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by Ben D » Sat Aug 09, 2014 3:52 am
justdrew » Sat Aug 09, 2014 5:37 pm wrote:surely that connects even with the smallest grain of sand
but perhaps that cosmic consciousness is just another super brain among peers and makers of it's own. It could be turtles all the way up.
by justdrew » Wed Aug 27, 2014 2:56 pm
Xenon exposure shown to erase traumatic memories
McLean Hospital researchers are reporting that xenon gas, used in humans for anesthesia and diagnostic imaging, has the potential to be a treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other memory-related disorders.
"In our study, we found that xenon gas has the capability of reducing memories of traumatic events," said Edward G. Meloni, PhD, assistant psychologist at McLean Hospital and an assistant professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. "It's an exciting breakthrough, as this has the potential to be a new treatment for individuals suffering from PTSD."
In the study, published in the current issue of PLOS ONE, Meloni, and Marc J. Kaufman, PhD, director of the McLean Hospital Translational Imaging Laboratory, examined whether a low concentration of xenon gas could interfere with a process called reconsolidation – a state in which reactivated memories become susceptible to modification. "We know from previous research that each time an emotional memory is recalled, the brain actually restores it as if it were a new memory. With this knowledge, we decided to see whether we could alter the process by introducing xenon gas immediately after a fear memory was reactivated," explained Meloni.
The investigators used an animal model of PTSD called fear-conditioning to train rats to be afraid of environmental cues that were paired with brief footshocks. Reactivating the fearful memory was done by exposing the rats to those same cues and measuring their freezing response as a readout of fear. "We found that a single exposure to the gas, which is known to block NMDA receptors involved in memory formation in the brain, dramatically and persistently reduced fear responses for up to 2 weeks. It was as though the animals no longer remembered to be afraid of those cues", said Dr. Meloni.
Meloni points out that the inherent properties of a gas such as xenon make it especially attractive for targeting dynamic processes such as memory reconsolidation. "Unlike other drugs or medications that may also block NMDA receptors involved in memory, xenon gets in and out of the brain very quickly. This suggests that xenon could be given at the exact time the memory is reactivated, and for a limited amount of time, which may be key features for any potential therapy used in humans."
"The fact that we were able to inhibit remembering of a traumatic memory with xenon is very promising because it is currently used in humans for other purposes, and thus it could be repurposed to treat PTSD," added Kaufman.
For these investigators, several questions remain to be addressed with further testing. "From here we want to explore whether lower xenon doses or shorter exposure times would also block memory reconsolidation and the expression of fear. We'd also like to know if xenon is as effective at reducing traumatic memories from past events, so-called remote memories, versus the newly formed ones we tested in our study".
Meloni and Kaufman indicate that future studies are planned to test if the effects of xenon in rats seen in their study translate to humans. Given that intrusive re-experiencing of traumatic memories – including flashbacks, nightmares, and distress and physiological reactions induced when confronted with trauma reminders – is a hallmark symptom for many who suffer from PTSD, a treatment that alleviates the impact of those painful memories could provide welcome relief.
by smoking since 1879 » Thu Aug 28, 2014 9:11 am
Bioengineers close to brewing opioid painkillers without using opium from poppies
For centuries poppy plants have been grown to provide opium, the compound from which morphine and other important medicines such as oxycodone are derived.
Now bioengineers at Stanford have hacked the DNA of yeast, reprograming these simple cells to make opioid-based medicines via a sophisticated extension of the basic brewing process that makes beer.
Led by Associate Professor of Bioengineering Christina Smolke, the Stanford team has already spent a decade genetically engineering yeast cells to reproduce the biochemistry of poppies with the ultimate goal of producing opium-based medicines, from start to finish, in fermentation vats.
"We are now very close to replicating the entire opioid production process in a way that eliminates the need to grow poppies, allowing us to reliably manufacture essential medicines while mitigating the potential for diversion to illegal use," said Smolke, who outlines her work in the August 24th edition of Nature Chemical Biology.
In the new report Smolke and her collaborators, Kate Thodey, a post-doctoral scholar in bioengineering, and Stephanie Galanie, a doctoral student in chemistry, detail how they added five genes from two different organisms to yeast cells. Three of these genes came from the poppy itself, and the others from a bacterium that lives on poppy plant stalks.
