As most of the entire world knows by now, Mother Nature gave us a bit of a surprise this week - a meteor exploded in the atmosphere and shattered windows and injured hundreds of people in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia.With just the concussive force of the meteorite explosion shattering things, you can imagine what would have happened if a meteorite hit a building - one meteorite did...
read moreThe rumor mill has it that Elsevier is in advanced talks to buy Science 2.0 fave Mendeley, a platform academics use to collate PDFS and share research and collaborate via a social network (and a terrific company all the way around, in my opinion). TechCrunch says that the sale might close by the end of February and could be in the region of $100 million. But they also say Mendeley has closed...
read moreResearchers at Imperial College have released a video game that was written in part by what they call an Artificial Intelligence (AI) "machine" named Angelina, which is a clever acronym for "A Novel Game-Evolving Labrat I've Named Angelina".Their latest effort, released last month, is called "A Puzzling Present" (download it here). Players have to help Santa collect gifts on 30 Christmas levels...
read moreElsevier has launched a new open access, online journal, Leukemia Research Reports. It will publish a range of peer-reviewed short form papers, including brief communications, case reports, letters to the editors, images and debate articles about basic and/or applied clinical research in leukemias, lymphomas, multiple myeloma and other hematologic malignancies. The editors of Leukemia...
read moreViviTouch is a kind of 'artificial muscle' that seeks to make video games feel more real. The technology behind it is electroactive polymers, developed by Bayer subsidiary Artificial Muscle of Sunnyvale, right up the road from me.It's basically a new sort of motor that converts electrical energy into movement, to go beyond the traditional haptic interface people expect by now. Motor?...
read moreOpenStreetMap, an alternative to Google map data, has had a lot of success but can't agree on what direction to go next, say those in the know. An odd problem for people who make maps, right?But at least they are having fun trying. When I was young, the only sort-of controversy in maps was 'fairness' to third world countries. We didn't say 'developing nations' back then, we said 'third...
read more