Vision of the future from British Telecom

Its hard to say if this old video from BT  is serious. Who transmits a picture by sending it to a video screen and then scanning it off of it “on high quality photo sensitive paper”? They certainly did not see the laser printer coming :)

The Cloud Appreciation Society

Yes, there is one. and their home page has some awesome pictures of clouds and lightning taken by people from all over the world. [Link]

 

Cracking the code to everything

Stephen Wolfram (Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha creator) has a theory of everything. This story from Wired magazine 2002 tries to follow his 10 years long quest to find out a theory of everything in a very un-orthdox way.  The resulting book, modestly titled,   is going to be as revolutionary as any book by any scientist so far (according to Wolfram).  [Link]

As dessert is served, I bring up the secret-of-the-universe question. Wolfram's theory that there is a single rule at the heart of everything - a single simple algorithm that, in effect, generates all the rules of physics and everything else - is bound to be one of his most controversial claims, a theory that even some of his close friends in physics aren't buying.

Furthermore, Wolfram rubs our faces in the dreary implications of his contention. Not only does a single measly rule account for everything, but if one day we actually see the rule, he predicts, we'll probably find it unimpressive. "One might expect," he writes, "that in the end there would be nothing special about the rule for our universe - just as there has turned out to be nothing special about our position in the solar system or the galaxy."

I have some trouble with this.

"I've got to ask you," I say. "How long do you envision this rule of the universe to be?"

"I'm guessing it's really very short."

"Like how long?"

"I don't know. In Mathematica, for example, perhaps three, four lines of code."

"Four lines of code?"

"That's what I'm guessing. I mean, I don't really know, but I think there's no obvious evidence that it's any longer than that. Now, in a sense, it will be short if Mathematica was a well-designed language. It will be longer if it doesn't happen to be as well-designed, in the sense that that doesn't happen to be the way the universe works. But we're not looking at 25,000 lines of code or something. We're looking at a handful of lines of code."

"So it's not like Windows?"

Transparent Screens

Take a picture of your desk, then set it as your wallpaper. More cool pictures here.

TED: Brian Greene on string theory

Good explanation of the string theory on a level that a layman can (sort of) understand.

High Speed Camera captures perfect surfing moment

Skip to 50 sec into the video if you can’t bother to watch the whole minute. More extreme slo-mo action here.

Solar Transit of ISS and the space shuttle

Thierry Legault took these pictures of the ISS and the space shuttle using a solar-filtered Takahashi 5" refracting telescope and a Canon 5D Mk II. For more photos in huge size and awesome resolution, go here.

Space Shuttle [Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)]

International Space Station [Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)]

 

Space shuttle and the Hubble telescope  [Photo Credit: (NASA/Thierry Legault)]

and here is the setup used to take these.

[Photo Credit: Thierry Legault]

Chicago Gangs’ Calling cards from the 70s and 80s

Here is a list of calling cards from different gangs of Chicago in the 70s and 80s. A couple of thoughts come to mind. First, Nothing makes you look like less of a bad ass than having your card say “Robert Loves Ann” and “Michael Loves Bridget” on the corners. Second, having the names of the gang members (and their girlfriends) printed on the calling card would result in frequent, expensive re-printing. What happens when Robert does not love Ann anymore or, god forbid, brother “Skippy” loses an argument with the police?

 

 

 

Recession: Sing-A-Long

This funny yet accurate cartoon from Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist and animator Walt Handelsman captures the essence of the current financial meltdown. [Link]


More economy related funny cartoons by Handelsman here.

How children lost the right to roam in four generations

This picture is worth a thousand words. [Link]

The contrast between Edward and George's childhoods is highlighted in a report which warns that the mental health of 21st-century children is at risk because they are missing out on the exposure to the natural world enjoyed by past generations.

The report says the change in attitudes is reflected in four generations of the Thomas family in Sheffield.

The oldest member, George, was allowed to roam for six miles from home unaccompanied when he was eight.

His home was tiny and crowded and he spent most of his time outside, playing games and making dens.

Mr Thomas, who went on to become a carpenter, has never lost some of the habits picked up as a child and, aged 88, is still a keen walker.

His son-in-law, Jack Hattersley, 63, was also given freedom to roam.

He was aged eight in 1950, and was allowed to walk for about one mile on his own to the local woods. Again, he walked to school and never travelled by car.

By 1979, when his daughter Vicky Grant was eight, there were signs that children's independence was being eroded.

"I was able to go out quite freely - I'd ride my bike around the estate, play with friends in the park and walk to the swimming pool and to school," said Mrs Grant, 36.

"There was a lot less traffic then - and families had only one car. People didn't make all these short journeys."

Today, her son Edward spends little time on his own outside his garden in their quiet suburban street. She takes him by car to school to ensure she gets to her part-time job as a medical librarian on time.

While he enjoys piano lessons, cubs, skiing lessons, regular holidays and the trampoline, slide and climbing frame in the garden, his mother is concerned he may be missing out.

She said: "He can go out in the crescent but he doesn't tend to go out because the other children don't. We put a bike in the car and go off to the country where we can all cycle together.

"It's not just about time. Traffic is an important consideration, as is the fear of abduction, but I'm not sure whether that's real or perceived."

