lab
This Awesome Graph Shows Just How Boring Class Really Is
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/this-awesome-graph-shows-just-how-boring-class-really-is-2012-11
This great graph, taken using a wearable sensor, shows a student’s emotional, physical, and mental arousal during all different phases of every day of the week.
The device measures what’s called Electrodermal Activity — which measures the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, best known to control the fight-or-flight response. It is activated by emotional arousal, increased cognitive workload, or physical exertion.
Spikes pop up during lab work, exams, studying, and sleep, but what’s stunning is how low activity levels were during this student’s classes. They must have been super boring.
The chart comes from a May 2010 paper via JoiIto. You can download the paper here.
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Source: http://gizmodo.com/5946148/a-water+cooled-chip-that-concentrates-the-sun-to-desalinate-water
Anyone who’s dropped a cellphone in the bath knows that water and microelectronics don’t usually mix well. But at IBM’s Swiss lab in Zurich, marrying the two is becoming almost commonplace: microprocessors with water coursing through microchannels carved deep inside them are already crunching data in SuperMUC, an IBM supercomputer – with the heat that the water carries away used to warm nearby buildings.
And last week, on an unseasonally sunny Zurich rooftop, IBM went public before begoggled journalists with a demo of the technology’s newest application: a solar energy-generating microchip array whose waste heat might one day drive desalination systems in arid areas like the Sahara. The firm has long promised this system, and it’s still a work in progress, but it has now reached a form that can be demonstrated.
The trick with a concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) system like IBM’s is to place a high-performance electricity-generating solar cell array at the focal point of a dish that collects sunlight (unlike a solar concentrator, which focuses a field of sun-tracking mirrors onto a steam generator that drives a turbine). In IBM’s CPV system, water gushes through the base of the solar cells, cooling them to a temperature where they convert sunlight to electricity most efficiently. This beats regular solar power in two ways: it guarantees optimum efficiency and creates hot water that can be used for any purpose – with a multi-effect boiling desalination process being IBM’s choice.
On IBM’s rooftop, I donned ultra-dark goggles to watch Stephen Paredes, Bruno Michel and colleagues demonstrate their dazzling concept. A 1.5-metre mirrored dish concentrated the sun’s energy by 150 times onto their prototype CPV chip, which has been engineered to maximise thermal contact with a water-cooled layer. It’s fascinating to see their control rig: half of it is electronic but the rest, frankly, is plumbing – an interesting mix of disciplines indeed. Paredes’s laptop showed the concentrator dish conversion efficiency to be about 18 per cent – respectable for a prototype, he says.
Their research aim now is to move towards 40 per cent efficiency or more with better-cooled CPV arrays that can cope with solar radiation 5000 times the sun’s normal intensity. “We know how to engineer these cooling packages for computers so we’re confident we can make this contribution to solar energy,” says Michel.
New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the results of human endeavour set in the context of society and culture, providing comprehensive coverage of science and technology news.
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5946148/a-water+cooled-chip-that-concentrates-the-sun-to-desalinate-water
Anyone who’s dropped a cellphone in the bath knows that water and microelectronics don’t usually mix well. But at IBM’s Swiss lab in Zurich, marrying the two is becoming almost commonplace: microprocessors with water coursing through microchannels carved deep inside them are already crunching data in SuperMUC, an IBM supercomputer – with the heat that the water carries away used to warm nearby buildings.
And last week, on an unseasonally sunny Zurich rooftop, IBM went public before begoggled journalists with a demo of the technology’s newest application: a solar energy-generating microchip array whose waste heat might one day drive desalination systems in arid areas like the Sahara. The firm has long promised this system, and it’s still a work in progress, but it has now reached a form that can be demonstrated.
The trick with a concentrated photovoltaic (CPV) system like IBM’s is to place a high-performance electricity-generating solar cell array at the focal point of a dish that collects sunlight (unlike a solar concentrator, which focuses a field of sun-tracking mirrors onto a steam generator that drives a turbine). In IBM’s CPV system, water gushes through the base of the solar cells, cooling them to a temperature where they convert sunlight to electricity most efficiently. This beats regular solar power in two ways: it guarantees optimum efficiency and creates hot water that can be used for any purpose – with a multi-effect boiling desalination process being IBM’s choice.
On IBM’s rooftop, I donned ultra-dark goggles to watch Stephen Paredes, Bruno Michel and colleagues demonstrate their dazzling concept. A 1.5-metre mirrored dish concentrated the sun’s energy by 150 times onto their prototype CPV chip, which has been engineered to maximise thermal contact with a water-cooled layer. It’s fascinating to see their control rig: half of it is electronic but the rest, frankly, is plumbing – an interesting mix of disciplines indeed. Paredes’s laptop showed the concentrator dish conversion efficiency to be about 18 per cent – respectable for a prototype, he says.
