Most people have probably written in the sand several times, whether it was in the sandbox in kindergarden or on a beach during a summer vacation. But artist and surfer Jim Denevan has taken the sand writing to a whole new level. He uses a simple driftwood stick to create large-scale beach…
(Source: quickmeme)
Serenus Sammonicus, doctor to Emperor Caracella of Rome, prescribed this incantation to malaria sufferers. He said that the word must be inscribed on an amulet that was to be worn by the afflicted!
Malaria outbreaks usually occurred in the late summer when the dog star, “Sirius”, would disappear in the glow of the sun. Malaria was referred to as the “rage of the Dog Star” because it would happen in the time called “caniculares dies”, literally “the dog days of summer”. [source]
(Source: quickmeme)
Five Things About NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover
Mars Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity, is part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term program of robotic exploration of the Red Planet. The mission is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in late 2011, and arrive at an intriguing region of Mars in August 2012. The goal of Curiosity, a rolling laboratory, is to assess whether Mars ever had an environment capable of supporting microbial life and conditions favorable for preserving clues about life, if it existed.
1. How Big Is It?: The Mini Cooper-sized rover is much bigger than its rover predecessors, Spirit, Opportunity and Pathfinder. Curiosity is twice as long (about 2.8 meters, or 9 feet) and four times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, which landed in 2004. Pathfinder, about the size of a microwave oven, landed in 1997.
2. Landing—Where and How: NASA will select a site believed to be among the most likely places to hold a geological record of a favorable environment for life. The site must also meet safe-landing criteria. The landing system is similar to a sky crane heavy-lift helicopter. After a parachute slows the rover’s descent toward Mars, a rocket-powered backpack will lower the rover on a tether during the final moments before landing. This method allows landing a very large, heavy rover on Mars.
3. Toolkit: Curiosity will use 10 science instruments to examine rocks, soil and the atmosphere. A laser will vaporize patches of rock from a distance, and another instrument will search for organic compounds. Other instruments include mast-mounted cameras to study targets from a distance, arm-mounted instruments to study targets they touch, and deck-mounted analytical instruments to determine the composition of rock and soil samples acquired with a powdering drill and a scoop.
4. Big Wheels: Each of Curiosity’s six wheels has an independent drive motor. The two front and two rear wheels also have individual steering motors. This steering allows the rover to make 360-degree turns in-place on the Mars surface. The wheels’ diameter is double the wheel diameter on Spirit and Opportunity, which will help Curiosity roll over obstacles up to 75 cm high.
5. Rover Power: A nuclear battery will enable Curiosity to operate year-round and farther from the equator than would be possible with only solar power.
[NASA JPL]
The thin line of Earth’s atmosphere and the setting sun are featured in this image photographed in July 18, 2010 by an Expedition 24 crew member on the International Space Station. [NASA Human Space Flight]
Cyborgs Needed for Escape from Earth
As the growing global population continues to increase the burden on the Earth’s natural resources, some historians and scientists think humans should prepare to colonize space. The problem is, we may have to alter human biology significantly to achieve that goal.
Scientists have warned for decades that humans are straining the Earth. The global population is increasing, economies are expanding and consumption doesn’t appear to be slowing.
While save-the-planet campaigns are asking people to save energy, conserve water, recycle and even go vegetarian, some scientists are thinking literally out of this world by suggesting that humans may eventually have to consider leaving Earth if they are to survive as a species.
If humans are to colonize other planets, it could well require the “next state of human evolution” to create a separate human presence where families will live and die on that planet. In other words, it wouldn’t really be Homo sapiens that would be living in the colonies, it could be cyborgs—a living organism with a mixture of organic and electromechanical parts—or in simpler terms, part human, part machine.
Altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space. Even though it may be both logically and technologically possible, the ethical question is whether it should be done.
Image: Artist’s rendition of a future base on Mars. A manned-Mars mission would take require astronauts being in space for more than a year. Currently, there isn’t enough research to know what long-term deep space travel would do to astronaut health.
Read the full article at astrobio.net
Creator of the world’s first underwater sculpture park, Jason de Caires Taylor has gained international recognition for his unique work. His sculptures highlight ecological processes whilst exploring the intricate relationships between modern art and the environment. By using sculptures to create…
(Source: quickmeme)
Interactivity, though, is only part of the story. Bringing texts onto a digital platform provides an opportunity to make the book as social as the classroom. With Inkling’s technology, for instance, a student can choose to follow another’s “note stream,” or view a heat map of the class’s most-highlighted passages. Professors get real-time information on how much of the reading assignment the class actually did, or whether a particular review problem is tripping up large numbers of students. All that comes on top of the cost savings: even these advanced digital textbooks will cost less than their print equivalents (with most of them in the $99 range) and some will even come “unbundled,” allowing students to buy the individual chapters they need most for a small fraction of the cost of a full textbook.