She added: "Over four generations our family is poles apart in terms of affluence. But I'm not sure our lives are any richer."

Pixel Qi Promises Cheap, Readable, Low-Power Displays

Pixel Qi seems to be the only company right now that  might pose a challenge to E-Ink Technologies. They are developing a new screen based on LCD that can work in low power electronic paper mode as well as the regular (back-lit) mode. [Link]

Mary Lou Jepsen is a tech necromancer who battled the odds to conjure up a product that most experts said couldn’t be built: a $100 laptop (give or take a few twenties). Now she’s back, with plans for low-cost, low-power, super-readable, LCD-based screens that will go into everything from e-book readers to netbooks and computers.

“We are creating e-paper with color and video capability, but on high volume, standard, mass production lines, so they will be available easily,” says Jepsen, founder of Pixel Qi (pronounced Pixel Chee), a San Bruno, California-based startup. The company plans to have samples of its display out within the next two months, “and we are pulling all-nighters now to get the product ready.”

Jepsen was the chief technical officer and first employee of the One Laptop per Child’s XO computer, and she was charged with making the cheap computer technically feasible. A low-power LCD was the cornerstone of that effort. Now, Jepsen wants to take her OLPC experience — and her 48 display-related patents — to market with a for-profit company.

Pixel Qi’s displays called 3Qi will operate in three settings: a full-color, bright, conventional LCD mode; a very low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a low-power, basic color transflective mode. The screens are initially expected to be available in 10.5-inch and 7.5-inch screen sizes.

Rubber Snake Power

A new wave energy generator, “The Anaconda”, that can generate electricity from the energy of bulge waves that travel down a tube when placed in the ocean. [Link]

The tube is anchored at one end and as waves wash along its length they exert pressure on the snake that is transmitted by the water inside. This forces Anaconda's walls to expand outwards into the wave troughs where they are under less pressure, forming "bulge waves" that travel along the Anaconda's length.

These waves are similar to those that pass through the human circulatory system and can be felt as the pulse in the wrist and neck, says Rod Rainey of Atkins Global, co-inventor of the Anaconda. When each bulge wave reaches the end of the snake it keeps a turbine spinning to generate electricity.

The snake is made from a rubber-based material similar to that used to make dracones – flexible containers that are filled with diesel or water and towed behind ships for quick and cheap transportation.

Other than the turbine, Anaconda has no moving parts and unlike other wave power devices it needs only one tether to the ocean floor. That lowers construction costs and reduces the need for maintenance – an expensive undertaking in offshore settings where corrosion and accessibility are problems, explains Rainey.

Bad Influenza :)

TED: Electricity through Kites

This TED talk provides a brief overview of a kite based system to generate electricity. Some nice video in there of a kite flying around helping generate 10 kW. They are going for Mega-watt class machines with big kites flying at 2000 ft (~600 m). Video length: 6:35

Since the video is low on technical details, here is an article in the economist shedding further light on how such a system might work. [Link, subscription required]

Meanwhile, Wubbo Ockels of the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has been developing another approach to airborne wind generation at lower altitude, with backing from Royal Dutch Shell and Nederlandse Gasunie, a natural-gas company. Dr Ockels’s idea is that a kite (without rotor blades) be launched from a ground station, turning a generator as it rises to an altitude of several hundred metres. When it reaches its full height, it alters its shape to catch less wind, and can thus be reeled back in using much less power than it produced when it was being paid out.

An arrangement of two or more of these kites could act together to produce a steady supply of power. When one kite was being released, part of the electricity produced would reel the other kite back in, and vice versa. The whole system would thus remain in surplus, and if well designed could deliver a constant current. This system has the advantage that it requires only simple parts—generators, kites and cables—and should thus be much cheaper to build than a conventional turbine.

Google’s Book scanning machine

This Patent application by Google describes a method to automatically scan books while correcting for the curvature of the binding so that it is easier for the OCR software to convert it into text. That sound you hear? the desperate cries of a thousand book publishers. [Link, Link]

What is claimed:
1. A system comprising: an infrared projector; a pattern mask located in an output path of the infrared projector; a stereoscopic camera to generate images of opposing pages of a document from which a three-dimensional image of a surface of the opposing pages of the document is generated; and control logic to process the three-dimensional image to locate a groove that is defined by the spine of the document and located between the opposing pages of the document.

Foldit! Online Protein folding game

Gaming without guilt :)

This new game allows you to take part in cutting edge research while having fun. Available for Windows, MAC and Linux. [Link]

 

What big problems is this game tackling?

• Protein structure prediction: As described above, knowing the structure of a protein is key to understanding how it works and to targeting it with drugs. A small proteins can consist of 100 amino acids, while some human proteins can be huge (1000 amino acids). The number of different ways even a small protein can fold is astronomical because there are so many degrees of freedom. Figuring out which of the many, many possible structures is the best one is regarded as one of the hardest problems in biology today and current methods take a lot of money and time, even for computers. Foldit attempts to predict the structure of a protein by taking advantage of humans' puzzle-solving intuitions and having people play competitively to fold the best proteins.
• (Coming soon!) Protein design: Since proteins are part of so many diseases, they can also be part of the cure. Over the summer, we will add new functionality to the game to allow users to design brand new proteins that could help prevent or treat important diseases.