The social pedia
I found a rather insightful commentary discussing some of Wikipedia’s fundamental problems in the Slashdot submission queue today. The commentary is presented more or less as an introspective series of rhetorical questions from the perspective of a disgruntled user. I don’t find Wikipedia’s problems to be very interesting. While I hope that Wikipedia retains its [...]
Laser link from Earth to Moon?
Oerlikon recently demonstrated transmission of data over light at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers. The laser is specifically designed to provide data links to and from objects in space (to each other), as well as planetary to object, or possibly interplanetary links. From what the press release says, they achieved speeds of approximately 10MBit/Sec, [...]
The science of insider fraud
IT Wire is running something neat today, researchers in Australia have combined efforts to automate the process of detecting (internal) employee fraud. This research is of particular interest to any company that enjoys a decentralized structure that enables employees to work from home via the Internet. To explain why this sort of research is so [...]
Ghost hunting
Every year at around this time, The Discovery channel (and others) run all kinds of interesting shows about paranormal researchers. Usually, I like my existing job (getting ghosts out of ‘machines’) just fine. There are very few other vocations that could lure me away from my comfy desk chair and fuzzy slippers, paranormal researching could [...]
Does your DNA smile?
ABC is reporting that Dr. Paul Rothemund at the California Institute of Technology can make 50 billion smileys, each a thousand times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. [ ultra paranoid geek mode ON ] We’ve already seen a patent for music from human DNA. Could this technique result in a patent that [...]
Bye bye, HIV?
Science Daily is reporting that researchers have stopped HIV in its tracks. Through a combination of sustained therapies, HIV can be blocked from mutating and neutralized in many HIV patients. Like most therapies (even antibiotics), this treatment is only effective if the patient is diligent in following the prescribed course. One must take all medicine, [...]
Calmer, gentler married men
New Scientist is running a neat article on why married men tend to be calmer than single men. The answer (we all knew) is decreased levels of testosterone. A study in Africa more than confirms what we’ve been noticing for years. The study, in northern Kenya sampled single, married and polygamist males who marry at [...]
Rather sweeping, my dear Watson
When the world is rather angry, you can count on Science to make it even angrier. James Watson (who won the Nobel Prize for his work on DNA) has made some interesting comments to Times Online, later reduced and paraphrased by ABC News. His comments reflect on research that he’s analyzed indicating that people of [...]
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