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Make plastic objects appear before your eyes - 0 views

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    Everyone has experienced a broken knob or a broken piece off of an appliance. You also know that while trying to get a new one you might have a long waiting period. Well there might be a prototype that is here to solve that problem. The Thing-O-Matic claims to manifest any three-dimensional plastic object in just minutes. The machine was shown first at a Las Vegas trade fair and is meant to make manufacturing more common for the average person.\n\n3,000 have already been sold at $790 a device. This model only makes plastic objects but the manufacturers say that in the future models could make metal and plastic models to make super cool gadgets. The machines make objects that are six by six by seven inches. The machine is not capable of making images but it does make boxes, tubes and get this- even action figures!
thinkahol *

The American Wikileaks Hacker | Rolling Stone Culture - 0 views

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    On July 29th, returning from a trip to Europe, Jacob Appelbaum, a lanky, unassuming 27-year-old wearing a black T-shirt with the slogan "Be the trouble you want to see in the world," was detained at customs by a posse of federal agents. In an interrogation room at Newark Liberty airport, he was grilled about his role in Wikileaks, the whistle-blower group that has exposed the government's most closely guarded intelligence reports about the war in Afghanistan. The agents photocopied his receipts, seized three of his cellphones - he owns more than a dozen - and confiscated his computer. They informed him that he was under government surveillance. They questioned him about the trove of 91,000 classified military documents that Wikileaks had released the week before, a leak that Vietnam-era activist Daniel Ellsberg called "the largest unauthorized disclosure since the Pentagon Papers." They demanded to know where Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, was hiding. They pressed him on his opinions about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Appelbaum refused to answer. Finally, after three hours, he was released. Sex, Drugs, and the Biggest Cybercrime of All Time Appelbaum is the only known American member of Wikileaks and the leading evangelist for the software program that helped make the leak possible. In a sense, he's a bizarro version of Mark Zuckerberg: If Facebook's ambition is to "make the world more open and connected," Appelbaum has dedicated his life to fighting for anonymity and privacy. An anarchist street kid raised by a heroin- addict father, he dropped out of high school, taught himself the intricacies of code and developed a healthy paranoia along the way. "I don't want to live in a world where everyone is watched all the time," he says. "I want to be left alone as much as possible. I don't want a data trail to tell a story that isn't true." We have transferred our most intimate and personal information - our bank accounts, e-mails, photographs, ph
thinkahol *

Study claims 100 percent renewable energy possible by 2030 - 0 views

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    (PhysOrg.com) -- New research has shown that it is possible and affordable for the world to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2030, if there is the political will to strive for this goal.
thinkahol *

Paralyzed Man Stands, Aided by Electrodes - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    A young man paralyzed by an injury to his spinal cord has regained the ability to stand for short periods, take steps with help and move his legs and feet at will, with the help of an electrical stimulator implanted in his lower back.
thinkahol *

‪Quantum Computers and Parallel Universes‬‏ - YouTube - 0 views

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    Complete video at: http://fora.tv/2009/05/23/Marcus_Chown_in_Conversation_with_Fred_Watson Marcus Chown, author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You: A Guide to the Universe, discusses the mechanics behind quantum computers, explaining that they function by having atoms exist in multiple places at once. He predicts that quantum computers will be produced within 20 years. ----- The two towering achievements of modern physics are quantum theory and Einsteins general theory of relativity. Together, they explain virtually everything about the world in which we live. But almost a century after their advent, most people havent the slightest clue what either is about. Radio astronomer, award-winning writer and broadcaster Marcus Chown talks to fellow stargazer Fred Watson about his book Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You. - Australian Broadcasting Corporation Marcus Chown is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. Formerly a radio astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, he is now cosmology consultant of the weekly science magazine New Scientist. The Magic Furnace, Marcus' second book, was chosen in Japan as one of the Books of the Year by Asahi Shimbun. In the UK, the Daily Mail called it "a dizzy page-turner with all the narrative devices you'd expect to find in Harry Potter". His latest book is called Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You.
thinkahol *

