2007-03-31
http://www.liftport.com/progress/wp/?p=1108
TierneyLab hereby promises to name Saturn’s mysterious hexagon after the reader who comes up with the most entertaining explanation for this 15,000-mile wide feature at the planet’s north pole. NASA says it looks like clouds are whipping around a hexagaonal race track, but to me it doesn’t look anything like Nascar.
2007-03-04
Construction of the World's Highest Bridge
Construction of the Millau Bridge in France
The Millau bridge over the River Tarn in the Massif Central mountains is more than 300m (984ft) high - taller even than the Eiffel Tower. With its concrete and steel pillars soaring high above the morning fog in the Tarn Valley, the construction makes a spectacular sight.
The Millau bridge over the River Tarn in the Massif Central mountains is more than 300m (984ft) high - taller even than the Eiffel Tower. With its concrete and steel pillars soaring high above the morning fog in the Tarn Valley, the construction makes a spectacular sight.
2007-03-03
POSSIBLY THE BEST WAY TO FIGHT POVERTY AND DESERTIFICATION
"Desertification is potentially the most threatening ecosystem change impacting livelihoods of the poor" (UNCCD). It is about land degradation caused by CLIMATE CHANGE and human-induced factors.
By planting a tree you will make a difference by helping to create a giant heart in Niger, the poorest country in the world, and one of the most affected by desertification. see project
You can use the interactive map to navigate the park and choose an exact spot to plant your tree or trees. With GPS coordinates your virtual tree corresponds to a real tree planted in the eco-park in Niger, so you and the whole world can always find it.
By planting a tree you will make a difference by helping to create a giant heart in Niger, the poorest country in the world, and one of the most affected by desertification. see project
You can use the interactive map to navigate the park and choose an exact spot to plant your tree or trees. With GPS coordinates your virtual tree corresponds to a real tree planted in the eco-park in Niger, so you and the whole world can always find it.
Yoshihiko Satoh's 12-necked art guitar
Thanks to Travis, Reid, Circuit Master, Andrew, Make and vvork for letting me know about the bonkers art of Yoshihiko Satoh. His 12-neck stratocaster is functional, and he's also made a pair of clock-like 12-neck circular guitars.
2007-02-15
Building the Cortex in Silicon
An ambitious project to model the cerebral cortex in silicon is under way at Stanford. The man-made brain could help scientists understand how the most recently evolved part of our brain performs its complex computational feats, allowing us to understand language, recognize faces, and schedule the day. It could also lead to new neural prosthetics.
"Brains do things in technically and conceptually novel ways--they can solve rather effortlessly issues which we cannot yet resolve with the largest and most modern digital machines," says Rodney Douglas, a professor at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, in Zurich. "One of the ways to explore this is to develop hardware that goes in the same direction."
Neurons communicate with a series of electrical pulses; chemical signals transiently change the electrical properties of individual cells, which in turn trigger an electrical change in the next neuron in the circuit. In the 1980s, Carver Mead, a pioneer in microelectronics at the California Institute of Technology, realized that the same transistors used to build computer chips could be used to build circuits that mimicked the electrical properties of neurons. Since then, scientists and engineers have been using these transistor-based neurons to build more-complicated neural circuits, modeling the retina, the cochlea (the part of the inner ear that translates sound waves into neural signals), and the hippocampus (a part of the brain crucial for memory). They call the process neuromorphing.
"Brains do things in technically and conceptually novel ways--they can solve rather effortlessly issues which we cannot yet resolve with the largest and most modern digital machines," says Rodney Douglas, a professor at the Institute of Neuroinformatics, in Zurich. "One of the ways to explore this is to develop hardware that goes in the same direction."
Neurons communicate with a series of electrical pulses; chemical signals transiently change the electrical properties of individual cells, which in turn trigger an electrical change in the next neuron in the circuit. In the 1980s, Carver Mead, a pioneer in microelectronics at the California Institute of Technology, realized that the same transistors used to build computer chips could be used to build circuits that mimicked the electrical properties of neurons. Since then, scientists and engineers have been using these transistor-based neurons to build more-complicated neural circuits, modeling the retina, the cochlea (the part of the inner ear that translates sound waves into neural signals), and the hippocampus (a part of the brain crucial for memory). They call the process neuromorphing.
2007-02-11
Mimicking how the brain recognizes street scenes
At last, neuroscience is having an impact on computer science and artificial intelligence (AI). For the first time, scientists in Tomaso Poggio's laboratory at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT applied a computational model of how the brain processes visual information to a complex, real world task: recognizing the objects in a busy street scene. The researchers were pleasantly surprised at the power of this new approach.
