125th Anniversary Issue: Science Online Special Feature

125th Anniversary Issue: Science Online Special Feature: "In a special collection of articles published beginning 1 July 2005, Science Magazine and its online companion sites celebrate the journal's 125th anniversary with a look forward -- at the most compelling puzzles and questions facing scientists today. A special, free news feature in Science explores 125 big questions that face scientific inquiry over the next quarter-century; accompanying the feature are several online extras including a reader's forum on the big questions. The Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment highlights some classic Science papers that have influenced the study of cell signaling. The Science of Aging Knowledge Environment looks at several important questions confronting researchers on aging. And Science's Next Wave introduces us to four young scientists building their careers grappling with some of the very questions that Science has identified."

Visually Impaired acess Web

The Net is revolutionizing how we access information. I wonder how the visually handicapped are impacted by this. Technology should help them access this beautiful resource. This thought occured when I was reading something on the 'captcha'  technique to prevent spamming.

More :
" Captchas based on reading text — or other visual-perception tasks — prevent visually impaired users from accessing the protected resource. However, captchas do not have to be visual. Any hard artificial intelligence problem, such as speech recognition, can be used as the basis of a captcha. Some implementations of captchas permit users to opt for an audio captcha. The development of audio captchas appears to have lagged behind that of visual captchas, however, and presently may not be as effective."

" A Screen Reader software application reads aloud information displayed on a computer monitor screen. The screen reader reads aloud text within a document, and it also reads aloud information within dialog boxes and error messages. Screen Readers also read aloud and menu selections, graphical icons on the desktop. Recent upgrades are much better reading aloud information on the World Wide Web. "

" What is a braille display ? [link]
A braille display is a tactile device consisting of a row of special 'soft' cells. A soft cell has 6 or 8 pins made of metal or nylon; pins are controlled electronically to move up and down to display characters as they appear on the display of the source system - usually a computer or braille note taker. Soft braille cells have either 6 or 8 dot pins depending on the model. Advanced braille code features 8 dot braille, but most will probably only use the 6 dot code. Dots 7 and 8, if present. can be used to show the position of the cursor in the text or for European 8 dot braille. They can also be used for advanced maths work and for computer coding. "

Google QR

There are a lot of cool Google tips and hacks floating around, some of which I've mentioned in my weekly e-column. (For example, you can use Google as a dictionary by typing "define:ersatz," or whatever.)

But here's a nice, tidy list of all of them in one place, some of which are new to me. Bookmark this baby!

Socks on, rocks off | The Other Side | Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au (22-06-2005)

Socks on, rocks off | The Other Side | Breaking News 24/7 - NEWS.com.au (22-06-2005): "PEOPLE find it easier to have an orgasm when they are wearing socks in bed, surprised Dutch scientists have discovered.
Draughts in the scanning room left couples complaining of 'literally cold feet', and providing a pair of socks allowed 80 per cent, rather than 50 per cent, to reach a climax while being scanned.

The same study showed that men and women experience sexual pleasure in strikingly different ways, the first brain scans taken during orgasm show.

While male brains focus heavily on the physical stimulation involved in sexual contact, this is just one part of a much more complex picture for women, scientists in The Netherlands have found.

The study found the key to female arousal seems rather to be deep relaxation and a lack of anxiety: direct sensory input from the genitals plays a less critical role.

The scans show that during sexual activity the parts of the female brain responsible for processing fear, anxiety and emotion start to relax and reduce in activity.

This reaches a peak at orgasm, when the female brain's emotion centres are effectively closed down to an almost trance-like state."

AppleInsider | Flash drives in future Apple laptops?

AppleInsider | Flash drives in future Apple laptops?: "Samsung hopes that falling prices for flash-memory chips will mean solid-state memory can eventually replace hard-disk drives in Apple PowerBooks and iBooks as well as other devices, Macworld UK is reporting. "

Wuxia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wuxia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "Wǔxi� (also Wu Xia) (Traditional Chinese: 武俠; Simplified Chinese: 武侠 pronounced 'woo-shyah') literally meaning 'martial arts chivalry', is a distinct genre in Chinese literature and cinema. Wuxia figures prominently in the popular culture of all Chinese-speaking areas, and the most important writers have devoted followings.

The wuxia genre is confined and peculiar to Chinese culture, because it is a unique blend of the martial arts philosophy of xia (俠, 'chivalry', 'a chivalrous man or woman') developed down the centuries, as well as the country's long history in wushu. Samurai bushido traditions share some aspects with Chinese martial xia philosophy, but there is nothing exactly equivalent to the Chinese concept of xia within even East Asian cultures like Japan and Korea. Although the xia or 'chivalry' concept is often translated as 'knights', 'chivalrous warriors' or 'knight-errants', most xia aspects are so rooted in socio- and cultural milieu of ancient China that it is impossible to find an exact translation in the Western world."

