Archive for March, 2014
A Powerful New Way to Edit DNA
March 4th, 2014Via: New York Times: In the late 1980s, scientists at Osaka University in Japan noticed unusual repeated DNA sequences next to a gene they were studying in a common bacterium. They mentioned them in the final paragraph of a paper: “The biological significance of these sequences is not known.” Now their significance is known, and […]
Goodbye Academia
March 4th, 2014Via: Yes, Another Science Blog: As a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, I am not even back to earning what I did ten years ago as a junior programmer with no skills or domain-specific knowledge. In a commercial setting, my compensation would have kept pace with my knowledge and skills, but in academia, there seems to […]
Rapid Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Job Losses
March 4th, 2014Via: Financial Times: The impact of IT and automation on the world of work – and dire warnings about the job destruction they might cause – are as old as the technology itself. But the convergence of a number of tech trends has made the threat more immediate. As a result, 47 per cent of […]
Sleep Problems Plague Device-Dependent Children
March 4th, 2014Via: The Fiscal Times: Parents reported that nearly 75 percent of children ages 6 to 17 have at least one electronic device in their bedroom, with many using those devices right before bedtime. “To ensure a better night’s sleep for their children, parents may want to limit their [children’s use of] technology in the bedroom […]
Headband Could Help Brain Communicate with Computers
March 4th, 2014Via: Boston Globe: Computer scientist Robert Jacob and biomedical engineer Sergio Fantini are working on a headband to read brain activity, enabling a computer to determine whether the wearer is bored, fatigued, or sharp. In a tower full of air traffic controllers wearing headbands, the computer could automatically shift flight assignments, depending on which controllers […]
RUSSIA DEMANDS SURRENDER OF UKRAINE’S CRIMEA FORCES
March 3rd, 2014Update: Moscow Denies Ultimatum Via: euronews: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called on Russia’s western partners on Monday to put aside geopolitical calculations and think about the Ukrainian people. “We call for a responsible approach, to put aside geopolitical calculations, and above all to put the interests of the Ukrainian people first,” he said in Geneva […]
The Derelict Mansions on Britain’s Billionaires’ Row
March 2nd, 2014Via: CNN: A third of the houses on Britain’s second most expensive street are lying vacant, many abandoned for decades and left to rot. Behind the padlocked gates and long driveways, up to 20 mansions stand empty on London’s The Bishops Avenue, despite a reported combined value of around £350 million ($582 million). Dubbed “Billionaires’ […]
Mayor of London: The State Should Abduct Children of Thought Criminals
March 2nd, 2014Via: BBC: Muslim children who risk radicalisation by their parents should be taken into care, Boris Johnson has said. Writing in his weekly Daily Telegraph column, the London mayor said such children were victims of child abuse. Mr Johnson said they should be removed from their families to stop them being turned into “potential killers […]
Dismantling Fukushima Will Require Robotic Technology That Has Not Been Invented Yet
March 2nd, 2014Via: IEEE: “At Fukushima you have wrecked infrastructure, three melted cores, and you have some core on the floor, ex-vessel,” Barrett says. Nothing like Fukushima, he declares, has ever happened before.
Britain: Perovskite Solar Panels
March 2nd, 2014Via: Guardian: Materials researchers in Oxford, led by Dr Henry Snaith, have recently shown that they can make simple perovskite solar cells with efficiencies pushing 20%. This is big news, because 20% makes them competitive with existing commercial silicon solar cells while being much cheaper to make in high volumes. They are also more suitable […]
