Epicenter Mind Our Tech Business Beyond the iPad: Massive MultiTouch Displays Have Big Social Potential

Photo courtesy MultiTouch

From Epicenter:

Apple appears to have been right in betting that people would embrace a big version of the iPod Touch; the increased sense of intimacy with no keyboard or mouse chaperons is palpable. But even larger touchscreens, like the one the Finnish company MultiTouch let us play around with last week, can track each fingertip of a large group of people — a key distinction that enables a more social set of behaviors, because multiple people can use them at the same time.

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Modified Viruses 'Can Destroy Cancer Cells'

Cancer Research UK funded the study into gene therapy. Photograph: Graham Turner

From The Guardian:

Development could lead to treatments tailored to different diseases, say research groups.

Viruses can be modified to seek out and destroy cancer cells, scientists said today. Laboratory tests at Leeds University have shown how proteins can be added to a virus to enable it to recognise unique markers on the surface of tumours.

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Facebook Sets Up Google-War With Vast Expansion Through Open Graph

From Times Online:

Facebook has announced plans to spread its influence more widely across the internet by weaving its service into all websites.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of the social networking site which has 400 million regular users worldwide, has set his sights on beating Google.

Mr Zuckerberg described how users would be guided around the web by their connections and interests rather than a search engine.

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Accidents Don’t Slow Gulf Of Mexico Drilling

From New York Times:

As the Coast Guard was trying to assess the potential environmental effect of the oil rig explosion near Louisiana, industry officials said Thursday that they did not expect drilling in the Gulf of Mexico’s deep waters to be curtailed.

“It’s a tragedy, but at the end of the day we are not going to stop doing things that need to be done,” said Larry Goldstein, a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation. Eleven workers remained missing Thursday, and several others were injured seriously.

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Bright Future Projected For Hand-Held Games

Flex your skills (Image: Human Media Lab/Queens University)

From New Scientist:

Zi Ye and Hammad Khalid of the Human Media Lab at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, have devised a way of using a shoulder-mounted projector system to display - and play - a game on a bendy A4-sized sliver of plastic. Sensors in the screen allow gameplay to be controlled by bending, shaking or tapping it.

A prototype of the system, called Cobra, was shown last week at the Computer-Human Interaction meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. It runs games on a computer housed in a shoulder pouch, while the pouch's straps hold a small projector that shines images onto the flexible screen, held by the gamer.

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Fix Farsightedness By Sleeping In Your Contacts

Reshaping the Cornea with Contact Lenses Image courtesy of Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

From Popular Science:

What if you could go to sleep with a vision problem and wake up with a crystal-clear view of the world? A Spanish optometrist not only says this is possible, but he actually wants you to sleep in your contacts. His patented contact lenses, designed to achieve the same effect of corneal reshaping surgery, can correct vision defects like myopia (nearsightedness) and stigmatism – and now hyperopia (farsightedness) – without taking sharp instruments or lasers to your eyes.

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Red Wine Bolsters Brain Against Strokes

From The Telegraph:

Red wine protects the brain from damage after a stroke, new research suggests.

Researchers discovered that a compound found in red grape skins and seeds lessens the effect of a blood clot on the brain and aids recovery.

It could be so effective that the substance, known as resveratrol, reduces the long-term brain damage by as much as 40 per cent.

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Millions Of Computers Shut Down As Faulty Anti-Virus Program Causes Havoc Around The Globe

Big freeze: A faulty software update from McAfee led to thousands of PCs repeatedly rebooting in offices, hospitals and schools around the world

From The Daily Mail:

Computers in companies, hospitals and schools around the world slowed down or froze after an antivirus program identified a normal Windows file as a threat.

While the problem has now been identified, IT technicians are today having to deal with extra workloads to ensure their systems are protected.

Antivirus vendor McAfee Inc confirmed that yesterday a software update had caused its antivirus program for corporate customers to target a harmless file, leading PCs to repeadedly reboot themselves.

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Researchers Create 'Sound Bullets': Highly Focused Acoustic Pulses Could Be Used As Sonic Scalpels And More

Researchers have built a nonlinear acoustic lens that produces highly focused, high-amplitude acoustic signals, drawing inspiration from "Newton's cradle" (shown above). (Credit: iStockphoto)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 21, 2010) — Taking inspiration from a popular executive toy ("Newton's cradle"), researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have built a device -- called a nonlinear acoustic lens -- that produces highly focused, high-amplitude acoustic signals dubbed "sound bullets."

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Eyjafjallajokull Volcano's Ash Cloud Explained

From Live Science:

The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano during April 2010 has been remarkable for the effects of its ash cloud. The ash cloud created phenomenal lightning displays, colored sunsets red across much of Europe, and forced flight cancellations for several days. Here's what's going on:

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CIA-Backed Group Investing In Lens Start-Up

Image: LensVector's tiny lens uses no moving parts. (Credit: LensVector)

From CNET:

LensVector, a Silicon Valley start-up working on new lens technology that rids mobile phones of moving parts, has secured new funding to tailor its products for a group with a particular interest in tiny cameras: the United States intelligence community.

Specifically, In-Q-Tel, the CIA-based organization that invests in technology companies, has funded the Mountain View, Calif.-based start-up, said LensVector Chief Executive Derek Proudian. In addition, LensVector also is being paid to develop specific products through the deal with IQT.

