The Pentagon has plans to deploy its first ever ship-mounted laser
next year, a disruptive, cutting-edge weapon capable of obliterating
small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles with a blast of infrared
energy.
Navy officials announced Monday that in early 2014, a solid-state
laser prototype will be mounted to the fantail of the USS Ponce and sent
to the 5th fleet region in the Middle East for real-world experience.
April 5, 2013
Future of organs? Synthetic tissue built with 3-D printer
Scientists have built a 3-D printer that creates material resembling
human tissues. The novel substance, a deceptively simple network of
water droplets coated in lipids, could one day be used to deliver drugs
to the body -- or perhaps even to replace damaged tissue in living
organs.
The creation, described in the journal Science, consists of lipid bilayers separating droplets of water -- rather like cell membranes, whose double layers allow the body’s cells to mesh with their watery environments while still protecting their contents.
“The great thing about these droplets is that they use pretty much exclusively biological materials,” said study co-author and University of Oxford researcher Gabriel Villar, making them ideal for medical uses.
Los Angeles Times
The creation, described in the journal Science, consists of lipid bilayers separating droplets of water -- rather like cell membranes, whose double layers allow the body’s cells to mesh with their watery environments while still protecting their contents.
“The great thing about these droplets is that they use pretty much exclusively biological materials,” said study co-author and University of Oxford researcher Gabriel Villar, making them ideal for medical uses.
Los Angeles Times
April 4, 2013
Arthur Frommer buys travel guides back from Google to keep print editions alive
Google acquired Frommer’s Travel Guides from Wiley in 2012 — and then, last month, reportedly decided
to stop publishing them as print editions. Now Arthur Frommer, the
83-year-old founder of the brand, has bought Frommer’s back from Google
and will continue publishing the travel guides in print and digital
editions.
The AP reported the news Wednesday night and quoted Frommer saying, “It’s a very happy time for me. We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com.” Google confirmed the news to Engadget, saying, “We can confirm that we have returned the Frommer’s brand to its founder and are licensing certain travel content to him.”
The purchase price was undisclosed. Google reportedly paid Wiley $22 million for Frommer’s last year. The travel site Skift first reported that Google would stop publishing the Frommer’s guides in print.
Frommer’s had published over 300 guidebooks since its founding in 1957.
paidContent
The AP reported the news Wednesday night and quoted Frommer saying, “It’s a very happy time for me. We will be publishing the Frommer travel guides in ebook and print formats and will also be operating the travel site Frommers.com.” Google confirmed the news to Engadget, saying, “We can confirm that we have returned the Frommer’s brand to its founder and are licensing certain travel content to him.”
The purchase price was undisclosed. Google reportedly paid Wiley $22 million for Frommer’s last year. The travel site Skift first reported that Google would stop publishing the Frommer’s guides in print.
Frommer’s had published over 300 guidebooks since its founding in 1957.
paidContent
April 3, 2013
The first cellphone call was made 40 years ago today
Martin Cooper changed the world when he made the first cellphone call 40 years ago.
The former Motorola vice president and division manager made the call on the company's DynaTAC phone while standing in front of the New York Hilton on Sixth Avenue. His first call: to the head of research at Bell Labs, which had also been racing to build the first cellphone.
Cooper's call did more than untether people from their traditional fixed phone lines; it opened the door to true mobility and continues to affect virtually every aspect of our lives.
cnet
The former Motorola vice president and division manager made the call on the company's DynaTAC phone while standing in front of the New York Hilton on Sixth Avenue. His first call: to the head of research at Bell Labs, which had also been racing to build the first cellphone.
Cooper's call did more than untether people from their traditional fixed phone lines; it opened the door to true mobility and continues to affect virtually every aspect of our lives.
cnet
April 1, 2013
The Risks of Parenting While Plugged In
WHILE waiting for an elevator at the Fair Oaks Mall near her home in
Virginia recently, Janice Im, who works in early-childhood development,
witnessed a troubling incident between a young boy and his mother.
The boy, who Ms. Im estimates was about 2 1/2 years old, made repeated attempts to talk to his mother, but she wouldn’t look up from her BlackBerry. “He’s like: ‘Mama? Mama? Mama?’ ” Ms. Im recalled. “And then he starts tapping her leg. And she goes: ‘Just wait a second. Just wait a second.’ ”
Finally, he was so frustrated, Ms. Im said, that “he goes, ‘Ahhh!’ and tries to bite her leg.”
