Too much work, too little time

I haven’t posted for a while because I have been working too many hours and I haven’t had the time to even check my email.
Now however, I just got a new cell phone with a data plan and will be able to start posting again on a regular basis.
For the two of you who actually read my blog, I am sorry for abandoning you and I hope you do start reading my blog again.

See ya soon,

Rob.

T -19 hours.

In roughly 19 hours NASA will launch the second of three flights whose mission is to complete the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kibo laboratory. This flight will feature two space veterans as well six “newbies,” and three EVAs (Extravehicular Activity).

Get the full mission summary here.

Scientists see big boom

Wow, that was an understatement!! Anyhow, earlier this year Alicia Soderberg and her team of astronomers were using NASA’s swift satellite to observe a supernova that just started. In a huge struck of luck, on January 9, another star went supernova and it just happened to be in their field of view.

For the first time ever has a group of scientists actually seen a star, to use highly scientific terms, go boom. Usually, astronomers are only able to detect a supernova a while after it has exploded, however this time they were able to see it from the beginning. Although this doesn’t have any real world application, it is just plain cool.

Check out the full scoop here.

RepRaps finally get the attention they deserve.

RepRaps (Replicating Rapid-prototyper) is a 3D printer that builds parts by printing this sheets of plastic on top of each other. What this means is that one can take a 3D computer model and automatically build it using the reprap. Another great thing about repraps, is that they are “self-replicating.” What I mean by that is that they can print out their own parts (at least the major ones) in order to build another one.

What is even greater about repraps is that they are distributed under the GNU (General Public Licence). This way anyone can build and improve on them. Furthermore, say someone improves the design of a reprap. All they have to do, is upload the model for the new parts and all other reprap owners can just print out the new parts and perform the upgrade.

What is even more mind boggling is the possible applications of this technology. Say you have a blender that breaks. Now imagine just going to the manufactures website, downloading the 3D model for the piece that’s broken, printing it and just replacing it. Of course this is a banal example, but one can see its ramifications.

The technology is not quite there yet, as it only prints plastic pieces. However, there are people already working on how to print using metals that have very low melting points. I myself can’t wait to get my hands on one of these (it costs about $600 to build one of these).

Check out the full story here.

Vitamins aren’t always so good for you

After a review of over 67 studies including over 230,000 adults, scientists say that taking vitamins A, C, and E are not only ineffective but can also shorten your life.

Maybe this will at least slowdown the vitamin crazy going on in America today. If you take any vitamin supplements, stop. Even if you eat fast-food everyday, BigMacs contain plenty of vitamins.

Check out the full scoop here.

The (scientific) world mourns the death of John Wheeler

The 96 year old pioneer physicist “popped out of existence” earlier this week in a proverbial quantum foam.

Here an excerpt from sciam.com:

Yesterday morning, renowned physicist John Archibald Wheeler died of pneumonia. He was an iconic figure: a veteran of the Manhattan Project, a pioneer of the search for a quantum theory of gravity, and an originator of such evocative terms as “black hole.” Most physics students know him as co-author of the standard textbook on Einstein’s general theory of relativity—a tome that defies almost every stereotype of a textbook, much as Wheeler’s own career defied almost every generalization. He was rigorous yet playful, and he always had a pithy, Zen-like phrase for profound ideas and questions: “it from bit,” “mass without mass” and “Why the quantum?”. An out-of-the-box thinker who wasn’t afraid to speculate, he always carefully identified speculation as such. In so doing, he opened up space for his colleagues to push the boundaries.

Check out the his full biography here.

The next gen way of doing science

Everyone has heard of web 2.0 by now ( if you haven’t, shame on you). Scientist now are taking this concept and applying it to science. They call it …. well …. science 2.0. The idea is to use all the technology we acquired from web 2.0 and use it to share scientific knowledge.

Professors are starting to use wikis to post lecture notes, students using them to post lab notes, and even researchers using it to make their research data public much earlier then they previously would. This is a grea way to improve in the advancement of science. In the latter for example, others can comment on the data, and offer their opinions which could take the research to a whole other level.

Read more about it here.

Happy National Cheese Ball Day

Just a bit of random news. I Just found out today is National Cheese Ball Day.

I say, celebrate and engorge in cheese balls (this sounds so wrong!)
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Goats, chimps, and M&M’s trump over 50 years of research

Monty Hall strikes again. The infamous Monty Hall Problem (more here) might just be the thing that will practically flush almost 50 years of psychology research into how we rationalize our decisions. The research so far has shown that our previous decisions, cause us to rationalize our future decision not to contradict our previous ones.

This is basically how the research worked (more here):

Say you have a certain chimp (or any animal for that matter. The research has shown the same patter across species including humans of course) , and you give
it the choice between a red and a blue M&M. Now, lets say that the chimp chooses the red one. If we then give the chimp a choice between a green and a blue M&M, research has shown that it will be two thirds more likely to choose the green M&M over the blue one. Of course that this works for any set of colors.

Up to know, researchers thought this was due to a psychological phenomena, where we try to rationalize our decisions. This means that once we reject something, we tend to reject it again in future decisions. New evidence however, shows that this trend is nothing more than mere probability.

Economist M. Keith Chen mathematically suggested that this trend occurs for much the same reasons as Monty’s problem seeming to go against our common sense. Although no conclusion have been made yet, this is a very interesting concept.

Read the full article here.

Pencils massacre computer chips…

….well, not exactly. However, what it is true is that carbon chips are just around the corner, and they will surely bring the demise of silicon chips.

We have reached a point in time where we have te technology to make graphene ICs. For those who don’t know, graphene is one single layer of graphite (Graphite is composed of sheets of carbon “chicken wire”).

This technology has a great potential for growth, and it may just be the thing to speed up Moore’s Law even more. Check out the full scoop here.