According
to Heinz, ketchup exits the company’s iconic glass bottles at an
excruciatingly slow .028 miles per hour. In case you were wondering,
that’s slower than a Galápagos tortoise, which, according the San Diego
Zoo, creeps along at a relatively speedy .16 miles per hour.
What’s the cause of such lethargic condiments? That would be our old
pal friction. Luckily for burger fans everywhere, impatiently tapping
our ketchup bottles might be a thing of the past thanks to MIT PhD
candidate Dave Smith.
Fast Company brings news
of the valiant Smith’s contribution to lunch science. Apparently he and
a team of mechanical engineers and nano-technologists have been holed
up in a MIT lab for the past two months trying to solve the ketchup
conundrum.
Their solution? LiquiGlide, which is “kind of a structured liquid–it’s rigid like a solid, but it’s lubricated like a liquid,” Smith tells Fast Company.
Appetizing! This wonder material can be used to coat the inside of
anything and is made from FDA-approved materials. Once applied,
whatever’s inside — including ketchup, mayo or any other sauce — slides
out effortlessly (see the videos here) with little residue.
Smith and his team came in second place in MIT’s $100k
Entrepreneurship Competition. The biggest payday, however, will come if
they actually sell the invention to companies that make sauces, a market
Smith says is worth $17 billion. Oh, and if you’re looking to steal his
idea, know that he “patented the hell out of it.”
Lets hope some big companies bite. I’m tired of waiting five minutes for ketchup to land on my cheeseburger.
[via Fast Company]
n an extremely compact text, this book embraces nine areas of science:
electronics, surface travel, medicine and mental health, sound and
light, space, atomics, television, meteorology, and oceanography.. It
deals with new developments in these fields and experiments which
indicate new trends.
Fred Reinfeld was one of the most prolific authors in history, having written or .....New York, 1964); What's New in Science (Sterling, New York, 1960); Young ...
科學新發現 香港:今日世界 1963
現在可以追查50年前的新科技 譬如說本書末篇
Mohole, Project, program proposed in 1957 to drill a hole down to the boundary between the crust and the mantle,
known as the Mohorovičić discontinuity at about 4 to 43 mi (7 to 70 km)
below the earth's surface. Initiated by the American Miscellaneous
Society, a loose organization of scientists, the main purposes of the
project were to determine the nature of this boundary and to attempt to
fill gaps in the geologic record from samples of the rocks encountered.
The technology of such a project, however, was beyond the state of
drilling technology at that time. Groups such as the National Science
Foundation and the National Academy of Science eventually backed phase
1, in which five holes were drilled off the coast of Mexico, the most
successful entering 601 ft (183 m) into the ocean floor under 2.2 mi
(3.5 km) of water. The project was abandoned by 1966, as funding to
support the ever-increasing costs of the project failed to gain
congressional approval. Nevertheless, ship positioning and design, along
with deepwater drilling technology developed for Project Mohole, were
employed in the Deep Sea Drilling Project and future drilling projects.
Wikipedia 更詳細Project Mohole.
大部分現代科技 如無人駕駛等` 當時都有人提出現 又如超視:
Sounds below human's lowest audible frequency of 20Hz are known as Infrasound.
Managing Technology After Broadband: Imagining a Future When Connected Networks Are All-pervasive What will the future be like a decade from now when fast networking and connected devices are almost ubiquitous? How will social, family and community life change? What will be the impact on fields such as manufacturing and health? A group of entrepreneurs, executives, policy makers and other experts brainstormed about these questions and more at a conference held last month in Wharton San Francisco. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/3002.cfm
Google Fiber: Can ultra-fast internet change a city?
By Daniel Nasaw and David BottiBBC News Magazine, Kansas City
VIDEO: People in Kansas City discuss the arrival of Google's super-fast internet
Google is installing super-fast fibre optic internet service in Kansas City. Will it usher in a new era in industry and society - or just enable faster web browsing and media downloads?
For technology consultant Bret Rhodus, Google's newest venture is an amazing business opportunity.
"This can be a game-changer," he says. "The opportunity for entrepreneurs is significant."
For art supply clerk Danni Parelman, however, it's just a chance to download more music.
