated by the brain, as there was so much to learn.”

end​

 
From Lab Coats to Handcuffs.

Climate scientists call out the reality of global heating and the destruction this will cause.

 
Dr Karl's Triple Jay podcast from 24th April 2025 " ( that went AWOL for a few weeks ) " Rollercoaster retirement , winking and zombie stars " has finally been fixed and is now available , online.
 
100 years on



there are 400 year-old windows in Europe exhibiting similar flow

but...

The idea that glass is a liquid is a common misconception. Glass is actually classified as an amorphous solid. This means that, while it has a disordered atomic structure similar to liquids, it does not flow or change shape under normal conditions like a liquid would.

The notion that glass flows over time comes from observations of very old glass windows, which often appear thicker at the bottom than at the top. However, this is primarily due to the manufacturing processes used in the past, where glass was not uniformly thick. Over centuries, the glass may settle slightly due to gravity, but this is not indicative of glass behaving like a liquid.

In summary, glass is a solid with unique properties, and it does not flow in the way liquids do under normal conditions.

However I would quote Lao Tzu, to paraphrase, it is the space inside the glass which makes is useful.

That is, the (amber) liquid. 🍻
 

The Earth is predicted to increase its rotation speed in July and August, once again bucking the trend of a slower rotation over time. Tomorrow on July 9, the first of three especially short days, it is expected to be 1.30 milliseconds shorter than usual. Though there are clear reasons for the increased rotational speed this summer, the cause of the recent increase in speed is a little puzzling to scientists.

The Earth's rotation has altered significantly over time. Right now, the Earth rotates just over 365 times on its axis in the time it takes to orbit around the Sun – this is our number of days in a year. However, the length of the day has varied in Earth's history, according to various calculations, meaning the number of days it took Earth to go around the Sun in the past has ranged from around 490 to 372 days.

There are all sorts of factors that affect the speed of rotation, such as changing sea levels and shifts within the Earth, though the biggest factor is that the Moon is moving away from the Earth (who can blame it) and as the two bodies interact, the result is the Earth slowing down at a rate of about 1.8 milliseconds per century.

In recent years, we have kept a precise track of the Earth's day length using atomic clocks. Normally, a leap second may be introduced every now and then to account for the slowing of the Earth. This is vital, for instance, to keep GPS operational. However, since 2020, the reverse has been true: the Earth's rotation has been speeding up again.

In 2020, the 28 shortest days since 1960 were recorded. Every year after that, the record for the shortest day has been broken, with the shortest day on record so far – set in 2024 – being 1.66 milliseconds short of the usual 86,400-second day.
This year in July and August, we are predicted to have some shorter days again. Timeanddate.com reports that on July 9, the day is predicted to be 1.30 milliseconds shorter, based on observations and models from the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) and the United States Naval Observatory. July 22 is predicted to be 1.38 milliseconds shorter, while August 5 is predicted to be 1.5 milliseconds shorter than a usual day.

While the Moon is thought to be responsible for the long-term slowing of the Earth's rotation, it can also be a cause of acceleration. The closer to the Earth's equator the Moon is, the more drag it has on the Earth. These days are predicted to be the shortest days of the year as the Moon is at its maximum distance away from the Earth's equator.

These shorter days are predictable by astronomers, but the trend is a little unexpected. Since 1972, there have been 27 leap seconds added to account for the decreased rotation rate of the Earth. But since 2016, not one leap second has been necessary, and the IERS has confirmed no leap second will be added this year in June. Nobody is entirely sure why the Earth's trend of slower rotation appears to have reversed in recent years.

“This lack of the need for leap seconds was not predicted,” Judah Levine, a physicist in the time and frequency division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told Discover Magazine in 2021. “The assumption was, in fact, that Earth would continue to slow down and leap seconds would continue to be needed. And so this effect, this result, is very surprising.”

“Nobody expected this,” Leonid Zotov, expert on Earth rotation at Moscow State University, told Timeanddate.com. “The cause of this acceleration is not explained.”

"Most scientists believe it is something inside the Earth," he added. "Ocean and atmospheric models don’t explain this huge acceleration."

Other factors that can affect the Earth's rotation include earthquakes. In March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan, shifted the Earth's axis, and shortened days on Earth.

The quake – the most powerful on record to hit the country – shifted the planet's axis by about 17 centimeters (6.5 inches), and may have moved the main island by about 2.4 meters (8 feet). Like other similarly large earthquakes, it also changed the rotation speed of the Earth.

