Science: Nanotechnology barcodes to identify biological weapons

You might still remember the scene from the movie “Blade Runner” when Harrison Ford with the help of a chemist and the serial number on microscopic scale finds out what type of material he is looking at. It seems we got just one step closer to be able to do something similar today. Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently developed a novel bio-sensing platform that uses engineered nanowires for biochemical tests…

Continue reading…

Advertising: Career in Computer Science

Besides the “cool” skateboarder meeting girl and having a good time plot this video is full of great and potentially not so far away gadgets. MS Research is using the short film to get young people interested in a career in Computer Science. We really liked the flying personal robot but what is awesome and most likely to happen very soon is the data transfer visualization on the virtual computer table in the cafe…

Continue reading…

BBC: Horizon - most of our universe is missing

Another great documentary from the “BBC science series”. This 50 minutes movie is explaining the fundamentals of gravity, astrophysics, galaxies, dark matter, and dark energy. It is also the story of a controversy in science based on observation supporting a theory that has yet to be experimentally or conclusively proven…

Continue reading…

Europe: European Innovation Scoreboard 2006 published

The European Innovation Scoreboard measures the innovation performance of a country’s economy based on a wide range of 25 indicators, from education to expenditure in Information and Communication Technologies, investment in R&D or number of patents. Countries with a more homogeneous behavior in all aspects of innovation tend to achieve higher overall scores.

“…For the fourth consecutive year, the innovation gap between the US and the EU has decreased. The Nordic countries and Switzerland continue to be the innovation leaders worldwide, while many of the new Member States are steadily catching up with the EU average. These are some of the main findings of the European Innovation Scoreboard 2006, published today. The report presents a comparative analysis of the innovation performance of European countries, the US and Japan…

Continue reading…

2006 Turing award: ACM for the first time laureates female engineer

After more than 40 years of existence the Turing Award aka the “Nobel Prize in Computing” for the first time today was awarded to a female engineer. Frances E. Allen, received the USD 100,000 price for “…pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of optimizing compiler techniques that laid the foundation for modern optimizing compilers and automatic parallel execution…” . Frances E. Allen has been working in the field of computing and Information Technology since the days of punch cards and is currently with…

Continue reading…

Research: Unveiling the Quantum Computer

There were quite some stories going around the last days regarding Canadian company D-Wave and their presentation in the Silicon Valley yesterday.
If you want to learn more about it:

ABC News has a two page story about it.
Rose.blog (D-Wave) also has more detailed info and links.
There is a Press Release at the [...]

Video: Tour of the International Space Station

For those interested in a tour of the International Space Station there is now a video online explaining some of the details of the project and the station modules in a fly around…

Continue reading…

Put your message into orbit! Buy ad space on MIT satellite

A group of students at MIT and Georgia Tech are trying to raise money for their space mission by selling advertising on the spacecraft to companies and individuals. To allow sponsor to bid for advertising space on the satellite they have last week opened the YourNameIntoSpace.org web site.
The program is an initiative of the Massachusetts [...]

Clean Energy: HiPER a future energy source?

After two years intensive work involving over 1000 top-level scientists, the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) has published on Thursday 19 October the roadmap outlining 35 opportunities for major science facilities over the next 20 years.
The HiPER laser project has been included in the list as a key opportunity to demonstrate a [...]

How NASA imagined space colonies in the 1970s

During the 1970s NASA Ames has conducted a series of space colony summer studies. Colonies housing for about 10,000 people were designed and a number of really amazing artistic renderings of the concepts created.
The Library with the full size images is accessible here
Thumbnails of some of the images are shown below.

images courtesy NASA Ames [...]