Technology
jtoney | February 15, 2012
This is a feel good story of the day - the world's first human to humanoid robot handshake, in space! The robot even sent out a tweet.
From The New York Times:
The commander of the International Space Station, Daniel Burbank, shook hands Wednesday with Robonaut. It's the first handshake ever between a human and a humanoid in space.
NASA's Robonaut was launched aboard space shuttle Discovery last February. Crews have been testing it to see how it one day might help astronauts perform space station chores.
On Wednesday, ground controllers activated computer software that enabled the robot…
jtoney | February 13, 2012
Imagine the killer from the infamous "Headless Man Found in Topless Bar" murder was convicted using a photograph of the face of the victim, with reliability rivaling that of DNA analysis. Impossible?
With a skull found, how can we determine to whom it belonged?
A research group at the University of Granada has developed a new method that merges facial photographs with 3D images of a skull called craniofacial superimposition that could revolutionize forensic analysis.
How did they do it?
Identifying remains using photographs or even paintings has been used since the 19th century. This group…
carlyo | February 13, 2012Known as "the authority on the future of technology " and the world's oldest technology magazine,Technology Review - published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - is bringing its prestige and expertise back to the Festival as a Media Partner!
Technology Review, published by MIT since 1899, continues today to provide unparalleled insights into cutting edge technologies that are changing the world and the way science and engineering do business.
In returning as a Media Partner, the magazine joins a growing list of other top science media leaders who are also serving as Festival…
carlyo | February 3, 2012Popular Science, one of the leading sources of news in technology, science, gadgets, space, green tech and more, is returning as a key Media Partner with the Festival!
In doing so, PopSci joins a growing list of other top science media leaders who will be serving as Festival sponsors, including Popular Mechanics, Scientific American, MIT's Technology Review, Chemical & Engineering News, School Tube.com, ENGINEERING.com, EE Times and PBS Kids.
PopSci has been a major source of science and technology news since its award-winning magazine Popular Science was founded back in 1872. Its online…
drorzel | February 2, 2012As I keep saying in various posts, I'm teaching a class on timekeeping this term, which has included discussion of really primitive timekeeping devices like sundials, as well as a discussion of the importance of timekeeping for navigation. To give students an idea of how this works, I arranged an experimental demonstration, coordinated with Rhett at Dot Physics. We've been trying to do this literally for months, but the weather wouldn't cooperate. Until this past weekend, when we finally managed to make measurements that allow us to do some cutting-edge science. For 200 BC, anyway...
So, what…
jtoney | February 1, 2012
Color-enhanced scanning electron micrograph shows splenic tissue from a monkey with inhalational anthrax; featured are rod-shaped bacilli (yellow) and an erythrocyte (red)Credit: Arthur Friedlander
A university professor has allegedly mailed anthrax to the Pakistani prime minister's office in October, accoding to today's The New York Times. Could this be the beginning of a new anthrax scare? Is history repeating itself?
If true, any individual considering such "attacks" can no longer assume that their weapons are untraceable, as shown by the anthrax scare in 2001.
Below is an excerpt from…
drorzel | February 1, 2012It's apparently a good day for asking questions of the readership, so here's another one: as SteelyKid has gotten older and more active, she's become a real drain on productivity, especially at bedtime. Bedtime is now a process rather like a certain spoof book, extending well over an hour, and involving repeated requests to come back into her room for some silly reason or another. If I don't respond quickly enough, she'll work herself up into a real tantrum, so I pretty much need to stay upstairs in our bedroom until she's asleep. Which means either I can't get any work done, or I have to…
jtoney | January 28, 2012OpenYale courses.
Looking for free, open source learning materials about any subject, from top experts in the world? I used to think that MIT's OpenCourseWare and Yale's OpenYale courses were a "one stop shopping" source for this, until I came across this stunning, worldwide, multi-lingual collection of course materials.
I invite you to explore this collection of free learning materials, including course syllabi, exams and study guides in a wide array of subjects, from the US, the UK, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, China...you get the idea.
Many thanks to Junqiang Zhou…
kbonham | January 26, 2012I grew up on the coast of California, and I loved to surf. At my favorite break, Pleasure Point, the best waves were often at low tide, but low tide also meant seaweed. Lots of seaweed.
[Source]
The giant kelp of Monteray Bay is an astonishing organism. It's not actually a plant, it's a brown algae, and it can grow 12 inches per day. This rapid growth makes it an ideal resource, and a bane of surfers that get their fins caught in thick mats.
You can't tell, but it was definitely kelp that made me fall, not the fact that I was too far forward and unable to turn. No, really...
Brown algae…
drorzel | January 24, 2012So, back when How to Teach Physics to Your Dog was coming out, I did a few "dramatic readings" of bits of the book, such as this one on the Quantum Zeno Effect:
This was made with Windows Movie Maker, because it was free (came with the computer) and dead simple. However, Movie Maker on my new computers is hopelessly broken-- I've made a couple of attempts to do the same sort of thing with my laptop, but I've never managed to get more than a couple of steps in before it crashes. (To be fair, this is one of only two things that are worse under Windows 7 than Vista, and the only one that's…
jtoney | January 18, 2012
Can a plant send tweets for water? It is possible, using a "do your own biology" approach.
