POSTED Thursday, December 14, 2006

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Entropy

A function first introduced in classical thermodynamics to provide a quantitative basis for the common observation that naturally occurring processes have a particular direction. Subsequently, in statistical thermodynamics, entropy was shown to be a measure of the number of microstates a system could assume. Finally, in communication theory, entropy is a measure of information. Each of these aspects will be considered in turn. Before the entropy function is introduced, it is necessary to discuss reversible processes.

Reversible processes

Any system under constant external conditions is observed to change in such a way as to approach a particularly simple final state called an equilibrium state. For example, two bodies initially at different temperatures are connected by a metal wire. Heat flows from the hot to the cold body until the temperatures of both bodies are the same. It is common experience that the reverse processes never occur if the systems are left to themselves; that is, heat is never observed to flow from the cold to the hot body. Max Planck classified all elementary processes into three categories: natural, unnatural, and reversible. Natural processes do occur, and proceed in a direction toward equilibrium. Unnatural processes move away from equilibrium and never occur. A reversible process is an idealized natural process that passes through a continuous sequence of equilibrium states.

Entropy function

The state function entropy S puts the foregoing discussion on a quantitative basis. Entropy is related to q, the heat flowing into the system from its surroundings, and to T, the absolute temperature of the system. The important properties for this discussion are:

1. dS > q/T for a natural change.

 dS = q/T for a reversible change.

2. The entropy of the system S is made up of the sum of all the parts of the system so that S = S₁ + S₂ + S₃ ···.

Nonconservation

In his study of the first law of thermodynamics, J. P. Joule caused work to be expended by rubbing metal blocks together in a large mass of water. By this and similar experiments, he established numerical relationships between heat and work. When the experiment was completed, the apparatus remained unchanged except for a slight increase in the water temperature. Work (W) had been converted into heat (Q) with 100% efficiency. Provided the process was carried out slowly, the temperature difference between the blocks and the water would be small, and heat transfer could be considered a reversible process. The entropy increase of the water at its temperature T is ?S = Q/T = W/T. Since everything but the water is unchanged, this equation also represents the total entropy increase. The entropy has been created from the work input, and this process could be continued indefinitely, creating more and more entropy. Unlike energy, entropy is not conserved.

Degradation of energy

Energy is never destroyed. But in the Joule friction experiment and in heat transfer between bodies, as in any natural process, something is lost. In the Joule experiment, the energy expended in work now resides in the water bath. But if this energy is reused, less useful work is obtained than was originally put in. The original energy input has been degraded to a less useful form. The energy transferred from a high-temperature body to a lower-temperature body is also in a less useful form. If another system is used to restore this degraded energy to its original form, it is found that the restoring system has degraded the energy even more than the original system had. Thus, every process occurring in the world results in an overall increase in entropy and a corresponding degradation in energy.

Measure of information

The probability characteristic of entropy leads to its use in communication theory as a measure of information. The absence of information about a situation is equivalent to an uncertainty associated with the nature of the situation. This uncertainty is the entropy of the information about the particular situation.

“熵”是德国物理学家克劳修斯在１８５０年创造的一个术语，他用它来表示任何一种能量在空间中分布的均匀程度。能量分布得越均匀，熵就越大。如果对于我们所考虑的那个系统来说，能量完全均匀地分布，那么，这个系统的熵就达到最大值。

 

Source

Alan Turing, Mathematician

• Born: 23 June 1912
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: 7 June 1954 (Probable suicide by cyanide poisoning)
• Best Known As: Pioneer in computers and artificial intelligence

Name at birth: Alan Mathison Turing

Alan Turing was a mathematician who in 1937 suggested a theoretical machine, since called a Turing Machine, that became the basis of modern computing. In 1950 he suggested what has become known as a "Turing's test," still the criterion for recognizing intelligence in a machine. During World War II Turing led the team that succeeded in breaking German high-level secret codes, using the first practical programmed computer, called Colossus. Turing was a homosexual, a crime in England at the time, and in 1952 he was tried, convicted and sentenced to estrogen treatments. In 1954 he died of cyanide poisoning, an apparent suicide.

Turing was also an accomplished competitive runner.

