October 2010
2 posts
The supercomputer that folded a protein →
It took the supercomputer known as Anton, which you can see below, about three weeks to fully simulate every aspect of the atoms’ movements, not to mention that of the surrounding water. Such a small period of time may not sound like much, but the protein went through 15 rounds of folding and unfolding in just those couple hundred microseconds.
MIT researchers may be closer to understanding why... →
All spacesuit gloves stiffen and fill with gas during an astronaut spacewalk, also known as extravehicular activity, or EVA. This pressure production is required to keep astronauts alive in space, and current spacesuits provide one-third of an atmosphere, which is sufficient to ensure astronaut well-being. But the pressurized gloves in a pressurized spacesuit make it very difficult, and often...
July 2010
1 post
May 2010
29 posts
First Self-Replicating, Synthetic Bacterial Cell... →
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Counter‐intuitive illusory contours © Bart Anderson
(University of Sydney, Australia)
2nd Prize winner in the Best Illusion of the Year Contest.
In many natural scenes, portions of occluding surfaces and contours can be camouflaged by having an identical color as their background. It is now well known that the visual system will often generate illusory contours and surfaces in order to...
Gil Scott-Heron’s Me And The Devil from his...
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Promotional video for a newly created city district by +1 Amsterdam.
The city district Amsterdam Osdorp recently merged with Slotervaart and Geuzenveld-Slotermeer and was given the name Amsterdam Nieuw-West. This change also meant the end of 20 years of restructuring urbanized areas. To celebrate everything achieved, a book was published. ‘The Metamorphosis of Osdorp’ gives an overview of the...
Independent walking robots made of DNA →
…big robots can be loaded with masses of software that guides their actions – no such luck at the nano-level.
The two new studies have solved this problem by programming the robots’ actions into their environment rather than their bodies.
When the [nano] spider steps, it leaves a trail of cut, unattractive DNA behind it, with paths of fresh, enticing strands ahead of it. Its legs...
Image Forensics : Error Level Analysis →
Error level analysis is a quick and easy image forensics method, allowing one to determine if an image has been modified by programs such as Adobe Photoshop.
It works by resaving an image at a known quality, and comparing that to the original image. As a jpeg image is resaved over and over again, its image quality decreases. When we resave an image and compare it to the original, we can guess...
Cooling the planet →
The Times Online writes:
Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.
But Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the Government, said that experiments with potential consequences beyond national borders...
London Calling
I avoided Queensday here in Amsterdam the other day by going to London for the Museumnext conference with my colleague’s from the n8. It was a short trip, but we managed squeeze in a visit to Tate Modern. My first time there.
How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the... →
Jason Kottke:
You might worry that Adams’ piece is out of date, but it’s one those evergreen bits of wisdom that will apply right up until human consciousness is absorbed into the digital cloud.
Guess how much oil is spilling into the Gulf of... →
There’s a new game in town:
Using video showing the movement of oil spewing from the well, mechanical engineer Steven Wereley of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, estimates that the well is losing 70,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s equivalent to an Exxon Valdez disaster every four days, and more than 10 times the 5000 barrels a day estimated by BP.
Meanwhile; President...
Gold To Go →
A machine that dispenses gold was unveiled at the Emirates Palace hotel yesterday.
“Half the fun of having an opinion is the quest to find it.”
– @rands
Teleport →
Viewing my Mac Mini’s screen at Full HD resolution on a 13 inch Macbook display through Screen Sharing wasn’t really working for me, so I was very pleased to find this wonderful tool:
teleport lets you use a single mouse and keyboard to control several Macs. Simply reach an edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your nearby Mac, which also becomes controlled by your...
Red Dead Redemption →
Like the psychological thriller Heavy Rain, released earlier this year, it says that games really have grown up: they can present us with moral choices, they can make us experience living virtual worlds.
Next level.
Facebook Account Security →
To help keep your Facebook account as safe as possible, we can notify you when your account is accessed from a computer or mobile device that you haven’t used before.
[via. Lifehacker]
Mozilla Plugin Check Now Cross-Browser →
Apparently, Flash is outdated.
