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The goal of the workshop is to explore ways to become better providers and connectors of knowledge in a world where the sources of knowledge are increasingly diverse and dispersed. At the World Bank, for example, we are seeking ways to connect with new centers of research, emerging communities of practice, and tap the practical experience of development organizations and the policy makers in rapidly developing economies. Our goal is to find better ways to connect those that have the development knowledge with those that need it, when they need it.

People sometimes worry about the Singularity [Vinge, 1993; Kurzweil, 2005], or about the world being taken over by artificially intelligent robots. I believe the risks of these are very small. However, few people recognize that we already share our world with artificial creatures that participate as intelligent agents in our society: corporations. Our planet is inhabited by two distinct kinds of intelligent beings --- individual humans and corporate entities --- whose natures and interests are intimately linked. To co-exist well, we need to find ways to define the rights and responsibilities of both individual humans and corporate entities, and to find ways to ensure that corporate entities behave as responsible members of society.

One of the enabling technologies for a quantum internet is the ability to store and retrieve quantum information in a reliable and repeatable way.  One of the more promising ways to do this involves photons and tiny clouds of rubidium gas. Rubidium atoms have an interesting property in that a magnetic field causes their electronic energy levels to split, creating a multitude of new levels. Switching the field off, returns the atoms to their normal state.

PopFab is a multi-tool for the 21st century. At its heart is a computer-controlled motion platform and a means of attaching various toolheads. These enable PopFab to make objects from a digital plan in a variety of ways: current capabilities include 3D printing (as you are about to see), milling, vinyl cutting, and drawing - with more on the way. PopFab has traveled the world as a carry-on item of luggage to Saudi Arabia and Germany, and within the USA to Aspen in Colorado. We hope that this is only the beginning.

In the past few years, digital technologies have revolutionized everything from the way we work to the way we educate, inform and entertain ourselves. In fact, millions of engaged citizens are using the Web to connect and collaborate around shared concerns and opportunities in their communities and in international forums and institutions. Now, as Canada readies itself to host the World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT2012) in Montreal this October, we have a unique opportunity to mobilize large numbers of connected citizens to participate in a global, online conversation designed to elicit new ideas and innovations that could help address some of the world's most urgent challenges.

Could computers become cleverer than humans and take over the world? Or is that just the stuff of science fiction? Philosophers and scientists at Britain's Cambridge University think the question deserves serious study. A proposed Center for the Study of Existential Risk will bring together experts to consider the ways in which super intelligent technology, including artificial intelligence, could "threaten our own existence," the institution said Sunday. "In the case of artificial intelligence, it seems a reasonable prediction that some time in this or the next century intelligence will escape from the constraints of biology," Cambridge philosophy professor Huw Price said.

"Someone points me to this report from Tilburg University on disgraced psychology researcher Diederik Stapel. The reports includes bits like this: When the fraud was first discovered, limiting the harm it caused for the victims was a matter of urgency. This was particularly the case for Mr Stapel's former PhD students and postdoctoral researchers . . . However, the Committees were of the opinion that the main bulk of the work had not yet even started. . . . Journal publications can often leave traces that reach far into and even beyond scientific disciplines. The self-cleansing character of science calls for fraudulent publications to be withdrawn and no longer to proliferate within the literature. In addition, based on their initial impressions, the Committees believed that there were other serious issues within Mr Stapel's publications . . . This brought into the spotlight a research culture in which this sloppy science, alongside out-and-out fraud, was able to remain undetected for so long. . . . The scientific literature must be cleansed of everything that is fraudulent, especially if it involves the work of a leading academic. Sounds familiar? I think it also applies to recipients of the Founders Award from the American Statistical Association. There's more: The most important reason for seeking completeness in cleansing the scientific record is that science itself has a particular claim to the finding of truth. This is a cumulative process, characterized in empirical science, and especially in psychology, as an empirical cycle, a continuous process of alternating between the development of theories and empirical testing. . . . My first reaction was that all seems like overkill given how obvious the fraud is, but given what happened with comparable cases in the U.S., I suppose this "Powell doctrine" approach (overwhelming force) is probably the best way to go."

"Before I became a university professor, I had a long career in the entertainment business-first as a concert producer for the likes of Bob Dylan and The Band, and later as producer of motion pictures, including Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets and The Last Waltz. Both the music and movie industries have been utterly transformed by the Internet, in positive and negative ways. But I sense that we're still at the beginning stages of this big shift, and that some of the most interesting developments are yet to come. For example, social sentiment analysis is going to change the game for Hollywood marketing."

