Clipmarks | wildcat's science collection

Say wow! the flying jellyfish

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 11:49:00 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Last year Festo surprised everyone with their amazing prototype of the Air_ray a manta ray that swims through the air and the b-IONIC Airfish. We reported on it in a great post which was titled "Airships are just like fish in the sky" Festo is currently at the Hannover Messe 2008 and they brought an just as stunning new project with them. We present the Air Jelly, a jellyfish that swims through the air. Currently the information about the AirJelly is only available in German at the Festo Website but the pictures speak for them self, of course we also provide you with a direct link to the autotranslated Page in English about the AirJelly
The Video on the Website of Festo did not work for me so I uploaded it to YouTube just in case you can not see the "Flim" on the Festo website:

Tags: robotics, jellyfish

The Future Of Code, Digital And Genetic Continued

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:15:56 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Simonyi talked about his “intentional software” concept. If the human genome can be encoded in a program that takes up less than 1 gigabyte, he asked, why does Windows require 15 or 16? So, instead of building software according to elaborate blueprints that detail every programming step, Simonyi is following what he called a recipe approach. His team at Intentional Software creates a set of programming tools, writes a very specific description of the problem they are attempting to solve, and then uses the tools to generate a software solution. It sounds like a software version of the directed self-assembly techniques used in chemistry and nanotechnology.

Over on the in vivo side of the house, Harvard’s George Church, biotechnologist and founder of the Personal Genome Project; Drew Endy, of Stanford University and a founder of the BioBricks Foundation; and Rodney Brooks, of MIT and iRobot, discussed what’s being called synthetic biology or synthetic life research.

Tags: future, code, digital, genetic

Animal Intelligence and the Evolution of the Human Mind

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:50:26 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Subtle refinements in brain architecture, rather than large-scale alterations, make us smarter than other animals

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

The human brain lacks conspicuous characteristics—such as relative or absolute size—that might account for humans’ superior intellect.

Researchers have found some clues to humanity’s aptitude on a smaller scale, such as more neurons in our brain’s outermost layer.

Human intelligence may be best likened to an upgrade of the cognitive capacities of nonhuman primates rather than an exceptionally advanced form of cognition.

As far as we know, no dog can compose music, no dolphin can speak in rhymes, and no parrot can solve equations with two unknowns. Only humans can perform such intellectual feats, presumably because we are smarter than all other animal species—at least by our own definition of intelligence.

Of course, intelligence must emerge from the workings of the three-pound mass of wetware packed inside our skulls

Thus, researchers have tried to identify unique features of the human brain that could account for our superior intellectual abilities

Tags: brain, mind, evolution, intelligence

Gene linked to commitment-phobia

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 17:40:08 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: commitment-phobia, everybody has it..

Clip Source: www.sciencenews.org

Men with a common gene variation for "bonding" hormone report more marital strife

There’s news for women who want a man who bonds instead of a James Bond: Scientists have identified a common genetic variation that appears to weaken a man’s ability to emotionally attach to one partner.

The study, to appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to try to examine whether a hormone that encourages monogamy in animals plays a similar role in male humans. Before getting ideas about a DNA-fidelity test, though, women should consider that the study wasn’t designed to determine how much — or even whether — the gene in question is responsible for monogamy in humans.

“We can’t with any accuracy predict effects on behavior,” says Hasse Walum of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. “A lot of different things determine how happy you will be in a relationship.”

But women can now wonder, “What about his vasopressin 1a receptor subtype?”

Tags: genetics, commitment-phobia

Telepresence Robot TiLR at the X PRIZE Foundation

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:21:36 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: revolutionary technology

Clip Source: www.prweb.com

RoboDynamics is an innovative robotics company that develops enterprise Robotic Telepresence platforms such as TiLR. By using TiLR the X Prize Foundation is shifting the paradigm of face to face communications whereby a person can now transport himself instantly to their offices without actually being at their office. This new mode of collaboration will dramatically reduce downtime, increase productivity, and eliminate travel. The robot is installed at the Google Lunar X Prize offices within the X Prize Foundation.

Robotic Telepresence provides the ability to instantly transport a person to a remote location without the person actually going there. Robotic Telepresence is similar to video conferencing in that there is a real time audio/video link, but also provides the means for the user to commandeer the robot and move about the remote location as though the user was actually there.

For more information please visit www.robodynamics.com

Tags: telepresence, robot, tilr, x prize foundation

Surge in Food Nanotechnology Worries Consumers

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:09:20 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Davies quoted David Rejeski of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, who advocates a U.S. investment of $150 million a year in such research by 2010, to benefit from an industry that will involve “15 percent of globally manufactured goods, worth $2.6 trillion, by 2014.”