The systems and methods described in the '220 and the '318 enable nano layer deposition with ultra-conformality comparable to that of atomic layer deposition (ALD) and the manufacturing throughput of more conventional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) systems. NLD allows semiconductor manufacturers to choose from a wide field of deposition precursors (a key limitation of ALD) for the application of any thin film in use today on the surface of a wafer with atomic layer precision. NLD technology can also be used to construct complex, compound film structures with a level of control and conformality that was previously unavailable or impractical.

The '220 patent covers a system and process incorporating a pulsed plasma and deposition technique applicable to a variety of films such as Titanium Nitride, Copper and several low-K (dielectric constant) insulating films. The pulsing technique can also be used to deposit a low-K material and to "seal" it in-situ in order to preserve the film's low-K properties. This has been a major limitation to the successful implementation of low-K dielectric materials into current generations of semiconductors.

The '318 patent combines system design, source design and NLD technology to enable a manufacturing solution for next generation semiconductor devices. The '318 discloses a new helical ribbon electrode as a plasma source for use in an NLD system. The '318 patent builds on the technology disclosed in the '220 patent and provides a multi-chamber platform for performing a wide variety of processing steps such as pre-clean, etch, NLD, densification, etc. As a result, complex films can be deposited with complete conformality and layer thicknesses can be controlled to one monolayer or to several hundred of Angstroms.

The market for highly conformal deposition tools, such as ALD and NLD, is one of the fastest-growing segments of the semiconductor device manufacturing space. According to VLSI Research Inc., the current market for highly conformal deposition tools is over US$100 million and will grow at an annual rate of over 66% to reach US$1.35 billion in 2008.

"We are pleased to add these two key patents to Tegal's extensive base of intellectual property and know-how," said Michael Parodi, Tegal chairman, president & CEO. "This is one of the most exciting areas that Tegal has ever participated in, and we look forward to demonstrating the superiority of our NLD systems in the market."

Safe Harbor Statement

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Harvesting Solar Energy From Nano-Thin Films

By Grace Jean

Researchers at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., are developing prototypes of battery chargers and shelters that would harness solar energy through nanocomposite thin-film photovoltaics.

“It’s really an exciting time right now, because there are a number of new photovoltaic technologies out there trying to drive down costs, allowing you to use them in ways that couldn’t be used before,” said Lynne Samuelson, a research chemist at Natick.

Photovoltaic technology has advanced from the large, heavy and expensive glass panels into smaller, lightweight and cheaper devices.

“Up until the last few years, those technologies weren’t of interest to the military,” said Samuelson. But now, she said, power is a number one priority for soldiers who carry an increasing amount of electronic equipment. They need something lightweight and portable to charge those devices, she said.

Her research team has produced thin-film photovoltaics, or PVs, that could eventually answer that call.

The thin-film PVs are made by coating nanoparticles of titanium dioxide with a light-harvesting dye and sandwiching them between two plastic-based electrodes, said Samuelson. The resulting device has the thickness of three sheets of paper. When light comes through the device, it hits the dye and an electron gets shuttled through the titanium dioxide to the other electrode. A redux mediator keeps the process running, she said.

The sheets of PVs can be cut to any length or width, she said. The longer the device, the more current it will produce. If you need to charge up a radio, for example, you know the watts and amps required, and you could design a PV to meet that specific requirement, she said.

The goal for these devices is to generate 30 watts per pound, said Samuelson. Soldiers currently use a battery, BA5590, that produces about 22 watts per pound. With the nanocomposite thin-film PVs, “you’re providing a higher density, and it’s renewable,” said Samuelson.

Within the next year, these films will be incorporated into handheld battery-charger prototypes capable of recharging four AA batteries in two hours, said Samuelson. In the next two years, the team will incorporate the films into shelters as well.

“What’s nice about this technology is you can do some unique things with it that you can’t do with traditional materials,” said Samuelson. For example, making a camouflage-pattern photovoltaic.

“Because we’re using a light-harvesting dye, we can make colored patterns,” she explained. “We can inkjet-print these dyes easily to make camouflage-colored PVs without having to put a mesh over it,” she added.

Her team is also working on converting the thin-film PVs into fibers that could be weaved directly into textiles.

“It would make all the applications we’re already going after even better,” she said.