This multi-species gene mashup was required to turn yeast into cellular factories that replicate two, now-separate processes: how nature produces opium in poppies, and then how pharmacologists use chemical processes to further refine opium derivatives into modern opioid drugs such as hydrocodone.
From Plants to Pills Today
Plant-derived opium has been used and abused for centuries, but a good place to begin the modern story is with the use of morphine during World War II.
Morphine is one of three principal pain killers derived from opium. As a class they are called opiates. The other two important opiates are codeine, which has been used as a cough remedy, and thebaine, which is further refined by chemical processes to create higher-value therapeutics such as oxycodone and hydrocodone, better known by brand names such as OxyContin and Vicodin, respectively.
Today legal poppy farming is restricted to a few countries--including Australia, France, Hungary, India, Spain and Turkey--supervised by the International Narcotics Control Board, which seeks to prevent opiates like morphine, for instance, from being refined into illegal heroin.
The biggest market for legal opiates, and their opioid derivatives, is the United States, where pharmaceutical factories use chemical processes to create the refined products that are used as pain-killing pills. However poppies are not grown in significant quantities in the U.S., creating various international dependencies and vulnerabilities in the supply of these important medicines.
Turning Yeast Into a Pharmaceutical Factory
The thrust of Smolke's work for a decade has been to pack the entire production chain, from the fields of poppies, through all the subsequent steps of chemical refining, into yeast cells using the tools of bioengineering.
What Smolke's team has now done is to carefully reprogram the yeast genome -- the master instruction set that tells every organism how to live -- to behave like a poppy when it comes to making opiates.
The process involved more than simply adding new genes into yeast. Opioid molecules are complex three-dimensional objects. In nature they are made in specific regions inside the poppy. Since yeast cells do not have these complex structures and tissues, the Stanford team had to recreate the equivalent of poppy-like "chemical neighborhoods" inside their bioengineered yeast cells.
It takes about 17 separate chemical steps to make the opioid compounds used in pills. Some of these steps occur naturally in poppies and the remaining via synthetic chemical processes in factories. Smolke's team wanted all the steps to happen inside yeast cells within a single vat, including using yeast to carry out chemical processes that poppies never evolved to perform -- such as refining opiates like thebaine into more valuable semi-synthetic opioids like oxycodone.
So Smolke programmed her bioengineered yeast to perform these final industrial steps as well. To do this she endowed the yeast with genes from a bacterium that feeds on dead poppy stalks. Since they wanted to produce several different opioids, the team hacked the yeast genome in slightly different ways to produce each of the slightly different opioid formulations, such as oxycodone or hydrocodone.
The Missing Link
All of this was demonstrated in the new paper. But Smolke's team must still clear one more hurdle in order to achieve the goal of pouring sugar into a stainless steel vat of bioengineered yeast and skimming off specific opioids at the end of the process. They must perform another set of bioengineering hacks to connect the two major advances they have made over the past decade.
Remember that it takes about 17 chemical steps to go from poppy to pill. When she began the work in 2004, Smolke started early in the process and went about halfway through these chemical steps. In a 2008 paper she reported success in that first phase of the project when her bioengineered yeast produced a precursor to thebaine--one of the three principal opiates.
In her new paper, Smolke started with thebaine obtained from poppies, put this into her bioengineered yeast and got refined opioids at the end of the process.
Now her team must extend the 2008 process from sugar to thebaine. Once she forges this missing link in the chain of biochemical synthesis, she will have produced a bioengineered yeast that can perform all 17 steps from sugar to specific opioid drugs in a single vat.
"We are already working on this," she said.
Smolke said it could take several more years to perfect these last steps in the lab and scale up the process to produce large sized batches of bioengineered opioids that are pharmacologically identical to today's drugs that start in a field and are refined in factories.
"This will allow us to create a reliable supply of these essential medicines in a way that doesn't depend on years leading up to good or bad crop yields," Smolke said. "We'll have more sustainable, cost-effective, and secure production methods for these important drugs."
by elfismiles » Thu Aug 28, 2014 4:40 pm
Rowan Merewood
Found my now 15 year old Schwa t-shirt. Its Xenon™ coating glows if it detects aliens. Truth is out there, man.
by Elvis » Thu Aug 28, 2014 11:34 pm
smoking since 1879 wrote:Not one mention of Afghanistan - not like it's the biggest producer or anything...
by justdrew » Fri Aug 29, 2014 3:00 am
MIT News:
Most memories have some kind of emotion associated with them: Recalling the week you just spent at the beach probably makes you feel happy, while reflecting on being bullied provokes more negative feelings.