Clip Source: www.findingdulcinea.com

As more foods produced by nanotechnology are making their way to the public, some consumers worry about the health implications of the largely unregulated industry.

Companies say that so-called nanofoods could be more flavorful and healthier than regular food. There’s even indication that a juicy hamburger could taste the same minus the fat and cholesterol, and peanuts could one day provide an innocuous snack for those with peanut allergies, for example.

Nanotechnology alters the characteristics of materials by manipulating their atoms and molecules, which generally measure only about 1–100 nanometers. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter, and a single human hair measures 100,000 nanometers wide.

Nanotechnology has already brought advances in medicine, weaponry, construction, and consumer products, including lightweight tennis rackets, bicycles, certain sunscreens, washing machines and containers for food

Tags: nanotech, food, future

Gordon Moore's Next Act

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 10:27:21 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: The man behind Moore's Law is tackling biodiversity, the future of engineering education, and the secrets of the galaxies

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

“ANYTHING BUT MOORE’S LAW”: Semiconductor pioneer Gordon E. Moore hopes his philanthropic work will have an enduring impact.

Gordon E. Moore, cofounder and chairman emeritus of Intel Corp., the world’s 288th richest man, and the eponymous soothsayer of one of technology’s most famous “laws,” sits across from me, eating a turkey sandwich.

Moore was a 36-year-old research physicist at Fairchild Semiconductor Corp. when he wrote his famous forecast, in the 35th anniversary issue of Electronics magazine. He predicted that the number of transistors manufacturers would be able to put on a chip would double every year. At the time, a state-of-the-art chip had about 50 transistors. In 1975, Moore revised the doubling period to two years, thinking that the pattern would last at most a decade longer. To his surprise, it still holds true today, as a new Intel chip, code-named Tukwila, hits the market with 2 billion transistors.

Tags: gordon moore

What's wrong with science as religion

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:44:19 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Piercing a Communion wafer with a nail and throwing it in the garbage, as one crusading biologist recently did, does science no favors"

Clip Source: www.salon.com

Jul. 31, 2008 | PZ Myers is a true believer, a science crusader with the singled-minded enthusiasm of a televangelist. A biologist at the University of Minnesota at Morris and a columnist for Seed magazine, Myers has earned notoriety with his blog, Pharyngula, in which he reports on new developments in biology and indiscriminately excoriates those he views as hostile to science, a pantheon of straw men and women that includes theologians, journalists and churchgoers. He is Richard Dawkins without the fame or felicitous prose style.

Religion is dangerous, he wrote; it breeds hatred and idiocy. It is our job to advance humanity's knowledge "by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality." There is no wisdom in our dogmas, Myers warned, just "self-satisfied ignorance." We find truth only in science, looking at the world "with fresh eyes and a questioning mind."

Tags: science, vs, religion

The Secrets of Storytelling: Why We Love a Good Yarn

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 16:24:50 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Storytelling is a human universal, and common themes appear in tales throughout history and all over the the world.

These characteristics of stories, and our natural affinity toward them, reveal clues about our evolutionary history and the roots of emotion and empathy in the mind.

By studying narrative’s power to influence beliefs, researchers are discovering how we analyze information and accept new ideas.

Popular tales do far more than entertain, however. Psychologists and neuroscientists have recently become fascinated by the human predilection for storytelling. Why does our brain seem to be wired to enjoy stories? And how do the emotional and cognitive effects of a narrative influence our beliefs and real-world decisions?

Storytelling is one of the few human traits that are truly universal across culture and through all of known history. Anthropologists find evidence of folktales everywhere in ancient cultures, written in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian and Sumerian

Tags: storytelling, human universals

Please Help Scientists By Participating In National Orgasm Day July 31st

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:05:04 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: So, Britain, privatize your National Health Services and cut the welfare - tell those people in Manchester the steel industry is never coming back so they should get other jobs. Then you could put money toward science studies that really count, like this.

After all, this is not a gender-specific issue. Having British women famous for lack of orgasms really doesn't make the men there look all that great either.

Clip Source: www.scientificblogging.com

I'm taking a moment away from crafting "Journey To The Center Of The Uterus", my opus on reproduction and culture, to discuss something of equal import - namely, orgasms.

It will shock you to know this, but nearly 50% of British women don't have orgasms. Are they frigid? No, not at all, as my 1999 layover at Heathrow can attest. Science funding is the issue, as we shall see.

As we have discussed in articles like The Science of Orgasms and Would Female Orgasms Kill Men?, (1) orgasms are tricky business but scientists know what they are doing. Fewer scientists means fewer orgasms. Britain is in the throes of a science funding meltdown so the problem for British women will only get worse. With fewer scientists there can be fewer studies on important stuff like this.

What are we talking about?