New system could make censorship of Internet sites virtually impossible - 0 views

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    Chinese citizens could once again enjoy LOL Cats on YouTube - as well as content critical of the communist government - if a new system developed by researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) and the University of Waterloo (UW) in Canada were implemented. The researchers claim the system, called Telex, would thwart Internet censorship and make it virtually impossible for a censoring government to block individual sites by essentially turning the entire web into a proxy server.
Todd Suomela

On Being a Scientist: Third Edition - 0 views

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    The scientific research enterprise is built on a foundation of trust. Scientists trust that the results reported by others are valid. Society trusts that the results of research reflect an honest attempt by scientists to describe the world accurately and without bias. But this trust will endure only if the scientific community devotes itself to exemplifying and transmitting the values associated with ethical scientific conduct.
thinkahol *

Algorithms identify and track the most important privately-held technology companies | KurzweilAI - 0 views

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    A startup called Quid has developed algorithms that analyze Internet-based data from corporations to make fast-moving technology developments visible, navigable, and understandable. Quid has built a data set combining information about firms that succeeded and sank, patent documents, government grants, help wanted advertisements, and tweets. Its algorithms use the collection of information to analyze the prospects of around 35,000 firms and research groups working on new technologies. By extracting words and phrases from the collected documents, Quid constructs a "technology genome" that describes the primary focus of each of those 35,000 entities. A map of the connections between those genomes can be used By investors to find hints about interesting companies or ideas. Most companies cluster around established sectors, but a few will sit in the white spaces between the clusters and can represent the seeds of new technology sectors.
thinkahol *

New Scientist TV: Hack your hand to learn the guitar - 0 views

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    Instead of practicing for hours, a device can now teach you a tune by taking control of your hand (see video above). The system, developed by the University of Tokyo and Sony Computer Science Laboratories, is appropriately named PossessedHand and electrically stimulates muscles in your arm that move your fingers. Tests have shown that the device can help you learn the correct fingering faster but many find the concept unsettling. Would you be willing to have your hand hacked to learn an instrument?
thinkahol *

Ultimate energy efficiency: Magnetic microprocessors could use million times less energy than today's silicon chips - 0 views

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    ScienceDaily (July 5, 2011) - Future computers may rely on magnetic microprocessors that consume the least amount of energy allowed by the laws of physics, according to an analysis by University of California, Berkeley, electrical engineers.
thinkahol *

Stressed-DNA repair protein identified | KurzweilAI - 0 views

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    Vera Gorbunova and Andrei Seluanov of the University of Rochester have found that human cells undergoing oxidative stress caused by environmental chemicals or routine cellular processes produce a protein (SIRT6) that stimulates cells to repair DNA double-strand breaks, thought to be associated with premature aging and cancer. The team first measured levels of SIRT6 in stressed cells, then treated a second group of stressed cells with a drug that deactivates the protein. DNA repair in the second group stopped, confirming SIRT6′s role.  The team also found that SIRT6 acts in concert with another protein, called PARP1, to make the repairs. Furthermore, the team found that increased levels of SIRT6 lead to faster DNA repair. They suspect that the protein acts as a "master regulator," coordinating stress and DNA repair activities. Ref.: Zhiyong Mao, Christopher Hine, Xiao Tian, Michael Van Meter, Matthew Au, Amita Vaidya, Andrei Seluanov, and Vera Gorbunova. SIRT6 Promotes DNA Repair Under Stress by Activating PARP1. Science 17 June 2011: 1443-1446. [DOI:10.1126/science.1202723]
thinkahol *

Anonymous exposes 1,589 internet child porn users OPDarknet | MGx - Musings, Essays & Ballads - 0 views