A new study from MIT neuroscientists reveals the brain circuit that controls how memories become linked with positive or negative emotions. Furthermore, the researchers found that they could reverse the emotional association of specific memories by manipulating brain cells with optogenetics — a technique that uses light to control neuron activity.
by smoking since 1879 » Fri Aug 29, 2014 6:07 am
by coffin_dodger » Wed Sep 10, 2014 8:06 am
by seemslikeadream » Wed Sep 24, 2014 9:30 pm
'Bash' bug could let hackers attack through a light bulb
By Jose Pagliery @Jose_Pagliery September 24, 2014: 7:25 PM ET
dangerous light bulbs
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)
Say hello to the bash bug, a lesson in why Internet-connected devices are inherently unsafe.
Computer security researchers have discovered a flaw in the way many devices communicate over the Internet. At its most basic, it lets someone hack every Internet-enabled device in your house -- via something as simple as your light bulb.
That is, if you're one of those tech-embracing types who buys Internet-connected "smart" appliances.
But that includes a rapidly growing number of businesses and governments that use smart devices -- like cameras -- within their internal networks.
Related: 7 safety tips from hackers themselves
Why fear the bash bug? Because it's so pervasive.
According to open source software company Red Hat, it affects any device that uses the operating system Linux -- which includes everything from Apple (AAPL, Tech30) Macs to calculators to cars.
In a public warning, Red Hat researchers classified the severity of the bug as "catastrophic."
Not every connected device is vulnerable. But it's difficult for the average person to figure out if, for instance, their home security camera is at risk.
The problem is new enough that it's impossible to know if hackers are already using it. But if it's anything like the Heartbleed bug discovered earlier this year, we might not see damage for months. And when we do, it could be disastrous.
In the case of Heartbleed, hackers eventually broke into a hospital network and stole 4.5 million patient records -- including Social Security numbers.
The only solution for the bash bug? If and when a patch becomes available, update every device you have. But that's something that's not likely. Companies don't often update their fleet of devices, and customers rarely pay attention for that sort of thing.
Here's how the bash bug works, as explained by cybersecurity expert Robert Graham.
The problem stems from a flaw in the "bash shell." A shell is a program that translates commands from you to a device's operating system. Think of it as an efficient middleman.
Lots of Internet-connected devices use the bash shell to run commands, like "turn on" and "turn off." Generally, a device that communicates using a bash shell also looks out for extra information, like what browser or device you're using.
And that's where the problem lies. If a hacker slips bad code into this extra data, they can sneak past a device's safeguards.
A hacked light bulb suddenly becomes a launchpad to hack everything else behind your network firewall, Graham said.
"This is problem with the 'Internet of Things.' We're putting all these things on the Internet without any expectation of actually patching them in the future," Graham said.
The bug was discovered by Stéphane Chazelas, a French IT manager working for a software maker in Scotland.
Quantum internet could keep us safe from spying eyes
18 September 2014 by Jacob Aron
Magazine issue 2987. Subscribe and save
For similar stories, visit the Quantum World Topic Guide
QUANTUM networks are quietly spreading across the world. With secure quantum connections linking up cities, people can communicate in the knowledge that the laws of physics will prevent eavesdropping. Eventually, there may even be a global quantum internet.
When former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden uncovered the extent of government spying, that underlined the need for more secure communications, says Don Hayford of Battelle, a research organisation in Columbus, Ohio. "Even before Snowden we decided there were things coming up in the future that meant people should start looking at something better."
That something is called quantum key distribution (QKD). The technique transmits photons in particular quantum states to generate a secure cryptographic key, with which you can encrypt data sent over an ordinary, non-quantum connection. QKD is far more secure than standard cryptography, which relies on hard mathematical problems that can theoretically be cracked, given enough computing power. Any attempt to intercept a quantum key, however, will disturb the photon's quantum states, alerting users not to use the key (see "Unbeatable security").
Since December, Battelle has operated a quantum link between its Columbus headquarters and manufacturing offices 62 kilometres away in Dublin, Ohio – the first commercial link of its kind in the US. They are working with ID Quantique in Geneva, Switzerland, which sells QKD technology and helped to keep the results of a 2007 Swiss election secure.
