Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Are Printed Photos Going Extinct?
From ABC News:
The Number of Photos Printed Worldwide Is Dropping by the Billions as Facebook Makes the Glossy Print Old-Fashioned.
The glossy print, it seems, is losing its sheen. According to estimates from IDC, 42 billion photos will be printed worldwide, both commercially and personally, in 2013. That’s a third less than the 63 billion printed in 2008. Meanwhile, about 124 billion photos are on pace to be shared through social networks that year. If it maintains its momentum, Facebook will likely be hosting the lion’s share of these images. The advent of the affordable digital camera circa 2001 was hard enough on the photography industry. People no longer had to buy film, since photos could be stored on memory cards or on a computer hard drive. Now Facebook is slowly but surely turning the nozzle of the industry’s only other real revenue stream: photo printing.
Read more ....
New 'Temperate' Exoplanet Hints At Solar System Like Our Own
An artist's impression shows CoRoT-9b, the first temperate exoplanet to be measured in detail. Scientists say it is about the size of Jupiter and orbits its parent star at about the same distance that Mercury orbits the sun. AFP/ESOFrom Christian Science Monitor:
Astronomers have for the first time made detailed measurements of an exoplanet in the temperate zone around its star. Their conclusion: It looks a lot like a planet in our solar system.
Astronomers have discovered a Jupiter-size planet that orbits its host star at a Mercury-like distance – a solar system that begins to look like a topsy-turvy, Alice in Wonderland version of our own.
The discovery has allowed scientists to glean for the first time a wide range of information about an extrasolar planet so relatively distant from its "sun."
Read more ....
Google Working With Intel, Sony, Logitech On TV Technology
From The Wall Street Journal:Google Inc. has lined up some big partners--including Intel Corp. and Sony Corp.--in the Internet giant's recent quest to move its technology into the living room, people familiar with the situation say.
The joint effort, which is in its preliminary stages, includes software to help users navigate among Web-based offerings on TVs and serve as a platform for other developers to target in creating new programs, these people say. The technology could be included with future TVs, Blu-ray players or set-top boxes, they added.
Read more ....
Solar Storms Create 'Killer Electrons'
A stream of charged particles from the Sun hits Earth's magnetosphere. Credit: NASAFrom Cosmos:
SYDNEY: 'Killer electrons' - electrons circling Earth that wreck satellites and can cause cancer in astronauts - are created when Solar storms create shockwaves in the Earth's protective magnetic bubble, scientists said.
The Earth's magnetic field abounds with charged, fast moving particles that orbit up to 64,000 km above the surface. When a severe solar storm - a stream of energetic particles emanating from the Sun - hits the Earth's magnetic field, it creates a shockwave that boosts the number of particles by up to ten times as much.
Read more ....
The CIA Predictioneer: Using Games To See The Future
Three decades of getting it right (Image: Ethan Hill/Contour by Getty Images)From New Scientist:
MY HOROSCOPE this week says that now is the perfect time to relocate, or at least de-clutter. I know it's nonsense, but I can't help wishing there was a genuine way to predict the future.
Perhaps there is. One self-styled "predictioneer" believes he has found the answer. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a professor of politics at New York University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California. In his new book, The Predictioneer (The Predictioneer's Game in the US), he describes a computer model based on game theory which he - and others - claim can predict the future with remarkable accuracy.
Read more ....
Rewriting The Decline (CO2 and Temperature)
Above: Matthews 1976, National Geographic, Temperatures 1880-1976 From Watts Up With That?:
The great thing about old magazines is that once published, they can’t be adjusted. Jo Nova has a great summary of some recent work from occasional WUWT contributor Frank Lansner who runs the blog “Hide the Decline” and what he found in an old National Geographic, which bears repeating here. – Anthony
Jo Nova writes:
Human emissions of carbon dioxide began a sharp rise from 1945. But, temperatures, it seems, may have plummeted over half the globe during the next few decades. Just how large or how insignificant was that decline?