Textbook publishers stand to lose some revenue if individual chapter purchases catch on, but they hope to more than offset the loss by attracting new customers. Big publishers like McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Cengage are locked in a longstanding battle against the used-textbook market, which now totals about $2.2 billion, according to Simba, and from which they earn no revenue. Online textbook-rental companies like Chegg.com offer lower prices than the publishers, and reach a wide customer base. But traditional publishers think technology will be their salvation. There’s no such thing as a “used” e-book, and digital textbooks are the center of a whole ecosystem of services—such as homework-management systems and video-capture technology for recording lectures—that publishers hope will be profitable. “We’re becoming a software service company instead of a textbook company,” says Peter Davis, president of McGraw-Hill Education.
» via Newsweek
Baby Mops
Make your children work for their keep. After the birth of a child there’s always the temptation to say “Yes, it’s cute, but what can it do?” Until recently the answer was simply “lie there and cry,” but now babies can be put on the payroll, so to speak, almost as soon as they’re born. Just dress your young one in Baby Mops and set him or her down on any hard wood or tile floor that needs cleaning. (Source)
Butt / Face Towel
Never again will you have to wonder if the part of the towel you’re rubbing all over your face to dry off was just drying your cheeks; the Butt / Face Towel ($12.29) ends any possible confusion about which side to use. (Buy it here)
Nose Gel Dispenser
What better…
(Source: quickmeme)
Computer Gates Built From DNA Could Lead To Biocomputers We Can Inject Inside Us
Scientists are finding success recently in getting DNA to mimic non-biological circuits and form logic gates, the stuff from which all computers are made. DNA-based logic gates that could some day carry out calculations inside our bodies and can be programmed to target diseases as they arise. “The biocomputer would sense biomarkers and immediately react by releasing counter-agents for the disease,” says Itamar Willner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, who led the work.
The new logic gates are formed from short strands of DNA and their complementary strands, which in conjunction with some simple molecular machinery mimic their electronic equivalent. Two strands act as the input: each represents a 1 when present or a 0 when absent. The response to their presence or absence represents the output, which can also be a 1 or 0.
Take the “exclusive OR” or XOR logic gate. It produces an output when either of the two inputs is present but not when both are present or both are absent. To put the DNA version to the test, Willner and his team added molecules to both the complementary strands that caused them to fluoresce when each was present in isolation, representing a logical 1 as the output. But when both were present, the complementary strands combined and quenched the fluorescence, representing a 0 output.
One of DNA computing’s advantages is that it allows calculations to be carried out in parallel, if different types of logic gates are represented by different ingredients. The team tested this process by tossing the XOR ingredients into a test tube, along with those for two other gates, to produce the first few steps involved in binary addition and subtraction.
The team was also able to create logic gates that calculate in sequence. The trick here is to make the output from the first gate a new DNA string that can be used as the input for a second gate and so on. Such “cascading gates” allow for more complex calculations: the entire set of steps required for addition and subtraction, for example, or to deliver a multi-step drug treatment.
Previous DNA-based computers tended to slow down at each step as the DNA strands were used only once, and so became depleted with time. One significant advance claimed by Willner and his team is that their DNA strands reform after each step, allowing long sequences of calculations to be carried out easily for the first time.
Even a single logic gate could have useful medical applications, Willner says. His group built and tested a gate designed to reduce the activity of the blood-clotting enzyme thrombin, which can lead to brain damage following a head injury. The gate acts as a switch that is triggered by the presence of thrombin. Part of the gate consists of a DNA strand connected to a molecule that binds to thrombin. If thrombin is present, this molecule is released, otherwise it stays bound and inert. Such a smart drug could be injected into the bloodstream in advance and would only switch on when needed (Nature Nanotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2010.88).
Another problem with earlier DNA computers is that they use enzymes to manipulate the DNA, and so function only in certain chemical environments that cannot easily be reproduced inside the body. Willner’s team use DNA-like molecules to do this job.
“Being enzyme-free, it has potential in future diagnostic and medical applications,” says Benny Gil of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. He is impressed with the new gate system but recognises that it will take years of research and development to bring “smart drugs” to medicine.
Source: New Scientist.
Magnets And Nano-particles May One Day Grow Us A New Liver
Although scientists have been building artificial human organs for sometime now, researchers at Rice University and the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston have developed a simple way to make cells form 3-D structures using magnets and metal nano-particles. Building organs by tissue engineers has so far been limited to a 2D surface.
Being able to grow more realistic liver, heart, and other tissues in the lab could provide a new lease on life for patients waiting on the transplant list–and lead to more realistic systems for testing drugs. But tissue engineers have found that mimicking these complex, three-dimensional structures in the lab is difficult. Part of what’s holding them up are flat, two-dimensional tissue culture systems that grow cells in an environment very different from that inside the body.
