February 12, 2009, 6:10 AM CT

Laser sharp digital maps

Restoring habitat for spawning species of fish, such as Atlantic salmon, starts with a geological inventory of suitable rivers and streams, and the watershed systems that support them. But the high-tech mapping tools available to geologists and hydrologists have had their limits.

Now, lasers beamed from planes overhead are adding greater clarity to mapping streams and rivers and interpreting how well these bodies of water can help maintain or expand fish stocks, according to a new study.

"It's kind of like going from your backyard telescope to the Hubble telescope," says Boston College Geologist Noah P. Snyder. "Restoring fish habitat is just one example. For the fisherman, backpacker, forester, land use planner or developer anyone who uses map data this new technology is the next revolution in mapping".

Airborne laser elevation (or lidar) surveys provide a 10-fold improvement in the precision with which topographical features are measured, Snyder reports in the current edition of Eos, the weekly journal of the American Geophysical Union.

Lidar represents the latest technology to improve digital topographical maps known as digital elevation models, or DEMs. Pulsing laser beams released by a lidar device from a plane overhead bounce off of rocks, trees, soil, even water, and send signals back to the device, which makes topographical calculations based on the time it takes the laser signal to return at the speed of light......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:09:51 GMT

Samsung Show W7900 Struts Its Stuff

Pico projectors are all the rage, and their popularity is growing. I always thought that these little projectors would really shine once they become fully integrated into the projects that use them such as a phones or handheld games. Well, the Samsung Show W7900 has been demoed, and it is very nice.

The Samsung Show W7900 is just like any other Samsung media device save for one essential feature; it has a built in projector capable of displaying a great image up to 50 inches diagonally. Specifically, the projector features 10 lumens and 480 by 320 pixels. Other specs on the phone include a 5MP camera, 3G connector, 3.2 inch OLED screen, and a front facing VGA camera for video conferencing. If the OS and the media functions are up to snuff, this phone will be very nice.

It was only a tech demo, and there is no official Samsung W7900 release date or price, but you can bet these things will be hitting the street soon. Now if I could only get a PSP or a Nintendo DS with a built-in projector.

via PopSci Posted by: Chris Matier      Read more     Source

January 15, 2009, 7:36 PM CT

Electronic biological chips

A handheld, ultra-portable device that can recognize and immediately report on a wide variety of environmental or medical compounds may eventually be possible, using a method that incorporates a mixture of biologically tagged nanowires onto integrated circuit chips, as per Penn State researchers.

"Probably one of the most important things for connecting to the circuit is to place the wires accurately," says Theresa S. Mayer, professor of electrical engineering and director of Penn State's Nanofabrication Laboratory. "We need to control spatial placement on the chip with less than a micron of accuracy".

Using standard chip manufacturing, each type of nanowire would be placed on the board in a separate operation. Using the researchers' bottom-up method, they can place three different types of DNA-coated wires where they wanted them, with an error rate of less than 1 percent.

"This approach can be used to simultaneously detect different pathogens or diseases based on their nucleic acid signatures," says Christine D. Keating, associate professor of chemistry.

"Device components such as nanowires can be synthesized from a number of different materials and even coated with biological molecules previous to assembling them onto a chip," the scientists note in today's (Jan. 16) issue of Science They add that positioning the nanowires accurately is still difficult using conventional methods......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

November 12, 2008, 10:29 PM CT

Computers make sense of experiments on human disease

Increased use of computers to create predictive models of human disease is likely following a workshop organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF), which urged for a collaborative effort between specialists in the field. Human disease research produces an enormous amount of data from different sources such as animal models, high throughput genetic screening of human tissue, and in vitro laboratory experiments. This data operates at different levels and scales including genes, molecules, cells, tissues and whole organs, embodying a huge amount of potentially valuable insight that current computer modelling approaches often fail to exploit properly.

However, significant advances in the modelling of a few specific diseases, such as multiple sclerosis (MS), have been made. A major aim of the ESF workshop was thus to generalise such work and create a more coherent body of expertise across the whole field of computational disease analysis, as per Albert Compte, co-convenor of the ESF workshop, from the Computational and physiological bases of cortical networks laboratory at the Institut d'Investigacions Biomdiques August Pi Sunyer (IDIBAPS) in Barcelona. "A workshop like this one was useful in seeing how advances in other research fields can be used more generally for disease modelling," said Compte. "So far, novel modelling approaches have been confined to a specific disease or a particular level of description"......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

November 6, 2008, 7:58 PM CT

Proof by computer

New computer tools have the potential to revolutionize the practice of mathematics by providing far more-reliable proofs of mathematical results than have ever been possible in the history of humankind. These computer tools, based on the notion of "formal proof", have in recent years been used to provide nearly infallible proofs of a number of important results in mathematics. A ground-breaking collection of four articles by leading experts, published recently in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society (http://www.ams.org/notices), explores new developments in the use of formal proof in mathematics.

When mathematicians prove theorems in the traditional way, they present the argument in narrative form. They assume prior results, they gloss over details they think other experts will understand, they take shortcuts to make the presentation less tedious, they appeal to intuition, etc. The correctness of the arguments is determined by the scrutiny of other mathematicians, in informal discussions, in lectures, or in journals. It is sobering to realize that the means by which mathematical results are verified is essentially a social process and is thus fallible. When it comes to central, well known results, the proofs are particularly well checked and errors are eventually found. Nevertheless the history of mathematics has a number of stories about false results that went undetected for a long time. In addition, in some recent cases, important theorems have mandatory such long and complicated proofs that very few people have the time, energy, and necessary background to check through them. And some proofs contain extensive computer code to, for example, check a lot of cases that would be infeasible to check by hand. How can mathematicians be sure that such proofs are reliable?........ Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:06:42 GMT

Webicina will be open to patients

We are working hard to get Webicina ready by the 7th of October. This Tuesday, after months of preparation, we will launch it officially. We decided to open the service for patients as well. That is why it’s easy to say now Webicina is really trying to build a bridge between e-patients and physicians.