To celebrate National Orgasm Day on July 31, concerned groups in the UK have been conducting a survey on female orgasms - and the results are not good

Tags: humor, britain

Toward a Type 1 civilization

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:59:25 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Along with energy policy, political and economic systems must also evolve.
Michael Shermer, one of the most trusted voices in todays world.

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

By Michael Shermer
July 22, 2008

Our civilization is fast approaching a tipping point. Humans will need to make the transition from nonrenewable fossil fuels as the primary source of our energy to renewable energy sources that will allow us to flourish into the future. Failure to make that transformation will doom us to the endless political machinations and economic conflicts that have plagued civilization for the last half-millennium.

We need new technologies to be sure, but without evolved political and economic systems, we cannot become what we must. And what is that? A Type 1 civilization. Let me explain.

Type 1 can harness all of the energy of its home planet; Type 2 can harvest all of the power of its sun; and Type 3 can master the energy from its entire galaxy.

Based on our energy efficiency at the time, in 1973 the astronomer Carl Sagan estimated that Earth represented a Type 0.7 civilization on a Type 0 to Type 1 scale. (More current assessments put us at 0.72.)

Tags: michael shermer, civilization, transformation

Is There a Laziness Gene?

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 14:59:57 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.time.com

Have you ever wondered why you can't get off the couch and exercise — despite paying for an expensive gym membership, despite your New Year's resolutions, even despite the doctor's scolding at your last check-up? Turns out that your inertia may be coded right into your genes.

Based on some intriguing, preliminary studies in animals, J. Timothy Lightfoot, a kinesiologist, and his team at University of North Carolina, Charlotte, suggest that genetics may indeed predispose some of us for sloth. Using mice specially bred and selected according to their activity levels, Lightfoot identified 20 different genomic locations that work in tandem to influence activity levels in mice — specifically, how far the animals will run

genes may affect either the way muscles work — perhaps causing them to use energy more efficiently and preventing fatigue — or some higher-order biochemical circuit in the brain, such as levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine or serotonin

Tags: laziness, genetics

Europe, Japan join forces to map out future of intelligent robots

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 12:19:42 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

The field of robotics could be poised for a breakthrough, leading to a new generation of intelligent machines capable of taking on multiple tasks and moving out of the factory into the home and general workplace. The great success of robots so far has been in automating repetitive tasks in process control and assembly, yielding dramatic cuts in production, but the next step towards cognition and more human-like behaviour has proved elusive.

It has been difficult to make robots that can truly learn and adapt to unexpected situations in the way humans can, while it has been equally challenging trying to develop a machine capable of moving smoothly like any animal. There is still no robot capable of walking properly without jerky slightly unbalanced movements.

The future of cognitive robotics lies in combining the techniques discussed at the ESF/JSPS conference to develop true humanoid machines capable of assisting in homes, offices, and public places

Tags: europe, japan, future, intelligent, robots

The Coming Death Shortage

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:33:49 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Why the longevity boom will make us sorry to be alive" a must read.
Though I fail to agree with many of the premises of this article, the critical views it presents are important and the issues need be taken into consideration seriously

Clip Source: www.theatlantic.com

Stem-cell banks, telomerase amplifiers, somatic gene therapy—the list of potential longevity treatments incubating in laboratories is startling. Three years ago a multi-institutional scientific team led by Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical geneticist at Cambridge University, argued in a widely noted paper that the first steps toward "engineered negligible senescence"—a rough-and-ready version of immortality—would have "a good chance of success in mice within ten years." The same techniques, De Grey says, should be ready for human beings a decade or so later. "In ten years we'll have a pill that will give you twenty years," says Leonard Guarente, a professor of biology at MIT. "And then there'll be another pill after that. The first hundred-and-fifty-year-old may have already been born."

The critical issue, in Goldman's view, will be not the costs per se but determining who will pay them. "We're going to have a very public debate about whether this will be covered by insurance," he says

Tags: longevity, death, economy, future, public debate

The Implications of Robot Cars and Taxis

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 02:07:52 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.templetons.com

Or how geeks can save the planet and millions of lives using near-term A.I. to make taxis and trucks deliver, park, recharge and drive themselves.

For some time people have dreamed of a car that drives itself safely on the highway and city streets. While driving can often be a fun experience, Americans spend about 50 billion hours per year behind the wheel -- around 10% of our working hours -- and much of that is not productive or particularly pleasant.

This nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before the next decade is out, of a computer driving a man to lunch at noon and returning him safely to work.

Indeed, I came to the conclusion that making self-driving "robot" cars, taxis and trucks ("robocars") is the most compelling short-term engineering problem on our current horizon, and easily the computer engineering project with the greatest potential near-term benefit. It is well worth an "Apollo" project -- to make it happen in a decade.

Tags: ai, robot cars, taxis, self-driving