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Virtual Reality Makes Real-World Cash, Boosts Self-Esteem

From ABC News:

FarmVille, Wee World, Second Life Attract Millions of Users, But at What Cost to Society?

Last year, a man who goes by the moniker "Sal9000" married the love of his life in a ceremony that was streamed live online. The 27-year-old lives in Tokyo. His bride "Nene" lives inside a Nintendo DS handheld video game.

Sal9000 paid real money to marry a virtual woman, and he is not alone. Well, technically he's not.

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Diving Deep Into A Solar Prominence (SDO First Light)

April 21, 2010 -- What you're seeing here is the highest resolution photograph of the sun available to date, part of a brand new series of NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) observations. The SDO mission promises "10 times better clarity than a high-definition television," NASA says, and this first SDO image doesn't disappoint.

From Discovery News:

Taken from a series of movies of bubbling plasma erupting to the solar surface, this is a close-up shot of what's called an expanding solar prominence, seen in extreme ultraviolet light. We are basically looking deep into the throat of the fine structure of an eruption on our nearest star.

The light we are seeing in this observation is generated by plasma heated to around 50,000 Kelvin (twice as hot as a bolt of lightning). A solar prominence is a looped structure of hot plasma, wrapped in magnetic fields from the sun's "surface" (or the photosphere), projecting high into the solar atmosphere (the sun's corona). But this is only one of the many eyes of SDO; it is already revolutionizing our understanding of the sun.

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Maxed Out: How Cold Can You Get And Live?

Chill out, this won't hurt a bit (Image: Ty Milford / Getty)

From New Scientist:

Humans hate being cold, and for good reason: our long-limbed bodies are exquisitely adapted to lose heat, not to retain it. This makes perfect sense in the intense heat of the African savannah, where humans evolved. Without our technological adaptations to cold - clothing, heating, shelter - that's where we'd all still be living, says Mike Tipton of the University of Portsmouth, UK, who studies human thermoregulation.

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Skywatchers Set For Meteor Show

From The BBC:

Stargazers are preparing for a sky show as the annual Lyrids meteor shower gets underway on Wednesday.

The shower is named after the constellation Lyra, from which the meteors appear to originate.

The meteor shower peaks early on Thursday 22 April (GMT), when 10-20 meteors per hour are expected to be visible under favourable conditions.

Scientists say the best time to observe the meteor shower is during the dark hours before dawn.

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U.S. Treasury Jumps On 3-D Bandwagon, Unveils Redesigned Benjamins

New Benjamin A founding father gets a new look on the new $100 bill U.S. Treasury

From Popular Science:

Fun 3-D holograms give Mr. Ben Franklin a facelift for the new decade.

A running battle between the U.S. Treasury and the counterfeiting efforts of drug lords and North Korea just got even more high-tech, with 3-D interactivity. Now everyone can check the authenticity of their Benjamins, courtesy of color-changing and moving images of bells and numbers.

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Magnesium Power: White-Hot Energy

From The Economist:

New power sources could be made using magnesium.

STORING energy is one of the biggest obstacles to the widespread adoption of alternative sources of power. Batteries can be bulky and slow to charge. Hydrogen, which can be made electrolytically from water and used to power fuel cells, is difficult to handle. But there may be an alternative: magnesium. As school chemistry lessons show, metallic magnesium is highly reactive and stores a lot of energy. Even a small amount of magnesium ribbon burns in a flame with a satisfying white heat. Researchers are now devising ways to extract energy from magnesium in a more controlled fashion.

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We May All Be A Little Bit Neanderthal As Study Finds Species Interbred Twice With Humans

A new study suggests that most of us have some Neanderthal genes in our DNA. Scientists believe our ancestors may have bred twice with the extinct species

From The Daily Mail:

It won't come as a surprise to anyone wandering around Britain's city centres late on a Friday night. But scientists have discovered that most people have a little bit of Neanderthal man in them.

A major DNA study suggests that our ancestors interbred with the Neanderthals at least twice tens of thousands of years ago - and that their genes have been carried down the millennia ever since.

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Embracing Silence In A Noisy World -- A Book Review

From New York Times:

What is silence? I am profoundly deaf in my left ear (I have a cochlear implant). The ear is useless for hearing, though it makes a pleasant decorative ornament and serves as a place to display earrings and anchor glasses; no sound can penetrate it. You would think that profound deafness is as silent as it gets. And yet it is not quiet in there. I hear deep space sounds, a hollow hum that washes in and fades away, changes in pitch and volume.

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Smell Your Way to a Longer Life? Odors That Represent Food or Indicate Danger Can Alter An Animal's Lifespan

New research reveals that specific odors that represent food or indicate danger are capable of altering an animal's lifespan and physiological profile by activating a small number of highly specialized sensory neurons. (Credit: iStockphoto/Jodi Jacobson)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 20, 2010) — What does the smell of a good meal mean to you? It may mean more than you think. Specific odors that represent food or indicate danger are capable of altering an animal's lifespan and physiological profile by activating a small number of highly specialized sensory neurons, researchers at the University of Michigan, University of Houston, and Baylor College of Medicine have shown in a study in the online, open-access journal PLoS Biology.

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