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    Anonymous uses its skills to extract user information from darknet websites specializing in child pornography. Tuesday, after hacking into Lolita City, a darknet website used by pedophiles to trade in child pornography, Anonymous released usernames and other information of 1,589 pedophiles trading in kiddie porn. The move comes after the group managed to take down more than 40 pedophile websites last week which were swapping images through the Tor anonymization network. A darknet website is a closed private network of computers used for file sharing. Darknet websites are part of the Invisible Web, sometimes called the Deep Web, containing content that is not part of the Surface Web, which is indexed by standard search engines. Yesterday Pastebin release, Anonymous enthusiasts explain the technical side of how they were able to locate and identify Lolita City and access their user data base. In a prior Pastebin release, Anonymous offers a timeline of events detailing the discovery of the hidden cache of more than 100 gigabytes of child porn associated with Lolita City.
Esther Jarrell

Optoelectronic Components Market Worth 55.53 Billion USD by 2020 - 0 views

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    The growth of the optoelectronic components industry is mainly driven by the increased use of infrared components in consumer electronics & automobiles, the long life & low power consumption, demand for improved imaging & optical sensing solutions in the healthcare vertical, and the suitable physical properties of optoelectronic sensors to operate in harsh environments. https://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/optoelectronics-market-450.html
Nits Mahajan

Take Advantage Of Clinical Genomics Market - Read This Research Report By World Research Centre - 0 views

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    Clinical Genomics Market By Test Type (Diagnostic, Genetic, Newborn Screening, Prenatal, Carrier Screening), Software, Method (Molecular, Chromosomal, Biochemical Tests), End User (Hospitals and Clinics) - Global Forecast to 2023
Todd Suomela

Amateur Science and the Rise of Big Science | Citizen Scientists League - 0 views

  • Several trends came together to increase the professional nature of scientific work. First was the increasing cost of scientific work and its complexity. Scientific equipment became more precise and expensive. Telescopes, like those by Herschel, became bigger and bigger. Also, the amount of knowledge one needed to gain to contribute became increasingly daunting.
  • Second, the universities changed. Pioneered by the German states, which at the beginning of the 19th century was dismissed as a scientific backwater, universities began offering focused majors which trained students in a specific discipline rather than classical education as a whole. This was pioneered by Wilhelm von Humboldt, brother of the famous scientist Alexander von Humboldt, who was the Prussian Minister of Education.
  • Germany, once united, also provided impetus to two other trends that accelerated their dominance of science and the decline of amateurs. First, was the beginning of large-scale state sponsorship of science through grants which were first facilitated through the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (now the Max Planck Institute). This eventually supplanted prizes as the dominant large-scale source of scientific funding. Countries like France that relied on prizes began to fall behind. Second, was the intimate cooperation between industrial firms like BASF and universities.
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  • he final nail in the coffin was undoubtedly the Second World War. The massive mobilization of scientific resources needed to win and the discovery of war-winning inventions such as the atomic bomb and self-correcting bomb sight (with help from Norbert Wiener of MIT) convinced the nations of the world that the future was in large-scale funding and support of science as a continuous effort. Vannevar Bush, former president of MIT, and others pioneered the National Science Foundation and the military also invested heavily in its own research centers. Industrial labs such as those from Bell Labs, GE, Kodak, and others began dominating research as well. Interestingly, the first military investment in semiconductors coupled with research from Bell Labs led to what is now known as Silicon Valley.
thinkahol *

Mind's circuit diagram to be revealed by mammoth map - life - 07 February 2011 - New Scientist - 0 views

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    Our brain is the most complex object in the known universe - so we'll need to map it in formidable detail to track down memory, thought and identity
Todd Suomela

Educational Research - Adler Planetarium - 0 views

  • Throughout history, meaningful contributions to science have been made by members of the public. These citizen scientists have historically contributed by collecting data that is hard for a single scientist to collect such as weather information or the paths of migrating birds. Recently, advances in computer technology have opened new possibilities for citizen scientists to participate in science projects by helping with data analysis. We are investigating what motivates people to do this and what they learn when they do so. To do so, we are working with Galaxy Zoo and the Zooniverse family of citizen science projects.
Todd Suomela

The Public Values Failures of Climate Science in the US by Ryan Meyer - Minerva, Volume 49, Number 1 - 0 views