Read more ....
How Plants Put Down Roots
One week old seed of the thale cress with embryo. (Credit: Martin Bayer / Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology)From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Mar. 16, 2010) — In the beginning is the fertilized egg cell. Following numerous cell divisions, it then develops into a complex organism with different organs and tissues. The largely unexplained process whereby the cells simply "know" the organs into which they should later develop is an astonishing phenomenon.
Read more ....
Prehistoric Shark Attack Reconstructed
The skeleton of a dolphin, preserved for 4 million years, shows bite marks across its ribs from the shark attack that killed it. Credit: Giovanni BianucciFrom Live Science:
A shark attack that took place 4 million years ago has just been reconstructed from the extinct hunter's fossilized victim – a dolphin.
Scientists investigated a well-preserved 9-foot-long dolphin (2.7 meters) discovered in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. From the remains, the researchers not only finger-pointed the attacker but also how the thrashing went down, suggesting the shark took advantage of the dolphin's blind spot.
Read more ....
How Facebook Overtook Google To Be The Top Spot On The Internet
From Fortune/CNN:What the Hitwise numbers do — and don't — tell us about the coming showdown between the Internet's largest web properties.
Facebook has dethroned Google! Sort of! Well, ok, not really. For the week ending March 13, the social networking site got more traffic than its competitor in the United States, according to a blog post by industry tracker Hitwise. But be careful how you slice your numbers. While many pundits may use this data to validate predictions that Facebook will eventually beat Google (GOOG) at its own game, the social networking startup has yet to pull ahead in any real sense.
Read more ....
A Supersonic Jump, From 23 Miles In The Air
From New York Times:Ordinarily, Felix Baumgartner would not need a lot of practice in the science of falling.
He has jumped off two of the tallest buildings in the world, as well as the statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro (a 95-foot leap for which he claimed a low-altitude record for parachuting). He has sky-dived across the English Channel. He once plunged into the black void of a 623-foot-deep cave, which he formerly considered the most difficult jump of his career.
But now Fearless Felix, as his fans call him, has something more difficult on the agenda: jumping from a helium balloon in the stratosphere at least 120,000 feet above Earth. Within about half a minute, he figures, he would be going 690 miles per hour and become the first skydiver to break the speed of sound. After a free fall lasting five and a half minutes, his parachute would open and land him about 23 miles below the balloon.
Read more ....
Natural Gas: An Unconventional Glut
From The Economist:
Newly economic, widely distributed sources are shifting the balance of power in the world’s gas markets.
SOME time in 2014 natural gas will be condensed into liquid and loaded onto a tanker docked in Kitimat, on Canada’s Pacific coast, about 650km (400 miles) north-west of Vancouver. The ship will probably take its cargo to Asia. This proposed liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant, to be built by Apache Corporation, an American energy company, will not be North America’s first. Gas has been shipped from Alaska to Japan since 1969. But if it makes it past the planning stages, Kitimat LNG will be one of the continent’s most significant energy developments in decades.
Read more ....
China's Internet Users Top 384 Million
From Xinhuanet:BEIJING, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) -- China reported 384 million Internet users by the end of 2009, up 28.9 percent, or 86 million, from a year ago, said a report from the China Internet Network Information Center on Friday.
Internet users surfing through mobile phones increased by 120 million to top 233 million, about 60.8 percent of the total Internet population, thanks to expanding third-generation (3G) business, said the report.
Read more ....
Overcoming Blindness: Other Senses Compensate in Just 10 Minutes
From ABC News:
New Study on 'Neuroplasticity' Shows How Quickly Brain Adapts When Sight, Hearing Cut Off.
Four bikers headed off down a street in Southern California, safely navigating through traffic and past parked cars, and turned onto a narrow bike path leading up a steep hillside. None of them veered off the dirt path, and all safely avoided boulders along the way, always conscious of their surroundings and any possible obstacles.
Read more ....