Mars Underground

Most of the news we get from Mars is in the form of photos from the surface or from space. This week's story in TIME is one good example. So is this one. But earlier today, space scientists announced different sort of imagery, invisible to the human eye, which reveals what's lies beneath the Martian surface. No, not water--the radar instrument aboard the Mars Express orbiter can't pick that up, if it's there.

But the radar did find buried impact craters in droves. Mars has plenty of visible craters, but the majority lie in its southern hemisphere; the north is relatively smooth. Under that smoothness, though, is a rough, ancient surface that was long ago overlaid with lava flows and with sediment laid down by ancient seas. It's the first time this sort of radar map has ever been made (Venus has been mapped with radar too, but only the surface, not the subsurface.

— M.L.

Goodbye, Arctic Icecap

A little over a year ago, this report cited four years of unusual summer melting in sea ice that covers most of the Arctic Ocean and concluded that this northern sea could be completely ice-free--North Pole included--"well before the end of the century."

But this year's numbers, just  presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, suggest  that things have sped up. The ice didn't melt back quite as much as in 2005, the worst summer on record. But 2006 was still pretty bad--and while the ice is now refreezing as winter approaches, there's less ice than the historical norm by an area about the size of Alaska. When you plug all the data into computer simulations, they suggest that the summer ice could disappear completely a lot sooner than anyone thought--possibly within just 40 years, and possibly with very little warning. That's because as the sea ice melts in summer, warmer water can more easily flow into the Arctic. Open water also reflects a lot less sunlight than ice does, which lets the sun warm things up more as more water shows. That creates a feedback loop--more water means more heat means even more water means even more heat....until, in just one especially warm summer, the ice could vanish, and not return.

It's all just one more suggestion that global warming is very real, and that the effects could lead to sudden changes, not just gradual ones. If the Arctic ice disappears, it might be good for shipping--after all, a Northwest Passage to the Pacific was one of the prime economic motives for exploring northern North America--but wildlife (polar bears, seals) would be devastated. And the global climate effects could be pretty devastating as well, since such a major change could dramatically alter weather patterns.

— M.L.

Why a hydrogen economy doesn't make sense 

In a recent study, fuel cell expert Ulf Bossel explains that a hydrogen economy is a wasteful economy. The large amount of energy required to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds (water, natural gas, biomass), package the light gas by compression or liquefaction, transfer the energy carrier to the user, plus the energy lost when it is converted to useful electricity with fuel cells, leaves around 25% for practical use — an unacceptable value to run an economy in a sustainable future. Only niche applications like submarines and spacecraft might use hydrogen.

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“More energy is needed to isolate hydrogen from natural compounds than can ever be recovered from its use,” Bossel explains to PhysOrg.com. “Therefore, making the new chemical energy carrier form natural gas would not make sense, as it would increase the gas consumption and the emission of CO₂. Instead, the dwindling fossil fuel reserves must be replaced by energy from renewable sources.”

While scientists from around the world have been piecing together the technology, Bossel has taken a broader look at how realistic the use of hydrogen for carrying energy would be. His overall energy analysis of a hydrogen economy demonstrates that high energy losses inevitably resulting from the laws of physics mean that a hydrogen economy will never make sense.

“The advantages of hydrogen praised by journalists (non-toxic, burns to water, abundance of hydrogen in the Universe, etc.) are misleading, because the production of hydrogen depends on the availability of energy and water, both of which are increasingly rare and may become political issues, as much as oil and natural gas are today,” says Bossel.

“There is a lot of money in the field now,” he continues. “I think that it was a mistake to start with a ‘Presidential Initiative’ rather with a thorough analysis like this one. Huge sums of money were committed too soon, and now even good scientists prostitute themselves to obtain research money for their students or laboratories—otherwise, they risk being fired. But the laws of physics are eternal and cannot be changed with additional research, venture capital or majority votes.”

Even though many scientists, including Bossel, predict that the technology to establish a hydrogen economy is within reach, its implementation will never make economic sense, Bossel argues.

“In the market place, hydrogen would have to compete with its own source of energy, i.e. with ("green") electricity from the grid,” he says. “For this reason, creating a new energy carrier is a no-win solution. We have to solve an energy problem not an energy carrier problem."

A wasteful process

In his study, Bossel analyzes a variety of methods for synthesizing, storing and delivering hydrogen, since no single method has yet proven superior. To start, hydrogen is not naturally occurring, but must be synthesized.