Now, Battelle has announced plans to use an existing fibre-optic network running through Dublin to test a larger quantum network. The long-term aim is to link up with their offices in Washington DC, more than 650 kilometres away.
Researchers in China are also linking up cities. A group led by Shuang Wang of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei has just released details of the first experimental wide-area QKD network, which ran from December 2011 to July 2012 (arxiv.org/abs/1409.1568). The network connected five computers or nodes in Hefei to three more in Wuhu, 150 kilometres away, via another in a third city, Chaohu. "From the coverage area point of view, it is the largest quantum network built to date," says Wang.
A 2000-kilometre link between Beijing and Shanghai is due for completion by 2016. The Chinese government is already using QKD to protect its secrets, including discussions during the 18th National Congress in 2012 as new leaders took over the ruling party.
Building such an extensive QKD network was not without problems, however. Local roadworks severed a fibre in Wuhu three times while Wang's network was active, and a power outage at a Hefei node split the network in half just 10 days into the project. Another Hefei node had to be placed in a makeshift kitchen – the only space with access to the necessary optical fibre link. The large temperature variations in the kitchen weren't necessarily a bad thing, says Wang. "This harsh environment also provided us with a chance to test the robustness of the QKD devices."
Long-range networks come at a cost. The performance of Wang's network declined as the distance between the nodes increased. While two nodes in Hefei were able to conduct secure, real-time voice transmission, Hefei-to-Wuhu links could only send new keys three times a second.
One possible solution involves a device called a quantum repeater. At the moment, extending a quantum link beyond 100 kilometres or so requires a trusted node to sit between the two parties and establish a link with each of them. Each user has a secure quantum connection with this node, but they aren't able to communicate directly because the laws of quantum mechanics prevent the trusted node from copying a state to relay it. A quantum repeater would solve this problem by linking states over long distance using a property called entanglement, but entanglement is fragile and no one has yet built a successful repeater.
Quantum repeater
Eventually though, Hayford says repeaters could bring QKD to ordinary internet users. You won't have a direct optical fibre link to your home, but will instead visit a kind of quantum post office that is plugged in to the network. There, you'll pick up a memory stick filled with quantum codes to use with Google, Amazon and other internet companies on your home PC or smartphone. Such quantum keys could even travel via the undersea cables that the internet uses today – though installing repeaters at the bottom of the Atlantic will be a challenge, says Saikat Guha of BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Anyone who has been forced to change their password after an online leak might be sceptical that QKD can deliver totally secure communications. Researchers have already shows that it is possible to hack QKD systems, but this was due to flaws in hardware. Hayford says Battelle is working with hacking researchers to fix such problems. "It's something that we continually address."
Even with a perfect system, QKD can't hide the fact that you are talking to someone. Snowden told the world that the NSA gathers "metadata" like the time, location and parties involved in a conversation, from spying on optic cables. This enables the agency to glean information about people without ever reading their messages.
Following the Snowden leak, Guha and colleagues decided to look into the metadata problem. It turns out it is possible to send a small amount of data without anyone else realising, providing you disguise the message in a quantum link's inherent noise (arxiv.org/abs/1404.7347). The idea has only been tested on a small scale in the lab, but as quantum networks roll out across the globe, perhaps it will provide the ultimate way to send covert messages. "This is one step higher security than secure communication," says Guha.
Einstein's "Time Dilation" Prediction Verified
Experiments at a particle accelerator have confirmed the "time dilation" effect predicted by Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity
Sep 22, 2014 |By Alexandra Witze and Nature magazine
time-dilation
To test the time-dilation effect, physicists need to compare two clocks — one that is stationary and one that moves.
Physicists have verified a key prediction of Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity with unprecedented accuracy. Experiments at a particle accelerator in Germany confirm that time moves slower for a moving clock than for a stationary one.
The work is the most stringent test yet of this ‘time-dilation’ effect, which Einstein predicted. One of the consequences of this effect is that a person travelling in a high-speed rocket would age more slowly than people back on Earth.
Few scientists doubt that Einstein was right. But the mathematics describing the time-dilation effect are “fundamental to all physical theories”, says Thomas Udem, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching, Germany, who was not involved in the research. “It is of utmost importance to verify it with the best possible accuracy.”
The paper was published on September 16 in Physical Review Letters. It is the culmination of 15 years of work by an international group of collaborators including Nobel laureate Theodor Hänsch, director of the Max Planck optics institute.