"People have been talking about computers imitating the brain for a long time," said Poggio, who is also the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the co-director of the Center for Biological and Computational Learning at MIT. "That was Alan Turing's original motivation in the 1940s. But in the last 50 years, computer science and AI have developed independently of neuroscience. Our work is biologically inspired computer science."
"We developed a model of the visual system that was meant to be useful for neuroscientists in designing and interpreting experiments, but that also could be used for computer science," said Thomas Serre, a former PhD student and now a post-doctoral researcher in Poggio's lab and lead author a paper about the street scene application in the 2007 IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. "We chose street scene recognition as an example because it has a restricted set of object categories, and it has practical social applications."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/mifb-mht020607.php
"People have been talking about computers imitating the brain for a long time," said Poggio, who is also the Eugene McDermott Professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and the co-director of the Center for Biological and Computational Learning at MIT. "That was Alan Turing's original motivation in the 1940s. But in the last 50 years, computer science and AI have developed independently of neuroscience. Our work is biologically inspired computer science."
"We developed a model of the visual system that was meant to be useful for neuroscientists in designing and interpreting experiments, but that also could be used for computer science," said Thomas Serre, a former PhD student and now a post-doctoral researcher in Poggio's lab and lead author a paper about the street scene application in the 2007 IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. "We chose street scene recognition as an example because it has a restricted set of object categories, and it has practical social applications."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-02/mifb-mht020607.php
Quantum computer to debut next Tuesday?
Remember where you were when you heard about Steorn? Us neither. (Yet.) Kind of the same with D-Wave, which, as you may recall, claims to be the first and only "commercial" quantum computing venture; despite a low hanging cloud of skeptical academics, D-Wave is claiming next Tuesday it'll finally debut the first quantum computer: a 16 qubit processor capable of 64,000 simultaneous calculations in quantum space(s). What's a qubit? Why, it's the quantum computer measurement equivalent of a conventional computer's bit (i.e. more (qu)bits = more data and processes), but we're not even going to insult your intelligence by pretending to understand how a many-hundreds qubit quantum computer could supposedly solve more operations than the universe has atoms. We just know that a quantum computer has yet to be built, has the potential to revolutionize the way we understand and use computation -- and with any luck D-Wave's supposed machine will be promptly put to work analyzing weather patterns so we'll know the exact climate this time next year and not buy the wrong things when this year's fall lines come out. That is, if it doesn't open up a black hole, or something.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/08/quantum-computer-to-debut-next-tuesday/
http://www.engadget.com/2007/02/08/quantum-computer-to-debut-next-tuesday/
2007-02-07
Why Windows is less secure than Linux
Windows is inherently harder to secure than Linux. There I said it. The simple truth.
Many millions of words have been written and said on this topic. I have a couple of pictures. The basic argument goes like this. In its long evolution, Windows has grown so complicated that it is harder to secure. Well these images make the point very well. Both images are a complete map of the system calls that occur when a web server serves up a single page of html with a single picture. The same page and picture. A system call is an opportunity to address memory. A hacker investigates each memory access to see if it is vulnerable to a buffer overflow attack. The developer must do QA on each of these entry points. The more system calls, the greater potential for vulnerability, the more effort needed to create secure applications.
The first picture is of the system calls that occur on a Linux server running Apache.
This second image is of a Windows Server running IIS.
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2007-01-31
2007-01-25
Turning An Axel-Mounted Molecular Wheel
In the history of inventions, the wheel has been at the origin of major scientific and technological developments: from the creation of astronomical clocks or calculating machines to motor-drawn vehicles and other motor cars. At the molecular scale, the smallest at which a wheel can be created, it represents a major challenge for chemists and physicists. Since the end of the 1990s, chemists in the CEMES have been working on the design of molecular machines equipped with wheels. Step by step, they have studied this field in depth in collaboration with their colleagues at IBM in Zurich and then at the Free University of Berlin. After observing the random rotation of a flat molecular wheel in 1998, designing and synthesising a mono-molecular wheelbarrow in 2003 and then synthesising a molecular motor in 2005, they last year managed to operate the first molecular rack with a pinion of 1.2 nm in diameter.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070123111056.htm
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070123111056.htm
How to Make a Starship Enterprise Out of a Floppy Disk
Floppy disks are a thing of the past. However, that doesn't mean you have to toss them in a garbage can. Pay a tribute to another thing of the past (or, the future?)--The Starship Enterprise--and you can reminisce and recycle at the same time!
