Observatory

Viagra as Diet Pill? One Day, Perhaps

By DOUGLAS QUENQUA

Published: January 28, 2013

New evidence suggests that the erectile-dysfunction drug Viagra might have another use: helping burn away excess fat.

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Chris Gash

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The drug, generically known as sildenafil, helped convert undesirable white fat cells to energy-burning beige fat cells in laboratory mice, researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany report in The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

It was already known that mice fed Viagra became less prone to obesity when fed a high-fat diet. What was not clear was why.

Dr. Alexander Pfeifer, director of the university’s Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology, said he already had some clues: Viagra works by preventing the degradation of the intercellular messenger cGMP. Dr. Pfeifer has long been testing the effects of cGMP on fat cells.

So he fed the drug to mice for seven days and monitored their fat cells. As it turned out, the troublesome white fat cells, which are associated with human problems like the dreaded spare tire, were being converted to the beneficial type of fat cells at a higher rate than usual. Dr. Pfeifer called the results “very promising.”

Still, he cautions against taking the drug purely for dieting purposes. “The idea to have one pill and then obesity goes away, that is a dream, but not easy to come by,” he said. “What we are up to is basic research in mice. This pill is approved by the F.D.A. for a particular purpose for a reason.” 

半導體應用的下一個目標是「人體」

半導體的應用範圍不斷擴大，下一個目標是「人體」

2013/01/28 00:00

官方微博： 新浪微博 騰訊微博 搜狐微博 網易微博

       【日經BP社報導】對於已經開闢出多種用途的半導體技術來說，尚未開拓的應用領域之一就是人體。可模仿大腦活動進行靈活的運算處理，或者由晶片刺激神經以抑制疾病的發作——這類與人體相關的技術開發越來越活躍。

通過固體元件製作神經元和突觸 「IEDM 2012」上不斷出現通過CMOS電路實現神經通路中神經元功能的成果，以及通過ReRAM存儲元件實現突觸功能的成果。（圖：（a）由本刊根據史丹佛大學等的資料製作，（b）由本刊根據南韓光州科學技術學院等的資料製作）

       在2012年12月的「IEDM（International ElectronDevices Meeting）2012」上，三家研究機構相繼發佈了通過CMOS電路和可變電阻式記憶體（ReRAM），再現由神經細胞（Neuron，神經元）和突 觸（Synapse）構成的神經通路的成果。這是一次利用固體元件實現像大腦一樣具有學習功能，可根據輸入資訊靈活改變構造的運算電路的嘗試。

       ReRAM存儲元件具有電阻值根據載入電壓逐漸變化的性質。該性質類似於決定資訊存儲強度的突觸結合強度，隨著在突觸間交換的信號轉導量而 發生變化的現象。也就是說，如果將ReRAM存儲元件當做突觸的話，可以與起到神經元作用的CMOS電路組合使用，製作出擁有學習功能的運算電路。南韓光 州科學技術學院（Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology）等研發小組根據這個思路，開發出了可通過學習進行圖案識別的半導體電路。

       在將於2013年2月舉行的「ISSCC（International Solid-State Circuits Conference）2013」上，台灣研發小組將發佈可即時檢測癲癇的發作情況並刺激神經，從而抑制癲癇發作的SoC（System on a Chip）。晶片面積不到14mm²，支援無線供電，可嵌入體內使用。（記者：大下 淳一，《日經電子》）

■相關報導
IBM試製認知計算晶片，再現人腦構造

DNA存儲檢索系統

歐洲科學家展示DNA存儲檢索系統

英國《金融時報》 克萊夫•庫克森 報導

科學家們展示了一套運行成功的DNA存儲和檢索系統，並稱，遺傳學可能提供了儲存大量人造資料的最佳選擇。

位於劍橋的歐洲生物資訊研究所(European Bioinformatics Institute, EBI)的一個團隊開發了這種新方法，以滿足存儲數位化時代產生的海量電子資料的巨大挑戰。硬碟之類的現有技術是昂貴的，並且需要電力供應，而磁帶和磁片等替代存儲介質會隨著時間的推移而惡化。

EBI的DNA資料存儲方案源自科學家尼克•戈德曼(Nick Goldman)和厄溫•伯尼(Ewan Birney)在漢堡一個酒吧喝啤酒時迸發的創意，這種存儲工具不僅持久耐用而且體積非常小。EBI團隊使用一個DNA樣本的化學字母（G、A、T和C）對幾段由0和1組成的數位內容進行編碼。這些內容相當於近1百萬位元組的資料，包括聲音、圖片和文字。

科學家們估計，一杯DNA可以存儲1億小時的高清晰度視頻。經過30億年的進化，這些DNA能夠可靠保持遺傳信息。

“我們已經知道DNA是一種存儲資訊的可靠方法，因為我們可以從猛獁象的骨中提取DNA，歷經數萬年後，這些DNA仍能有效傳遞遺傳信息，”戈德曼博士表示。“它還令人難以置信地小和密集，而且不需要任何電源，因此便於運輸和保管。”