Their research aim now is to move towards 40 per cent efficiency or more with better-cooled CPV arrays that can cope with solar radiation 5000 times the sun’s normal intensity. “We know how to engineer these cooling packages for computers so we’re confident we can make this contribution to solar energy,” says Michel.
New Scientist reports, explores and interprets the results of human endeavour set in the context of society and culture, providing comprehensive coverage of science and technology news.
Intel, IDT to make resonance charging a reality, see reference chipset coming in first half of 2013
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/29/idt-to-make-intel-resonance-charging-a-reality/
Intel has been talking up wireless charging for years, to the point where we thought its implementation would forever remain a concept for the lab. Not so: Intel is having Integrated Device Technology (IDT) build a real-world chipset to support resonance charging in our gadgets. The lofty goal is to have a ready-made platform for charging up a mobile device or peripheral just by keeping it close to another device with a charger built-in, such as an Ultrabook; there’s none of the unseemly contact plates used with inductive wireless power. Intel’s commitment is still very much early and won’t put a full, two-way resonance chipset into the hands of hardware makers until sometime during the first half of 2013, let alone into a shipping product. We’ll take it all the same, as it just might be the first step toward embracing wireless power on a truly large scale.
Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, P! eriphera ls
Intel, IDT to make resonance charging a reality, see reference chipset coming in first half of 2013 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 29 Aug 2012 17:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
AmazonSupply launches, offers up lab and janitorial supplies in same convenient location
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/23/amazonsupply-launches-offers-up-lab-and-janitorial-supplies-in/
If you’re like us, there’s nothing you hate more than having to go to different sites to pick up your pneumatics and abrasives. Thankfully, Amazon, that aggregator of all things with a price tag, has launched AmazonSupply, a site serving a broad range of industrial and business categories, including such favorites as fasteners, power & hand tools, fleet & vehicle maintenance and cutting tools. The site also offers up such Amazonian favorites as free shipping for Prime customers. AmazonSupply features some 500,000 plus items at present and 365-day returns. More info can be found in the press release after the break.
AmazonSupply launches, offers up lab and janitorial supplies in same convenient location originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
AmazonSupply launches, offers up lab and janitorial supplies in same convenient location
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/04/23/amazonsupply-launches-offers-up-lab-and-janitorial-supplies-in/
If you’re like us, there’s nothing you hate more than having to go to different sites to pick up your pneumatics and abrasives. Thankfully, Amazon, that aggregator of all things with a price tag, has launched AmazonSupply, a site serving a broad range of industrial and business categories, including such favorites as fasteners, power & hand tools, fleet & vehicle maintenance and cutting tools. The site also offers up such Amazonian favorites as free shipping for Prime customers. AmazonSupply features some 500,000 plus items at present and 365-day returns. More info can be found in the press release after the break.
AmazonSupply launches, offers up lab and janitorial supplies in same convenient location originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 09:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Google responds)
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/20/microsoft-finds-google-bypassed-internet-explorers-privacy-sett/
There was quite a stir sparked last week when it was revealed that Google was exploiting a loophole in a Apple’s Safari browser to track users through web ads, and that has now prompted a response from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team, who unsurprisingly turned their attention to their own browser. In an official blog post today, they revealed that Google is indeed bypassing privacy settings in IE as well, although that’s only part of the story (more on that later). As Microsoft explains at some length, Google took advantage of what it describes as a “nuance” in the P3P specification, which effectively allowed it to bypass a user’s privacy settings and track them using cookies — a different method than that used in the case of Safari, but one that ultimately has the same goal. Microsoft says it’s contacted Google about the matter, but it’s offering a solution of its own in the meantime. It’ll require you to first upgrade to Internet Explorer 9 if you haven’t already, then install a Tracking Protection List that will completely block any such attempts by Google — details on it can be found at the source link below.
As ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley notes, however, Google isn’t the only company that was discovered to be taking advantage of the P3P loophole. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University’s CyLab say they alerted Microsoft to the vulnerability in 2010, and just two days ago the director of the lab, Lorrie Faith Cranor, wrote about about the issue again on the TAP blog (sponsored by Microsoft, incidentally), detailing how Facebook and others also sk! irt IE’s ability to block cookies. Indeed, Facebook readily admits on its site that it does not have a P3P policy, explaining that the standard is “out of date and does not reflect technologies that are currently in use on the web,” and that “most websites” also don’t currently have P3P policies. On that matter, Microsoft said in a statement to Foley that the “IE team is looking into the reports about Facebook,” but that it has “no additional information to share at this time.”