The California internet giant has begun installing fibre optic cable that will give Kansas City residents download speeds of up to 1Gbps - about 100 times faster than the broadband internet service currently available to most Americans. 'The future'?
Danni Parelman says the high speed internet will enable her to download music faster
In dozens of interviews in the streets, shops, offices and cafes of Kansas City - a metropolitan area that straddles the Kansas-Missouri state line - residents and business people agreed that the project would be great for the town.
Analysts say the project, called Google Fiber, is the future of the web.
But the speed will be so much faster than what is currently available that even people familiar with the concept have a hard time imagining how it will affect industries and lives.
Although the seeds of the internet germinated in US Department of Defense laboratories and many of the most innovative internet companies are based in the US, Americans have far slower internet than residents of many other industrialised nations.
In March, Google chose the Kansas City metropolitan area from more than 1,100 cities and towns that requested the service
Google crews have begun hanging fibre lines from utility poles in selected neighbourhoods
The service will launch in residential neighbourhoods only - no commercial districts - the first half of 2012
About two million people live in the Kansas City metropolitan area, but Google has not said how many will have access to the service
Google has not said how much the monthly service will cost, but says it will be "competitive"
Source: BBC research
The average broadband internet speed across the US is 12.84 Mbps, according to Netindex.com. That makes the US 31st in the world (the UK is 32nd with 12.4 Mbps speed).
The ultra-high-speed unleashed by the fibre optic technology is a natural progression in the development of America's telecommunications infrastructure, says Aaron Deacon, a member of the board of the Social Media Club of Kansas City and a technology marketing consultant.
"This is the way the world is heading," he says.
"There are other places around the world that have this kind of connectivity, but around the US adoption has been pretty slow." Uncertain impact
But what will be super-fast internet's affect on the town in practical terms?
Aaron Deacon says: "Being the first for a new infrastructure is kind of a double-edged sword"
At first, the ultra-high-speed could simply mean people use the same web sites and internet services they already do, just faster.
"People say, 'oh it's going to just be faster YouTube'. It's sort of a joke," says Mr Deacon.
"But actually to have fast YouTube and videos with no buffering, and instantaneous downloading of feature movies, is a pretty significant change in the way that video can work."
The high speed will enable small businesses and home-office workers to have high-definition video conferencing without the hiccups, lag-time, and buffering slogs frequently suffered with cable or DSL broadbased.
It will allow greater use of cloud computing by small businesses, for example by allowing them to keep customer databases and accounting systems online instead of in costly local servers.
"Once business people can collaborate and work together and they don't have to worry about lag times - when you're not frustrated with the limitations of internet speeds - things really start jiving and amazing things get done," says Dave Greenbaum owner of a Kansas City computer repair company, who predicts a burst of small business innovation.
Aside from the expected boon to businesses, analysts predict almost every aspect of people's personal lives could be affected.
Having affordable super-fast internet in the home will enable faster and more efficient telecommuting, which could take cars off the roads, analysts say. Holograms and MRIs
Source: Netindex.com, based on volunteers who have tested their own connections through the speedtest.net
Doctors and hospitals will more easily be able to transmit data-heavy medical images like MRI scans. Businesses or local governments could install "dumb terminals" - computers with little more than a screen, keyboard, mouse and internet connection - across the city.
Communities could establish shared music, film and e-book libraries. High definition - even holographic - video conferencing could enable greater participation in local government: "Town hall in the home" is one catchphrase. Public safety could be improved by higher definition CCTV and video emergency calling.
Elsewhere in the US, an electric power firm in Chattanooga, Tennessee now offers 1Gbps internet to its customers - the broadest community-wide rollout of fiber optic connectivity in the nation.
But with its high cost for residential customers - about $350 (£223) a month - only nine have signed up, says EPB's spokeswoman Danna Bailey.
"It's not going to happen overnight," she says.
"It's a bit of a curiosity."
Google published web videos and a blog promoting its service to Kansas City residents
And in Britain, BT says it will begin offering 300Mbps - less than one-third of Google Fiber's advertised speed - in 2013. Shift to wifi
Despite the overwhelming enthusiasm in Kansas City for Google Fiber, people familiar with it warn of potential pitfalls.