The services we will provide:

• Consulting: presentations about web 2.0 and medicine in person; or online (webinars, Second Life workshops).
• Online Image Building Solutions: e-mail support for 3 months about the tools and methods medical professionals need to build a proper online reputation.
• E-Courses: materials and step-by-step tutorials through which users can learn to use the web 2.0 tools and methods they need. Premium account provides a 3 months long access and e-mail support, while the Basic account does not include e-mail support.
• Personalized Medicine 2.0 Package: a personalized set of web 2.0 tools designed to solve the problems of physicians, health care workers and patients. Membership includes one extended e-mail containing all the web 2.0 tools, services and information dedicated to a specific medical condition or a medical specialty.

Please join the discussion about how to change the way medicine is practiced and healthcare is delivered from the 7th of October! Posted by: Bertalan      Read more     Source

October 1, 2008, 8:19 PM CT

Computer hardware 'guardians' protect users

As computer processor chips grow faster and more complex, they are likely to make it to market with more design bugs. But that may be OK, as per University of Michigan scientists who have devised a system that lets chips work around all functional bugs, even those that haven't been detected.

Firms such as Intel find functional bugs by simulating different scenarios, commands and configurations that their processor might encounter. Bugs only show themselves when they're triggered by certain configurations. When firms find major bugs, they fix them. But because it would be virtually impossible to simulate all possibilities, engineers don't find all the bugs.

Buggy hardware inadvertently released to customers could fail. Short of replacing the product, there isn't much a company can do to fix the problem today.

The U-M researchers' system would eliminate this risk by building a virtual fence that prevents a chip from operating in untested configurations. The approach keeps track of all the configurations the firm did test, and loads that information onto a miniscule monitor that would be added to each processor.

The monitor, called a semantic guardian, keeps the chip operating within its virtual fence. It works by switching the processor into a slower, bare-bones, safe mode when the chip encounters a configuration that has not been validated. In this way, the monitor would treat all untested configurations as potential threats......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

September 25, 2008, 10:54 PM CT

Free Adeona service tracks stolen laptops

As college students head back to school with gleaming new laptops, some will, unfortunately, see the last of their machine in a library, cafeteria or dorm room. And it's not just college campuses that are hot spots for computer theft, or just students who are the targets. Newspapers recently reported that airports in the United States record hundreds of thousands of laptop thefts annually. Such thefts are not only expensive, they also often mean losing sensitive data.

Scientists at the University of Washington and at the University of California, San Diego have created a new laptop theft-protection tool. The software not only provides a virtual watchdog on your precious machine -- reporting the laptop's location when it connects to the Internet -- but does so without letting anybody but you monitor your whereabouts.

The tool is named Adeona, after the Roman goddess of safe returns, and is posted at http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/. It works by using the Internet as a homing beacon. Once Adeona is installed, the machine will occasionally send its Internet protocol address and related information to OpenDHT, a free online storage network. This information can be used to establish the computer's general location.

On a Macintosh computer, Adeona also uses the computer's internal camera to take a photo that it sends to the same server......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

August 27, 2008, 6:54 PM CT

Real-World Lessons in Virtual World

View a video of WolfQuest, an interactive computer game in which players are immersed in every aspect of a wolf's survival in its habitat.

It's bad enough that I haven't found a mate. I'm also hungry and I'm losing stamina. I've lost the rest of my group and a large grizzly bear has positioned himself across my path. What's a wolf to do?

Adopting the identity of a wolf is the key to learning about wolf behavior and ecology in WolfQuest, a computer game developed and hosted by the Minnesota Zoo with funding from the National Science Foundation. WolfQuest is one example of how, through computer gaming technology, learning can reach across time and space and link learners to a set of challenges--along with a set of tools to address them, and the motivation to succeed. Other such projects developed with NSF funding include "Project IT Girl," a project that involves high-school girls in designing and developing educational games, and LunarQuest, a multiple-player game that aims to support the learning of physics.

Through computer games, a single player can immerse himself or herself in a problem that demands the tools of science or math to solve it. The technology can also link a team of players who must work together and pool their resources to address issues. Just as the technology provides a network for learning, it also provides a trail of results detailing the players' success in rising to the challenges presented......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 00:23:19 GMT

What Do You Know?

Google has started a new site called Knol that allows you to share your vast wealth of personal information with the world. Everyone knows something that no one else knows. Think about it, I'm sure you can come up with something. Voice your opinion on something, or tell the world about something you witnessed. Then you can share it on Knol.



"The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides in people's heads" ~Cedric Dupont, Product Manager and Michael McNally, Software Engineer

Then you can browse around Knol and find other articles that interest you. Make modification suggestions to the author of the article, they can then choose to use your suggestions or not. Write reviews on other people's articles.

If you choose to use ads in your Knol articles, you stand the chance of earning a little extra money. You can even add cartoons to your articles from New Yorker magazine. Posted by: Linda Roeder      Read more     Source