Update: Google’s Senior Vice President of Communications and Policy, Rachel Whetstone has now issued a statement in response to Microsoft’s blog post. It can be found in full after the break.
Microsoft finds Google bypassed Internet Explorer’s privacy settings too, but it’s not alone (update: Google responds) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The banking industry often employs two-step security measures—similar to Google Authenticator—as an added layer of protection against password theft and fraud. Unfortunately, those systems have just been rendered moot by a highly-advanced hack.
The attack, know as the Man in the Browser method, works like this. Malicious code is first introduced onto the victim’s computer where it resides in the web browser. It will lay dormant until the victim visits a specific website—in this case, his bank’s secure website. Once the user attempts to log in, the malware activates and runs between the victim and the actual website. Often the malware will request that the victim enter his password or other security pass into an unauthorized field, in order to “train a new security system.” Once that happens, the attacker has full access to the account.
Luckily, the method is only a single-shot attack. That is, the attacker is only able to infiltrate the site once with the user-supplied pass code. But, once in, the attacker can hide records of money transfers, spoof balances and change payment details. “The man in the browser attack is a very focused, very specific, advanced threat, specifically focused against banking,” Daniel Brett, of malware testing lab S21sec, told the BBC.
Since this attack has shown that the two-factor system is no longer a viable defense, the banking industry may have to adopt more advanced fraud-detection methods similar to what secure credit cards. When compared to having your account silently drained, standing in line for the teller suddenly doesn’t seem like that much of a hassle. [BBC News via Technology Review]
Image: jamdesign / Shutterstock
Gamers Redesign a Protein That Stumped Scientists for Years [Science]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5878459/gamers-redesign-a-protein-that-stumped-scientists-for-years
![medium 6ed377c6888b8ee5f0187340a3fe88e2 Gamers Redesign a Protein That Stumped Scientists for Years [Science]](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2012/01/6ed377c6888b8ee5f0187340a3fe88e2.jpg "Gamers Redesign a Protein That Stumped Scientists for Years")
Folding: it’s detestable and boring, as any Gap employee can tell you. But it’s also a totally fun thing you can do in a video game! And today it’s particularly exciting because players of the online game Foldit have redesigned a protein, and their work is published in the science journal Nature Biotechnology.
It seems nobler than shooting people in the face, somehow. Granted, Foldit attracts a unique kind of gamer who enjoys obsessing over biological protein folding patterns. Proteins get their function from the way they are folded into coils like in the image above. When the amino acids in a protein interact, they create that coiled, three-dimensional structure. Scientists can manipulate the structure to make the protein more efficient. In Foldit, designs that create the most efficient proteins garner the highest scores.
University of Washington in Seattle scientists Zoran Popovic, director of the Center for Game Science, and biochemist David Baker developed Foldit (which is different from Folding@home, Stanford software that lets people donate their idle computer processing power to create a protein-folding supercomputer). By playing it, at-home gamers have redesigned a protein for the first time, and they did it better and faster than scientists who have trained their entire careers to build better proteins. Justin Siegel, a biophysicist in Baker’s group told Scientific American:
I worked for two years to make these enzymes better and I couldn’t do it. Foldit players were able to make a large jump in structural space and I still don’t fully understand how they did it.
Here’s how it works: Researchers send a series of puzzles to Foldit’s 240,000 registered users. The scientists sift through the results for the best designs and take those into the lab for real-life testing. They combed through 180,000 designs to get to the version of the protein published today. The paper details an enzyme that thanks to the crowdsourced redesign is 18-fold more active than the original version.
Now for the anticlimactic part: this particular enzyme doesn’t really have any practical uses. But the researchers say it’s a proof of concept, and future Foldit designs will be more useful. In fact, Baker has fed players a protein that blocks the flu virus that led to the 1918 pandemic—and their puzzle solving for this one could lead to an actual drug.
Nature via Scientific American
Image: Foldit
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Another day, another story about some cheap, plastic Wii motion control accessory finding an application outside of gaming. In this case, it’s the balance board, and not only is this device helping stroke victims recover, it’s saving them money, too.
In fact, doctors at the University of Melbourne found that the balance board, normally used for pseudo Yoga or navigating Mii’s down a virtual ski slope, was so sensitive it could very well replace traditional laboratory-grade “force platforms” doctors use to assess a patient’s balance.
When doctors disassembled the board, they found the accelerometers and strain gauges to be of “excellent” quality. “I was shocked given the price: it was an extremely impressive strain gauge set-up,” said lead researcher Ross Clark, in an interview with New Scientist.
Even better, Clark’s team has already published a paper that verifies the Wii balance board is “clinically comparable” to the nearly $18,000 lab force platform. That’s great news for many smaller physio clinics that would otherwise be unable to afford the traditional rig. [New Scientist]
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Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
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