To test the time-dilation effect, physicists need to compare two clocks — one that is stationary and one that moves. To do this, the researchers used the Experimental Storage Ring, where high-speed particles are stored and studied at the GSI Helmholtz Centre for heavy-ion research in Darmstadt, Germany.
The scientists made the moving clock by accelerating lithium ions to one-third the speed of light. Then they measured a set of transitions within the lithium as electrons hopped between various energy levels. The frequency of the transitions served as the ‘ticking’ of the clock. Transitions within lithium ions that were not moving served as the stationary clock.
The researchers measured the time-dilation effect more precisely than in any previous study, including one published in 2007 by the same research group. “It’s nearly five times better than our old result, and 50 to 100 times better than any other method used by other people to measure relativistic time dilation,” says co-author Gerald Gwinner, a physicist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada.
Understanding time dilation has practical implications as well, he notes. Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites are essentially clocks in orbit, and GPS software has to account for tiny time shifts when analysing navigational information. The European Space Agency plans to test time dilation in space when it launches its Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES) experiment to the International Space Station in 2016.
The speed of fast-moving ions means that accelerator experiments can test time dilation more precisely than experiments in Earth orbit, says Matthew Mewes, a physicist at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, who is not part of the team. “It’s important to look wherever we can and push the technology whenever possible,” he says.
But the research group is dismantling its longtime collaboration, as there is no larger accelerator they can go to for more powerful tests. “It's been many hours in basements, in shielded rooms with noisy equipment, and in the end you get one number,” says Gwinner. “We’ve been exchanging a bunch of nostalgic e-mails.”
by seemslikeadream » Fri Oct 03, 2014 11:35 am
New material steals oxygen from the air: One spoonful absorbs all the oxygen in a room
Date:
September 30, 2014
Source:
University of Southern Denmark
Summary:
Researchers have synthesized crystalline materials that can bind and store oxygen in high concentrations. Just one spoon of the substance is enough to absorb all the oxygen in a room. The stored oxygen can be released again when and where it is needed.
Professor Christine McKenzie (center in photo) and postdoc Jonas Sundberg, Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy at the University of Southern Denmark have synthesized a material that absorb oxygen in large quantities and store it.
Credit: Image courtesy of University of Southern Denmark
[Click to enlarge image]
Researchers from the University of Southern Denmark have synthesized crystalline materials that can bind and store oxygen in high concentrations. Just one spoon of the substance is enough to absorb all the oxygen in a room. The stored oxygen can be released again when and where it is needed.
We do fine with the 21 per cent oxygen in the air around us. But sometimes we need oxygen in higher concentrations; for example lung patients must carry heavy oxygen tanks, cars using fuel cells need a regulated oxygen supply. Perhaps one day in the future even sunlight-driven "reversible" fuel cells will be made. With these we will have to separate oxygen from hydrogen in order to recombine them in order to get energy.
"In the lab, we saw how this material took up oxygen from the air around us," says Christine McKenzie.
The new material is crystalline, and using x-ray diffraction the researchers have studied the arrangement of atoms inside the material when it was filled with oxygen, and when it was emptied of oxygen.
Oxygen comes and goes in many places
The fact that a substance can react with oxygen is not surprising. Lots of substances do this -- and the result is not always desirable: Food can go rancid when exposed to oxygen. On the other hand a wine's taste and aroma is changed subtly when we aerate it -- but not with too much oxygen! Our bodies cannot function if we do not breathe.
"An important aspect of this new material is that it does not react irreversibly with oxygen -- even though it absorbs oxygen in a so-called selective chemisorptive process. The material is both a sensor, and a container for oxygen -- we can use it to bind, store and transport oxygen -- like a solid artificial hemoglobin," says Christine McKenzie.
The material is so effective at binding oxygen, that only a spoon of it is enough to suck up all the oxygen in a room. The researchers' work indicates that the substance can absorb and bind oxygen in a concentration 160 times larger than the concentration in the air around us.
"It is also interesting that the material can absorb and release oxygen many times without losing the ability. It is like dipping a sponge in water, squeezing the water out of it and repeating the process over and over again," Christine McKenzie explains.
Once the oxygen has been absorbed you can keep it stored in the material until you want to release it. The oxygen can be released by gently heating the material or subjecting it to low oxygen pressures.