“Ultimately, hydrogen has to be made from renewable electricity by electrolysis of water in the beginning,” Bossel explains, “and then its energy content is converted back to electricity with fuel cells when it’s recombined with oxygen to water. Separating hydrogen from water by electrolysis requires massive amounts of electrical energy and substantial amounts of water.”

Also, hydrogen is not a source of energy, but only a carrier of energy. As a carrier, it plays a role similar to that of water in a hydraulic heating system or electrons in a copper wire. When delivering hydrogen, whether by truck or pipeline, the energy costs are several times that for established energy carriers like natural gas or gasoline. Even the most efficient fuel cells cannot recover these losses, Bossel found. For comparison, the "wind-to-wheel" efficiency is at least three times greater for electric cars than for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

Another headache is storage. When storing liquid hydrogen, some gas must be allowed to evaporate for safety reasons—meaning that after two weeks, a car would lose half of its fuel, even when not being driven. Also, Bossel found that the output-input efficiency cannot be much above 30%, while advanced batteries have a cycle efficiency of above 80%. In every situation, Bossel found, the energy input outweighs the energy delivered by a factor of three to four.

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“About four renewable power plants have to be erected to deliver the output of one plant to stationary or mobile consumers via hydrogen and fuel cells,” he writes. “Three of these plants generate energy to cover the parasitic losses of the hydrogen economy while only one of them is producing useful energy.”

This fact, he shows, cannot be changed with improvements in technology. Rather, the one-quarter efficiency is based on necessary processes of a hydrogen economy and the properties of hydrogen itself, e.g. its low density and extremely low boiling point, which increase the energy cost of compression or liquefaction and the investment costs of storage.

The alternative: An electron economy

Economically, the wasteful hydrogen process translates to electricity from hydrogen and fuel cells costing at least four times as much as electricity from the grid. In fact, electricity would be much more efficiently used if it were sent directly to the appliances instead. If the original electricity could be directly supplied by wires, as much as 90% could be used in applications.

“The two key issues of a secure and sustainable energy future are harvesting energy from renewable sources and finding the highest energy efficiency from source to service,” he says. “Among these possibilities, biomethane [which is already being used to fuel cars in some areas] is an important, but only limited part of the energy equation. Electricity from renewable sources will play the dominant role.”

To Bossel, this means focusing on the establishment of an efficient “electron economy.” In an electron economy, most energy would be distributed with highest efficiency by electricity and the shortest route in an existing infrastructure could be taken. The efficiency of an electron economy is not affected by any wasteful conversions from physical to chemical and from chemical to physical energy. In contrast, a hydrogen economy is based on two such conversions (electrolysis and fuel cells or hydrogen engines).

“An electron economy can offer the shortest, most efficient and most economical way of transporting the sustainable ‘green’ energy to the consumer,” he says. “With the exception of biomass and some solar or geothermal heat, wind, water, solar, geothermal, heat from waste incineration, etc. become available as electricity. Electricity could provide power for cars, comfortable temperature in buildings, heat, light, communication, etc.

“In a sustainable energy future, electricity will become the prime energy carrier. We now have to focus our research on electricity storage, electric cars and the modernization of the existing electricity infrastructure.”

Citation: Bossel, Ulf. “Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense?” Proceedings of the IEEE. Vol. 94, No. 10, October 2006.

By Lisa Zyga, Copyright 2006 Physorg.com

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John F. Kennedy, U.S. President

• Born: 29 May 1917
• Birthplace: Brookline, Massachusetts
• Died: 22 November 1963 (assassination by gunshot)
• Best Known As: President of the United States, 1961-63

John F. Kennedy's 1963 assassination was one of the most shocking public events of the 20th century. Kennedy served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, commanding the patrol boat PT-109 and leading his crew to rescue after the boat was sunk by the Japanese in the Solomon Islands. A Democrat, "JFK" was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Massachusetts' 11th district in 1946. In 1952 he moved up to the U.S. Senate, defeating Henry Cabot Lodge. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on 12 September 1953; they had two children, Caroline (b. 1957) and John Jr. (b. 1960). (A third child, Patrick, was born on 7 August 1963 and died two days later.) JFK was elected to replace President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 (narrowly defeating Eisenhower's vice-president, Richard Nixon); he swept into office with a reputation for youthful charm, impatience, wit and vigor. Kennedy's term was sometimes called the New Frontier, a phrase he coined in his acceptance speech at the 1960 Democratic convention. Kennedy was shot to death by sniper Lee Harvey Oswald during an open-car motorcade in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963; two days later, Harvey was shot and killed by another man, Jack Ruby. Kennedy was succeeded by Lyndon Johnson.