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Starship-Enterprise-Out-of-a-Floppy-Disk
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Starship-Enterprise-Out-of-a-Floppy-Disk
Microwave Oven Can Sterilize Sponges, Scrub Pads
University of Florida engineering researchers have found that microwaving kitchen sponges and plastic scrubbers — known to be common carriers of the bacteria and viruses that cause food-borne illnesses – sterilizes them rapidly and effectively.
That means that the estimated 90-plus percent of Americans with microwaves in their kitchens have a powerful weapon against E. coli, salmonella and other bugs at the root of increasing incidents of potentially deadly food poisoning and other illnesses.
“Basically what we find is that we could knock out most bacteria in two minutes,” said Gabriel Bitton, a UF professor of environmental engineering. “People often put their sponges and scrubbers in the dishwasher, but if they really want to decontaminate them and not just clean them, they should use the microwave.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070122143050.htm
That means that the estimated 90-plus percent of Americans with microwaves in their kitchens have a powerful weapon against E. coli, salmonella and other bugs at the root of increasing incidents of potentially deadly food poisoning and other illnesses.
“Basically what we find is that we could knock out most bacteria in two minutes,” said Gabriel Bitton, a UF professor of environmental engineering. “People often put their sponges and scrubbers in the dishwasher, but if they really want to decontaminate them and not just clean them, they should use the microwave.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070122143050.htm
2007-01-19
Laying Down the Einstein's Laws
I just got the January 2007 issue of Physics Today, and it has an interesting letter by Richard Kadel of Lawrence Berkeley labs:
Since my undergraduate days, I have been puzzled by the fact that we have Newton's laws of motion but only Einstein's theory of special relativity... It's time to rename it as more than just a theory.
I propose that we, as physicists, define a set of Einstein's laws, just as we have Newton's laws, Coulomb's law, or Faraday's law.
To paraphrase, the laws he proposes are:
* Einstein's First Law. The laws of physics are the same for all observers no matter what their velocity is, as long as they are not accelerating.
* Einstein's Second Law. The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers.
* Einstein's Third Law. The total energy of a body with momentum p and mass m is (m2c4 + p2c2)1/2.
The third law implies that a body at rest (p = 0) has energy mc2 and that a massless body such as a photon (m = 0) has energy pc, which in turn implies that light carries momentum. These three laws capture the essence of the special theory of relativity. To rope in the general theory, too, we might add:
* Einstein's Fourth Law. No observer can tell the difference between acceleration and the force of gravity based on local measurements.
The general theory is so rich that it's hard to know what else to include.
Other folks have proposed a similar set of laws (see, for example, http://www.geocities.com/ciencia_farma/nat_laws.htm). Please let me know of any other prior art. And please let me know if you can come up with phrasing as elegant as the classic formulation of Newton's third law: "For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction."
Since my undergraduate days, I have been puzzled by the fact that we have Newton's laws of motion but only Einstein's theory of special relativity... It's time to rename it as more than just a theory.
I propose that we, as physicists, define a set of Einstein's laws, just as we have Newton's laws, Coulomb's law, or Faraday's law.
To paraphrase, the laws he proposes are:
* Einstein's First Law. The laws of physics are the same for all observers no matter what their velocity is, as long as they are not accelerating.
* Einstein's Second Law. The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers.
* Einstein's Third Law. The total energy of a body with momentum p and mass m is (m2c4 + p2c2)1/2.
The third law implies that a body at rest (p = 0) has energy mc2 and that a massless body such as a photon (m = 0) has energy pc, which in turn implies that light carries momentum. These three laws capture the essence of the special theory of relativity. To rope in the general theory, too, we might add:
* Einstein's Fourth Law. No observer can tell the difference between acceleration and the force of gravity based on local measurements.
The general theory is so rich that it's hard to know what else to include.
Other folks have proposed a similar set of laws (see, for example, http://www.geocities.com/ciencia_farma/nat_laws.htm). Please let me know of any other prior art. And please let me know if you can come up with phrasing as elegant as the classic formulation of Newton's third law: "For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction."
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Escape from the Insipid: Our Brains May Be Wired for Daydreaming
Some people seem to continually have their heads in the clouds. Perhaps they are pondering during their drive to work the next pickle 24 protagonist Jack Bauer will find himself in. Or maybe they are assessing while buttering toast the Indianapolis Colts' chances of finally making it to the Super Bowl. Or considering where they will dine that evening as they tap out an e-mail. The question is: What makes their minds veer from the task at hand?
