27633908
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
A recent New England Journal of Medicine editorial talks about the mini-mental state examination — a standardized screening test for cognitive impairment. After years of being widely used, the original authors claim to own copyright on the test and "a licensed version of the MMSE can now be purchased [...] for $1.23 per test. The MMSE form is gradually disappearing from textbooks, Web sites, and clinical tool kits." The article goes on to describe the working of copyright law and various alternative licenses, including GNU Free Documentation License and ends with the following suggestion: "We suggest that authors of widely used clinical tools provide explicit permissive licensing, ideally with a form of copyleft. Any new tool developed with public funds should be required to use a copyleft or similar license to guarantee the freedom to distribute and improve it, similar to the requirement for open-access publication of research funded by the National Institutes of Health."
21542196
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
Not Exactly Rocker Science has an interesting piece about Erez Lieberman Aiden, a scientist that is frequently hopping from one field to another, including "molecular biology, linguistics, physics, engineering and mathematics." This is in contrast to the prevailing trend of specializing in a specific field. "... I think a huge amount of invention is recognising that A and B go together really well, putting them together and getting something better. The limiting step is knowing that A and B exist. And that’s the big disadvantage that one has as a specialist – you gradually lose sight of the things that are around. I feel I just get to see more." Read on to see how failure to map antibodies led to an important discovery of the 3D folding of DNA and how the study of irregular verbs created a new scientific field.
21220280
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
In 2008 Google found correlation between seasonal flu activity and certain search term, a finding that allowed it to track flu activity better and more rapidly than previous methods. Now, Google is offering a new tool, Google Correlate, that allows researched to do the same for other trends. "Using Correlate, you can upload your own data series and see a list of search terms whose popularity best corresponds with that real world trend." Of course, Google reminds us that correlation does not imply causation.
21020430
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
The National Endowment for the Arts recently published their criteria for next year's Arts in Media grants. One of the key changes is the inclusion of video games as works of art. "Projects may include high profile multi-part or single television and radio programs (documentaries and dramatic narratives); media created for theatrical release; performance programs; artistic segments for use within an existing series; multi-part webisodes; installations; and interactive games. Short films, five minutes and under, will be considered in packages of three or more." For those who worry that game companies will try to get a grant for a commercial game, notice that the grant is only for non-profit organizations.
19871676
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
Light pollution is a big problem this days, affecting not only astronomers and wild life, but also everyone else because of wasted energy. GLOBE at Night aims to raise awareness by urging people to go outside and find out how much light pollution there is in their area. "The campaign is easy and fun to do. First, you match the appearance of the constellation Orion in the first campaign (and Leo or Crux in the second campaign) with simple star maps of progressively fainter stars found. Then you submit your measurements, including the date, time, and location of your comparison. After all the campaign’s observations are submitted, the project’s organizers release a map of light-pollution levels worldwide."
19687622
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
Whether you think it is useful or useless, you can't ignored the sheer cool geekiness of a game played entirely in the URL bar. "... this self-described "ridiculous" project was developed over the course of one evening."
19158990
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
WebOS Internals Group is the central repository for all the homebrewing done on the WebOS platform, including apps, patches and kernels. Recently it became clear that server infrastructure would fall behind future progress in the WebOS world. "So they asked HP's Phil McKinney, who has arranged to donate an HP Proliant DL385 2u server with 32 gigs of RAM and 8 terabytes of disk space... Notably, this is a straight-up donation, no strings attached — so WebOS Internals will remain how they always have: completely independent from the company whose OS they hack on."
18549712
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
When the Apollo 12 crew left Earth for a trip to the Moon, they did not know that the ground crew hid a surprise in one of the command module locker: a calendar photo of Playboy Playmate DeDe Lind. Now this card is offered for auction, after being kept in the personal collection of command module pilot Richard Gordon, which added the following memo: "This is to certify that the accompanying 4.5” x 6.25” cue carddid, indeed, accompany me on my trip to the moon in the Command Module Yankee Clipper aboard the historic Apollo 12 lunar landing missionThis cue card, which flew with me to the moon, has been in my sole possession and part of my personal space collection since my return from the moon in 1969 aboard America’s second lunar landing mission, and it remains one of the all-time greatest Apollo era astronaut ‘Gotcha’s!"
For those interested, minimum bid is $1000.
17329912
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
After the recent news items about the obstacles facing E-voting systems, many of us feel it is not yet time for this technology. A recent TED talk by David Bismark unveiled a proposal for a new E-voting technology that is both anonymous and verifiable. I am not a cryptography expert, but it does seem interesting and possibly doable.
17053026
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
Google's Creative Labs came out with a slideshow of interesting things on the web. In the slideshow you will find "lot of interesting HTML5 apps, iPhone apps, visualization tools, 3D projections, art projects, creative YouTube videos, crowdsourcing services and many other interesting things." It ranges from cool YouTube videos to really amazing data collection projects and much more. Guaranteed to ruin your productivity for today. Watch it here.
16543160
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
In the past we talked about Khan Academy. Today Google annonced that they are one of 5 winners of their Project 10^100, their competition to find projects that help the most to spread information globally. Amongst the other winners arte a project intended to drive innovation in public transport and a project to help make government more transparent.
16153682
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
A burglary ring was caught in Nashua, NH due to the vigilance of an off-duty police officer. The group is credited with 50 acts of burglaries, the targets chosen because they posted their absence from home on the Internet. "'Be careful of what you post on these social networking sites,' said Capt. Ron Dickerson. 'We know for a fact that some of these players, some of these criminals, were looking on these sites and identifying their targets through these social networking sites.'"
Well, I guess the prophecies came true.
15952554
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
In recent years the number of people killed in New South Wales, Australia has dropped, but strangely enough, the number of pedestrians killed has risen. Some think it's because of the use of iPods and other music players making people not attentive to road dangers (The so-called "iPod Zombie Trance"). Based on this (unproven) assumption, the Pedestrian's Council has started a campaign in an effort to educate the people, but apparently it isn't enough. Now, some are pushing for the government to enact laws to help eradicate the problem. "The government is quite happy to legislate that people can lose two demerit points for having music up too loud in their cars, but is apparently unconcerned that listening devices now appear to have become lethal pieces of entertainment," [Harold Scruby, of the Pedestrian Council of Australia] said. "They should legislate appropriate penalties for people acting so carelessly towards their own welfare and that of others... Manufacturers should be made to [warn] consumers of the risks they run."
15883406
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
After having a go with Name-Your-Price album and an open-source video, Radiohead is again pushing new ground, this time with a fan-based initiative. A group of fans went to a show of the band in Prague, each shooting the show from a different angle. By editing it all together, and adding audio from the original masters given by the band, they have created a video of the show that is "Strictly not for sale – By the fans for the fans...Please share and enjoy" (original in all caps).
Can this be the future of live show videos?
15881006
submission
Kilrah_il writes:
The fine-structure constant, a coupling constant characterizing the strength of the electromagnetic interaction, has been measure lately by scientist from University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and has been found to change slightly in light sent from quasars in galaxies as far back as 12 billion years ago. Although the results look promising, caution is advised: “This would be sensational if it were real, but I'm still not completely convinced that it’s not simply systematic errors” in the data, comments cosmologist Max Tegmark of MIT. Craig Hogan of the University of Chicago and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., acknowledges that “it’s a competent team and a thorough analysis.” But because the work has such profound implications for physics and requires such a high level of precision measurements, “it needs more proof before we’ll believe it.”
The ramifications of this study are profound, if correct, because it might suggest that other constants, such as the gravitational constant, are not so... constant.