DNA代碼通過電子郵件發送給加利福尼亞州的生物技術公司安捷倫(Agilent)，由其製成實體的DNA分子，然後將經過冷凍乾燥處理後得到的粉末郵寄回劍橋。“結果看起來就像一小撮灰塵，”安捷倫的艾米莉•勒普羅斯特(Emily Leproust)表示。

使用一台DNA閱讀機，EBI能夠以100%的準確性重建原始數位資料。這些資料包括馬丁•路德•金(Martin Luther King)的“我有一個夢想”演講、EBI實驗室的一張照片、莎士比亞所有十四行詩的文本，以及沃森(Watson)和克裏克(Crick)有關DNA“雙螺旋”結構的知名論文。

其他研究人員以前也曾使用DNA存儲數位資料，包括去年為一本書編碼的哈佛大學(Harvard University)的一個研究小組。但戈德曼表示，EBI的系統率先糾正數位和DNA代碼之間的轉換錯誤，而且能夠擴大規模，用於實際的檔案存儲。這項研究成果發表于《自然》(Nature)雜誌。

伯尼和戈德曼計畫研發一套在商業上可行的DNA資料庫，在這個資料庫中，1克DNA可以安全存儲相當於100萬張CD的資料，有效存儲時間超過1萬年。雖然具體細節仍有待研究，但一個檔案庫也許能夠用小瓶裝的DNA灰塵儲存海量資料，每個小瓶都有一個編碼在DNA中的索引系統，以幫助檢索個別文檔。

SAP Just Gave a Major Blow to IBM, Oracle and Microsoft

By SiliconIndia  |   Monday, 14 January 2013,

Bangalore: SAP has announced that its in-memory database HANA is now compatible to accept and run the software maker’s all business applications. This announcement is certainly a major blow to SAP’s rivals like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft who, according to analysts,  will need several years to achieve what SAP has accomplished.

Elaborating on the accomplishment, SAP has introduced a new technology that allows a single database to perform both business analysis and transactions at the same time. This is the first time that such a technology is being introduced into the main stream. On the other hand, rivals like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft still are able to provide only by using two databases.

"It's the only in-memory DBMS (database management system) that can do data warehousing and transactions in the same database,” said Gartner analyst Donald Feinberg. “That's where it's unique."

The technology is exceptionally advantageous, especially for SAP customers. SAP has proved that customers who use HANA powered applications can speed up their sales process dramatically, as from now onwards there is no need of wasting time on waiting for the information.

-----

 

An in-memory database (IMDB; also main memory database system or MMDB) is a database management system that primarily relies on main memory for computer data storage. It is contrasted with database management systems which employ a disk storage mechanism. Main memory databases are faster than disk-optimized databases since the internal optimization algorithms are simpler and execute fewer CPU instructions. Accessing data in memory reduces the Disk seek when querying the data which provides faster and more predictable performance than disk.^[1][2]

In applications where response time is critical, such as telecommunications network equipment and mobile advertising networks, main memory databases are often used.^[3] IMDBs have gained a lot of traction, especially in the Data analytics space, starting mid 2000s mainly due to cheaper RAMs.^[4][5]

Rights Group Reports on Abuses of Surveillance and Censorship Technology

 

Rights Group Reports on Abuses of Surveillance and Censorship Technology

By JOHN MARKOFF January 17, 2013

A Canadian human rights monitoring group has documented the use of American-made Internet surveillance and censorship technology by more than a dozen governments, some with harsh human rights policies like Syria, China and Saudi Arabia.
The Citizen Lab Internet research group, based at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, used computer servers to scan for the distinctive signature of gear made by Blue Coat Systems of Sunnyvale, Calif.

It determined that Egypt, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates employed a Blue Coat system that could be used for digital censorship. The group also determined that Bahrain, China, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Malaysia, Nigeria, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Turkey and Venezuela used equipment that could be used for surveillance and tracking.

The authors said they wanted to alert the public that there was a growing amount of surveillance and content-filtering technology distributed throughout the Internet. The technology is not restricted from export by the State Department, except to countries that are on embargo lists, like Syria, Iran and North Korea.

“Our findings support the need for national and international scrutiny of the country Blue Coat implementations we have identified, and a closer look at the global proliferation of dual-use information and communications technology,” the group noted. “We hope Blue Coat will take this as an opportunity to explain their due diligence process to ensure that their devices are not used in ways that violate human rights.”

A spokesman for Blue Coat Systems said the firm had not seen the final report and was not prepared to comment.

In 2011, several groups, including Telecomix and Citizen Lab, raised concerns that Blue Coat products were being used to find and track opponents of the Syrian government. The company initially denied that its equipment had been sold to Syria, which is subject to United States trade sanctions.

Shortly afterward, Blue Coat reversed itself and acknowledged that the systems were indeed in Syria, but it said that the devices had been shipped to a distributor in Dubai, and said that it thought that they had been destined for the Iraqi Ministry of Communications.

The Citizen Lab research project was led by Morgan Marquis-Boire and Jakub Dalek. Mr. Marquis-Boire, a Google software engineer, has during the last year been involved in a variety of research projects aimed at exposing surveillance tools used by authoritarian regimes. He said that he carefully segregated his work at Google from his human rights research.

Last year, Mr. Marquis-Boire used computer servers to identify the use of an intelligence-oriented surveillance software program, called FinSpy, which was being used by Bahrain to track opposition activists.