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    "This paper examines the broad social purpose of US climate science, which has benefited from a public investment of more than $30 billion over the last 20 years. A public values analysis identifies five core public values that underpin the interagency program. Drawing from interviews, meeting observations, and document analysis, I examine the decision processes and institutional structures that lead to the implementation of climate science policy, and identify a variety of public values failures accommodated by this system. In contrast to other cases which find market values frameworks (the "profit as progress" assumption) at the root of public values failures, this case shows how "science values" ("knowledge as progress") may serve as an inadequate or inappropriate basis for achieving broader public values. For both institutions and individual decision makers, the logic linking science to societal benefit is generally incomplete, incoherent, and tends to conflate intrinsic and instrumental values. I argue that to be successful with respect to its motivating public values, the US climate science enterprise must avoid the assumption that any advance in knowledge is inherently good, and offer a clearer account of the kinds of research and knowledge advance likely to generate desirable social outcomes. "
Todd Suomela

The Technium: The World Without Technology - 0 views

  • Although strictly speaking simple tools are a type of technology made by one person, we tend to think of technology as something much more complicated. But in fact technology is anything designed by a mind. Technology includes not only nuclear reactors and genetically modified crops, but also bows and arrows, hide tanning techniques, fire starters, and domesticated crops. Technology also includes intangible inventions such as calendars, mathematics, software, law, and writing, as these too derive from our heads. But technology also must include birds' nests and beaver dams since these too are the work of brains. All technology, both the chimp's termite fishing spear and the human's fishing spear, the beaver's dam and the human's dam, the warbler's hanging basket and the human's hanging basket, the leafcutter ant's garden and the human's garden, are all fundamentally natural. We tend to isolate human-made technology from nature, even to the point of thinking of it as anti-nature, only because it has grown to rival the impact and power of its home. But in its origins and fundamentals a tool is as natural as our life.
  • The gravity of technology holds us where we are. We accept our attachment. But to really appreciate the effects of technology – both its virtues and costs -- we need to examine the world of humans before technology. What were our lives like without inventions? For that we need to peek back into the Paleolithic era when technology was scarce and humans lived primarily surrounded by things they did not make. We can also examine the remaining contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes still living close to nature to measure what, if anything, they gain from the small amount of technology they use.
  • Then about 50,000 years ago something amazing happened. While the bodies of early humans in Africa remained unchanged, their genes and minds shifted noticeably. For the first time hominins were full of ideas and innovation. These newly vitalized modern humans, which we now call Sapiens, charged into new regions beyond their ancestral homes in eastern Africa. They fanned out from the grasslands and in a relatively brief burst exploded from a few tens of thousands in Africa to an estimated 8 million worldwide just before the dawn of agriculture 10,000 years ago.
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  • It should have been clear to Neanderthal, as it is now clear to us in the 21st century, that something new and big had appeared -- a new biological and geological force. A number of scientists (Richard Klein, Ian Tattersall, William Calvin, among many others) think that the "something" that happened 50,000 years ago was the invention of language. Up until this point, humanoids were smart. They could make crude tools in a hit or miss way and handle fire – perhaps like an exceedingly smart chimp. The African hominin's growing brain size and physical stature had leveled off its increase, but evolution continued inside the brain.  "What happened 50,000 years ago," says Klein, "was a change in the operating system of humans. Perhaps a point mutation effected the way the brain is wired that allowed languages, as we understand language today: rapidly produced, articulate speech."  Instead of acquiring a larger brain, as the Neanderthal and Erectus did, Sapien gained a rewired brain.  Language altered the Neanderthal-type mind, and allowed Sapien minds for the first time to invent with purpose and deliberation. Philosopher Daniel Dennet crows in elegant language: "There is no step more uplifting, more momentous in the history of mind design, than the invention of language. When Homo sapiens became the beneficiary of this invention, the species stepped into a slingshot that has launched it far beyond all other earthly species." The creation of language was the first singularity for humans. It changed everything. Life after language was unimaginable to those on the far side before it.
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