The New York Times
The boy, who Ms. Im estimates was about 2 1/2 years old, made repeated attempts to talk to his mother, but she wouldn’t look up from her BlackBerry. “He’s like: ‘Mama? Mama? Mama?’ ” Ms. Im recalled. “And then he starts tapping her leg. And she goes: ‘Just wait a second. Just wait a second.’ ”
Finally, he was so frustrated, Ms. Im said, that “he goes, ‘Ahhh!’ and tries to bite her leg.”
The New York Times
Russia Censors Sites Like Facebook, Twitter to Protect Children
Russia is using a new law to block certain internet content that is considered unsafe for children's eyes.
The law, passed in November 2012, allows the Russian government to remove internet content on websites like Facebook and Twitter if it is deemed harmful for children.
DailyTech
The law, passed in November 2012, allows the Russian government to remove internet content on websites like Facebook and Twitter if it is deemed harmful for children.
DailyTech
November 3, 2012
Technology Changing How Students Learn
Technology Changing How Students Learn, Teachers Say
There is a widespread belief among teachers that students’ constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks, according to two surveys of teachers being released on Thursday.
New York Times
Meanwhile...
Meanwhile...
iPads work well for little kids in new preschoolsTacoma News Tribune
In the preschool at Arlington Elementary School, “A” is for apple. It also stands for app – as in application. The 4-year-olds in this South Tacoma school are learning to use digital-world apps that turn their classroom iPads into reading, writing, spelling, speaking, coloring, counting and sorting tools.
April 2, 2012
Deconstructing the Creepiness of the 'Girls Around Me' App—And What Facebook Could Do About It
Last week, Cult of Mac had a fascinating, stomach-churning story about an application called Girls Around Me that scraped public Foursquare and Facebook checkins onto a map that showed people in your vicinity. Its branding was crass -- "In the mood for love, or just after a one-night stand? Girls Around Me puts you in control!" -- but, as the developers of the app argued, they had technically done nothing wrong aside from being piggish and crude.
The Atlantic
The Atlantic
March 29, 2012
The Holy Cosmos: The New Religion of Space Exploration
Think about how you feel when you see the Earth from space or the Apollo astronauts walking on the moon. These images are achievements of science, sure, but they also have a religious feel to them; they tug at something deeper than engineering, something sublime. When viewed as a whole, space exploration has a lot in common with religion. It offers us a salvation narrative, for instance, whereby we put our faith in technology in order to be delivered to new worlds. Its priests, figures like Neil deGrasse Tyson, extoll its virtues in what sound like sermons. In its iconography, astronauts are like saints that ascend into heaven and extraterrestrials are like gods---benevolent, kind, wise, capable of manipulating space and time.
This idea of seeing space exploration as a religion has a long history, dating back to the Russians of the early twentieth century, many of whom self-identified as "Cosmists." From there it migrated to German rocket scientists like Werner von Braun, who took his ideas about space travel to America after the Second World War. Americans were slow to warm to space exploration. They saw it as a fantasy, but that changed as Americans began to regard technology with a new reverence in the postwar period. Today Americans are the most fervent Cosmists on the planet, even if manned space exploration seems to have stalled for the time being.
Albert Harrison, a professor of psychology at U.C. Davis, has been working on the psychology of space exploration since the 1970's, when he did research for NASA about the psychological effects of long-term space travel. Harrison was kind enough to send me a chapter of his forthcoming book about Cosmism, and the complex psychological motivations that underlie space exploration. What follows is our conversation about the past, present and future of space exploration as a religious quest.
The Atlantic
This idea of seeing space exploration as a religion has a long history, dating back to the Russians of the early twentieth century, many of whom self-identified as "Cosmists." From there it migrated to German rocket scientists like Werner von Braun, who took his ideas about space travel to America after the Second World War. Americans were slow to warm to space exploration. They saw it as a fantasy, but that changed as Americans began to regard technology with a new reverence in the postwar period. Today Americans are the most fervent Cosmists on the planet, even if manned space exploration seems to have stalled for the time being.
Albert Harrison, a professor of psychology at U.C. Davis, has been working on the psychology of space exploration since the 1970's, when he did research for NASA about the psychological effects of long-term space travel. Harrison was kind enough to send me a chapter of his forthcoming book about Cosmism, and the complex psychological motivations that underlie space exploration. What follows is our conversation about the past, present and future of space exploration as a religious quest.
The Atlantic
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