Researchers at Dartmouth College may have the answer. They found that a default network of regions in the brain's cortex—a grouping known to be active when the mind is completely unoccupied—is firing away as a person is engaged in routine activities.
Malia Mason, now a postdoctoral researcher of neurocognition at Harvard Medical School, trained subjects in verbal and spatial memory tasks that after four days of continual repetition became quite banal—perfect conditions for thinking about something unassociated with the work at hand. In fact, subjects reported more daydreaming when performing the rehearsed sequences rather then when the tasks were tweaked slightly to introduce a novel stimulus requiring a bit more focus.
On the fifth day, the subjects performed these activities while being surveyed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). While the subjects were not performing any task, there was activation in several cortical regions, including parts of the medial prefrontal cortex (involved in executive functions), the premotor cortex (which coordinates body movements), and the cingulate (part of the limbic system that is implicated in memory and learning). When the subjects were asked to perform their well-rehearsed tasks, many of these areas were recruited once again, but when the job was slightly altered, the signals from these areas attenuated.
This finding "suggests that the default network appears to be associated with the production of these thoughts," Mason says.
The research team speculates that when engaged in a mundane task, mind wandering allows people to remain properly aroused. Alternatively, they say, daydreams could be a conduit for uniting experiences from a person's past or present to their future. Or, the brain may just have evolved the ability to handle more than one function at once.
"In a sense, these thoughts reflect an amazing capacity on our part to multitask," Mason explains, expanding on the last possibility. "It's like we have a sense of what we can and what we cannot get away with. In other words, it is as if we have a sense of how much attentional resources we have "left over" and [then we] allocate these resources to working out some problem or anticipating what we have to do in the near future."
Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, says that Mason's study illustrates that daydreaming is really the default state of the brain. He cautions, however, that while he finds the evidence—published in this week's Science—compelling, the measurements are indirect. "They didn't actually examine activation of the default network specifically during times when individuals were reporting mind wandering versus not," he says. "That's an important additional line of research that needs to be done."
Researchers at Dartmouth College may have the answer. They found that a default network of regions in the brain's cortex—a grouping known to be active when the mind is completely unoccupied—is firing away as a person is engaged in routine activities.
Malia Mason, now a postdoctoral researcher of neurocognition at Harvard Medical School, trained subjects in verbal and spatial memory tasks that after four days of continual repetition became quite banal—perfect conditions for thinking about something unassociated with the work at hand. In fact, subjects reported more daydreaming when performing the rehearsed sequences rather then when the tasks were tweaked slightly to introduce a novel stimulus requiring a bit more focus.
On the fifth day, the subjects performed these activities while being surveyed by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). While the subjects were not performing any task, there was activation in several cortical regions, including parts of the medial prefrontal cortex (involved in executive functions), the premotor cortex (which coordinates body movements), and the cingulate (part of the limbic system that is implicated in memory and learning). When the subjects were asked to perform their well-rehearsed tasks, many of these areas were recruited once again, but when the job was slightly altered, the signals from these areas attenuated.
This finding "suggests that the default network appears to be associated with the production of these thoughts," Mason says.
The research team speculates that when engaged in a mundane task, mind wandering allows people to remain properly aroused. Alternatively, they say, daydreams could be a conduit for uniting experiences from a person's past or present to their future. Or, the brain may just have evolved the ability to handle more than one function at once.
"In a sense, these thoughts reflect an amazing capacity on our part to multitask," Mason explains, expanding on the last possibility. "It's like we have a sense of what we can and what we cannot get away with. In other words, it is as if we have a sense of how much attentional resources we have "left over" and [then we] allocate these resources to working out some problem or anticipating what we have to do in the near future."
Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia, says that Mason's study illustrates that daydreaming is really the default state of the brain. He cautions, however, that while he finds the evidence—published in this week's Science—compelling, the measurements are indirect. "They didn't actually examine activation of the default network specifically during times when individuals were reporting mind wandering versus not," he says. "That's an important additional line of research that needs to be done."
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Ultra-Dense Optical Storage -- On One Photon
Science Daily — Researchers at the University of Rochester have made an optics breakthrough that allows them to encode an entire image's worth of data into a photon, slow the image down for storage, and then retrieve the image intact.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070119094254.htm
While the initial test image consists of only a few hundred pixels, a tremendous amount of information can be stored with the new technique.