On a hunch last month, the researchers used the Shodan search engine, a specialized Internet tool intended to help identify computers and software services that were connected to the Internet. They were able to identify a number of the Blue Coat systems that are used for content filtering and for “deep packet inspection,” a widely used technology for detecting and controlling digital content as it travels through the Internet.

The researchers stressed that they were aware that there were both benign and harmful uses for the Blue Coat products identified as ProxySG, which functions as a Web filter, and a second system, PacketShaper, which can detect about 600 Web applications and can be used to control undesirable Web traffic.

“I’m not trying to completely demonize this technology,” Mr. Marquis-Boire said.

The researchers also noted that the equipment does not directly fall under the dual-use distinction employed by the United States government to control the sale of equipment that has both military and civilian applications, but it can be used for both political and intelligence applications by authoritarian governments.

“Syria is subject to U.S. export sanctions,” said Sarah McKune, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab. “When it comes to other countries that aren’t subject to U.S. sanctions it’s a more difficult situation. There could still be significant human rights impact.”

The researchers also noted that a large number of American and foreign companies supplied similar gear in what Gartner, the market research firm, described as a $1.02 billion market in a report issued in May 2012.

The researchers said that some American security technology companies, like Websense, had taken strong human rights stands, but had declined to grapple with the issue of the possible misuse of the technology.

中國網絡審查技術：美國製造？

JOHN MARKOFF 報道 2013年01月17日

加拿大一家人權觀察機構發佈報告稱，有十多個國家的政府採用美國公司開發的互聯網監視和審查技術進行網絡監控，其中包括一些有着嚴苛人權政策的國家，比如敘利亞、中國和沙特阿拉伯。
這家名為“公民實驗室”(Citizen Lab)的互聯網研究機構位於多倫多大學(University of Toronto)的蒙克全球事務學院(Munk School of Global Affairs)。研究人員採用計算機服務器掃描了步立康系統公司(Blue Coat Systems)所製造的設備的專用簽名。步立康系統公位於美國加利福尼亞州的森尼韋爾(Sunnyvale)。

Thor Swift for The New York Times

摩根·馬奎斯-博伊爾與雅各布·達勒克共同領導"公民實驗室"的研究計劃。

多倫多大學蒙克全球事務學院的雅各布·達勒克。

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結果確認，埃及、科威特、卡塔爾、沙特阿拉伯和阿拉伯聯合酋長國採用了一種步立康生產的可以用來進行數字審查的系統。該研究機構還發現，巴林、中 國、印度、印度尼西亞、伊拉克、肯雅、科威特、黎巴嫩、馬來西亞、尼日利亞、卡塔爾、俄羅斯、沙特阿拉伯、韓國、新加坡、泰國、土耳其和委內瑞拉採用了可 以用來進行監視和追蹤的設備。
研究人員稱，他們希望警告大眾，互聯網上遍布着越來越多的監視和內容過濾技術。這些技術不受美國國務院的出口限制，除了敘利亞、伊朗和朝鮮等已在禁運名單中的國家。
“我們的發現證明，美國和國際社會有必要審查我們發現的採用步立康系統的國家，還有必要更密切地關注軍民兩用類的信息和通訊技術的全球擴散，”該機構稱。“我們希望，步立康抓住這次機會，解釋公司的盡職調查過程，從而保證他們的設備不被用於違反人權的領域。”
步立康的發言人稱，公司尚未看到最終報告，因而不準備予以評論。
2011年，包括“電子公社”(Telecomix)和“公民實驗室”在內的數個組織擔憂地表示，步立康的產品被敘利亞政府用於查找和追蹤反對派。一開始，步立康否認自家設備出售到了美國貿易制裁名單上的敘利亞。
不久之後，步立康轉變立場，承認有一些系統設備確實在敘利亞，但公司稱這些設備運送給了迪拜的一家分銷商，他們本以為最終的客戶是伊拉克通信部。
“公民實驗室”研究項目由摩根·馬奎斯-博伊爾(Morgan Marquis-Boire)和雅各布·達勒克(Jakub Dalek)牽頭。馬奎斯-博伊爾是谷歌公司(Google)的一名軟件工程師，去年參與了旨在揭露威權政權採用的監控工具的一系列研究項目。他稱自己小 心地將谷歌的工作與人權研究區分開來。
去年，馬奎斯-博伊爾採用計算機服務器發現了一款名為FinSpy的軟件程序的使用跡象。FinSky是以搜集情報為目的的監控軟件，被巴林用來追蹤反對派活動人士。
上個月，研究人員突發奇想，使用了Shodan搜索引擎。這種專業互聯網工具旨在協助指認聯網的計算機及軟件服務。他們發現，許多步立康的系統被用來進行內容過濾和“深度包檢測”。“深度包檢測”技術被廣泛用於監測和控制互聯網中流轉的電子內容。
研究人員強調，他們明白步立康的產品ProxySG和PacketShaper都可以用於好壞兩個方面。ProxySG的功能是網絡過濾，而PacketShaper系統不僅可以監測約600個網絡應用程序，還可以用來控制令人不快的網絡流量。
“我不是要全盤妖魔化這種技術，”馬奎斯-博伊爾說。
研究人員也注意到，這種設備並不完全符合美國政府的“兩用”定義，但它可以被威權政府用於政治和情報目的。美國政府施行“兩用”分類來控制既可以軍用、又可以民用的設備的銷售。
“公民實驗室”高級研究員薩拉·麥丘恩(Sarah McKune)說，“敘利亞適用於美國的出口制裁措施。但是，涉及到不適用於美國制裁措施的那些國家，情況就更艱難，這些設備還是會在那些地方對人權產生嚴重影響。”
研究人員還注意到，大量的美國和海外公司在這個巨大的市場中供應類似設備。跟據市場研究公司高德納(Gartner) 2012年5月發佈的一份報告，這一市場價值10.2億美元（約合63億元人民幣）。
研究人員稱，一些像網感公司(Websense)這樣的美國安全技術公司，雖然人權立場強硬，但也不願糾纏於技術可能被濫用的問題。

