Making Smarter Smart Homes
The 21st century will be the century of the 'smart home', where your home and your portable technology all interact seamlessly with one another.
Science 2.0: Network Modeling To Seek Out Misinformation Diffusion
If you read politics on Twitter, you would have recently seen that Republicans in the U.S. Congress are going to impeach President Obama if they get enough seats in November, so it is vital that Democrats win elections.
DDT Linked To Obesity In Female Mice Long After Exposure
DDT, the first modern pesticide, has been banned in the United States since 1972 but it is still commonly used in places where malaria is prevalent. The United Nations recommends it because it is far less harmful to people than malaria is and remains superior to replacements. Malaria drugs have become less effective over time so it's better kill pests before they infect people.
Happy 99th Birthday To The Inventor Of The Laser, Charles Townes
Charles Hard Townes (AP Photo)
Charles Townes has a lot going for him; he just saw his 99th birthday and 500 people showed up to cheer for him. He has a Nobel prize and a younger wife - Frances is 98.
Oh, and he invented the laser, which just about everyone on planet Earth has heard of.
If You Care About The Organic Revolution, Disavow Mike Adams
Revolutions are messy business, they require participation by a type of personality that is not very savory; militant, bombastic, a little crazy.
Mitochondria And Antioxidants: A Tale Of Two Scientists
There is a little miracle of science happening in your body right now. As you read this, a minuscule 5 grams of a high-energy molecule called adenosine triphosphate - ATP - is causing all kinds of reactions in order to give you the energy to sit at your computer. In total, 8 ounces of ATP is being recycled hundreds of times each day, so many times that a human can use their body weight - 200 pounds of ATP in my case – every 24 hours.
Vegan Cheese – No Milk, Human DNA Instead
At a secret enclave in the San Francisco metropolitan area, synthetic biologists and DIYBio tinkerers have been hacking nature up to fix the one thing about the vegan diet that would be difficult for many Americans: going without cheese.
iGEM - the 10th international Genetically Engineered Machine competition - is tackling expressing casein proteins in yeast to make cheese. Not a cheese substitute, real cheese, without milk from a cow or a goat.
Environmental Accountability: What America Gets Wrong, Canada And India Get Right
In America, radical environmental groups get something of a cultural free pass.
It's understandable, because America is a two-party country. Due to that, otherwise scientifically literate Democrats will rationalize the anti-vaccine, anti-GMO and anti-nuclear members under their umbrella as being 'anti-corporate' while scientifically literate Republicans don the same blinders about climate science and denial of evolution.
The Big Data Problem Will Also Be A Problem For Science 2.0
George Dyson. Credit: edge.org
If you read about Big Data for very long, a quote from science historian George Dyson is sure to come up: "Big data is what happened when the cost of keeping information became less than the cost of throwing it away."
That will be a platform to talk about the challenges, etc.
But there is a bigger problem that shows the challenges of Big Data - that isn't what Dyson said. But like with Einstein quotes about bees, in a Google world, where accuracy is measured by how often you are repeated and thus make it to the top of search engines, the Big Data problem is accuracy, not volume.
Going Deep With David Rees – Fun Science For The Family
"Going Deep" With David Rees premieres tonight on National Geographic Channel and if you have little time to decide whether or not to watch it, you are in luck because I can be brief - it's a good show.
"Going Deep" is fun for all ages and levels of expertise because he starts into the concepts and then really goes deep, just like he says he will.