"Earthquakes can change the Earth's rotation by rearranging the Earth's mass. This is what a spinning ice skater does to make herself spin faster. She moves her arms closer to her body, she's moving her mass closer to the axis about which she's rotating," Dr Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explained to Popular Mechanics in 2011. "And earthquakes do the same thing."

"This earthquake must've moved the mass on average a bit closer to the Earth's rotation axis to make the Earth rotate faster and the length of the day a bit smaller."

By looking at models of the Earth's mass distribution before the earthquake and using estimates of how the fault slipped during the earthquake, Gross was able to figure out how the mass distribution changed. "Then, by conservation of angular momentum, if I know how the Earth's mass was rearranged, then I know how the Earth's rotation must've changed," he said.

All in all, the earthquake sped up the rotation of Earth by about 1.8 microseconds (1.8 millionths of a second). The Indonesian earthquake in 2004, for comparison, sped up the Earth's day by an estimated 2.68 microseconds.

The IERS will continue to monitor the Earth's rotation, as always, and will be able to confirm just how short these days in July and August are and whether we have any new records on our hands.
 

The Earth is predicted to increase its rotation speed in July and August, once again bucking the trend of a slower rotation over time. Tomorrow on July 9, the first of three especially short days, it is expected to be 1.30 milliseconds shorter than usual. Though there are clear reasons for the increased rotational speed this summer, the cause of the recent increase in speed is a little puzzling to scientists.

The Earth's rotation has altered significantly over time. Right now, the Earth rotates just over 365 times on its axis in the time it takes to orbit around the Sun – this is our number of days in a year. However, the length of the day has varied in Earth's history, according to various calculations, meaning the number of days it took Earth to go around the Sun in the past has ranged from around 490 to 372 days.

There are all sorts of factors that affect the speed of rotation, such as changing sea levels and shifts within the Earth, though the biggest factor is that the Moon is moving away from the Earth (who can blame it) and as the two bodies interact, the result is the Earth slowing down at a rate of about 1.8 milliseconds per century.

In recent years, we have kept a precise track of the Earth's day length using atomic clocks. Normally, a leap second may be introduced every now and then to account for the slowing of the Earth. This is vital, for instance, to keep GPS operational. However, since 2020, the reverse has been true: the Earth's rotation has been speeding up again.

In 2020, the 28 shortest days since 1960 were recorded. Every year after that, the record for the shortest day has been broken, with the shortest day on record so far – set in 2024 – being 1.66 milliseconds short of the usual 86,400-second day.
This year in July and August, we are predicted to have some shorter days again. Timeanddate.com reports that on July 9, the day is predicted to be 1.30 milliseconds shorter, based on observations and models from the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) and the United States Naval Observatory. July 22 is predicted to be 1.38 milliseconds shorter, while August 5 is predicted to be 1.5 milliseconds shorter than a usual day.

While the Moon is thought to be responsible for the long-term slowing of the Earth's rotation, it can also be a cause of acceleration. The closer to the Earth's equator the Moon is, the more drag it has on the Earth. These days are predicted to be the shortest days of the year as the Moon is at its maximum distance away from the Earth's equator.

These shorter days are predictable by astronomers, but the trend is a little unexpected. Since 1972, there have been 27 leap seconds added to account for the decreased rotation rate of the Earth. But since 2016, not one leap second has been necessary, and the IERS has confirmed no leap second will be added this year in June. Nobody is entirely sure why the Earth's trend of slower rotation appears to have reversed in recent years.

“This lack of the need for leap seconds was not predicted,” Judah Levine, a physicist in the time and frequency division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, told Discover Magazine in 2021. “The assumption was, in fact, that Earth would continue to slow down and leap seconds would continue to be needed. And so this effect, this result, is very surprising.”

“Nobody expected this,” Leonid Zotov, expert on Earth rotation at Moscow State University, told Timeanddate.com. “The cause of this acceleration is not explained.”

"Most scientists believe it is something inside the Earth," he added. "Ocean and atmospheric models don’t explain this huge acceleration."

Other factors that can affect the Earth's rotation include earthquakes. In March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the east coast of Japan, shifted the Earth's axis, and shortened days on Earth.

The quake – the most powerful on record to hit the country – shifted the planet's axis by about 17 centimeters (6.5 inches), and may have moved the main island by about 2.4 meters (8 feet). Like other similarly large earthquakes, it also changed the rotation speed of the Earth.

"Earthquakes can change the Earth's rotation by rearranging the Earth's mass. This is what a spinning ice skater does to make herself spin faster. She moves her arms closer to her body, she's moving her mass closer to the axis about which she's rotating," Dr Richard Gross of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory explained to Popular Mechanics in 2011. "And earthquakes do the same thing."