Heat and pressure releases the stored oxygen
"We see release of oxygen when we heat up the material, and we have also seen it when we apply vacuum. We are now wondering if light can also be used as a trigger for the material to release oxygen -- this has prospects in the growing field of artificial photosynthesis," says Christine McKenzie.
The key component of the new material is the element cobalt, which is bound in a specially designed organic molecule.
"Cobalt gives the new material precisely the molecular and electronic structure that enables it to absorb oxygen from its surroundings. This mechanism is well known from all breathing creatures on earth: Humans and many other species use iron, while other animals, like crabs and spiders, use copper. Small amounts of metals are essential for the absorption of oxygen, so actually it is not entirely surprising to see this effect in our new material," explains Christine McKenzie.
Depending on the atmospheric oxygen content, temperature, pressure, etc. it takes seconds, minutes, hours or days for the substance to absorb oxygen from its surroundings. Different versions of the substance can bind oxygen at different speeds. With this complexity it becomes possible to produce devices that release and/or absorb oxygen under different circumstances -- for example a mask containing layers of these materials in the correct sequence might actively supply a person with oxygen directly from the air without the help of pumps or high pressure equipment.
"When the substance is saturated with oxygen, it can be compared to an oxygen tank containing pure oxygen under pressure -- the difference is that this material can hold three times as much oxygen," says Christine McKenzie.
"This could be valuable for lung patients who today must carry heavy oxygen tanks with them. But also divers may one day be able to leave the oxygen tanks at home and instead get oxygen from this material as it "filters" and concentrates oxygen from surrounding air or water. A few grains contain enough oxygen for one breath, and as the material can absorb oxygen from the water around the diver and supply the diver with it, the diver will not need to bring more than these few grains."
The substance has been designed and synthesized at University of Southern Denmark. Some of the gas uptake measurements have been made with special equipment by colleagues at the University of Sydney, Australia.
by zangtang » Fri Oct 03, 2014 1:55 pm
by smoking since 1879 » Fri Oct 03, 2014 2:16 pm
by zangtang » Fri Oct 03, 2014 3:28 pm
by seemslikeadream » Thu Oct 16, 2014 10:02 am
http://www.billboard.com/articles/busin ... coln-tesla
Neil Young is making the media rounds this week to hype his Toblerone-sized Pono music player and its updated website, which now has a preview of how the service's music store will function when launched. The PonoMusic.com store is comprised of a simple search bar and a selection of current albums by Prince, Ryan Adams and others, though there are currently no prices and you can't purchase anything yet.
The company announced that Young will officially launch PonoMusic at the Salesforce Dreamforce conference on Thursday, Oct. 16 in San Francisco. During his keynote speech, Young will presumably talk about the website and planned Pono desktop app, though it's unclear whether the store will launch by then. Says the company, the "music purchases and the PonoMusic desktop app will not be publicly available until we've successfully completed our beta testing of the music purchase ecosystem."
Pono expects to have the complete catalogs of the three major labels (Sony, Universal and Warner) in the store, with a total of over 2 million tracks. The store will be powered by Omnifone, which handles the songs for Sony's Music Unlimited service. As Gigaom notes, Pono is working with JRiver to develop its app.
In a visit to Howard Stern's radio show on Tuesday, Oct. 14, Young talked about the early enthusiasm among music lovers for his Pono device, which sold out its initial run with the help of a $6 million-dollar Kickstarter campaign. "We're making more in January and February," he told Stern of the player, which costs $399. "We're starting to build and scale up, and the demand for them was awesome and they're gone. We're making this for people who want it."
Stern asked Young whether he felt most people are "sophisticated enough" to understand the technical differences between Pono and other digital music delivery systems. "No, I don't," he said. "But I think that they will feel it. And that's what I care about. So it's not a cognizant thing. That's why when you try to discuss this with some people, they don't get it -- particularly investors. They don't understand, and I say 'well, you really feel the music when you listen to the music this way.' When you hear it through this you get goosebumps -- if you liked the music originally, you love the music. If it's one of your favorite songs, you're inside it."
Young said the idea of Pono "started innocently enough" around 2000. "I had just gotten to the point where I was really tired of the CDs, and I saw that the new thing that was happening was even worse than the CDs. Instead of getting better, it was getting worse. The quality got even worse, it went down to like 5 percent of what was capable."
by DrEvil » Thu Oct 16, 2014 4:54 pm
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