Aliens, astronomers, or super-intelligent aardvarks?
You decide. Whatever the case, it’s kind of amazing.
(via Ectoplasmosis)
A search engine that predicts the future
The future:
…which is even stranger when you consider that it’s predicting the release of itself. Â Stay tuned.
I’ve been playing around on the preview, and while I’m not as impressed as I was by the initial (guided/rehearsed) demo searches, I’m still mighty curious. Â As long as WolframAlpha survives, it certainly won’t get worse. Â And there are already some interesting types of calculations it can summon.
There’s a whole world of math and physical usefulness, but much less so in the biological world, so far. Â Is my impression.
We’ll see.
Self-reassembling robot
In spite of the “crudeness” of this demonstration, it’s still amazing (if still mercifully short of the reassembly skills of a terminator):
Comical, also. (Wait for the surprise ending.)
(via BoingBoing)
Leaves doing what leaves do best… sort of
Maybe it’s pop culture eroding my brain, but “Functionalized Nanoporous Gold Leaf Electrode Films for the Immobilization of Photosystem I” doesn’t have quite the same kick as “cyborg leaf”.
Good work making science relevant to modern society, NewScientist!
(Don’t expect electricity-generating houseplants anytime soon — but still, it’s interesting work.)
Robots of the future, break out of your cells
Say what you will of Lockheed-Martin’s take on Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles-as-documentary; this proof-of-concept (if that’s the right phrasing) test video is eerily captivating.
(References: http://www.mda.mil/mdalink/html/mdalink.html, http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/12/killing_robot_b.html, http://www.thirdeyeconcept.com/news/index.php?page=336)
Turn up the volume…
…on soil remediation!
Researchers have developed a prototype that cleans soil by making mud of it and blasting it with ultrasound:
Sound waves travel through water as a series of high pressure waves with low pressure areas in between. The low pressure causes the water to boil and form microscopic bubbles. The high pressure then forces the bubbles to collapse, generating a shockwave that produces localised temperature flashes of more than 4000°C and pressures of about 1000 atmospheres. That is more than enough to break down any complex molecules in the water, Sosa Pintos says.
Trials look to have been involving a “simplified” soil medium, so it’ll be interesting to see if the technique is as successful in the field.
(NewScientist: “Sound blaster cleans contaminated soil,” by Tom Simonite [Sept 6, 2006])
Create all sorts of fun maps thanks to the folks at the MLA: map language-speakers by county, by zip code, and all sorts of other good stuff. Pull-down menus and such let you re-draw the map according to your curiosity. (The above map, FYI, is of Hungarian speakers by county. I think. Of course, handily, I didn’t include the color-coded key, so if you’re really curious, you’ll have to dial up the map yourself.) (0)
Yotophoto is a handy-dandy photo searching site that lets you find quality free-use photos. Search by keywords, image size, image licenses or–and this is the clincher–color. (Hence the admittedly lame title.) (0)
- Online! Flow-charts! Boxes! Arrows! Lines! Make diagrams online with Giffy, then share ‘em online or whatever. Floor plans, generic diagrams, flow-charts, whatever you want, Giffy can help you make it. Handy, if you’re into that sort of thing. (0)
- …but requiring just a little more mucking about. Still, SIMILE’s Timeline is a potentially awesome tool. Particularly if it’s user-friendlified a bit. Right now it’s a bit like GoogleMaps, if GoogleMaps required you to draw all your own maps, plot distances, pinpoint natural landmarks, etc. (0)
Information Agglomeration
The Internet being what it is, it’s useful to have ways of sorting all that information. To be able to get at it later, easily. First there was Furl, which I’ve used in the past and loved, then there was Yahoo!’s My Web (which is my current default choice), and now there’s Google Notebook, which is nifty for its own reasons.
All are excellent resources & tools, it’s just a matter of figuring out how to use them. I’m leaning towards MyWeb as a sort of all-purpose information sorting tool, with Google Notebook as a more project-specific tool. (Furl is arguably the most powerful of the bunch, but I haven’t yet figured out the best way to make use of it, sadly.)