Goldbergian Flash Fits Rube Goldberg Web Site

Intentionally, I hope, the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest web site illustrates how to use needlessly complex engineering to design a tool that fails to follow sensible engineering guidelines. Rather than aiming for well designed usable products, the desire is to produce a machine that sort-of complies with the requirements but in a extremely foolish, convoluted way. Obviously it would be much more sensible to design that web site with html and it would just work simply, easily and quickly for everyone. But flash is the perfect tool to use if you want to promote Goldbergian thinking.

The web site, for example, does display content to a web browser. If that web browser has a flash plugin installed and it is the proper type. And sure the conventions of the web don’t work in this crippled environment but who cares about that when designing Goldbergian web sites. Of course if you actually want to design a good web site such choices would be – lets see, oh yeah, lame. I could link to the contest information – but in good Flash Goldbergian fashion that is not possible with the non-website website they have.

15 Photovoltaics Solar Power Innovations

15 Photovoltaics Solar Power Innovations You Must See

Researchers at McMaster University (coolest name ever) have succeeded in ‘growing’ light-absorbing nanowires made of high-performance photovoltaic materials on carbon-nanotube fabric. In other words, hairy solar panels.

The aim is to produce flexible, affordable solar cells that, within five years, will achieve a conversion efficiency of 20%. Longer term, it’s theoretically possible to achieve 40% efficiency!
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while looking for a solution, researchers noticed that moths have very non-reflective eyes (“most likely an evolutionary defense against nocturnal predators”). The moth-eye process creates panels that reflect less than 2% of light. That’s a vast improvement over the 35 to 40% reflection rate seen without the anti-reflection coating layers.
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Some experts are speculating that First Solar might beat over 80 competitors to achieve manufacturing costs low enough to market solar panels at less than $1 per Watt, the target considered necessary for solar to compete with coal-burning electricity on the grid.

Asymmetrical Brains Aid Multi-tasking

Asymmetrical brains help fish (and us) to multi-task:

In the animal world, the ability to multi-task is a matter of life and death. Many species must be ever-watchful for food, while simultaneously looking out for predators who would view them in the same way Like too many open applications that slow down a computer, these multiple tasks compete for the brain’s finite resources. Those who survive life’s challenges are those with an edge at efficiently dealing with multiple demands.

One way of doing this is to use parallel processing – to delegate different parts of a problem to different pieces of hardware. This is exactly the situation found in the human brain, with two asymmetric hemispheres associated with different mental abilities. And this ‘lateralisation’ is not unique to us, but seems to be present in all back-boned animals, from fish to apes. An explanation for this asymmetry now becomes obvious – it may allow animals to multi-task, acting as a sort of cerebral division of labour.
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In these cases, regardless of parallel processing power, an asymmetric brain is clearly a disadvantage. The two scientists believe that the tipping point between these pros and cons comes when an animal has to perform difficult mental tasks.

Other studies have shown that asymmetrical brains endow wild chimpanzees with superior termite-fishing skills, and (equally wild) human children with better mathematical and verbal abilities than their classmates. It may be that over the course of evolution, our brain’s halves started to work together more effectively as they became more different and specialised. It is ironic and sad then, that the opposite seems to hold true for the divergence of human cultures.

Friday Dog Fun

Church of England Sees Wisdom in Understanding Evolution

Good religion needs good science by Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, Director of Mission and Public Affairs

When a big new idea emerges which changes the way people look at the world, it’s easy to feel that every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do battle against the new insights. The church made that mistake with Galileo’s astronomy, and has since realised its error. Some church people did it again in the 1860s with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
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Subsequent generations have built on Darwin’s work but have not significantly undermined his fundamental theory of natural selection. There is nothing here that contradicts Christian teaching. Jesus himself invited people to observe the world around them and to reason from what they saw to an understanding of the nature of God (Matthew 6: 25–33). Christian theologians throughout the centuries have sought knowledge of the world and knowledge of God. For Thomas Aquinas there was no such thing as science versus religion; both existed in the same sphere and to the same end, the glory of God.
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Charles Darwin: 200 years from your birth, the Church of England owes you an apology for misunderstanding you and, by getting our first reaction wrong, encouraging others to misunderstand you still. We try to practice the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests. Good religion needs to work constructively with good science – and I dare to suggest that the opposite may be true as well.

2008 Innovation Generation Grants

The Motorola Foundation today announced the recipients of its 2008 Innovation Generation grants, which provide $4 million to 92 K-12 education programs across the country.

