Technology
clock | March 2, 2010Duke's Periodic Tables at the Broad Street Cafe
March 9, 2010 | 7:00 P.M.
Nanomaterials in Ecosystems: Should we worry?
Nanotechnology has the enormous potential to change our society. New advances in medicine, energy production, environmental cleanup and better access to clean water are just a few of the many possibilities. According to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, the number of products that use nanomaterials has increased almost 380% since 2006. But, is it the same special properties that make nanoscale materials so useful that also pose potential risks to humans…
clock | March 1, 2010At Morehead Planetarium in Chapel Hill this week:
SCIENCE & ETHICS: AIRPORT SECURITY
Thursday, March 4, 7 p.m.
Michael Zunk,
Federal Security Director, TSA, RDU International Airport
Come hear Mr. Zunk discuss scanning technologies while busting some popular myths on airport security screening.
Cookies and coffee served.
Morehead Banquet Hall, East Entrance, 2nd Floor. Chapel Hill, NC.
cevans | March 1, 2010
Photograph by Benjamin Reed.
Ursula K. Le Guin is a internationally-recognized, award-winning science fiction writer, an elegant badass and the author of such classics as the Hugo and Nebula-award winning The Left Hand of Darkness, The Lathe Of Heaven, and the Earthsea novels. Last year, she began mounting formidable opposition to the Google Books Settlement, an inscrutably complex 303-page agreement reached between the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers and Google regarding the Web giant's desire to scan the libraries of the world. The Settlement, if approved -- it…
revere | February 27, 2010Fifteen years isn't a long time. Most of us can remember what we were doing 15 years ago. Often it's the same thing we are doing now, job-wise. Sure our kids were just kids, not adults. But 15 years isn't a historical epoch. At least not when you are living through it. But the fact is we have gone through a revolution in that period that will seem as profound as the 50 years from 1450 to 1500, the half century after Gutenberg and the invention of moveable type.
It's hard to remember what the cyberworld was like a short 15 years ago, but thanks to the internet we can retrieve -- instantly --…
edyong | February 23, 2010I grew up in the days of the SNES and the Sega Megadrive. Even then, furious debates would rage about the harm (or lack thereof) that video games would inflict on growing children. A few decades later, little has changed. The debate still rages, fuelled more by the wisdom of repugnance than by data. With little regard for any actual evidence, pundits like Baroness Susan Greenfield, former Director of the Royal Institution, claim that video games negatively "rewire" our brains, infantilising us, depriving us of our very identities and even instigating the financial crisis.
Of course, the fact…
grrlscientist | February 23, 2010tags: Old Spice commercial, manmercial, television, Superbowl, advertizing, technology, computer-generated imagery, CGI, wow, I'm on a Horse, Isaiah Mustafa, funny, humor, streaming video
Daily, men ask themselves, What do women want? We want a gorgeous bare-chested man with a beautiful voice on a horse, that's what! And this is exactly what Old Spice gave us with bare-chested Isaiah Mustafa, a TV actor and former NFL player, in their "manmercial" that first aired during the Superbowl. But how was that amazing commercial made? Maybe you think it was stitched together from a lot of separate '…
pontiff | February 22, 2010The Singularity University is crazy. I like crazy. If I were a grad student with copious time on my hands (trust me, in comparison, you have copious time, dear GradStudent) I'd apply to attend the Singularity University summer school:
SU's Graduate Studies Program (GSP) is a 10-week summer program (June 19 through August 28) located at NASA Ames Research Park in Silicon Valley. The program is for top graduate and postgraduate students worldwide to learn about the various exponentially growing cross-disciplinary technologies (biotechnology, nanotechnology, information technology, artificial…
grrlscientist | February 22, 2010Since I have been without wireless for one week now, I thought I'd take this opportunity to provide you with an update so you don't think I've either died, lost interest in writing or been kidnapped by space aliens. None of these things is true.
If you've been following my saga on twitter these past few days, then you know that I've been going crazy because my wireless connection unexpectedly died one week ago. The internet providers, T-Mobile, are a study of stupidity and incompetence, unable to understand what the problem is (like, duh!), unable to route our many phone calls to someone in…
gregladen | February 16, 2010Well, that is not a direct quote, but Google has admitted that the early version of Google Buzz had serious flaws related to privacy, and this may be related to Google having skipped a step with its testing process.
The BBC has a story on this.
...Buzz was only tested internally and bypassed more extensive trials with external testers...
"We've been testing Buzz internally at Google for a while. Of course, getting feedback from 20,000 Googlers isn't quite the same as letting Gmail users play with Buzz in the wild."
The biggest problem was the automatic creation of a circle of "friends"…
grrlscientist | February 15, 2010tags: Downfall, Even Hitler Made a Hitler Parody, internet meme, technology, Hitler, satire, parody, humor, comedy, fucking hilarious, streaming video
If you've been following the Hitler Parodies video meme on YouTube (197 unique videos so far!), then you'll appreciate this amusing parody where Hitler himself tries to jump on the bandwagon.