From Mashable:
From SparkFun:
Botanicalls Kits let plants reach out for human help! They offer a connection to your leafy pal via online Twitter status updates to your mobile phone. When your plant needs water, it will post to let you know, and send its thanks when you show it love. It comes as a kit so that you can hone your soldering skills (or teach someone else) while you build a line of communication between you and your houseplant!
This kit comes with everything you need to get your plant…
kbonham | January 18, 2012I promise, this will be my last semen post for a while.
I've talked about allergy to semen.
I've talked about allergens in semen.
And I've talked about autoimmunity to semen.
All of these are problems, leading to discomfort or infertility. But what if those problems could be leveraged for our benefit?
[Source: These drawings were made by Antonie von Leeuwenhoek - the first man to view sperm cells under a microscope]
Using the immune system as a contraceptive is not a new idea. In 1899, Karl Landsteiner
and Elie Metchnikoff (both of whom would later win Nobel Prizes) independently demonstrated…
jtoney | January 17, 2012
A "holy grail" in spinal injury research is to repair the spinal cord with newly minted nerve cells. This study published in the journal ACS Chemical Neuroscience takes us a major leap forward, with the first evidence that cells from an umbilical cord -- not from a fetus -- can be transformed into active nerve cells. This eliminates any ethical concerns about using a fetus for medical applications.
From the Abstract:
Umbilical cord stem cells would be a favorable alternative to embryonic stem cells for therapeutic applications. In this study, human multipotent progenitor cells (MLPCs)…
jtoney | January 16, 2012Photo by Nicolas Genin.
66ème Festival de Venise (Mostra)
In the touching film "Up in the Air," Ryan Bingham played by George Clooney has an ambition of earning ten million frequent flyer miles, for which he:
receives an instant upgrade: a personally engraved metal card that will allow him to directly access his own private operator, someone who will greet him by name.
No such thing exists for publishing - whether you're a writer, a reviewer or an editor - until now.
Mike Fowler of the Nature Network describes a new "publishing revolution" in his recent blog post. The current system…
drorzel | January 14, 2012It's a sign of how good computers have gotten that I'm faintly offended whenever Google Translate fails to come up with something even halfway sensible. I mean, translating a blog post from one language to another is a ridiculously difficult problem, and yet they usually do a passable job. It's only when the vanity search turns up something like this blog post in Hebrew that it fails completely, and gives a string of disconnected and incoherent words and phrases.
So, here's to the amazing successes of Google Translate. And if anybody can tell me what in the world that blog post says about my…
jtoney | January 14, 2012
Tim Tebow Foundation
Tim Tebow with Jacob Rainey, one of the many people dealing with health problems Tebow hosted at Broncos games this season.
Photo source.
Denver Broncos Quarterback Tim Tebow has become a popular culture phenomenon not only because of his extraordinary athletic skills but because he lives out the values of his religious faith - displayed publicly and shamelessly - everyday (more on that later.) But something that has not received much coverage in the news media is that three years ago, Tim Tebow had a "mysterious pain in his throwing shoulder" and he sought out some…
jtoney | January 10, 2012
Mac Users Guide Flickr Photostream
As a technophile, I do love my iPhone and iPod as portable portals to new media, the web and entertainment. But everything comes at a price. I was reminded of this, starkly, by a brilliant commentary by Mike Daisy, featured recently on NPR's This American Life. That sausage may be delicious, but few of us want to be reminded of how it came to be. So it goes for iPhones, even for something as mundane as to how their screens are cleaned in the factory.
From This American Life broadcast, "Mr. Daisy and The Apple Factory:"
Mike Daisey performs an excerpt…
sastyk | January 5, 2012
If you have followed energy issues from anywhere other than a cave on a mountain peak, you've probably heard technoutopians utter some variation on the following sentence two or three hundred times "We walked on the moon - of course we can do whatever it takes to shift from fossil fuels to some other source of energy." The moon shot is perceived as the ultimate example of "put in a quarter and get out the technological outcome you want" in our history. If we could set out to put a man on the moon and do it in less than decade, can't we do anything we want to, with just enough ingenuity?…
pharyngula | December 31, 2011That most excellent blog on plant genetics and scientific agriculture, Biofortified, is having a fundraiser to maintain their eucational and reporting efforts (there's a full breakdown of where the money goes on the site). They're not asking much and they produce so much more — help 'em out if you can.
(Also on FtB)
jtoney | December 19, 2011
Yes, earning a degree from MIT can be costly. Believe it or not, MIT has been offering free course materials for ten years now. If you're an educator, and you're not familiar with their extraordinary OpenCourseWare, you're missing out. One hundred million people so far have learned from this free open source.
OpenCourseWare, a free online publication of nearly all of MIT's undergraduate and graduate course materials. Now in its 10th year, OpenCourseWare includes nearly 2,100 MIT courses and has been used by more than 100 million people.
MIT announced today that OpenCourseWare was just…