201981
submission
Vicissidude writes:
As if the debate over immigration and guest worker programs wasn't complicated enough, now a couple of robots are rolling into the middle of it.
Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season.
The robotic work has been funded entirely by agricultural associations, and pushed forward by the uncertainty surrounding the migrant labor force. Farmers are "very, very nervous about the availability and cost of labor in the near future," says Vision Robotics CEO Derek Morikawa.
182107
submission
Vicissidude writes:
As an ice cream melts in your mouth this summer, take a moment to contemplate the protein that may be bringing you that sense of cool relief — and numbing your tongue. Researchers have pinned down the particular protein in mice used by the body to sense cold temperatures, and think that a similar one in humans does the same job. Mice rely on a single protein, called TRPM8, to sense both cold temperatures and menthol, the compound that gives mints their cool sensation.
The sensor also controls the pain-relieving effect of cool temperatures, but does not seem to play an important role in the response to painfully cold temperatures below 10 C. TRPM8 is in the same family as the protein that detects heat and capsaicin, the compound that makes peppers hot. These proteins lie in the cell membranes of select neurons, and form channels that open and close in response to external signals.
178251
submission
Vicissidude writes:
With the expiration of a key patent, major gas-grill manufacturers have scrambled to bring infrared cooking to the masses. The grills are still powered by propane and have traditional gas burners that heat mostly by convection — or hot air. But they also can cook foods with radiant heat generated by one or more infrared burners. Char-Broil says its advanced burners operate at 450 to 900 degrees, hotter than the 450 to 750 degrees of standard gas burners. And unlike charcoal, which can require 20 to 30 minutes to reach its 700-degree cooking temperature, heat from the infrared burners can be adjusted quickly. Bill Best, founder of Thermal Electric of Columbia, S.C., developed the technology in the 1960s, primarily to give automakers a faster way to dry the paint on cars.
53440
submission
Vicissidude writes:
At the National Targeting Center, the ATS program harvests up to 50 fields of passenger data from international flights, including names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers, and uses watchlists, criminal databases and other government systems to assign risk scores to every passenger. When passengers deplane, Customs and Border Protection personnel then target the high scorers for extra screening. Data and the scores can be kept for 40 years, shared widely, and be used in hiring decisions. Travelers may neither see nor contest their scores. The ATS program appears to fly in the face of legal requirements Congress has placed in the Homeland Security appropriations bills for the last three years, which states, "None of the funds provided in this or previous appropriations Acts may be utilized to develop or test algorithms assigning risk to passengers whose names are not on government watch lists." The prohibition most recently appeared in section 514(e) of Congress' 2007 appropriation, which was signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 4th. Marc Rotenberg, the director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said he was unaware of the language but that it clearly applies to the Automated Targeting System, not just Secure Flight, the delayed successor to CAPPS II. "Bingo, that's it — the program is unlawful," Rotenberg said. "I think 514(e) stands apart logically (from the other provisions) and 514 says the restrictions apply to any 'other follow-on or successor passenger prescreening program'. It would be very hard to argue that ATS as applied to travelers is not of the kind contemplated (by the lawmakers)."
33875
submission
Vicissidude writes:
Software industry body Nasscom has warned that India faces a shortfall of half a million skilled workers by 2010. Nasscom President Kiran Karnik told a conference in the city of Hyderabad that the IT industry in India needed 350,000 engineers per annum, but no more than 150,000 of the most highly-skilled engineers were available each year. This was creating severe shortages of talent, Mr Karnik said. There was a huge number of graduates and engineers, but people with the technical, communications, and team-working skills that were required were often lacking.
22229
submission
Vicissidude writes:
A team of American and British researchers has made a cloak of invisibility. In their experiment the scientists used microwaves to try and detect a copper cylinder. Like light and radar waves, microwaves bounce off objects making them visible and creating a shadow, though it has to be detected with instruments. If you can hide something from microwaves, you can hide it from radar and visible light. In effect the device, made of metamaterials — engineered mixtures of metal and circuit board materials, which could include ceramic, Teflon or fiber composite materials — channels the microwaves around the object being hidden. When water flows around a rock, co-author David R. Smith explained, the water recombines after it passes the rock and people looking at the water downstream would never know it had passed a rock. The first working cloak was in only two dimensions and did cast a small shadow, Smith acknowledged. The next step is to go for three dimensions and to eliminate any shadow.
10275
submission
Vicissidude writes:
A 3-D reference atlas of the genes that are active in the mouse brain is now complete. The atlas was declared finished on Tuesday, although scientists have been using it regularly for more than a year. The project began in 2002 with $100 million from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. "Since mice and humans share more than 90 percent of genes, the Allen Brain Atlas has enormous potential for understanding human neurological diseases and disorders affecting more than 50 million Americans each year," the Allen Institute for Brain Science said. These include Alzheimer's disease, which affects 4.5 million Americans, autism, which may occur in one in every 175 births, epilepsy, which affects 2.7 million Americans, schizophrenia and Parkinson's disease.