FCC Broadband Plan Promises High-Speed Internet For 100 Million More Americans By 2015
A Series of Tubes At Terremark's Miami headquarters, undersea Internet cables emerge from the Atlantic and connect to the rest of the country John B. Carnett From Popular Science:
Today the Federal Communications Commission unveiled its plan to expand broadband Internet access to 100 million more Americans within the next five years. The plan calls both for the expansion of wired networks in under-serviced areas, and for the dedication of more wireless spectrum for Internet use as opposed to television. Largely deficit-neutral, the plan has bipartisan support in the current Congress, in part because contentious issues of net neutrality and privacy were not tackled by the FCC's plan. As you remember, PopSci called for an improvement to the nation's broadband infrastructure last year
Read more ....
Seven Alternatives To The Apple iPad
From Crunch Gear:
Wait! Stop. Before you hand over Apple your credit card and pre-order the iPad, you may want to check out the other touchscreen options available now and in the near future. The iPad isn’t the only game in town. Sure, it might have a fancy-pants interface, but each of the follow seven tablets win the hardware fight, which is just as important to a lot of consumers.
Of course the hardware only tells part of the story. The iPad has a leg up on all of these options because of the user-friendly iPhone interface, but it’s not like you’re dropping $600+ on a tablet for your parents, right?
Methane May Be Building Under Antarctic Ice
From Wired News/Science News:
BALTIMORE — Microbes living under ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland could be churning out large quantities of the greenhouse gas methane, a new study suggests.
sciencenewsIn recent years scientists have learned that liquid water lurks under much of Antarctica’s massive ice sheet, and so, they say, the potential microbial habitat in this watery world is huge. If the methane produced by the bacteria gets trapped beneath the ice and builds up over long periods of time — a possibility that is far from certain — it could mean that as ice sheets melt under warmer temperatures, they would release large amounts of heat-trapping methane gas.
Read more ....
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Golden Bullet For Cancer? Nanoparticles Provide Targeted Version Of Photothermal Therapy For Cancer
Infrared images made while tumors were irradiated with a laser show that in nanocage-injected mice (left), the surface of the tumor quickly became hot enough to kill cells. In buffer-injected mice (right), the temperature barely budged. This specificity is what makes photothermal therapy so attractive as a cancer therapy. (Credit: WUSTL)From Science Daily:
Science Daily (Mar. 16, 2010) — In a lecture he delivered in 1906, the German physician Paul Ehrlich coined the term Zuberkugel, or "magic bullet," as shorthand for a highly targeted medical treatment.
Magic bullets, also called silver bullets, because of the folkloric belief that only silver bullets can kill supernatural creatures, remain the goal of drug development efforts today.
Read more ....
Video Games May Hinder Learning For Boys
Video games could hinder academic performance for boys, a new study finds.Credit: Dreamstime.
From Live Science:
Parents who buy their children a video game system might want to be careful that all the fun doesn't interfere with their learning. A new study suggests owning a game system could hinder academic development, at least for young boys.
The results show that boys given a PlayStation II are slower to progress in their reading and writing skills and have more learning problems reported by their teachers than those not given a system.
Read more ....
Hurtling Star On A Path To Clip Solar System
Heading our way (Image: ESO)From New Scientist:
A star is hurtling towards us. It will almost certainly clip the outskirts of the solar system and send comets towards Earth – though not for a while.
Vadim Bobylev of the Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg, Russia, modelled the paths of neighbouring stars using data from the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite and from ground-based measurements of the speeds of stars.
Read more ....
Startups Focus On AI At South By Southwest
From Technology Review:A new crop of startups aims to bring artificial intelligence to the masses.
South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive has a reputation as being the place for social Web startups to hit the headlines. Twitter found one of its first big audiences at the event in 2007, and attendees are among the most eager adoptees of new social Web tools.
To harness this cutting-edge mood, last year the event's organizers launched the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator, a competition showcasing 32 Web-focused startups. This year's competition starts today.
Read more ....
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)