USATODAY.com - Tsunami aid helps U.S. image, but resentment lingers

USATODAY.com - Tsunami aid helps U.S. image, but resentment lingers: "The United States' highest favorable rating came from India: 71%. The lowest was from Jordan: 21%."

Jhumpa_lahiri_The_Namesake

Jhumpa_lahiri_The_Namesake: "It is the story of Gogol Ganguli a child of Bengali immigrants to America who hates his first name and doesn’t know what it means. Neither does anyone else. It is later explained that his father named him after a nineteenth century Russian poet. The entire book is based on Gogol’s various failed attempts to change his name.

Like her character Gogol, Jhumpa herself is a child of Indian immigrants to America. She was born to Bengali parents in London from where her parents went to Rhode Island even before she was old enough to sit up.

Her writing career began when she was all of seven. That's the time she started 'co-authoring books' with a classmate during lunch break. Like many others of the Indian diaspora, Lahiri felt she did not belong to America and writing allowed the shy girl child to observe and make sense of things around her without having to participate.

After winning the Pulitzer Prize, Lahiri told Newsweek, ' We were always looking back so I never felt fully at home here. There's nobody in this whole country that we're related to. India was different---our extended family offered real connections. To see my parents as children, as siblings, was rare."

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Mirza woos and wins British press

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Mirza woos and wins British press: "The Sun says that Ms Mirza appeared after the match wearing a t-shirt bearing the words: 'Well-behaved women rarely make history'.

'I was telling myself to keep cool,' The Sun quotes her as saying, ' but I still lost my temper once.'

While other newspapers did not give Ms Mirza such prominent coverage, the coverage was no less complimentary.

The Independent refers to her as a 'talented debutante' while the Daily Telegraph says that Svetlana Kuznetsova frequently found her Indian opponent's 'booming ground strokes too hot to handle' before calling on her greater experience to squeeze through."

Pagerank Explained Correctly with Examples

Pagerank Explained Correctly with Examples: "Page Rank is a topic much discussed by Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts. At the heart of PageRank is a mathematical formula that seems scary to look at but is actually fairly simple to understand.

Despite this many people seem to get it wrong! In particular “Chris Ridings of www.searchenginesystems.net” has written a paper entitled “PageRank Explained: Everything you’ve always wanted to know about PageRank”, pointed to by many people, that contains a fundamental mistake early on in the explanation! Unfortunately this means some of the recommendations in the paper are not quite accurate."

Brain Sees Violent Video Games as Real Life - Study - New York Times

Brain Sees Violent Video Games as Real Life - Study - New York Times: "Mathiak found that as violence became imminent, the cognitive parts of the brain became active and that during a fight, emotional parts of the brain were shut down.

The pattern was the same as that seen in subjects who have had brain scans during other simulated violent situations.

It suggests that video games are a ``training for the brain to react with this pattern,'' Mathiak says.

The research was presented at a meeting in Canada and reported by New Scientist magazine.

Whether violent videos make people more aggressive though is hard to prove, the magazine noted. Studies have suggested players of violent games are in fact more aggressive but have left open the question of whether the games made them that way."

BBC NEWS | Technology | Paper's 'wikitorial' trial halted

BBC NEWS | Technology | Paper's 'wikitorial' trial halted: "US newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, has temporarily ended its short-lived trial which gave readers the chance to edit its editorials on its website.

The online version of the paper started its 'wikitorial' experiment last week. It was meant to give readers a 'voice'.

It was suspended after it was bombarded with inappropriate material. But the paper said it might try the idea again.

Wikis, from the Hawaiian 'wiki wiki' meaning 'quick', let people collectively change or add to webpages.

They have spawned collectively written encyclopedias, cookbooks and other publications.

In a statement, The LA Times said the wikitorial would stay offline while it looked at what happened and how to prevent it from happening again.

It said: 'We thank the thousands of people who logged onto the Wikitorial in the right spirit.'"

The 11-Year-Old Wife - New York Times

The 11-Year-Old Wife - New York Times: "On average, a woman is raped every two hours in Pakistan, and two women a day die in honor killings.

While Ms. Mukhtaran and Dr. Shazia have attracted international support, most victims in Pakistan are on their own. Earlier this year, for example, police reported that a village council had punished a man for having an affair by ordering his 2-year-old niece to be given in marriage to a 40-year-old man.

In another case this year, an 11-year-girl named Nazan was rescued from her husband's family, which beat her, broke her arm and strung her from the ceiling because she didn't work hard enough.

Then there are Pakistan's hudood laws, which have been used to imprison thousands of women who report rapes. If rape victims cannot provide four male witnesses to the crime, they risk being whipped for adultery, since they acknowledge illicit sex and cannot prove rape."