Kennedy was sometimes called by his nickname, Jack... U.S. senators Ted Kennedy and the late Robert F. Kennedy are Kennedy's younger brothers... His son John Kennedy Jr. died in a 1999 private plane crash... His older brother Joe Kennedy Jr. and his sister Kathleen were also killed in plane crashes during the 1940s... His father Joseph Kennedy was a controversial businessman and former ambassador to Great Britain... Kennedy's maternal grandfather, John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, was mayor of Boston...Kennedy suffered from back trouble for most of his adult life; the stiff-backed rocking chair he sometimes used in the Oval Office became a personal symbol... While recovering from two serious back operations he wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for biography... He also suffered from the glandular disorder Addison's Disease... Richard Nixon's running mate in 1960 was Henry Cabot Lodge, whom Kennedy defeated for senator in 1952... Kennedy attended the private school Choate and graduated from Harvard College in 1940... Kennedy was America's first Catholic president.

 

One Small Fact

A friend mentioned to me an interesting coincidence. Anna Politskaya was murdered on October 7. October 7 is Vladimir Putin's birthday. A present?

and who is Anna Politskaya ?and whois Vladimir Putin's ？

Russian journalist Anna Politskaya

万恶律师为首（英文原版进口）（硬皮精装）

 

As a child, Catherine Crier was enchanted by film portrayals of crusading lawyers like Clarence Darrow and Atticus Finch. As a district attorney, private lawyer, and judgeherself, she saw firsthand how the United States justice system worked--and didn't. One of the most respected Iegal journalists and commentators today, she now confronts a profoundly unfair legal system that produces results and profits for the few--and paralysis, frustration, and injustice for the many. Alexis de Tocqueville's dire prediction in Democracy in America has come true: We Americans have ceded the resolution of society's problems--our fundamental responsibility as citizens--to "legal authorities," and in doing so have given up precious democratic freedoms. .
The Case Against Lawyers is both an angry indictment and an eloquent plea for a return to common sense. It decries a system of laws so complex that even their enforcers--such as the IRS--cannot understand them. It unmasks a litigation-crazed society where billion:dollar judgments serve mostly to line the pockets of personal injury lawyers. It deplores the stupidity of a liability system that Ieads to such results as a label on a stroller warns: REMOVE CHILD BEFORE FOLDING. It indicts a criminal justice system that puts minor drug offenders away for life, yet allows celebrity murderers to walk free. And it excoriates the sheer corruption of the iron triangle of lawyers, bureaucrats, and politicians, who profit mightily from all this inefficiency, injustice, and abuse The Case Against Lawyers will make readers hopping mad. And it will make them realize that the only response can be to demand change. Now. ...

Dino Killer: One Comet, not Many

Only 20 years ago, the notion that a giant comet or asteroid impact killed off the dinosaurs was still a radical theory, but the discovery of a huge buried crater at Chicxulub, on the coast of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula in the early 1990s proved that a strike from space was at least a major factor. The dust and debris thrown into the atmosphere from the impact would have cut off the sun, killing off  plants at the base of the food chain, and chilled the planet dramatically to boot. But geologists have questioned whether a single space rock could have done the job itself, or whether multiple impacts were involved.

Nope--according, at least, to Ken MacLeod, a geologist at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Reasoning that sediments close to the impact site would be too churned up by the violence of the event to be useful, and that sediments too far away would contain too little debris to be definitive, he and several colleagues plumbed the seafloor about 2,800 miles away from the Yucatan. What they found was one and only one layer of impact-related material, dated to 65 million years ago--the precise age of the Chicxulub crater and of the dinosaurs' demise. His verdict: one shot from space was all it took.

— M.L.

34 Percent

11 Dec 2006 05:10 pm

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Water on Mars?