翻譯：黃錚

Air conditioning

研究：冷氣可提升生產力

2013-01-15 Web only 作者：經濟學人

1950年以前，波斯灣海岸線一帶的居民不到50萬，如今此區的居民已經多達2000萬，主因即為人造的冷空氣。不過，許多批評者 認為冷氣並非奇蹟，而是個詛咒，它浪費資源、帶動氣候變遷並破壞的臭氧層。但另一方面，許多研究亦顯示冷氣可以提升生產力，也可以降低熱浪來襲之際的死亡 率。

不過，地球的健康又怎麼樣呢？美國冷氣的總用電量比整個非洲的用電量都要高，聽起來很嚇人，但05年美國家庭總用電量中，冷氣仍舊只佔8%，暖氣佔了41%，製造熱水則佔了20%。此外，美國家庭平均用電30年來都沒有增加。
但窮國收入增加也帶起了美國式的冷氣潮流；1995至2004年間，中國城市家庭擁有冷氣的比例從8%增至70%，由於中國電力約70%仍舊來自燃煤電廠，任何增加用電量的東西，在全球暖化方面造成的傷害也特別嚴重。
所幸冷氣也變得更有效率。過去30年裡，己發展國家的冷氣規範變嚴格，已經讓新冷氣機的能源效率提升了一倍。如果技術革新能避免使用氟里昂等冷卻劑就更好了，就算是汙染度較低的冷卻劑，溫室效應也是二氧化碳的2000倍。
冷氣亦非降低室內溫度的唯一方式，例如在屋頂灑水等。此外，在室內種植植物、能將熱能傳至地面的地板也都能降溫。風扇和網格式坐椅也能減低人體的不適，畢竟，真正的目標不是減低建築內的溫度，而是讓人能有涼爽的感覺。（黃維德譯）
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013

No sweat

Air conditioning

By The Economist
From The Economist
Published: January 15, 2013

Artificial cooling makes hot places bearable—but at a worryingly high cost.
Jan 5th 2013 | DUBAI | from the print edition

SUMMER humidity in the Gulf often nears 90%. Winds are scant. Even in the shade the heat hovers far above the body's natural temperature. No wonder that before 1950, fewer than 500,000 lived along the whole 500-mile southern littoral. Now, rimmed by the mirrored facades of office towers, gleaming petrochemical works, marinas, highways, bustling airports, vast shopping malls and sprawling subdivisions of sumptuous villas, it is home to 20m people. Their lives are made possible by "coolth"—artificially cooled air.

Yet a chorus of critics counts air conditioning as more a curse than a miracle. Though food refrigeration is an unquestioned part of modern civilisation, chilling a room causes sniffiness. In his book "Losing our Cool" Stan Cox, a polemical plant scientist, blamed it for "resource waste, climate change, ozone depletion and disorientation of the human mind and body". In 1992 Gwyn Prins, a Cambridge University professor, called "physical addiction" to cooled air America's "most pervasive and least noticed epidemic".
Puritans sometimes forget that air conditioning was invented with the efficiency of machines, not the comfort of people, in mind. An early success came in 1902, at a printing plant in Brooklyn, New York, where shrinkage of paper due to humidity meant that differently coloured layers of ink could not be properly aligned. By the 1920s air conditioning had spread to public spaces such as cinemas and department stores. Their trade used to slump in the heat-sodden summer. With cool air indoors, it boomed. The same technology that cools the air also cleans it: the dust-free environments for high-tech manufacturing require air conditioning.

People fare better, too. A study of government typists in 1950s America found that air conditioning raised productivity by a quarter. On factory floors it cut absenteeism and stoppages. "Air-Conditioning America", a book by Gail Cooper, cites a 1957 survey in which 90% of American firms named cooled air as the single biggest boost to their productivity. The late Nelson Polsby, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, suggested that air conditioning reshaped American politics, by enabling the migration of Republican pensioners to the Sun Belt. That helped break the long-standing Democratic lock on southern politics.

A mapping project devised by William Nordhaus, an economist at Yale, revealed more proof that heat wilts economies. Using a global grid system to escape the biases of national data, he identified an almost linear correlation between mean annual temperatures and productivity per head. People in the coolest climes, he found, generate 12 times the economic output of those in the hottest. Far fewer people live at those extremes than in middling climate zones, but even in the crowded temperate band of the globe, the difference in output between hotter and cooler places was big.