The image, a "UR" for the University of Rochester, was made using a single pulse of light and the team can fit as many as a hundred of these pulses at once into a tiny, four-inch cell. Squeezing that much information into so small a space and retrieving it intact opens the door to optical buffering--storing information as light.
First image stored and retrieved from a single photon. (Credit: University of Rochester)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070119094254.htm
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Research removes major obstacle from mass production of tiny circuits
As they eliminate tiny air bubbles that form when liquid droplets are molded into intricate circuits, a Princeton-led team is dissolving a sizable obstacle to the mass production of smaller, cheaper microchips.
Led by Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering at Princeton, the team worked to troubleshoot one form of nanoimprint lithography, a revolutionary method invented by Chou in the 1990s.
Nanoimprint uses a nanometer-scale mold to pattern computer chips and other nanostructures, and is in marked contrast to conventional methods that use beams of light, electrons or ions to carve designs onto devices.
This technique allows for the creation of circuits and devices with features that are not much longer than a billionth of a meter, or nanometer -- more than 10 times smaller than is possible in today's mass-produced chips, yet more than 10 times cheaper. Because of its unique capabilities and reasonable cost, nanoimprinting is a key solution to the future manufacturing of computer chips and a broad range of nanodevices for use in optics, magnetic data storage and biotechnology, among other disciplines.
http://www.physorg.com/news88264955.html
Led by Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering at Princeton, the team worked to troubleshoot one form of nanoimprint lithography, a revolutionary method invented by Chou in the 1990s.
Nanoimprint uses a nanometer-scale mold to pattern computer chips and other nanostructures, and is in marked contrast to conventional methods that use beams of light, electrons or ions to carve designs onto devices.
This technique allows for the creation of circuits and devices with features that are not much longer than a billionth of a meter, or nanometer -- more than 10 times smaller than is possible in today's mass-produced chips, yet more than 10 times cheaper. Because of its unique capabilities and reasonable cost, nanoimprinting is a key solution to the future manufacturing of computer chips and a broad range of nanodevices for use in optics, magnetic data storage and biotechnology, among other disciplines.
http://www.physorg.com/news88264955.html
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Prussian Blue for information storage
In the family of Prussian blue, there is a compound that can act as a switch: it is not magnetic at the outset, but it can become magnetized by the effect of light and return to its initial state by heating. Researchers of the Institute of Molecular Chemistry and Materials of Orsay (CNRS/University of Paris XI) and the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry and Molecular Materials (CNRS/University of Paris VI) showed that this change of state is due to the collective modification of the position of the atoms, induced by light.
http://www.physorg.com/news88263072.html
http://www.physorg.com/news88263072.html
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2007-01-16
Bungee-Powered Backpack Can Lighten Your Load
December 30, 2006 Biologists at the University of Pennsylvania have announced details for a suspended-load ergonomic backpack that reduces the force of a backpacks load on the wearer by 86%, allowing wearers to run far more comfortably with heavy loads. The backpack was created with soldiers and emergency workers in mind and could prevent the sort of muscle and joint injuries associated with running while carrying heavy items. The backpack will also benefit schoolchildren, since heavy school bags have been linked to muscle and orthopedic injury. "For the same energetic cost, you can either carry 48 pounds in a normal backpack or 60 pounds in a suspended-load ergonomic backpack," Larry Rome, a professor in Penn's Department of Biology, said. "It is like carrying an extra 12 pounds for 'free.'"
http://www.gizmag.com/go/6654/
http://www.gizmag.com/go/6654/
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2007-01-12
How to play music with barbed wire and chainsaws
Jon Rose is an Australian violinist/artist/composer who has done many cool things. here (QT link) is a clip of him playing barbed wire with a violin bow: "One aspect of the barbed wire fence that appeals to me is that it becomes very clear where the notes are - if you miss'em it's quite painful. Also the scale articulated by the barbs is extremely unorthodox and about as far as you can get from the equal tempered scale upon which most western music is played. But the tyranny of the equal tempered scale is not a subject upon which we should dwell in the middle of an Australian desert.".
And here he is conducting an orchestra made up of violinists, a drummer, a pianist and several chainsaw players. There's a lot more interesting stuff, including a MIDI bow being demonstrated on daytime TV, at this page. (Thanks Sam)
http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-to-play-music-with-barbed-wire-and_30.html
And here he is conducting an orchestra made up of violinists, a drummer, a pianist and several chainsaw players. There's a lot more interesting stuff, including a MIDI bow being demonstrated on daytime TV, at this page. (Thanks Sam)
http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2006/12/how-to-play-music-with-barbed-wire-and_30.html
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