December 2009
52 posts
“1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;
2)...”
– Douglas Adams in DNA/How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet, explaining how the world works (1999). (via designtumblelog) (via rafer) (via hiten)
in that case, forty is the new twenty-five. =)
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smarterplanet:
A World Transformed: What Are the Top 30 Innovations of the Last 30 Years? - Knowledge@Wharton
The list is as follows, in order of importance:
1. Internet, broadband, WWW (browser and html)
2. PC/laptop computers
3. Mobile phones
4. E-mail
5. DNA testing and sequencing/Human genome mapping
6. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
7. Microprocessors
8. Fiber optics
...
“only crazy, ignorant, passionate people would still be reading this, thinking...”
– Dave McClure - Master of 500 Hats: Great Entrepreneurs are PASSIONATE about Customers & Products, NOT about being Great Entrepreneurs. (via hiten)
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Give a Goat for Christmas! and get two mpFrees! →
courtesy of Pomplamoose Music:
Go here to give a goat: http://donate.worldvision.org/OA_HTML/xxwv2ibeCCtpSctDspR… When you give a goat, World Vision sends you an email receipt. Forward that email to us at PomplaGoat@gmail.com and we’ll send you the mp3 of this song, and our new original coming out in a few weeks!
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Yesteryear's healthcare pilot projects are...
jayparkinsonmd:
I just finished reading Atul Gawande’s latest article in the New Yorker, Testing, Testing: The healthcare bill has no master plan for controlling costs. Is that a bad thing?
He draws parallels to the history of agriculture in America:
At the start of the twentieth century, another indispensable but unmanageably costly sector was strangling the country: agriculture. In 1900,...
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“In their 2009 report to Congress, the Medicare trustees estimate that the...”
– Weisberg, on the GOP’s health-care hypocrisy. (via newsweek) (via mikehudack)
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IEEE Spectrum: Nuclear-Powered Transponder for... →
This week at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), in Baltimore, Md., Cornell University engineers presented research that shows progress in powering cybernetic organisms with a radioactive fuel source.
Electrical engineering associate professor Amit Lal and graduate student Steven Tin presented a prototype microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) transmitter—an RF-emitting device...
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WatchIEEE Spectrum: The A-Team of Robots (Audio Slide Show)
featuring University of Minnesota’s Center for Distributed Robotics
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annoyance, the mother of invention?
IEEE Spectrum: “Shady” Robot Climbs Windows, Blocks Sunlight
When you’re an MIT researcher and your laboratory’s windows let in too much sunlight, obviously the only thing to do is to build a robot to solve your problem. Whence Shady, a window-climbing robot that unfurls a shade to block sunlight and glare.
If you’ve ever visited MIT’s Computer Science and...
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“Success is about making your life a special version of unique that fits who you...”
– Mark Cuban - Success & Motivation: What Will You Remember When You are 90 ? « blog maverick (via hiten) (via jayparkinsonmd)
amen, brothers~
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“By mimicking the way that a living body acquires immunity to disease through...”
– Researchers Build Artificial Immune System to Solve Computational Problems (via smarterplanet)
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Reading the bill would be alot easier if it had links in it. i.e.,
(c) Eligibility- For purposes of this section, the term `eligible individual’ means an individual who meets the requirements of subsection (i)(1)—
(1) who—
(A) is not eligible for—
(i) benefits under title XVIII, XIX, or XXI of the Social Security Act; or
(ii) coverage under an...
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H.R.3962: Affordable Health Care for America Act
Calendar No. 210
111th CONGRESS 1st Session
H. R. 3962
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES
November 10, 2009
Received and read the first time
November 16, 2009
Read the second time and placed on the calendar
========================================
[snip]
TITLE I—IMMEDIATE REFORMS
Sec. 101. National high-risk pool program.
Sec. 102. Ensuring value and lower premiums.
Sec. 103....
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Healthcare Reform Legislation
Because I can’t sift through all the hoopla & don’t really know who to trust, I’m reading the darn thing myself.
Anyone else interested in doing so can find it here.
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“For every 100 copies of a physical book we sell, where we have the Kindle edition, we will sell 48 copies of the Kindle edition. It won’t be too long before we’re selling more electronic books than we are physical books.”
— Jeff Bezos (via marco) (via peterwknox) (via mikehudack)
Not until the Kindle drops in price, that is.
While I don’t mind reading books on a screen, I do very much...
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Structure Spaces (JMLR) →
Finite structures such as point patterns, strings, trees, and graphs occur as “natural” representations of structured data in different application areas of machine learning. We develop the theory of structure spaces and derive geometrical and analytical concepts such as the angle between structures and the derivative of functions on structures. In particular, we show that the...
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nsf.gov - With Help from a Bacterium, Cockroaches... →
Uric acid and urea are nitrogenous waste products not useful to animals as food. But by teaming up with a bacterium, cockroaches can use them as sources for making their own proteins.
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nsf.gov - On the Crest of Wave Energy →
The ocean is a potentially vast source of electric power, yet as engineers test new technologies for capturing it, the devices are plagued by battering storms, limited efficiency, and the need to be tethered to the seafloor.
Now, a team of aerospace engineers is applying the principles that keep airplanes aloft to create a new wave-energy system that is durable, extremely efficient, and can be...
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NASA - A Tale of Planetary Woe →
Conventional wisdom holds that Mars’s atmosphere is vulnerable because the planet lacks a global magnetic field. Earth’s magnetic field stretches far out into space and envelopes the whole planet in a protective bubble that deflects the solar wind. Mars has only regional, patchy magnetic fields that cover relatively small areas of the planet, mostly in the southern hemisphere.
...
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First Gallium-Based FinFETs →
Purdue researchers take compound semiconductors into the third dimension
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IEEE Spectrum: Gaza Power Strip →
Like the territory itself, Gaza’s electrical system—and its lone power plant—seems stuck in a kind of chaotic limbo. Life for a plant engineer here is a daily struggle to keep the operation running amid chronic shortages of fuel, spare parts, expertise, and basic building materials. Somehow, this solitary power plant wheezes on. This is what engineering looks like at the edge, where engineers...
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IEEE Spectrum: Utility Scale Photovoltaics →
There’s been a “dramatic change in the attitude of utilities” toward centrally generated photovoltaic electricity, says Julie Blunden, vice president for public policy and communications with Sunpower. Mark Pinto, chief technology officer and senior vice president with Applied Materials, basically agrees with Blunden that a variety of factors associated with production scale...
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“I see corrupt politicians deciding it is more profitable, and also more secure,...”
– Marginal Revolution: The future of Africa? (via jryu) (via mikehudack)
The last sentence of the above paragraph:
It will mean higher living standards and better infrastructure, but probably not along a path that will look very appealing to most Western observers.
Bleak with a forecast for...
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