Self-repair

22 Dec 2011 - I was always recall Stanley Kubrick's master-piece "2001" a Space Odyssey", when I read about developments like this. But researchers have done it again: are we one step closer to computers ruling the world? In any way, self-repairing electronic chips are one step closer, according to a team of US researchers. The group has created a circuit that heals itself when cracked thanks to the release of liquid metal which restores conductivity. The process takes less than an eye blink to bring the circuit back to use. The researchers said that their work could eventually lead to longer-lasting gadgets as well as solving one of the big problems of interplanetary travel. The work was carried out by a team of scientists and engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (never heard of the place, but that's where it obviously happens) and is published in the journal Advanced Materials. The process works by exploiting the stress that causes the initial damage in the chips to break open tiny reservoirs of a healing material that fills in the resulting gaps, restoring electrical flow.

No More Alien Search

28 April 2011 - A monitoring system for potential extra-terrestrial communication has been shelved due to budget cuts. The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) in California has been mothballed, according to the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (Seti) Institute. Funding for the observatory, which hosts the ATA, has been cut to one-tenth its former level. The Seti Institute was established in 1984 to look for life beyond Earth. The telescopes, at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory north of San Francisco, California, have a number of science goals, including searching for radio signals from intelligent life in the Universe. "Effective this week, the ATA has been placed in hibernation due to funding shortfalls for operations of the Hat Creek Radio Observatory where the ATA is located," Tom Pierson, chief executive of the Seti Institute, said in a statement.

IQ Motivation

26 April 2011 - Intelligence tests are as much a measure of motivation as they are of mental ability, says research from the US. Researchers from Pennsylvania found that a high IQ score required both high intelligence and high motivation but a low IQ score could be the result of a lack of either factor. Incentives were also found to increase IQ scores by a noticeable margin. The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Firstly, it analysed previous studies of how material incentives affected the performance of more than 2,000 people in intelligence tests. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, found that incentives increased all IQ scores, but particularly for those of individuals with lower baseline IQ scores. Then the same researchers tested how motivation impacted on the results of IQ tests and also on predictions of intelligence and performance in later life. By using data from a long-term study of 250 boys from adolescence to early adulthood, they were able to conclude that some individuals try harder than others in conditions where the stakes are low. Therefore, the study says, "relying on IQ scores as a measure of intelligence may overestimate the predictive validity of intelligence." Getting a high score in an IQ test requires both high intelligence and competitive tendencies to motivate the test-taker to perform to the best of their ability. Dr James Thompson, senior honorary lecturer in psychology at University College London, said it had always been known that IQ test results are a combination of innate ability and other variables. "Life is an IQ test and a personality test and an IQ result contains elements of both (but mostly intelligence). "If an IQ test doesn't motivate someone then that is a good predictor in itself."

Taxi please!

19 April 2011 - Nasa has given an indication of the companies it thinks may be closest to offering commercial systems to carry American astronauts into space. With its shuttles about to retire, the agency has offered $270m (£166m) of funds to four firms to help them mature designs for new orbiting vehicles. Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp and SpaceX hope to sell astronaut "taxi" services to Nasa by mid-decade. Until then, US crews will have go to the space station on Russian rockets. "The next American-flagged vehicle to carry our astronauts into space is going to be a US commercial provider," said Ed Mango, Nasa's Commercial Crew Programme manager. "The partnerships Nasa is forming with industry will support the development of multiple American systems capable of providing future access to low-Earth orbit." The winning companies have a range of concepts under developments.

Aggltinative Language

1 April 2011 - The Mongolian language  is tthe best-known member of the Mongolic language family. It sounds a bit weird, but really beautiful and musical. It may have about 5.2 million speakers, including the vast majority of the residents of Mongolia and many of the Mongolian residents of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region of China. In Mongolia, the Khalka dialect of Mongolian, written in Cyrillic, is predominant. Mongolian has vowel-hermony and a complex syllabic structure for a Mongolic language that allows up to three syllable-final consonants. It is a typical agglutinative language that relies on suffix chains in the verbal and nominal domains. While the basic word order is subject-object-predicate, the noun phrase order is relatively free, so functional roles are indicated by a system of about eight grammatical cases. There are five voices. Verbs are marked for voice, aspect, tense and epistemic modality. In sentence linking, a special role is played by converbs. It almost like science.

Business Cards

1 March 2011 - Industries may change and brand names may come and go, but at least one tradition in the business world has remained largely unchanged for hundreds of years. The exchange of cards between two people who are meeting for the first time is a ritual that goes back as far as business itself. For most of us, the handing over of contact details is an important moment - a clear signal that a connection has been made. But as our lives turn increasingly digital, technology is attempting to provide a range of futuristic alternatives to the old-fashioned card. Ever since the arrival of electronic communication, people have been exploring new ways to share information with each other- from swapping email addresses to trading mobile phone numbers and, increasingly, connecting through an online social network. A range of services have appeared to take advantage of this trend, including Bump Technologies, a two-year-old startup based in California's Silicon Valley. Its application, which users download to their phones, lets people trade contact details simply by tapping their handsets together. It is an approach that has a number of advantages over the traditional paper card, says Bump's Sadie Bascom - particularly since nobody goes anywhere without their mobile these days.
"It's easy, always on your phone, and you never have to remember to grab a stack of physical cards or worry about them running out."

