Tag Archives: webcasts

Robo-One Grand Championship in Tokyo

Two-legged robots battle for supremacy at the the Robo-One Convention in Tokyo. Very fun video. The robots has to be built from scratch by amateurs. Also see ROBO-ONE: Grand Championship Competition @ IREX (with full video of final match).

YouTube+ for Science from PLoS

SciVee is a new site by the great people at PLoS, with support from NSF and San Diego Supercomputer Center. It is very early in the launch of this effort but it looks very promising.

SciVee allows scientists to communicate their work as a multimedia presentation incorporated with the content of their published article. Other scientists can freely view uploaded presentations and engage in virtual discussions with the author and other viewers. SciVee also facilitates the creation of communities around specific articles and keywords. Use this medium to meet peers and future collaborators that share your particular research interests.

Of course plenty of great videos are already online but this looks like another great effort at helping improve communication of scientific ideas by the Public Library of Science. And there are advantages to a community lead by scientists that not only posts videos but encourages scientific discussion on the related matters. I am hopeful (and confident) this will become a great resource.

Related: Science and Engineering Webcast Directory – Stanford Linear Accelerator Center Public Lectures – Google Engineering and Technology Webcasts
Originally I posted this to my employers blog: Engineering and…. It turns out it was made public prematurely – SciVee update.

Great Speech by Marissa Mayer on Innovation at Google

Marissa Mayer speech at Stanford on innovation at Google (23 minute speech, 26 minutes of question and answers). She leads the product management efforts on Google’s search products- web search, images, groups, news, Froogle, the Google Toolbar, Google Desktop, Google Labs, and more. She joined Google in 1999 as Google’s first female engineer. Excellent speech. Highly recommended. Google top 9 ideas:

(inside these are Marissa’s thoughts) [inside these are my comments]

Ideas come from anywhere (engineers, customers, managers, executives, external companies – that Google acquires)
Share everything you can (very open culture)
Your Brilliant We’re Hiring [Google Hiring]
A license to pursue dreams (Google 20% time)
Innovation not instant perfection (iteration – experiment quickly and often)
Data is apolitical [Data Based Decision Making – common errors in interpreting data – read the related links too]
Creativity loves Constraints [process improvement and innovation]
Users not money (Google focuses on providing users what they want and believe it will work out)
Don’t kill projects morph them

So far every time I hear one of Google’s leaders speak I am happier that I own a bit of stock – this is another instance of that.

RNA interference webcast

If you are like me, it might take awhile to understand all that is said, it is packed with information.

via: Video of RNAi in action

Cool Mechanical Simulation System

Cool device from MIT: A Shrewd Sketch Interpretation and Simulation Tool.

We aim to create a tool that allows the engineer to sketch a mechanical system as she would on paper, and then allows her to interact with the design as a mechanical system, for example by seeing a simulation of her drawing. We have built an early incarnation of such a tool, called ASSIST, which allows a user to sketch simple mechanical systems and see simulations of her drawings in a two-dimensional kinematic simulator.

via: Back to the Drawing Board

Engineered Art

Strandbeest – “Kinetic Sculptures” by Theo Jansen. He creates mobile sculptures that walk with the wind.

More videos: Theo Jansen discusses the mechanics of this work at ArtFutura05 – video of another piece – BMW commercial

More Great Webcasts: Nanotech and more

ScienceLive video archive from Cambridge University Science Productions. Videos include:

Viruses as nanomachines by Peter Stockley
Powering nanodevices with biomolecular motors by Amir Khan
Ice Cream, Chocolate, and Einstein by Chris Clarke
Communicating Science by Brian Trench and David Dickson
So many experiments, live in the studio! by Paul McCrory

Great stuff, another example of universities providing open access content 🙂

The Inner Life of a Cell – Animation

The Inner Life of a Cell, an eight-minute animation created for Harvard biology students… illustrates unseen molecular mechanisms and the ones they trigger, specifically how white blood cells sense and respond to their surroundings and external stimuli.

The online video is beautiful, see – Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell. Update: Unfortunately the webcast links on that page are not working but you can see a longer version than was available via: Inner Life of a Cell – Full Version.
Continue reading →

Open Access Education Materials

Watch a video of Richard Baraniuk (Rice University professor speaking at TED) discussing Connexions: an open-access education publishing system. The content available through Connexions includes short content modules such as:

What is Engineering??:

Engineering is the endeavor that creates, maintains, develops, and applies technology for societies’ needs and desires.
…
One of the first distinctions that must be made is between science and engineering.
…
Science is the study of what is and engineering is the creation of can be.

and: Protein Folding, as well as full courses, such as: Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering I and Physics for K-12.

Related: Google technical talk webcasts (including a presentation by Richard Baraniuk at Google) – podcasts of Technical Talks at Google – science podcast posts – Berkeley and MIT courses online