"Being the first for a new infrastructure is kind of a double-edged sword," Mr Deacon says.
"It can be a really great thing, and it can build a leadership position around that, but you're also sort of a guinea pig, so if you're not smart about how you use that opportunity you can be the bad example that somebody else learns from."
Since Google first announced plans to install the fibre network in 2010, internet users' attention has shifted away from desktop internet to mobile internet, as consumers spend more and more time on smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices, says Ed Malecki, a professor of geography at Ohio State University who studies technology and economic development.
As mobile providers tighten up on cellular data use, consumers will have greater need for high-speed wifi where ever they go in their home towns, he says.
Residents said they hoped the project would help Kansas City outgrow its reputation as a "cow town"
"If Google wants to make super-fast community wifi, fine," he says. Google fiber is "not going to help anybody unless it's translated into wifi."
Meanwhile, Ms Bailey of EPB notes past world-changing technologies took years to have a broader impact.
"When electric power first became widely available in homes, it was a more convenient, somewhat novel alternative to the oil lamp for lighting," she says.
"At that time, it would have taken an incredible visionary to predict what kind of an impact electric power would have on business and ultimately quality of life."
Hand-Gesture Technologies Wave Bye to Desktop Mouse
BY JESSICA E. VASCELLARO A race to liberate computer users from the mouse
is kicking into high gear, inspired by the potential of turning hands
and other body parts into digital controllers.
The goal: to
manage computers and other devices with gestures rather than pointing
and clicking a mouse or touching a display directly. Backers believe
that the approach can make it not only easier to carry out many existing
chores but also take on trickier tasks such as creating 3-D models,
verifying whether clothes fit, training athletes and browsing medical
imagery during surgery without touching anything.
Cathy, who was completely
paralysed by a stroke 15 years ago, thought about having a drink of
coffee. A robotic arm responded by moving her drinking bottle from a
nearby table up to her mouth so she could sip through the straw.
The remarkable experiment in brain technology was the first time
since the stroke that 58-year-old Cathy had drunk without help from a
carer. “The smile on her face was a remarkable thing to see,” said Leigh
Hochberg, a professor of neuro-engineering at Brown University in Rhode
Island.
Cathy was one of two tetraplegic patients taking part in a clinical
trial of the BrainGate brain-computer interface developed at Brown.
The results, reported in tomorrow’s edition of the journal Nature,
describe the most complex functions anyone has performed using a
brain-computer interface.
“Years after the onset of paralysis, we found that it was still
possible to record brain signals that carry multi-dimensional
information about movement and that those signals could be used to move
an external device,” Prof Hochberg said.
The researchers say their technology is still several years from
practical use. The future lies in developing a fully automated, wireless
brain-computer interface.
Online social network size is reflected in human brain structure Proc. R. Soc. B April 7, 2012 279 1732 1327-1334; published ahead of print October 19, 2011, doi:10.1098/rspb.2011.1959 1471-2954
...variability in the size of such online friendship networks was significantly correlated...to articulate and make visible their friendship networks, and it is apparent that there...individual defined by more intimate friendships. However, the grey matter density at...
The increasing ubiquity of web-based
social networking services is a striking feature of modern human
society. The degree
to which individuals participate in these networks
varies substantially for reasons that are unclear. Here, we show a
biological
basis for such variability by demonstrating that
quantitative variation in the number of friends an individual declares
on
a web-based social networking service reliably
predicted grey matter density in the right superior temporal sulcus,
left middle
temporal gyrus and entorhinal cortex. Such regions
have been previously implicated in social perception and associative
memory,
respectively. We further show that variability in
the size of such online friendship
networks was significantly correlated with the size of more intimate
real-world social groups. However, the brain regions
we identified were specifically associated with
online social network size, whereas the grey matter density of the
amygdala
was correlated both with online and real-world
social network sizes. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that the
size
of an individual's online social network is closely
linked to focal brain structure implicated in social cognition.