Eileen Sweeney, director of the Motorola Foundation: “Building a diverse pipeline of critical thinkers, skilled scientists and engineers is a by-product of our efforts that not only will benefit Motorola and our industry, but it also will support a sustainable workforce and bolster the country’s competitive advantage in the global, knowledge-based economy.”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Strengthening Education: Meeting the Challenge of a Changing World, jobs requiring science, engineering or technical training will increase 24 percent between 2004 and 2014 to 6.3 million. The disparity between the growing demand for critical thinkers and the country’s ability to adequately prepare students to fill these jobs has been widening for decades. The lack of skilled graduates in these fields poses a significant threat to sustained U.S. competitiveness in the global, knowledge-intensive economy.

Examples of this year’s grant recipients include:

* American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES) – The AISES National American Indian Science and Engineering Fair and Expo inspires American Indian and Alaska Native students from all 50 states to pursue their interest in science and engineering through in-person and virtual presentations of research, access to role models and mentors, and hands-on demonstrations of scientific and engineering innovations across industries.

* Edheads in Columbus, Ohio – A highly interactive website for middle school girls interested in engineering design will be used nationally by schools and after-school programs.

* Rochester Institute of Technology – TechGirlz weeklong camp for girls who are deaf and hard-of-hearing and entering seventh, eighth or ninth grades fosters their long-term interest in STEM and enhances their awareness of the opportunities available to them in these disciplines in higher education.

* University of Central Florida – My Sports Pulse engages Florida middle school and high school students in a youth mobile learning initiative that imparts science and technology concepts through interactive sports games and tests.

Move over MRSA, C.diff is Here

Clostridium difficile (C.diff), a bacteria, is increasingly posing health risk. Rising Foe Defies Hospitals’ War On ‘Superbugs’

Even as hospitals begin to get control of other drug-resistant infections such as MRSA, a form of staph, rates of C. diff are rising sharply, and a recent, more virulent strain of the bug is causing more severe complications. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates there are 500,000 cases of C. diff infection annually in the U.S., contributing to between 15,000 and 30,000 deaths. That’s up from roughly 150,000 cases in 2001.
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Many patients get C. diff infections as an unintended consequence of taking antibiotics for other illnesses. That’s because bacteria normally found in a person’s intestines help keep C. diff under control, allowing the bug to live in the gut without necessarily causing illness. But when a person takes antibiotics, both bad and good bacteria are suppressed, allowing drug-resistant C. diff to grow out of control.
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Only 3% to 5% of healthy, non-hospitalized adults carry C. diff in their gut, but that rate is much higher in hospitals and nursing homes, where carriers can spread the bacteria to others. Studies at several hospitals in recent years have shown that 20% or more of inpatients were colonized with C. diff, and a 2007 study of 73 long-term-care residents showed 55% were positive for C. diff. Even though the majority had no symptoms of disease, spores on the skin of asymptomatic patients were easily transferred to the investigators’ hands.

Ancient Ants

Blind “Ant From Mars” Found in Amazon

An ant so unlike all other living ants that it was given an extraterrestrial name has been discovered in the Amazon rain forest, biologists announced today. The tiny new species is the only known surviving member of an ant lineage that separated from the main family more than a hundred million years ago, DNA analysis revealed.

The pale, eyeless ant appears to be adapted to living underground, possibly surfacing at night to forage. Its long mandibles suggest that the 0.08-inch-long (2-millimeter-long) animal is a predator, most likely of soft-bodied creatures such as termite larvae.

Christian Rabeling, a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin, found a single specimen of the new species, thought to be a worker ant, in tropical soils near Manaus, Brazil. Rabeling’s team named the new creature Martialis heureka—”Martialis” means “of Mars
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The new species’ genes suggest that it broke away from the main ant family before the origin of all other living ant groups, which include 20 subfamilies that together contain more than 12,000 species.

New Antipsychotics Old Results

Risks Found for Youths in New Antipsychotics

A new government study published Monday has found that the medicines most often prescribed for schizophrenia in children and adolescents are no more effective than older, less expensive drugs and are more likely to cause some harmful side effects. The standards for treating the disorder should be changed to include some older medications that have fallen out of use, the study’s authors said.
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“I think the reason the use of these newer drugs has gone up so fast is that there was this widespread assumption that they were safer and more effective than what we had before,” Dr. McClellan said. “Well, we’re seeing now that that’s not the whole story.”

The Robotic Dog

From Boston Dynamics. [update 2017 – Google sold Boston Dynamics to Softbank (Japan)]

via: Man’s New Best Friend: The Robotic Dog [I removed the broken link]