|
 |
Tuesday, March 18, 2003 |
Smartgun with authentication and minicam. A new South African gun comes equipped with a biometric authentication system (so it can only be fired by its owner) and a built-in minicam (so you can document the circumstances of each shot fired). Link Discuss (via /.) [Boing Boing Blog]
Great, I can just see the new TV series now, "Gun Shot." Showing all the footage of people getting shot at from the gunners POV, of course for TV, no one ever dies. Maybe the cops can review the footage and understand why these highly trained officers are such bad shots most of the time. "One shot, One Kill."
7:05:04 AM 
|
|
hong kong flu. BBC: A global warning has been issued about a virulent flu and pneumonia sweeping hospitals in Hong Kong and Vietnam. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
This worries me since it seems to be an airborne virus. Easy to spread, hard to stop.
6:50:49 AM
|
|
Is the Brain Equivalent to a Turing Machine?. From the NewScientist.com: "The world's first brain prosthesis - an artificial hippocampus - is about to be tested in California. Unlike devices like cochlear implants, which merely stimulate brain activity, this silicon chip implant will perform the same processes as the damaged part of the brain it is replacing. The prosthesis will first be tested on tissue from rats' brains, and then on live animals. If all goes well, it will then be tested as a way to help people who have suffered brain damage due to stroke, epilepsy or Alzheimer's disease." [kuro5hin.org]
Wow!
Now we have brain and Face implants, what's next?
6:48:11 AM
|
|
|
Monday, March 17, 2003 |
Scary first-person account of martian Hong Kong pneumonia. SARS -- the mystery pneumonia that's sweeping Asia and has been spotted in Canada and elsewhere -- is unbelievably scary. Check out this message from a Hong Kong doctor to Dave Farber's Interesting People list:
Unresponsive to various combinations of cefotaxime, chlarithromycin, levofloxacin, doxyclycline and Tamiflu. All microbiology is NEGATIVE (after one week)...
So far 2-3 of our older patients with chronic disease have deteriorated fastest. Medical staff - younger and fitter have faired better. Their radiological findings have deteriorated in all but one case...
We receive 2-3 admissions per day. So far no-one has shown any improvement. Once intubated however they remain relatively static but very oxygen and PEEP dependent. Those ventilated have solid lungs. Interestingly one patient developed a pneumothorax on the medical ward and after chest drain and re-expansion his pneumonia involves only the side without a chest drain. Another patient (ventilated) has developed surgical emphysema.
ICU is now closed for all but atypical pneumonias. All our other "clean cases" have been transferred to other ICUs. All elective surgery is being cancelled and wards are being closed and evacuated. Al ambulances are being diverted...
Masks are worn throughout the hospital. Staff are not going home to children.
Please take the warning below seriously. My impression is that even with minimal contact with an infected person people have been becoming ill. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]
7:04:42 AM
|
|
Face Transplant Soon. A very brave sixteen-year-old Irish girl looks set to become the first person to undergo a face transplant operation. [Antipixel]
6:59:42 AM
|
|
|
Tuesday, March 11, 2003 |
SETI@Home identifies 150+ possible alien intelligences. The SETI@Home distcomp project has borne fruit: 150+ signals that match SETI's criteria for probable alien intelligence have been identified, and the project is going back to the Arecibo radio-telescope-array to take a closer look at them.
"This is the culmination of more than three years of computing, the largest computation ever done," said UC Berkeley computer scientist David Anderson, director of SETI@home. "It's a milestone for the SETI@home project."
SETI@home users should find out the results of the re-observations - what The Planetary Society, the founding and principal sponsor of SETI@home, is billing as the "stellar countdown" - within two to three months.
Though excited at the opportunity to re-observe as many as 150 candidate signals, Anderson is cautious about raising people's expectations that they will discover a signal from an extraterrestrial civilization. Link Discuss (via Robot Wisdom) [Boing Boing Blog]
8:21:53 PM
|
|
Irish Researcher Speeds Up Fight Against Bio-Terrorism.