This is an open-access article distributed
under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which
permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
下面這篇科普的寫法有些扭曲原作的意思翻譯也有些問題
《英對照讀新聞》Brain Size Tells How Many Friends a Person Has 腦的大小透露一個人有多少朋友
◎自由時報國際新聞中心
The larger your brain
size is, the more the number of friends you have:this is what is being
said by a team of researchers from the University of Oxford.
你的腦越大,你就有越多朋友:牛津大學研究團隊是這麼說的。
Keeping
up friendships takes brain power, research found, and people with real
friends - as opposed to pals on social network sites - have to employ
more cognitive skills to understand what someone is thinking.
研究發現,保持友誼耗費大腦的力量,而且擁有真正的朋友--而非社群網站上的夥伴--必須運用更多認知技巧來了解某人在想什麼。
Researchers
have found a link between the number of friends people have and the
size of their orbital prefrontal cortex. Tests were conducted on 40
people, with scientists taking anatomical MR images of their brains to
measure the size of their prefrontal cortex, which is used for
high-level thinking.
研究人員發現朋友數與大腦前額葉皮質區的大小有關聯。科學家在40人身上測試,以核磁共振攝影照他們的大腦,測量他們用來進行高層級思考的前額葉的尺寸。
Participants
were asked to make a list of people they had social - rather than
professional - contact with over a seven day period. They also took a
test to determine how competent they were at ’mentalising’, which is the
capacity to understand what another person is thinking - a crucial
aspect in how people handle the social world.
參與者被要求列出他們在7天內有社交接觸而非工作接觸的人名,他們也參與測試,了解他們的「認知」能力有多強,所謂的認知能力就是了解其他人在想什麼的能力,這是人們應對社交世界的一個關鍵面向。
Results
- published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B - showed a
connection between people with a large friendship group and a larger
prefrontal cortex.
刊登在「皇家學會學報—生物學」的研究結果顯示,朋友群很大的人,前額葉也大。 新聞辭典
tell:動詞,分辨、知道。例句:I could tell(that)you were unhappy.(我看得出你不快樂。)
as opposed to:片語,相對於,而非。例句:I’d prefer to go on holiday in May, as opposed to September.(我比較想在5月度假,而不是9月。)
competent:形容詞,有能力的,能勝任的。例句:I wouldn’t say he was brilliant but he is competent at his job.(我不會說他聰明,不過他能勝任他的工作。)
The BBC's Ian Hardy looks at why companies have been rushing to embrace HTML5 - and the innovative ways it is being used
It's hard to imagine now,
but original sites on the world wide web, written in HTML code or
hypertext mark-up language, were made up of little more than text.
Corporate web designers were well
aware that most of their customers had slow connections and would not
tolerate much of a wait.
Even a simple black and white image could irritate a user, as
it gradually appeared on the screen revealing itself one painful line
at a time.
That began to change as modem speeds gradually crept up and
content makers used more sophisticated methods to encode their
multimedia content.
Macromedia's Flash, now an Adobe product, made all the
difference when it arrived in the mid-nineties. Animations, video
sequences and graphics became more sophisticated.
But since its invention in the early 1990s HTML has not supported video natively.
That is why HTML5 is being received so enthusiastically by
businesses in particular. The latest version can perform all kinds of
dynamic tasks and visual tricks. The web is progressing faster now than
it has in a long time. Going native
Application developers, like Kevin Sweeney who works at Vimeo,
a video-sharing website based in New York, have already embraced the
new tools that are built in to HTML5.
It will take time before all systems are able to work with HTML5
"We've needed to rely on third parties like Adobe Flash or
QuickTime and had to embed this inside web pages. What HTML5 will do is
remove them from the equation so this stuff is supported natively," he
says.
Put simply it means that there's now much less chance that
customers visiting a website will come across a black hole in the middle
of the page, or get endless prompts to "download a plug-in" which may
take several minutes to install.
People will know what ingredients they have in their refrigerator and keep track of it using an HTML5 app on the screen”
Aaron GustafsonAuthor
By then it is often too late. The consumer has already clicked on a competitor's website.
The iPod Touch, iPhone and lately the iPad have been
especially good at leaving black holes on the screen, because the former
boss of Apple, Steve Jobs, would not allow Flash to run on any of his
iOS devices from the start.