Cooling also lowers mortality. In studies of what epidemiologists quaintly call a "harvesting effect", summer heatwaves have been shown to cause sudden rises in the number of deaths from cardiovascular, respiratory and cerebrovascular disease. A 2006 survey of six South Korean cities, for instance, indicated that a rise of just 1°C over normal summer peak temperatures prompted a rise of between 6.7% and 16.3% in mortality from all causes. On the hottest days during a 2003 heatwave in Spain, according to a health-ministry survey, the increase over normal mortality rates was around a quarter.

Live cool and long
Studies of heatwaves in American cities during the 1980s and 1990s observed that a good predictor for falling ill was poverty, and specifically a lack of air conditioning in the home. Surveys since then suggest that the dramatic fall in the number of Americans who sicken or die during heatwaves is a direct result of widening air-conditioner ownership, from 68% of American households in 1993 to nearly 90% today. An academic paper on deaths in Chicago related to a 1999 heatwave concluded bluntly that "the strongest protective factor was a working air conditioner."

A statewide study of summer admissions to hospital in California, published in 2010, adjusted for household income, found that for each 10% increase in ownership of air conditioning there was an absolute reduction in cardiovascular disease of 0.76%, and of respiratory disease by 0.52%, for people over 65. For places less blessed than California, where risks include insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, or high levels of toxic particulate matter in the air, the benefits of wider air-conditioning use could be far greater.

But what about the health of the planet? America uses more electricity for cooling than Africa uses for everything, notes Mr Cox. Hotter summers and larger homes helped American energy consumption for air conditioning to double between 1993 and 2005. Cooling buildings and vehicles pumps out almost half a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.

That sounds a lot. Yet air conditioning still only accounted for 8% of household power consumption in 2005, according to the most recent comprehensive survey by America's Energy Information Agency. That compares with 41% for heating, and 20% for making hot water, the necessity of which is seldom contested. (Significantly, overall energy use per American household has not risen in 30 years, because of things like better insulation and more efficient gadgetry.) Air conditioning is more energy-intensive than heating. But people use less of it. The shift in America's population from northern to southern states has cut the nation's total energy bill.

Yet rising incomes in poor countries are associated with American-style spending on air conditioning there. Between 1995 and 2004 the proportion of homes in Chinese cities with air conditioning rose from 8% to 70%. Asia already accounts for more than half the global air-conditioning market, and China alone for 70% of production. Sales of air conditioners there, boosted by government schemes that also encourage purchase of more efficient models, have rocketed. Global warming will further stoke demand. Research in the Netherlands (see chart) by Morna Isaac and Detlef van Vuuren reckons that energy demand for air conditioning will rise forty-fold this century.

Given that dirty coal-fired plants still produce some 70% of China's current energy output, anything that stokes its electricity consumption is particularly damaging in global-warming terms. But with the use of air conditioners rising inexorably, their share in energy consumption is rising too, with the added trouble that heatwaves bring sudden spikes in use, meaning that spare capacity has to be built in to provide for summer peaks in power demand. The big blackouts over swathes of India in the summer of 2012 were widely blamed on its burgeoning middle class's desire to keep cool. That may be unfair: though air-conditioning certainly stokes demand, political meddling in the power industry hampers its ability to keep the current flowing.

Thankfully for lovers of coolth, air conditioning is becoming more efficient. In the past 30 years, more stringent standards for air conditioners in developed countries have more than doubled the energy efficiency of new units. For decades, air conditioning has used the same compressor technology that runs refrigerators. But Coolerado, an American company, claims to have cut energy costs by 90%, using only water as a coolant: its devices feature specially designed plastic plates that chill by evaporation. They blast half the air, sodden and warm, back outside and send the rest, cool and dry, inside. The machines can even be solar powered (though their thirsty habits may not suit all hot places).

Conventional air conditioning has to overcool the air in order to rid it of moisture. This dehumidifying is the most expensive part of the process. An Israeli-founded firm called Advantix is one of a number of companies using "liquid desiccant" technology: it forces air through a strong brine solution which sucks out the moisture. Advantix says its machines cut energy consumption by half. Using plentiful night-time energy to iron out daytime peaks can work, too. A Californian company has a product called Icebear that makes and stores ice cheaply at night to cool buildings during the day.
]
Such changes are even more beneficial if they avoid using refrigerant chemicals such as freon. These air-conditioning coolants leak into the atmosphere and are among the more potent greenhouse gases. Even less polluting coolants that have widely replaced earlier kinds produce warming effects that are 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide's. International protocols have only slowly phased out the worst, ozone-eating gases. But in the meantime, much slow-to-replace old equipment in rich countries, as well as factory-fresh units in poor ones, still rely on older pollutants which are, to boot, still smuggled in large quantities to countries where they are meant to be banned.