The University of Ulster reports that one of its researchers has pioneered new DNA fingerprint techniques that could save thousands of lives in the event of a bioterrorist attack.
Dr Colm Lowery, from the School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, has developed a revolutionary method of detecting the killer bugs that could be used to wipe out entire populations if terrorists strike.
Current methods of tracing potential bio-terrorist agents such as Cryptosporidium or Clostridium botulinum can take up to five days, Dr Lowery’s new DNA Finger Printing technique takes only 15 minutes, a vital time saving mechanism that would save countless numbers of lives in the event of biological warfare.
Dr Lowery’s work is so significant that he has been awarded a prestigious Winston Churchill Fellowship and invited to the Centers for Disease Control Prevention, Atlanta, USA, to work alongside the world’s leading scientists in the fight against bioterrorism.
Please note that the Winston Churchill Fellowship Awards will be publicly announced sometime after March 14, 2003.
"Current scientific practices take several days to establish whether or not there has actually been an outbreak. These new cutting edge techniques will act as an early warning system for detecting these killer bugs in our water supplies. The method can equally be applied to routine monitoring of food and drinking water quality for the natural occurrence of these deadly pathogens," explained Dr Lowery.
He also added that "Because the DNA finger printing technology is so fast it will be invaluable in the event of a biological attack, allowing the quick detection of the source and type of agent that has been used. Subsequently, it will be easier to treat victims and prevent more outbreaks. The bottom line is that the introduction of these new technologies will help save lives."
For more information about DNA fingerprinting, check this National Science Foundation page.
Source: University of Ulster, March 10, 2003 [Roland Piquepaille's Technology Trends]
6:44:29 AM
|
|
|
Monday, March 03, 2003 |
China will colonize the moon. China's announced an ambitious project to explore and exploit the moon.
Ziyuan said exploring the Moon "probably holds the key to humanity's future subsistence and development". Chinese officials have previously said that some sort of permanent, most likely unmanned, base could be established on the Moon's surface by 2010...
"The prospect for the development and utilisation of the lunar potential mineral and energy resources provide resource reserves for the sustainable development of human society," he told the newspaper. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]
7:30:04 PM
|
|
Lotus Leaf Inspires Waterproofing Scheme [Scientific American]
Is it just me or do we seem to be coming up with more breakthroughs like this? I never really followed the material science front before, but lately I've come across some really cool ideas that really seem poised to change the way a lot of things work.
6:54:08 AM
|
|
|
Saturday, March 01, 2003 |
|
Saturday, February 22, 2003 |
GNU Radio's got your DTV transition *hangin'*. GNU Radio is a software-defined radio project implemented in Free Software. Using an ossciliscope, an analog-to-digital converter, and software that can pick out individual transmissions from the results, GNU Radio can be adapted to receive analog or digital TV, AM or FM radio, cellular traffic, 802.11a, b and g, and anything else that runs over the electromagnetic spectrum, subject to the speed of the analog-to-digital converter, the CPU, and the ability of codec authors to write decoders for different apps. Eric Blossom, the lead on GNU Radio, envisions a $65 FireWire peripheral in five or ten years that can handle every radio application you use today, all at once.
Except that under the terms of the Broadcast Flag mandate that the FCC is considering at the moment, all digital television demodulators will have to be designed to be tamper-resistant (i.e., not GPLed). If Hollywood gets its way, in other words, GNU Radio would be illegal.
Which is a damned shame, 'cause Eric just got DTV tuning and demodulation running. Link Discuss (via Oblomovka) [Boing Boing Blog]
5:22:37 PM
|
|
|
Saturday, February 15, 2003 |
Mutants live longer. ...and not just happy mutants. Turns out many people who live past the age of 100 share a specific mitrochondrial mutation that gives them additional resistance to oxidation. I wonder if my entirely self-sufficient grandmother (who lives alone and tends to her garden and bakes a killer Thanksgiving dinner) is a mitochondrial mutant? Link Discuss (Thanks, Scott!) [Boing Boing Blog]
1:53:29 PM
|
|
© Copyright 2003 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
|
|
|