The success of these products globally means many companies
cannot ignore the need to re-code their entire websites in HTML5,
especially the multimedia content.
A lot of companies are not waiting for the HTML5 specs to be
finalised and approved in a multi-year process. They have jumped right
in, using early "unofficial" versions of the code to deliver a complete
web page to every customer. New horizons
Aaron Gustafson, author of the book Adaptive Web Design, says
the versatility and dynamic nature of HTML5 means it can be used in new
ways in different environments including the office and kitchen.
"We are starting to see devices that are not traditionally web devices becoming more web-enabled," he says.
"If you are a recipe curator with a website, all of a sudden
you can build pages that work on a touchpad that's built into a
refrigerator. People will know what ingredients they have in their
refrigerator and keep track of it using an HTML5 app on the screen."
Many of Google's famous front page doodles, like this Jules Verne-inspired interactive submarine, are built using HTML5
Google is pushing HTML5 hard, not surprising since the greater
impact that web pages and apps have, the more advertising it can sell.
Its search homepage is traditionally sparse but many of the
doodles, including the Jules Verne-inspired interactive submarine, are
now being designed to take advantage of the newest code.
Jeff Harris, product manager for Google Docs, says HTML5 will change the way its services operate from the ground up.
"A simple example would be taking an attachment from your
desktop and dragging it into the compose window in Gmail. That's a basic
capability that you couldn't do five years ago because web browsers
didn't support it."
HTML5 also represents another step to the "semantic web", a
web structure championed by Tim Berners-Lee that cross-references,
reacts to and displays multiple information sources from the internet in
real time.
HTML5 is partly responsible for the browser wars in the past few years.
A decade ago Chrome, Firefox and Safari didn't exist, and browser updates for Internet Explorer were only occasional.
Today desktop and mobile browsers update frequently as new HTML5 functions get incorporated.
Companies favour HTML5 because it can also replicate
experiences previously only available inside an app, on the web. This is
especially true for the mobile environment.
And a lot of brand names don't like being part of someone
else's ecosystem because they lose control of pricing and subscribers.
The Financial Times recently announced it will shut off its iPad app
completely following the success of its HTML5 web page.
This is a trend that is likely to snowball within months. Flash forward
But where does this leave Adobe Flash?
Adobe's Danny Winokur insists Flash still has a future
The company has already stopped supporting it on mobile devices.
Danny Winokur, the general manager of the Interactive
Development Business at Adobe, says the future of Flash is not in doubt,
especially since protecting high quality assets with DRM (Digital
Rights Management) is not yet possible in HTML5.
"Flash is allowing things like 3D immersive gaming that you
would normally see on an Xbox or Playstation to come into a web
browser," he says.
"That's something that HTML may eventually be able to do but
it has a long way to go. Flash will pioneer those most advanced cases
like HD feature-rich cinema graphic content that needs to be
copy-protected."
Ideally of course the end user will not notice, or even care, that the web is being powered by a new updated set of code.
If HTML5 does its job properly, no-one outside the web development community will ever know about it!
Wiki
HTML5 is a markup language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, and is a core technology of the Internet originally proposed by Opera Software.[1] It is the fifth revision of the HTML standard (created in 1990 and standardized as HTML4 as of 1997)[2] and, as of May 2012,
is still under development. Its core aims have been to improve the
language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily
readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices (web browsers, parsers, etc.). HTML5 is intended to subsume not only HTML 4, but XHTML 1 and DOM Level 2 HTML as well.[2]
Following its immediate predecessors HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, HTML5
is a response to the observation that the HTML and XHTML in common use
on the World Wide Web are a mixture of features introduced by various
specifications, along with those introduced by software products such as
web browsers, those established by common practice, and the many syntax errors in existing web documents.[citation needed] It is also an attempt to define a single markup language
that can be written in either HTML or XHTML syntax. It includes
detailed processing models to encourage more interoperable
implementations; it extends, improves and rationalises the markup
available for documents, and introduces markup and application programming interfaces (APIs) for complex web applications.[3]
For the same reasons, HTML5 is also a potential candidate for
cross-platform mobile applications. Many features of HTML5 have been
built with the consideration of being able to run on low-powered devices
such as smartphones and tablets. In December 2011 research firm
Strategy Analytics forecast sales of HTML5 compatible phones will top 1
billion in 2013.[4]
In particular, HTML5 adds many new syntactical features. These include the new , and elements, as well as the integration of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) content that replaces the uses of generic
ASTRI collaborates with Imperial College London to develop next generation power efficient Body Sensor Network
(Hong Kong and London, 8 May 2012) With rapid
development in physiological sensors and wireless communication
technologies in recent years, many researchers, doctors and marketers
are pursuing after Body Sensor Network (BSN) as a new enabling
technology for healthcare, sports and other applications. However,
before it can be fully exploited, increasing power efficiency of sensors
and front-end analog ICs remains to be one of the biggest challenges.