(I am standing in a restaurant in Germany, viewing this video and the waitress just looked over my shoulder .. GAH! I hope this isn't illegal here!)
razib | February 14, 2010Dr. Daniel MacArthur returns from hiatus, and observes that deCODE is now in the advanced stages of corporate death. Pointers to a Newsweek article and other bloggers at Dr. MacArthur's post. Over at Gene Expression Classic p-ter points out that Small genetic effects do not preclude drug development (one of the rationales given for why deCODE couldn't translate associations in $$$).
Also, for historical perspective, check out this 2002 article about deCODE.
revere | February 14, 2010The mosquito is the vector for diseases like malaria, yellow fever and West Nile. They are major scourges of public health, and while we have sunk a fair amount of money in drying to eradicate them, we haven't put as much money into developing the technology for the war on mosquitoes as the war on other humans. Think of the Star Wars Initiative and the investment and difficult of zapping a single missile before it hits an population area. The technology is super expensive (and super profitable for defense contractors. And so far nobody has been able to make it work. The idea of shooting a…
pharyngula | February 12, 2010How very useful: if you've got an iPhone, you can download an app with rebuttals to common denialist arguments.
Also, if you enjoy that kind of thing, you will certainly enjoy Tim Lambert's demolition of Monckton in a debate.
gregladen | February 11, 2010Huh. I was just beginning to explore Google Wave and now apparently it has already crashed on the lonely shore of Software User Indifference. But what will be the fate of Google Buzz? (Razib explores the question.)
At this time in my personal IT/Computer development Google Wave is the opposite of what I've been moving towards. I want documents that are plain text, marked up but preferably with minimal makrup. Google Wave scares me and annoys me and call me crazy but I'm not happy with a document that someone else can edit while I'm working on it. Not that there is not a place for such…
drorzel | February 11, 2010Relevant to yesterday's discussion, I let Windows install its critical updates on my work computer last night. So far this morning, I have: 1) Spent five minutes looking at the blue Vista start-up screen, as the computer was hung up-- not a screen with a "Configuring updates" message, mind-- an otherwise blank blue screen with "Windows Vista" at the bottom, 2) Had Word inform me that it is unable to find the file I double-clicked to open Word, 3) Opened Word, opened the file from within Word, closed the file, tried to quit Word, and was told that I can't quit Word because it's in use by…
razib | February 10, 2010What do you think? I think the probability is lower that it will flop like Wave in terms of widespread use because I can recognize what the application is trying to do. It seems to be pushing into a recognizable niche of social content aggregation and organization, though since it hooks into stuff you already use like Gmail it's got a definite advantage out of the gates. The only major caution is that a lot of the comments I'm seeing in Buzz are like the initial ones in Wave. "So, what do we do with this?" "Hey everyone!" "I'm here...."
cagapakis | February 10, 2010"The history of any given technology is extraordinarily complex."
--Rob Carlson, Biology is Technology.
Analyzing the history of a technology requires a complex look at the social, economic, and political context in which it emerged, and the reciprocal influences that the developing technology exerts on these factors. Predicting what the future of a technology will be like, how it will affect the economy and understanding the potential risks and payoffs is much much harder. Rob Carlson's new book, Biology is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of…
drorzel | February 10, 2010We had a meeting yesterday with the chair of the CS department, who wanted to know about our computing needs. Sadly, she just meant that she wanted to know what computing things we would like our students to be taught, because my real computing need, as I said to Kate last night, is "I need the entire computer industry to operate on a different paradigm than it does now, because the current system is making everyone miserable."
I was half joking, but not entirely. I genuinely am annoyed at the whole way the industry operates, because planned obsolescence means that I am constantly being…
revere | February 10, 2010I'm a scientist and my research is supported by NIH, i.e., by American taxpayers. More importantly, the science I do is for anyone to use. I claim no proprietary rights. That's what science is all about. We make our computer code publicly available, not just by request, but posted on the internet, and it is usable code: commented and documented. We ask the scientists in our program to do the same with the reagents they develop. Reagents are things like genetic probes or antibodies directed against specific targets mentioned in the articles they publish. There is an list of the reagents on the…
drorzel | February 8, 2010What's the application? The use of lasers to provide an entertaining light show for humans, dogs, or cats.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "How will I entertain my dog or cat?"
2) "How can we distract people from the fact that Roger Daltrey has no voice left?"
Why are lasers essential? Lasers provide coherent beams of light, which remain small over very large distances, allowing you to project a small spot or a tight beam across a room, or even a football stadium.
Why is it cool? Duuuuude! Lasers, duuuuude!
Why isn't it cool enough? 1) It's fundamentally just a toy. 2) No amount…