Clipmarks | Mohir's clips

TED talk: Joshua Klein's vending machine for crows

Fri, 16 May 2008 13:36:19 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: video at link,
very fun watch
these crows are very intelligent

Joshua Klein's TED presentation about how he taught crows to drop coins into a peanut vending machine of his own design was my favorite talk at the conference.

Hacker and writer Joshua Klein is fascinated by crows. (Notice the gleam of intelligence in their little black eyes?) After a long amateur study of corvid behavior, he's come up with an elegant machine that may form a new bond between animal and human.

Joshua Klein will hack anything that moves -- his list includes "social systems, computer networks, institutions, consumer hardware and animal behavior." His latest project, though charmingly low-tech, has amazing implications for the human-animal interface.

"Klein envisions a new symbiotic relationship between these intelligent birds and the humans that encroach on their habitat. ... Why not turn a longstanding rivalry between man and crow into something that profits both species?"

Tags: ted, crow, animals

One Hundred Movies on Just One Disk

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:56:09 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

Holographic digital storage will let consumers store a DVD library on a single disk.

How would you like to carry around your entire DVD collection on a single disk? That is the promise of a new holographic digital storage technology being developed by General Electric and coming to a computer near you around 2012. Although not the first commercial holographic storage system—that honor goes to InPhase Technologies’ Tapestry™ 300r holographic drive—GE’s system could be the first one aimed at consumers. (InPhase’s holographic drives, which debuted last year, sell for $18,000 and target broadcasters who need to archive television programs.)

Holographic media can store huge amounts of data because information is encoded in layers throughout the entire disk, not just on a single reflective surface as in today’s optical media. In GE’s system, a single CD-size disk made of plastic will be able to store about 1 terabyte of data, equivalent to 110 typical movie DVDs.

Tags: dvd, holographic storage, technology

Fifty years of DARPA: the ones to watch

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:39:41 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: technology.newscientist.com

Ones to watch

Robot Cars: DARPA's Grand Challenge competitions have aimed to foster the creation of driverless cars capable of travelling long distances across difficult terrain and even through busy traffic.

Z-man: The aim: to allow soldiers to scale vertical walls without ropes or ladders at a rate of 0.5 metres a second. The solution: mimic the microscopic hairs, or "setae", that allow geckos to stroll up walls and across ceilings. Small robots that climb using synthetic setae have already been demonstrated, but DARPA hopes to extend this technology to humans.

Underwater Express

Bionic Limbs: DARPA wants prosthetic limbs that are "fully functional, neurologically controlled and have normal sensory capabilities" and is funding scientists who are making serious progress.

Switchblade

Exoskeletons: Think of an exoskeleton as a mechanical full-body upgrade. DARPA wants to increase the distance soldiers can march and the loads that they can carry with them.

Tags: darpa, technology, future

Fifty years of DARPA: Hits and misses

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:37:07 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: technology.newscientist.com

Successful projects

The internet: Precisely who 'invented' the mass of linked computer networks that is today's internet is a moot point. But it wouldn't have happened without the ARPANET network built by DARPA in the 1960s. The idea was to make a "self-healing" communications network that still worked when parts of it were destroyed. It was the first network to transmit data in discrete chunks, not constant streams, and led to the development of the TCP/IP specification still in use today.

GPS

Speech translation

Stealth Planes

Gallium Arsenide

Failed projects

Hafnium bombs

The mechanical elephant

Telepathic spies

FutureMap

Orion: Set in motion shortly after DARPA was created, Project Orion aimed to drive an interplanetary spacecraft by periodically dropping nuclear bombs out of its rear end.

Tags: darpa, technology

Can You Catch Up on Lost Sleep?

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:16:51 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: The good news is that, like all debt, with some work, sleep debt can be repaid—though it won't happen in one extended snooze marathon. Tacking on an extra hour or two of sleep a night is the way to catch up. For the chronically sleep deprived, take it easy for a few months to get back into a natural sleep pattern, says Lawrence J. Epstein, medical director of the Harvard-affiliated Sleep HealthCenters.
Go to bed when you are tired, and allow your body to wake you in the morning (no alarm clock allowed). You may find yourself catatonic in the beginning of the recovery cycle: Expect to bank upward of ten hours shut-eye per night. As the days pass, however, the amount of time sleeping will gradually decrease.

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Sleep debt is the difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount you actually get. It's a deficit that grows every time we skim some extra minutes off our nightly slumber. "People accumulate sleep debt surreptitiously," says psychiatrist William C. Dement, founder of the Stanford University Sleep Clinic. Studies show that such short-term sleep deprivation leads to a foggy brain, worsened vision, impaired driving, and trouble remembering. Long-term effects include obesity, insulin resistance, and heart disease. And most Americans suffer from chronic deprivation.

on average, Americans sleep 6.9 hours per night—6.8 hours during the week and 7.4 hours on the weekends. Generally, experts recommend eight hours of sleep per night, although some people may require only six hours of sleep while others need ten. That means on average, we’re losing one hour of sleep each night—more than two full weeks of slumber every year.

Tags: sleep

Humanity Was Genetically Divided For 100,000 Years

Fri, 16 May 2008 12:01:31 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: the study provides insight into the early demographic history of human populations before they moved out of Africa. “These early human populations were small and isolated from each other for many tens of thousands of years,” says Rosset.
MtDNA, inherited down the maternal line, was used in 1987 to discover the age of the famous “Mitochondrial Eve,” the most recent common female ancestor of everyone alive today. This work has since been extended to show unequivocally that “Mitochondrial Eve” was an African woman who lived sometime during the past 200,000 years.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

The human race was divided into two separate groups within Africa for as much as half of its existence, says a Tel Aviv University mathematician. Climate change, reduction in populations and harsh conditions may have caused and maintained the separation.

“We wanted to look into the ancient history of our species. How did we live throughout most of our existence as a species? Did we live as one — or were we fractured into small groups? Until now, it wasn’t really clear,” says Rosset.

Researchers believe that about 60,000 years ago, modern humans started their epic journeys to populate the world. This time period has been the primary focus of anthropological genetic research. However, relatively little is known about the demographic history of our species over the previous 140,000 years in Africa.

The current study returns the focus to Africa and thereby refines the understanding of early modern Homo sapiens history.

Tags: dna, history, human