What may be harder to mitigate are the subtler negative impacts that air conditioning has had on the environments where people live and work. Since the 1940s, climate control has prompted architects to lower ceilings and scrap such pleasant features as balconies and porches, which leak costly cooled air into the outside world. Instead of being spaced to allow air to circulate, or being built around courtyards, buildings have tended to be boxlike and tightly packed together. That can create "heat canyons" where each building's air-conditioning unit runs at full throttle in a futile race against its neighbours. In the sprawling conurbations of the American South, as in the Gulf and cities such as Singapore, people seeking company find fewer free communal open spaces, and are herded instead into commercialised indoor venues such as shopping malls.

Fan dances
Perhaps the most ambitious response to such problems comes from Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think-tank that promotes energy efficiency. He argues that a combination of thoughtful design and new technology can minimise or even eliminate the need for air conditioning. His approach starts with architecture: avoiding dark-coloured external surfaces, using trees and other shade providers, and installing proper insulation and modern windows that let in light but reflect heat. These may be expensive to install, but hugely cut the need for cooler air—and hence the cost of providing it.

Nor is air conditioning the only way to lower the temperature indoors. Spraying water on a roof provides natural chill through evaporation, as do draught towers. "Many civilisations mastered these arts millennia ago," Mr Lovins notes. A profusion of indoor plants help cool a room, as do cleverly designed floors that conduct heat into the ground. Modern fans and mesh chairs can reduce the sensation of uncomfortable heat: the aim, after all, is to cool people, not buildings. For all that, the millions who have experienced the invigorating blast of cold, dry air on a hot muggy day will be loth to abandon it.
from the print edition | International
©The Economist Newspaper Limited 2013

「國際消費電子展 2013」

後智慧手機時代來臨
〔編 譯魏國金、記者陳炳宏／綜合報導〕全球最大規模科技展「國際消費電子展」8日在美國拉斯維加斯豋場，美國消費電子協會（Consumer Electronics Association）首席經濟學家杜布拉瓦克（Shawn Dubravac）在會前指出，智慧手機在日常生活中的應用，正進入「非通信活動」為主的「後智慧手機時代」。
杜布拉瓦克表示，「我認為，我們正進入後智慧手機時代。」現在消費者花在智慧手機上的時間，高達65％是在諸如健康、娛樂的應用程式或其他活動的「非通信活動」。智慧手機儼然成為使用者的數位生活中樞，而非僅是通信器材。
學者︰手機成數位生活取景器
他表示︰「我們不僅遠離了電話功能，也離開了通信做為這些器材首要功能的時代，因此，它不僅是一支通信器材，智慧手機變成了數位生活的取景器。」這是該科技展被專注的關鍵趨勢之一。
另一個趨勢是為智慧手機、平板電腦、電腦、電視等而研發的高密度螢幕。由於人們擁有較高品質的螢幕，他說︰「我們將要求高解析影像，這將對各種網路服務產生影響。」除多家廠商將展出大尺寸電視外，據悉還會有百吋大電視現身。
大會在揭幕前公布30類產品的創新獎，華碩共有15項產品獲獎，包括無線手持產品創新獎—PadFone 2變形手機，與行動運算裝置產品創新獎—太極雙螢幕筆電，堪稱國內參展廠商的最大贏家。
國際消費電子展 在美創意拚場
今 年最佳創新獎幾乎都由外國廠商包辦，包括MONEUAL的觸控餐桌，可在桌上點餐、付費、還可直接上網；APEX HD+內建HD攝影鏡頭的滑雪眼鏡，則可以Wi-Fi無線傳輸，將滑雪者影像傳到智慧手機。另有具備智慧手機所有功能的VUZIX智慧眼鏡M100，讓眼 鏡變身為就像是免持聽筒的藍芽耳機。
此外，MONEUAL得獎產品還包括失聰保健錶，可將生活周遭的聲音，如電話鈴聲、汽車喇叭聲或與人交談聲辨識後，轉成文字秀在手錶上，對聽障人士十分實用。
樂 高集團推出的「智慧積木」Mindstorms機器人套件組，也是另一個受到矚目的焦點。Mindstorms EV3售價350美元（約1萬150台幣），透過藍芽無線連結可與iPhone、iPad及iPod互動，樂高玩家可利用上述器材遙控他們的機器人，或設 計簡單程式，發送給機器人，以控制其行動。
Mindstorms EV3配備「雙眼」紅外線感應器，可接收小型紅外線遙控器發送的訊號，並加以定位。套件組包含機器蛇藍圖，機器蛇可利用眼睛去感應是否有人靠近其頭部，若有將發動攻擊。

Bono on How Technology Can Transform the World

 http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/508771/bono-on-how-technology-can-transform-the-world/

Bono on How Technology Can Transform the World

The musician and activist explains how technology provides the means to help us eradicate disease and extreme poverty.

Bono with Bill Clinton in New York City in 2011; with Steve Jobs in San Jose, California, in 2004; and with nurse Abena Wonka at a community clinic in Accra, Ghana, in 2006.

• By Brian Bergstein on January 2, 2013

• 4 comments

To say that Bono is the lead singer of the rock band U2 is like saying that Thomas Edison invented the record player: it leaves out a lot of biography. The 52-year-old Irishman (born Paul Hewson) is also a technology investor and an activist who cofounded the ONE and (RED) organizations, which are devoted to eradicating extreme poverty and AIDS. He has spent years urging Western leaders to forgive the debts of poor nations and to increase funding for AIDS medicines in Africa.

