August 31, 2008 by sean.

Can someone really recite Pi to 22,514 digits in 5 1/2 hours without making a single mistake and then go on to learn a complex foriegn language [Icelandic no less!] in seven days? See for yourself…

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August 31, 2008 by sean.

Amazing talk by Sugata Mitra who planted PCs and touchpads into “wholes in the walls” in rural India where 6-13 year old children not only taught themselves how to browse the internet and run applications on CD-ROMs, but also taught themselves English to better interact with the software. Truly amazing!

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August 30, 2008 by sean.

The Future of the Internet [via netguide.co.nz]:

Imagine yourself, as an individual, being logged into a computer system that spans the globe. You were given an online identity when your birth was registered and you take it everywhere you go.

The computer system supplies you with the information you need to learn as you grow. It is aware of your needs, and responds to them, whether it’s data for school work, the location of friends and family, where to get basic requirements like food, clothing and shelter, or assistance when in trouble. It stores all of this material in order to understand and help you – it can even anticipate your needs and actions. As you age, it senses your changing priorities and habits, and can offer advice on things you’re doing that may shorten your life, not to mention things you should do that may prolong it. And it definitely understands what you consider fun.

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August 30, 2008 by sean.

Ubiquity is a new platform from Mozilla that currently integrates into Firefox as a plug-in that allows you to do some really amazing things [harder to explain that simply to see] including those featured in this short tutorial / overview:

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August 17, 2008 by sean.

Rat brain cells power robot [via livescience.com]:

Scientists have created a robot controlled by a biological brain made of rat neurons.

The robot, named Gordon, is not exactly an Einstein but represents a remarkable bridging of the gap between biology and technology. Gordon relies a dish with about 60 electrodes to pick up electrical signals generated by the brain cells…

“This new research is tremendously exciting as firstly the biological brain controls its own moving robot body, and secondly it will enable us to investigate how the brain learns and memorizes its experiences,” said the university’s Kevin Warwick of the School of Systems Engineering. “This research will move our understanding forward of how brains work, and could have a profound effect on many areas of science and medicine.”

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August 17, 2008 by sean.

Reading Brain Waves… literally [via wtop]:

Armed with a $4 million grant from the Army, scientists are studying brain signals to try to decipher what a person is thinking and to whom the person wants to direct the message.

The project is a collaboration among researchers at the University of California, Irvine; Carnegie Mellon University; and the University of Maryland.

The scientists use brain wave-reading technology known as electroencephalography, or EEG, which measures the brain’s electrical activity through electrodes placed on the scalp.

It works like this: Volunteers wear an electrode cap and are asked to think of a word chosen by the researchers, who then analyze the brain activity.

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August 16, 2008 by sean.

A fascinating diversion into political speech data via Bruce Eisner:

A major reason that Obama’s rhetoric seems to soar so high is that our expectations have sunk so low.

In a new book, The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, Elvin T. Lim subjects all the words ever publicly intoned by American presidents to a thorough statistical analysis—and he finds, unsurprisingly, an alarmingly steady decline. A century ago, Lim writes, presidential speeches were pitched at a college reading level; today, they’re down to eighth grade, and if the trend continues, next century’s State of the Union addresses will be conducted at the level of “a comic strip or a fifth-grade textbook.” (“Iran’s crawling with bad guys: BAP!”)

Since 1913, the length of the average presidential sentence has fallen from 35 words to 22. Between Nixon and the second Bush, the average presidential sound bite shrank from 42 seconds to 7. Today’s State of the Unions inspire roughly 30 seconds of applause for every 60 seconds of speech. Although it’s tempting to blame the sorry state of things on the current malapropist-in-chief, Bush is only the latest flower (though, obviously, a particularly striking one) on a very deep weed.

Our most brilliant presidents, Lim says, often work hard to seem publicly dumb in order to avoid the stain of elitism—amazingly, Bill Clinton’s total rhetorical output checks in at a lower reading level than Bush’s. Clinton’s former speechwriters told Lim that their image-conscious boss always demanded that his speeches be “more talky”; today, he’s widely remembered as a brilliant speaker who never gave a memorable speech.

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August 9, 2008 by sean.

Wired Magazine reports on how “swimmers, cyclists and even gymnasts making the most of tech — and legal — performance enhancements” [via Wired.com]:

In order to make perfect strokes during training, the U.S. crew team members watch their progress on a VR-style goggle set that receives a live feed of their movements as they row. With this feed, they are able to see instantly if their torsos are misaligned. By evaluating themselves in real time, the rowers learn to perfect their form. Once the race starts, however, they’ll ditch the glasses.

Posted in science, fun, bionics | No Comments »

August 9, 2008 by sean.

HP, Yahoo and Intel are collaborating on a vareity projects that promise to expand the scope of cloud computing[via Technology Review]:

Last week, Intel, Yahoo, HP, and an international trio of research institutions announced a joint cloud-computing research initiative. The ambitious six-site project is aimed at developing an Internet-based computer infrastructure stable enough to host companies’ most critical data-processing tasks. The project also holds an unusual promise for advances in fields as diverse as climate change modeling and molecular biology… (T)o test this infrastructure, academic researchers will also run real-world, data-intensive projects that, in their own right, could yield advances in fields as varied as data mining, context-sensitive Web search, and communication in virtual-reality environments.

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August 8, 2008 by sean.

“Microsoft has studied a total of 30 billion instant messages sent by over 250 million people in June of 2006, and determined that we are in fact, all linked by only 6.6 degrees of separation” [via DailyGalaxy].

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