NASA/GETTY
This light-toned deposit several hundred yards long illustrates where a gully flowed in the Centauri Montes Region

Aside from the question "is there life on Mars," this is the big one. A whole series of orbiting cameras and surface rovers have been beaming back evidence that Mars had water flowing on its surface in the distant past, billions of years ago, but most of it seems to have vanished--from the surface, anyway. Planetary scientists have long held out hope that some of that water remains underground, but nobody's ever found the dribbling gun, as it were.

But a little over an hour ago, NASA announced they'd found something pretty close. In before-and-after photos taken by the Mars Global Surveyor, which seems to have gone out of commission last month, you can see changes that look for all the world as if trickles of flowing water deposited new sediments in ancient Martian gullies, sometime between 1999 and 2005.

That doesn't mean anyone is going to find lakes on the Red Planet--it's too cold, and the atmosphere is too thin, for liquid water to remain for more than a few minutes before freezing, then subliming off into water vapor. But it does suggest there's plenty under the ground--and where there's water, there could at least be microbial life (see above under "the big one").

—M.L.

Dobson on Cheney

11 Dec 2006 07:26 pm

Thursday, Dec. 7, 2006

Ebola's Horrifying Toll

Thanks largely to Richard Preston's blockbuster bestseller The Hot Zone, and also to screaming headlines every time there's a new outbreak, Ebola virus is one of the most feared infectious agents in the world. The truth is that it has killed a few thousand humans, at most, in all of the recorded outbreaks in history--orders of magnitude fewer than malaria, diarrheal disease or tuberculosis kill in a single year.

But according to a paper just published in Science, Ebola threatens to drive one of our closest evolutionary relatives out of existence entirely. According to a team of scientists from Gabon, Spain and Germany, an estimated 5,000 gorillas perished in two outbreaks in Congo in 2002 and 2003 alone--and that's a conservative estimate. Making the reasonable assumption that other outbreaks may have had comparable impact, and given the fact that the animals are hunted for meat and trophies, that their habitat is continually diminishing--and that total populations have been estimated at only about 100,000--there's good reason to fear that these majestic animals could be on a faster road to extinction than anyone thought.

— M.L.

Has Stradivarius' Secret Been Solved?

A rival publication which shall remain nameless published a piece yesterday describing the amazing new high-tech methods violin makers are using to try and reproduce--or even surpass--the extraordinary instruments made in Italy by the legendary Antonio Stradivari and  Giuseppe Guarneri, in the 1600s and 1700s. The story is full of references to graphite fibers and such--things you'd expect to find in a jet, not a fiddle.

But the piece leaves out one crucial fact. The reason former racing-shell designers and the like are forced to invent new ways to make violins is that nobody to date has completely figured out why those 300-plus-year-old violins, made with simple hand tools from low-tech spruce and maple still sound better than pretty much any instruments made since. It's not for lack of trying: the secret of Stradivari and the others has been a matter of intensive investigation by luthiers, engineers and physicists for 100 years and more; the old violins have been taken apart and their pieces measured, calibrated and,vibrated at high frequency--with no agreement at all about what makes them tick, or, more accurately, sing.

Today, however, a report in Nature is proposing at least a partial explanation. The extraordinary resonance of the old Italian violins, says a team of scientists led by Joseph Nagyvary, a biochemist at Texas A&M University, is...biochemistry. By sending tiny slivers from several Stradivari and Guarneri instruments through a sophisticated mass spectrometer, they've found evidence the wood was treated before it was carved into violins.

What that treatment consisted of is left unspecified in the report--as is the fact that Nagyvary has been pursuing the Stradivarius mystery for more than 25 years, doing extensive research on the lumber business in Northern Italy centuries ago and on the finishes used by furniture makers in Cremona, where Stradivari lived and worked. In all that time, he's come up with some highly plausible theories--that the wood felled in Italian mountain forests was floated downriver and sat in Venetian lagoons for up to a year before being sold, absorbing the brackish waters (a chemical treatment, albeit inadvertent). And he's concluded that the varnishes Stradivari used may have been full of fruit sugars, giving the wood an especial stiffness that allows it to vibrate brilliantly.

He's also been making violins according to his theories, and using sophisticated sound equipment to compare their sound with the real thing. And in a number of blind tests with real musicians and real audiences, Nagyvary's violins have equaled or even surpassed those of the Italian masters.

And there's not a drop of graphite or epoxy or space-age plastic in them.