"Learning methods have come a long way from students just sitting in class and writing down notes while a lecturer reads off his/her notes. It has come to the point where students can learn from their lecturers via the internet, such as accessing course materials on "Blackboard" websites, and even online classes (heck, there are even online degrees for those interested!), but conducting a class through Minecraft? Well that admittedly takes the cake as far as interactive learning is concerned! This was made possible thanks to a lecturer at the Bond University in Australia who decided to conduct his class through Minecraft as the university was closed due to the recent bout of floods experienced in Australia's east coast. Professor Jeffrey Brand launched the MinecraftUni project after hearing about how the game was used as part of the United Nation's Block by Block program."

"We thought ten people would care; instead a million people read our Storage Pod 1.0 blog post where we open sourced the Backblaze Storage Pod design and introduced the world's most cost-efficient way to store big data. The interest grew when we published our Petabytes on a Budget: Revealing More Secrets blog post that announced Storage Pod 2.0, which doubled the amount of storage and reduced the price. Since then several companies have built businesses selling Storage Pods inspired by Backblaze to hundreds of organizations around the world who are storing hundreds of petabytes of data on their own Storage Pods. Today we introduce Backblaze Storage Pod 3.0 which stores more data, costs less, is more reliable, and is easier to service."

"Researchers in China say that they've successfully managed to test an engine that runs on electricity, requires no propellant and produces no exhaust. It's called the EmDrive, and it's able to convert microwave energy directly into thrust inside a sealed chamber. Oh, it's totally silent and highly efficient, too. If it seems too good to be true, well, you're not the only one who feels that way. But the researchers have a prototype that apparently works, and they've just published a paper detailing it."

"Dropbox is holding a promotion for students in which you can gain 3GB of extra Dropbox space for two years, plus more depending on how many people in your school sign up. To sign up for Dropbox's "Great Space Race," all you need to do is head to the link below and type in a valid .EDU email address (which you probably have even if you aren't a student anymore). After you confirm it, you should see 3 extra GB of space in your account. If you get others at your school to sign up too, you'll get even more space, going all the way up to 25GB. So sign up, tell your friends, and invite them if you haven't already for bigger bonuses!"

"THE cassette tape is about to make a comeback, in a big way. From the updates posted by Facebook's 1 billion users to the medical images shared by healthcare organisations worldwide and the rise of high-definition video streaming, the need for something to store huge tranches of data is greater than ever. And while hard drives have traditionally been the workhorse of large storage operations, a new wave of ultra-dense tape drives that pack in information at much higher densities, while using less energy, is set to replace them."

SANTA BARBARA-"Maybe we're just too dumb," Nobel laureate physicist David Gross mused in a lecture at Caltech two weeks ago. When someone of his level wonders whether the unification of physics will always be beyond mortal minds, it gets you worried. Since his lecture, I've been learning about a theory that seems to confirm Gross's worry. It is so ridiculously hard that it could be the subject of an Onion parody. But at the same time, I've been watching how physicists are trying to power through their intimidation, because the theory promises a new way of understanding what space and time really are, at a deep level.

We are living a unique moment in history. The development of communication technologies has produced a change in the modes of interaction of society, creating new forms of relating which are fundamentally different from those before. These new ways of relating and technologies have contributed to the emergence of new social and political movements. These movements, as exemplified by the Arab Spring, the democratisation movement in Iceland, and the 15M / TakeTheSquare / Occupy movement, are the most strinking examples of the potential of this new phase (together with other phenomena such as Wikileaks and Anonymous).

A way to print Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips right onto paper has been discovered by a team of scientists from University of Montpellier.

If you pay for web hosting in order to run any kind of web-based application-from your WordPress blog to a nameplate site to a file-sharing service to a social media data archive-you need to back up your web server's data the same way you back up your computer's data. On database-driven web sites, there are two kinds of data you want to preserve and restore in case of disaster: the files that make up your site (the PHP/Perl/Python, JavaScript, CSS files, etc), and the contents of your database. Further, any good backup system should make both a local copy and a remote copy of the backed-up data.

With the Oscars just 3 days away, movies have been on our mind lately here at CDC's Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response.  Especially disaster movies.  They come in all kinds of flavors: deadly viruses, tornadoes, earthquakes, and, yes, even snakes on a plane.   Their special effects can be realistic enough to make us feel like we are right there in the heart of the storm.  But frequently, the heroes and heroines of these movies respond to disasters in ways that bear no resemblance to what people in the real world should do.  We can nevertheless use disaster films to consider how the characters could have been more prepared or how they should have reacted if the situation they faced was real.  Check out some of our favorite disaster movies and the lessons we can learn from them.

DARPA is unveiling a portable laser weapons system, HELLADS, which seems like something out of a sci-fi movie. The new laser application, created by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems with a custom power system from Saft Batteries, will help change the way the American military fights future wars. Current military laser systems are bulky contraptions which are mainly the size of a passenger jet, while the proposed DARPA weapon can fit on the back of a flatbed truck. The 150-kilowatt, solid state laser weapon is strong enough to take down drones or other aerial targets; a prototype is expected to be available by the end of 2012.