DAD

10 Feb 2011 - The BBC website had an interestiung reflection about modern times. Colm O'Regan wrote that if you work in an office it's quite possible that you suffer from a condition called DAD. He urges us not to panic as it's not serious and nothing a good book or a long walk won't cure.He explains that his internet browser had 24 tabs open. Among them were three separate attempts to reply to the same e-mail. His online banking session has timed out, and in the corner of his screen a Twitter feed is a never-ending scroll of news and links. Which he clicks. And clicks.He wonders what is wrong with him? He did some research and found Divided Attention Disorder, or DAD. DAD encapsulates the growing phenomenon whereby the constant stream of online information could actually be changing the way our brains work.He first read about this in a magazine while waiting to get his hair cut. The article is quite lengthy. Ironically the only reason he had the attention span to read all of it was that my local barber-shop has no mobile phone reception. Sounds familiar?

Watson

16 Jan 2011 - Remember computer HAL from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey? Well, the future is here. Watson, a supercomputer which IBM claims is as a profound advance in artificial intelligence, edged out jeopardy! game show champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on  Thursday in a short practice round ahead of a million-dollar tournament that will be televised next month. It is powered by 10 racks of servers running the Linux operating system. It's not connected t the internet but has digested encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, news, movies scripts and more. John Kelly III, IBM Director of research said the technology could help doctors sift through massive amounts of information to draw conclusions for patient treatment and care.

Human Heat

9 Sep 2010 - The warmth generated by human bodies in the Parisian metro will help heat a public housing project in the city center. The building, located in the Rue Beaubourg close to the Pompidou museum, is being renovated in an environmentally friendly way. "the building is connected to the metro through a staircase," said Francois Wachnick from Paris Habitat., the capitals largest owner of social housing. The calories emitted by passengers, about 100 watts per person, combined with the heat generated by the trains moving along the tracks underground and the heat from the surrounding buildigs, mean that corridor temperatures can be kept at a reasonable 14 to 20 degrees Celsius all year round. I never knew French people were that cold?

The Shrinking Moon

26 Aug 2010 - It sounds like a joke, but it is not: the moon is shrinking. In making the announcement, scientists were quick to add that the moon has not shrunk by much, and that shrinkage may have occurred over a billion years. We also do not have to be afraid that the moon will shrink out of view in the future. It was explained that as the moon's core has cooled and contracted, the outer crust fractured into faults, forming ridges as one side of the fracture slid on top of the other. The same cooling and shrinking occurs with all planetary bodies. Nasa's messenger spacecraft recently observed similar - and much larger - fractures on Mercury. The scientists also added that the findings were evidence that the moon is much livelier than its reputation as a cold, unchanging world makes us believe.

Globish

9 July 2010 - More than seven years in Hong Kong did not really help improving my English. In fact, I just read an article claiming that I probably do not speak English at all, but use globish. Globish is not a language from Lord of The Rings, but an international language close to English. However, it is not always the English familiar to native speakers, but has a nice twist to it. English is now widely spoken all over the world and the language is getting influenced by the fact that so many non-English native speakers use the language to communicate. Most foreigners use a subset standard English grammar, and they use only about 1500 words. The term "globish" was first used by former IBM President Jean-Paul Nerriere who observed that non-native English speakers at international conferences were very well able to communicate with each other, but sometimes failed to understand the Scottish, Australians or other native English speakers. I recognize that, but I sometimes wonder if people understand my Chinglish?

Oh Happy Day ...

19 June 2010 - I kinda missed it, but yesterday was officially the Happiest Day of the Year. British psychologist Cliff Arnall earlier calculated that the third Monday in January is the unhappiest day of the year, or Blue Monday. People realize their new years' resolutions have gone nowhere, they have spent all their money during Christmas and the drab winter weather is depressing. How different was life yesterday, because Arnall calculated that the 18th June must be the happiest day of the year! Summer is knocking on our doors, we will go for holidays soon, and nature is blossoming. What else does one want? The Germans would probably have been a lot happier with a win yesterday night, because they were unexpectedly beaten by the Serbs. Their nation was in shock. Everything is relative.

Venus or Mars

11 June 2010 - The summer holiday season is rapidly approaching in most European countries, which leads to some interesting questions. Who will pack the car? Dutch researchers found that it is a better idea to ask the man to the job, because - to put it simply - they are better at it. It was tested among 500 men and 500 women and all (incl. the women) agreed that men were faster and made more efficient use of the space. However, women are better in packing the suitcase. There was also no disagreement here - both sexes agreed that it was better to leave this part of the holiday preparation to women. So with those dilemmas sorted the remaining question is who will park the car?  Women and men both claimed they did a better job, and there was no conclusive answer from the experts.