To meet the needs of the emerging BSN market, Hong Kong Applied Science
and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) is partnering with the Hamlyn
Centre, Imperial College London to jointly develop a new ultra low
power BSN sensing platform for the Elite Sports Performance in Training
(ESPRIT) Programme. The Hamlyn Centre at Imperial is one of the world
leading research centers in BSN technologies. It has developed a number
of on-node and analog processing algorithms, sensors and techniques for
accurate detection of abnormalities and events while minimizing power
consumption. The ESPRIT Programme is an EPSRC (Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council) and UK Sport jointly funded programme for
developing pervasive technologies for sports, wellbeing and healthcare
applications (http://www.esprit-sport.org).
In this joint project, ASTRI will integrate the College’s analog
intelligent processing front end and ASTRI’s low power, high resolution
ADC, DAC with ARM core into a mixed-signal platform SoC implemented
with 0.18µm CMOS. ASTRI will also develop application modules to be used
as development platform for BSN applications and end products. The
Innovation and Technology Commission in Hong Kong supports this joint
initiative.
The SoC when successfully developed can be used for a variety of
applications related to healthcare, wellbeing and sport training. Its
ultra low power processing feature makes it ideal for applications in
wearable devices to ensure reliable and continuous remote monitoring of
physical condition. It can potentially be used in sophisticated
implantable medical devices such as cardiac pacemaker to improve the
abnormality detection and extend the longevity of the artificial devices
in human body. Other applications include motion sensing, security and
location finding etc.
Mr David Kwong, Vice President and R&D Director, IC Design Group of
ASTRI said: “I am very pleased that ASTRI could embark on such a
meaningful project with a top research centre like Imperial. I am
confident that with ASTRI’s expertise in portable mixed-signal IC design
and the College’s leading-edge sensing technologies, we can come up
with a good solution to help realizing the full potentials of wireless
body sensor network.”
Dr. Benny Lo, from the Hamlyn Centre at Imperial College London
said, “Tiny, implantable body sensors could quite literally
revolutionize the way we monitor the health and wellbeing of those
living with chronic health conditions. Through more effective,
unobtrusive monitoring of vital signs, it could lead to more responsive,
personalized treatments and a better quality of life for patients.
Dr. Lo continued, “That is why it is so important to collaborate
with our partners at ASTRI. Together, we will be able to make
improvements to the underpinning technology behind these sensors, which
could mean that they could be implemented in healthcare in the near
future.”
Imperial organizes this year’s International Conference on Wearable
and Implantable Body Sensor Networks (BSN 2012), providing a platform
for industry and academia to share insights and exchange ideas. At the
upcoming BSN 2012 which will be held on 9 to 12 May 2012 in London, Mr
David Kwong from ASTRI will deliver a talk on the topic “Imperial and
ASTRI’s integrated low power analog front end for BSN and multi-axis
g-sensor applications”. For more information, please visit http://www.bsn2012.org/.
倫敦帝國學院Hamlyn
Centre 盧秉禮博士表示:「微細、植入式的人體傳感器可以徹底改變我們監察慢性長期病患者健康情況的方法。利用更有效和不刻意的方法深測生理狀況,
令患者可得到更適當和更切合個人需要的治療,從而過更美好的生活」盧博士續稱:「所以我們十分重視今次和應科院的合作,相信我們可以將這項嶄新的傳感技術
發揚光大,在不久將來應用在醫療保健方面。」