[via. @plestik]
Steam Powered →
Among the initial titles available tomorrow will be Runic Games’ critically acclaimed Torchlight and the awesome Portal, which I still haven’t finished on the Playstation.
In addition to bringing the online functionality of Steam to the Mac, Valve will also make its Steamworks suite of publishing and development tools available on the Mac platform. These include product key authentication,...
The Humble Indie Bundle →
Great news.
So far, in just over 7 days, 115,662 generous contributors have put down an incredible $1,048,959. Of this, contributors chose to allocate 30.97% to charity: $324,912 for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play Charity.
Now with an extra Samorost 2 bonus.
SR-71 Flight Manual →
This resource is to educate the public about the operation of the SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft.
Just so, you know…
Earth, 2300: Too hot for humans →
Human survival depends on a wet-bulb temperature of less than 35 °C.
”The wet-bulb limit is basically the point at which one would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan,…”
March 2010
8 posts
Does This Headline Know You're Reading It? →
This is not simply a case of using infrared light, a camera, and eye
movement to move a cursor and click buttons: Text 2.0 infers user
intentions and enhances the reading experience in far more complex
ways. Reading certain words, phrases, or names can trigger the
appearance of footnotes, translations, definitions, biographies, even
sound effects or animations. Ask how a word is...
Reading and the Web - Texts Without Context →
Given the constant bombardment of trivia and data that we’re subjected to in today’s mediascape, it’s little wonder that noisy, Manichean arguments tend to get more attention than subtle, policy-heavy ones; that funny, snarky or willfully provocative assertions often gain more traction than earnest, measured ones; and that loud, entertaining or controversial personalities tend to get the most ink...
A curious history of the C.I.A. →
By holding no one accountable for past abuse, and by convening no commission on what did and didn’t protect the country, President Obama has left the telling of this dark chapter in American history to those who most want to whitewash it.
Spy in the sky that sees round corners →
By using buildings as mirrors, it will be possible to identify a target vehicle from radar reflections.
Bed readers rejoice: iPad gains last-minute... →
iPhones are addictive →
“But the relationship goes even deeper, at least for some. A quarter of the students said they see the iPhone as an extension of their brain or being. Almost 10 percent said they sometimes pat their iPhone, 3 percent have named it, and 8 percent have suspected at one time that their iPod is jealous of their iPhone.”
I’m cheating on ‘her’ on a regular basis.
Markets in everything →
Jonathan Keats — a San Francisco-based experimental philosopher who has, over the years, sold real estate in the extra dimensions of space-time proposed by string theory (he sold a hundred and seventy-two extra-dimensional lots in the Bay Area in a single day) made an attempt to genetically engineer God.
February 2010
9 posts
Moscow - Vladivostok: virtual journey on Google... →
“The great Trans Siberian Railway, the pride of Russia, goes across two continents, 12 regions and 87 cities. The joint project of Google and the Russian Railways lets you take a trip along the famous route and see Baikal, Khekhtsirsky range, Barguzin mountains, Yenisei river and many other picturesque places of Russia without leaving your house. During the trip, you can enjoy Russian...
Fear of Spiders Can Develop Before Birth →
Scientists aren’t sure how the fear is passed down, but they speculate that stressful events like predator attacks trigger the release of a hormone in the mother that influences the development of the embryo.
Arachnophobia.
PwdHash →
Not sure if I’m willing to step away from my beloved 1Password, but this sure does sound interesting.
Your users are very stupid. (Maybe.) →
In school, I was taught that if you use a calculator, you need to know enough about a problem to be able to tell if the answer you are getting is plausibly correct. Well, now we have a whole generation for whom a good chunk of the world is so alien, and so inaccessible that they literally don’t have the frame of reference just to verify that things are as they should be.
Interesting perspective...
Cheney: "I Was A Big Supporter Of Waterboarding" →
The question is therefore not if, but when, he is convicted as a war criminal - in his lifetime or posthumously.
January 2010
20 posts
Why You Can’t Use Your Phone’s SIM in the iPad... →
That iPad owners will likely consider taking a razor to the plastic SIM cards inside their iPhones, just so they can use the same portable data plan they’re already paying for, should tell you everything you need to know about the wireless data industry.