Technology
sporte | June 1, 2008This month's edition of Medicine 2.0 focuses on connections. You'll learn how new technologies are empowering patients by connecting them with their own health records, connecting patients and paramedics with doctors, and connecting doctors with each other.
Nothing connects like Web 2.0.
Let's hit the Midway!
Many submissions to this carnival certainly captured the carnival spirit. I had just become resigned to the notion of scouring the internet myself, looking for posts that would fit today's collection, when a couple of days ago, I was inundated with email submissions.
Great! I thought,…
revere | May 31, 2008Many years ago -- about 40 to be exact -- I was working as the only medical doctor in a bioengineering research laboratory in a famous technological university. A lot of what was done there involved speech synthesis (one of the first reading machines for the blind using text to speech recognition) and also some digital image processing. One of my interests was in radiology (the medical specialty of reading x-rays) and I was doing some research in that area. X-rays of the chest were usually taken in threes: the "posterior-anterior" (PA) view (back to front), the lateral (through the side) and…
neurophilosophy | May 29, 2008
Neuroscientists at the University of Pittsburgh report that they have successfully trained monkeys to feed themselves using a robotic arm controlled by a brain-computer interface (BCI). The study has been covered extensively in the media, and I've written quite a lot about these devices in the past, so, rather than elaborate on it here, I'll refer you to my previous posts, and to this post by Ed at Not Exactly Rocket Science.
However, I suggest that the new study is somewhat overhyped in some of the news stories that I've read. According to The Independent, for example, it is "a…
edyong | May 29, 2008Think of celery, an airplane or a dog. Each of these words, along with the thousands of others in the English language, create a different and unique pattern of activity in your brain. Now, a team of scientists has developed the first computer programme that can predict these patterns for concrete nouns - tangible things that you can experience with your senses.
With an accuracy of around 70%, the technique is far from perfect but it's still a significant technological step. Earlier work may have catalogued patterns of brain activity associated with categories of words, but this is the…
pontiff | May 28, 2008Bill Gates thinks that robots are at the equivalent stage that computers were when he and Paul Allen and a ton of hobbyists helped fuel the PC revolution. But is he right? Here is a radical proposal: might not bioengineering be the next field where amateurs have a huge impact? Such is the hypothesis of DIYbio which had its first meeting in Cambridge, MA on May 1st:
In the packed back-room of Asgard's Irish Pub in Cambridge, a diverse crowd of 25+ enthusiasts gathered to discuss the next big thing in biology: amateurs. Mackenzie (Mac) Cowell led-off the night with an overview of recent…
edyong | May 28, 2008The realm of science-fiction has just taken a big stride towards the world of science fact, with the creation of a prosthetic arm that can be moved solely by thought. Two monkeys, using only electrodes implanted in their brains, were able to feed themselves with the robotic arm complete with working joints.
Bionic limbs have been fitted to people before but they have always worked by connecting to the nerve endings in the chest. This is the first time that a prosthetic has been placed under direct control of the relevant part of the brain.
The study, carried out by Meel Velliste from the…
cevans | May 25, 2008The Large Hadron Collider is finally turning on.
A quick step backwards: the LHC is a particle accelerator, the largest of its kind, underwritten by all the wild money in science, a ringed tunnel some 27 kilometers long, deep underground, crossing the French-Swiss border at four points. It's been over twenty years in the making and has garnered the support of 10,000 scientists in 85 countries behind its unimaginable modus operandi: to recreate the environment of our universe as it was less than a millionth of a second after the Big Bang, and hence to reveal, among other things, the…
clock | May 24, 2008Before I went back to Belgrade, I did not know if there was a website with information about the racing and equestrian activities there. There used to be one some years ago, but it has not been updated in a very long time. So, I was happy when, while there, I was given URLs of the Belgrade Racecourse website and the Federation for Equestrian Sport of Serbia website. The former looks good and easy to navigate.
The latter is little old-timey in appearance but that may be on purpose, to emphasize the long tradition. It is also a little too PDF-happy for my taste - it is OK to use the…
clock | May 24, 2008...so other smart people are developing new kinds of maps - follow the links within to explore.
pontiff | May 22, 2008The telectroscope:
Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel will finally be completed. Immediately afterwards, an extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope will be installed at both ends which will miraculously allow people to see right through the Earth from London to New York and vice versa.
gregladen | May 21, 2008This is not a funny Linux video. This is an actual educational video. And it's long. Only for serious Linux scholars ...
Produced by the Computer History Museum.
Hat Tip: Linux Journal
More on Linux
gregladen | May 20, 2008According to Really Linux writer Andrea W. Cordingly, "Chicks Love Linux" ...
There I was standing around the LUG booth at the annual Linux expo when I realised that unlike years past, there were considerable numbers of female attendants. No, I am not referring exclusively to those female models hired to promote an OS (I won't mention which one) wearing skimpy demon costumes.
I was truly encouraged to find that women from all backgrounds and ages were making up an increasingly larger portion of those attending such Linux conferences.
Microsoft blames YOU
A recent study shows that Microsoft…
gregladen | May 20, 2008Microsoft has a deal with the government of Hungary which costs the government billions and traps university students in the Microsoft Gap. This is the usual monopolistic evil corporate policy that makes thinking people dislike Microsoft (everyone else is a mindless clone. Sorry, but, well, I'm just sayin').
Anyway, Microsoft Strong Man Steve Ballmer had the audacity to visit a Hungarian University. And what he got, he had coming.
Ha! I love watching Ballmer ducking behind the desk. Now he knows what the average Windows user feels.
You may remember, something similar happened to…
sciencetolife | May 20, 2008 Google Health, the latest service from Google, was recently launched as a beta version. Online personal health services have been around for a while (including Revolution Health and Microsoft's HealthVault) but here's what Google says is different about theirs:
1.Portability:Through Google Health, you will be able to have access and control over your health data from anywhere. People who travel will be able to move health data between their various health providers seamlessly and with total control.
2.Ease of use: Clean, easy-to-use user experience that makes managing your health…
razib | May 17, 2008Firefox 3 release candidate goes public:
It's a public preview of the new Firefox code, available in 45 languages, aimed at developers and early adopters to test out the new features. It has an extensive list of known bugs.
...
On the performance front, the documentation states that applications such as Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3, compared to Firefox 2, and memory usage has been improved. In addition, bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are less susceptible to data loss.
If you are running Firefox, Help → Check for Updates... Or download. Please note…
clock | May 16, 2008I'd like to sail on this thing:
Bay Area engineer Ugo Conti has sailed the world, but has always suffered from seasickness. A queasy stomach became his motivation to design "Proteus" - a spider-like sea craft made for smoother sailing. He designed the Wave Adaptive Modular Vessel to cross the ocean while flexing with the movement of the waves. And it may change the way people take to the high seas.
razib | May 16, 2008If you don't have a spare computer, want to try out a Linux distribution, and are a little intimidated by the details of setting up a dual-boot, check out Wubi. It makes a dual-boot pretty much a "one-click" affair, loading up the Ubuntu distribution via a Windows installer.
jlynch | May 15, 2008It's been a few years (2002, probably) since I used a Linux box regularly. Yesterday I dual-booted my laptop with Ubuntu 8.04 "Hardy Heron" and everything works flawlessly. So now I'm asking - what are the essential software packages I should install? Utilities, games, whatever ... make a recommendation. I'd be particularly interested in hearing about a good blogging client.
pontiff | May 15, 2008I'm a sucker for any game which involves time travel. If only now I could go back in time and use my time more wisely than I did by playing that silly game.