Bono answered questions over e-mail from MIT Technology Review’s deputy editor, Brian Bergstein, about the role technologies—from vaccines to information services—can play in solving our biggest problems.

It’s 2013, and millions of people are still short of food or proper medical care. Have technologists overpromised? 
The tech that’s been delivered has been staggering in its measurable achievements. For example, antiretrovirals, a complex 15-drug AIDS regimen compressed into one pill a day (now saving eight million lives); the insecticide-treated bed net (cut malaria deaths by half in eight countries in Africa in the last three years); kids’ vaccinations (saved 5.5 million lives in the last decade); the mobile phone, the Internet, and spread of information—a deadly combination for dictators, for corruption.
But to maximize the massive effect technology can have, you need a network of efforts, a system of interventions, supported by citizens who share social capital. That’s what drives substantial progress sustainably. There is no silver bullet to ending extreme poverty and disease, no magic technology. That takes commitment, a lifetime of it, plus resources, political will, and people standing up to demand it. Technology provides the means, however.

What should be the role of technology in making a better world? Are some problems beyond its reach, like poverty?
Technology has already helped tackle extreme poverty in Africa. Extreme poverty is the empirical condition of living on under $1.25 a day. Nelson Mandela once demanded we be the “great generation” to beat extreme poverty, noting how we have the technology and resources to achieve this extraordinary vision. And we do. We could achieve it by 2030, maybe before. The digital revolution that we are living through, the rapid advances in health and agrotechnology—these things have become core weapons in responding to Mandela’s clarion call. They enable people to get on with it themselves, to fight their way out of the condition they find themselves in. In Africa, things are changing so rapidly. What’s been a slow march is suddenly picking up pace in ways we could not have imagined even 10 years ago. Innovations like farmers using mobile phones to check seed prices, for banking, for sending payments … to the macro effect we saw with the Arab Spring thanks to Facebook and Twitter.

But people can use technology for bad as well as good. The social systems and the social capital within networks must be strong and positive to nurture a progressive use of technology. Let’s be honest.

“With data informing our course we can describe the kind of world we want to live in and then without airy-fairyness or wishful thinking go after it.”

You admired Steve Jobs. Did he make the world better or just make nice computers?
I think a large part of the reason Apple and Steve Jobs have beguiled so many is that they are a gigantic company that put greatness ahead of the bottom line, believing that great profitability would follow in the long term. Steve was an extremely tough deal maker, and if that was the only side you saw, I can imagine that a more fearsome profile would emerge. But the reason why I, and others who got a glimpse of him personally, were such believers was his clear thinking. Great ideas to me are like great melodies. They are instantly recognizable, memorable, and have some sort of inevitable arc. In the music world, it’s hard to imagine there being a better melody to “I want to hold your hand.” In the tech world, it’s hard to imagine there being any better form or function to a lot of Apple’s products. It’s as if they’ve always existed. It’s that kind of inevitability Steve could spot. With Jony Ive’s designs, with Avie ­Tevanian’s operating systems, etc. In amongst the noise, the yearning for that clear tone, or in Apple’s case, pure white.

He told me he would love to spend more time on philanthropy and would get to it one day. He wasn’t interested in half doing it, as is obvious with his personality. Still, Apple very quietly has contributed more than $50 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria through the sale of (RED) iPods, Nanos, etc. They are the biggest corporate donor. Tim Cook is passionate about this stuff. By attaching themselves to what is, in recessionary times at home, an unpopular emergency (people dying in far-off places because they can’t afford AIDS drugs), he and Apple have really helped to keep the heat on the issue.

Bono and Senator Barack Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington in 2006.

If you had a budget equivalent to the one that put astronauts on the moon, what problems would you try to solve?
There’s an exciting thought. The Apollo program in its day was 4 percent of the federal budget. All U.S. overseas assistance is just 1 percent, with 0.7 percent going to issues that affect the poorest people. I believe that extreme poverty is the biggest challenge we have. That term is a complex one, but on many aspects, we know what works. For example, with Apollo-level resources, you could finish the job on HIV/AIDS. Get rid of it, done. Malaria too. You could vaccinate every kid against deadly diseases we in the West hardly think about. You could boost farming productivity in Africa, which is twice as effective at reducing poverty as anything else. Lastly, you could kick-start electrifying Africa. Electricity means small businesses can function and hire people, medicines can be refrigerated, kids can study after the sun sets. Electrifying Africa would inspire the kind of economic development that would mean, eventually, they wouldn’t need our 4 percent or 1 percent. Aid is just a bridge, but where there are troubled waters, it’s needed.
I should add that without fighting corruption at the same time as spending the Apollo money, you’d be in danger of tossing it up to the moon. Corruption is deadly, but there’s a vaccine for that too—it’s called transparency. Daylight. It’s much harder to rip people off when they know what’s going on. We can gather and disseminate data in all sorts of ways, giving a whole new meaning to the word “accountability.”