Now researchers at Rice University and the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston have developed a simple way to make cells form 3-D structures. They developed a gel made up of a polymer, iron oxide nanoparticles, and engineered viruses called phage. When cells are added to this mixture, the phage cause them to absorb the magnetic particles. The Houston group showed that they could use a weak magnet to hold magnetized brain cancer cells in a 3-D suspension. Gene-expression studies showed that these suspended cells behave more naturally than a control group grown on a conventional flat surface: the cancer cells were producing a mix of proteins very similar to what they produce in the body. These results are described in Nature Nanotechnology this week.
The magnetizing gel has been licensed to a startup company, Nano3D Bioscience, which will run tests to compare the technology other methods for making 3-D tissues.
Source:
MIT Researcher Develops Technology To Make AI Smarter Than Ever
Artificial intelligence systems developed up until now are categorized into two types: logic-based or probability-based. But now a researcher at MIT has created a new language, Church, that combines the best aspects of the two categories and promises to make AI smarter than ever.
Artificial intelligence systems developed up until now are categorized into two types: logic-based or probability-based. But now a researcher at MIT has created a new language, Church, that Artificial intelligence researchers back in the 1950s thought of the human mind as a set of rules to be programmed and developed systems based on logical inferences, e.g., “if you know that birds can fly and are told that the waxwing is a bird, you can infer that waxwings can fly.”
But with rules-based AI, every exception had to be accounted for. The systems couldn’t figure out that there were types of birds that couldn’t fly; they had to be told so explicitly. Later AI models gave up these extensive rule sets and turned to probabilities: “a computer is fed lots of examples of something – like pictures of birds – and is left to infer, on its own, what those examples have in common.”
Church, a “grand unified theory of AI” developed by MIT researcher Noah Goodman, combines both systems, creating probability-based rules that are constantly revised as the system encounters new situations:
A Church program that has never encountered a flightless bird might, initially, set the probability that any bird can fly at 99.99 percent. But as it learns more about cassowaries – and penguins, and caged and broken-winged robins – it revises its probabilities accordingly. Ultimately, the probabilities represent all the conceptual distinctions that early AI researchers would have had to code by hand. But the system learns those distinctions itself, over time – much the way humans learn new concepts and revise old ones.
Researchers think that Church’s fluidity will help it surpass current AI models, and in a test in which the system was charged to make predictions based on a set of observations, it did a “significantly better job of modeling human thought than traditional artificial intelligence algorithms did.” Church is still rough around the edges, and while it’s effective at specific operations it’s too “computationally intensive” to tackle broader brain-simulation at this point. But Goodman will continue working on the new system, and in the mean time, it will only be getting smarter.
Source: MIT, Gizmodo
This Cute Tiny Cannon Will Blow Your Mind Away
“Wow…it is so tiny…so cute…so adorable…” is probably the first thing that flashes across your mind when you look at this microscopic gold-colored cannon resting peacefully in your palm. On a cuteness scale, the tiny cannon could match up to pudgy babies and furry puppies.
But do not, and I repeat, do not let its size fool you. For a thing no bigger than a fingernail, it packs a punch more powerful than Muhammad Ali.
The mini cannon has a solid base on which the cylindrical bore rests. A toothpick like lever is attached to one side of the base. The lever is used to aim the cannon and a dot-sized hole performs the function of the vent – where you load the ammunition into the cannon.
When I first saw this mini gun, I smirked. How could this even work, let alone punch a hole? So, I watched the video and saw the entire ordeal and was simply amazed!
First, the mini cannon was loaded, which is an interesting experience in itself. You aim the mouth of the cannon skyward; you pour in the gunpowder, and drop the steel ball inside it. Return the mouth to its original position and then insert a fuse in the vent.
Next, search for a suitable target. The creator’s eyes landed on an empty coke can and placed it a few feet away from the cannon to follow by lighting the fuse (borrowing the cigarette).
The cannon fired and recoiled while the coke-can moved a centimeter or so. Immediately afterwards, the can could show the damage; the mini cannon had blasted a hole in the can, which one could clearly see the entry and exit point.
Impressed by the first experiment and its results, the cannon’s power was tested on glass. A zero-watt bulb was selected and placed at a similar distance and the cannon fired away. Surprisingly, the cannon ripped open the top half of the bulb. “Tiny” (the nickname for the cannon) was beginning to grow.
Then, after having tested its firing power, it was decided to have some fun with it, and it was tested on a raw egg. After making sure that the egg is securely fastened to a holder (you don’t want to have egg all over the room), the cannon fired again. Needless to say, the egg was obliterated.
Well, this is fun, but now a real challenge was required for the “Tiny”, so a beer mug came into sight; a perfect thing for the next target.
To cut a similar story short, pieces of the mug now lie in the maker’s dustbin. The “Tiny” cannon repeatedly proved that it is a major force to be reckoned with and the cutest deadly device one can have.