"This earthquake must've moved the mass on average a bit closer to the Earth's rotation axis to make the Earth rotate faster and the length of the day a bit smaller."

By looking at models of the Earth's mass distribution before the earthquake and using estimates of how the fault slipped during the earthquake, Gross was able to figure out how the mass distribution changed. "Then, by conservation of angular momentum, if I know how the Earth's mass was rearranged, then I know how the Earth's rotation must've changed," he said.

All in all, the earthquake sped up the rotation of Earth by about 1.8 microseconds (1.8 millionths of a second). The Indonesian earthquake in 2004, for comparison, sped up the Earth's day by an estimated 2.68 microseconds.

The IERS will continue to monitor the Earth's rotation, as always, and will be able to confirm just how short these days in July and August are and whether we have any new records on our hands.
"Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so."

Ford Prefect: Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
 
From ABC Radio National program , Late Night Live , on last night , Wed 9 th July. Just google " How will the universe end ? Astrophysicist Dr . Katie Mack In Australia right now for lectures , is interviewed by David Marr . ( 25 minutes )

Her 2020 book " The end of everything " is pretty good , too .
 
RISC-V.

Open architecture computer chips gives start ups and big companies alike the ability to design a myriad of applications and machines without paying huge royalties to chip makers.



ChatGPT:
what is the potential of RISC-V in the developement of new technology?

ChatGPT said:​

The potential of RISC-V in the development of new technology is enormous, particularly because of its open-source, modular, and license-free nature. It is poised to revolutionize how CPUs are designed, customized, and deployed across industries.
Here’s a breakdown of where RISC-V is headed and why it matters:

🚀 What Makes RISC-V Special?​

  1. Open and Royalty-Free
    • Unlike ARM or x86, RISC-V is free to use, with no licensing fees or proprietary lock-in.
    • This drastically lowers the barrier to entry for startups, universities, and developing countries.
  2. Modular and Customizable
    • You can build a minimalist core for embedded systems or a powerful out-of-order processor for servers.
    • Extensions like vector processing (RVV), AI/ML acceleration, and security are optional and pluggable.
  3. Scalable Across Domains
    • From IoT to mobile, automotive, data centers, and supercomputers, RISC-V can adapt to nearly any form factor.

🔧 Current and Emerging Uses​

✅ Embedded and IoT Devices

  • Replacing ARM Cortex-M in sensors, controllers, wearables.
  • Lower cost and full IP control appeal to industrial and automotive manufacturers.

✅ AI/ML Accelerators

  • Companies are designing RISC-V cores with custom matrix/vector extensions for edge AI and inference workloads.

✅ Secure Computing

  • RISC-V is a natural fit for open verification, trusted hardware, and security-focused designs, including TEEs (Trusted Execution Environments).

✅ High-Performance Computing (HPC)

  • The European Processor Initiative is building RISC-V accelerators for exascale computing.
  • SiFive and Ventana are pushing into data center class RISC-V chips.

✅ Academic and Research

  • RISC-V is now the de facto standard in computer architecture education.
  • Easy to simulate, modify, and synthesize on FPGAs.

🌐 Industry Adoption Momentum​

  • NVIDIA, Intel, Qualcomm, Google, Apple, Samsung, and Meta all have RISC-V initiatives.
  • NASA selected RISC-V for future space missions via the High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) program.
  • The Chinese tech ecosystem is heavily investing in RISC-V to reduce dependency on foreign IP.

🧠 Potential Impact Areas​

FieldRISC-V Potential Impact
AI & MLCustom tensor/vector units, energy-efficient inference chips
Edge ComputingLow-power, tailored hardware with tight software-hardware control
CybersecurityTransparent, open verification of cryptographic operations
Education/ResearchReconfigurable cores for teaching and exploration
National SovereigntyStrategic autonomy from US/EU-controlled chip IP


⚠️ Challenges to Overcome​

  • Still catching up to ARM/x86 in terms of mature software ecosystem, especially toolchains and compilers.
  • Some extensions (e.g., SIMD, hypervisor support) are newer or still evolving.
  • Fragmentation risk from too many incompatible vendor-specific extensions.

📈 Summary: Why RISC-V Is a Big Deal​

RISC-V is not just another CPU architecture — it’s a new development model. Just like Linux changed the OS world, RISC-V may do the same for hardware. It enables:
  • Hardware democratization
  • Rapid innovation
  • Vendor independence
  • Deep software/hardware co-design
 


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