You’ve worked closely with Democrats and Republicans. How can they get more done in a politically polarized atmosphere? 
For nearly 15 years I’ve regularly been a pest in Washington, D.C., first an amateur with some smart company, now a pretty professional one with an army of the best and brightest at the ONE Campaign. From the start I was told how the Capitol had never been so polarized, and how nothing is getting done, parties are pounding each other out of effectiveness, etc. Fifteen years hearing the same thing. But every time I’ve been there, I’ve met with politicians who are willing to rise above that, to reach across the aisle to get things done when it comes to the most vulnerable people on our planet. Their plight lifts people above the negativity, reminds officials why they came to Washington in the first place—to get real things done that help people help themselves. In the last two elections, the world’s poor and foreign aid have not been used as a pawn in the political game. In fact, they’ve been the one thing that candidates can actually agree on. That didn’t just happen. A more savvy media and public demanded it.

How can President Obama best improve the state of the world in his second term?
President Obama has already set a strong course on strengthening food security in poor countries, and he’s built on President [George W.] Bush’s legacy on AIDS. Both of these initiatives need to be accelerated. With global leadership to promote partnerships with poorer countries, and with the right resources, we can end a few things that just don’t belong in the 21st century. Like AIDS, like malaria, like polio.
The president has also championed transparency in the oil, gas, and mineral extraction sector, shedding much-needed light on some of the murkier dealings that go on. Where there is great wealth under the ground in some of the poorest countries, the benefits belong in the hands of all those who live there.
Electrification—that’d be a good use of his leadership. Poorer countries have the advantage of being able to leapfrog, as they’ve done with communications infrastructure. They can do this with more efficient, cleaner forms of tech like geothermal, hydro, solar, carbon capture.

Do you despair? If not, why not?
Like any parent, I wonder what kind of world we’re leaving behind. But I’ve also been blessed to be involved in some great movements that helped bring major challenges—like debt or AIDS or malaria—from the margins to the mainstream. These social movements are the things that make the real difference, people from different walks of life coming together to stand up for what they believe in.  Whether they do it by marching, by writing, by tweeting, by posting, by singing, or by going to jail. It’s hard not to be an optimist when you see what happens when people join forces.
Right now, though, I think things do hang in the balance. I just heard about a report that predicts the world by 2030 will be fracturing further as rising populations and consumption patterns compete over scarce natural resources. That’s a real recipe for conflict and instability. But it’s avoidable. I’m confident we can overcome the worst trends—but only if we get even better at building innovative networks to do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
How might this happen? Collecting more data and more open data so we can drill down further on knowing what to do. Continued technological innovations, no question, on more and more fronts. The connectivity of social media, harnessed for action, not apathy. Hundreds of thousands marched in the “Drop the Debt” campaign, and now an extra 51 million kids in Africa are going to school because of monies freed up by debt cancellation—it’s a staggering number. That wouldn’t have happened without people across the globe demanding it. The tools that technology provides mean we know more and we understand more about previously-thought-unsolvable problems. With this data informing our course we can describe the kind of world we want to live in and then without airy-fairyness or wishful thinking go after it. It’s the greatest opportunity that has ever been offered any generation. Which is the truth. Wow.

Nikolai Luzin

Nikolai Luzin

Maths and the monks

How the name-glorifiers’ influence rippled through intellectual history

Dec 22nd 2012 | from the print edition

ON THE wall of the maths department of Moscow University, there used to be a family tree tracing links—who mentored whom—between dozens of Russian and Soviet mathematicians and scientists of the 20th century. Towards the bottom are some leaders of the Soviet space and nuclear programmes. Near the top is Nikolai Luzin, a brilliant, tortured mathematician, straddling the tsarist and Soviet eras, who was also a devout follower of the name-glorifying movement.
Two scholars—Jean-Michel Kantor, a French mathematician, and Loren Graham, an American philosopher of science—see this as more than a biographical detail. As name-glorifying gathered pace in the twilight of the tsarist world, mathematicians were wrestling with the question of infinity, and with the idea of a set which had an infinite number of constituents. Were all infinite sets the same, or was it possible to speak of multiple infinities, even an infinite number of infinities? French mathematicians got stuck on this question; their Russian counterparts untied the knot and stimulated such rich lines of enquiry as string theory, topology and the possibility of multiple universes.

In their book, “Naming Infinity”, Mr Kantor and Mr Graham argue that Luzin’s religious beliefs—and those of his close friend, the idiosyncratic priest, mathematician and name-glorifier Pavel Florensky—help explain these breakthroughs. As people who believed in the spiritual power of the name of God, the glorifiers felt bold enough to grapple with, and in some sense, pin down the concept of infinity. Their religious faith may have helped them find a path through the old debate between nominalism—the idea that names or sets are just a handy way of bunching things together—and realism, which holds that categories have an objective existence. (Plato was a realist; a famous nominalist was Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, who declared that “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean…”)

Like his theological mentors, Luzin got on the wrong side of authority. In 1936, he was tried for treason; two of his pupils (blackmailed because they were gay) denounced him. He escaped execution but Florensky, tried separately, did not. Until the Soviet Union collapsed, files on Luzin were hard to get. Mentioning him can still cause discomfort in Russian academic circles, where his fate is a dark memory. This year he was rehabilitated by Russia’s Academy of Sciences. Perhaps the monks who inspired him will have a similar vindication.