Conjuring an Imaginary Friend in the Search for an Authentic Self - New York Times

Conjuring an Imaginary Friend in the Search for an Authentic Self - New York Times: "The book, about an 8-year-old girl with an eerie imaginary friend, attracted gleaming reviews and buzz in Britain after its initial publication in January. Ms. Oyeyemi was called 'astonishing' in a review in The London Sunday Telegraph and 'extraordinary' by The Financial Times, which said she could claim a place among Amos Tutuola, Chinua Achebe and Ben Okri, all English-language Nigerian-born writers. Now, the soft-spoken 20-year-old Ms. Oyeyemi is looking forward to the American release of 'The Icarus Girl,' which is being released today in the United States by Nan A. Talese/Doubleday.

'I guess I don't really believe it's happening,' she said of her splashy debut during a recent interview in New York. She recalled obsessively writing 'The Icarus Girl' at her parent's computer on weekends, after school and in the middle of the night. She likened it to being in love. She rushed the first 20 pages off to an agent whose name she plucked from a directory of agents."

Longtail -Typepad

"I'm Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired Magazine. I wrote The Long Tail, which first appeared in Wired in October 2004 and will become a book, published by Hyperion, in early 2006.

The Long Tail is about how our economy and culture is shifting from mass markets to million of niches. The term refers to the yellow part of the sales chart at left, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to hard goods. The vertical axis is sales; the horizontal is products. The red part of the curve is the 'hits', which have dominated our markets and culture for most of the last century. The yellow part is the non-hits, or niches, which is where the new growth will come.

The article (and the forthcoming book) is about the effect of the technologies that have made it easier for consumers to find and buy niche products, thanks to the 'infinite shelf-space effect'--the new distribution mechanisms, from digital downloading to peer-to-peer markets, that break through the bottlenecks of broadcast and traditional bricks and mortar retail."

Questions & Answers: Start from scratch

Questions & Answers: Start from scratch: "Scratch has been known since the middle of the eighteenth century as a sporting term for a line scratched on the ground that acted as a boundary line or starting point. The first example in the Oxford English Dictionary actually relates to cricket and indicated the crease, the line drawn in front of the stumps where the batsman stands. "

The Long Tail: Why Social Software Makes for Poor Recommendations

"In other words, the assumption that there's a correlation between the people I like and the products I like is a flawed one. To use an analogy, Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, famously uttered this truism (now known as Joy's Law): 'No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.' The same might be said of recommendations. No matter who you are, someone you don't know has found the coolest stuff."

Credit card breach exposes 40 million accounts | CNET News.com

Credit card breach exposes 40 million accounts | CNET News.com: "a study commissioned by Adobe Systems and RSA Security found that eight out of 10 'senior-level professionals' in Washington, D.C., thought that lawmakers weren't doing enough to keep consumer data safe.

In the United States, MasterCard cardholders are protected against unauthorized transactions on their accounts. If cardholders believe their cards were used fraudulently, they should contact their bank, MasterCard said.

Credit card holders should monitor their accounts online for fraud, Javelin Strategy & Research's Van Dyke advised. 'For identity fraud, the individual cardholder is most likely the first who will discover it,' he said."

Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers - New York Times

Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers - New York Times: "IT would be an oversimplification to say that America's culture wars are now between people of faith and nonbelievers. People of faith are not of one mind, whether on specific issues like stem cell research and government intervention in the case of Terri Schiavo, or the more general issue of how religion relates to politics. In recent years, conservative Christians have presented themselves as representing the one authentic Christian perspective on politics. With due respect for our conservative friends, equally devout Christians come to very different conclusions."

EXPLORE: Twenty Questions - Dictionary of Games

EXPLORE: Twenty Questions - Dictionary of Games: "# Game theory suggests that the information (as measured by Shannon's entropy statistic) required to identify an arbitrary object is about 20 bits. The game is often used as an example when teaching people about information theory. Mathematically, if each question is structured to eliminate half the objects, twenty questions will allow the questioner to distinguish between 220 or 1,048,576 objects. Accordingly, the most effective strategy for Twenty Questions is to ask questions that will split the field of remaining possibilities roughly in half each time. The process is analogous to a binary tree search algorithm in computer science."

Dictionary.com/parsimony

Dictionary.com/parsimony: "par��si��mo��ny Audio pronunciation of 'parsimony' ( P ) Pronunciation Key (p��rs-mn)
n.

1. Unusual or excessive frugality; extreme economy or stinginess.
2. Adoption of the simplest assumption in the formulation of a theory or in the interpretation of data, especially in accordance with the rule of Ockham's razor."

Second Amendment to the United States Constitution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Text of the Second Amendment
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

alternatively

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

BBC News | SCI/TECH | Listen to public, says Dolly scientist

"The leading genetic scientist involved in the cloning of Dolly the Sheep has called on his colleagues to take note of public concerns about the progress of genetic science.
Professor Ian Wilmut led a team at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh that led to the birth of Dolly, the first cloned mammal, in 1996. She was revealed to the public following year.
Speaking at a seminar on public confidence in biomedical science at the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Prof Wilmut warned there was a danger in missing scientific opportunities because of public fears and misunderstandings.
He said research projects should continue to be innovative and ambitious or there would be a 'real danger' of missed opportunities.
But he added: 'We must deal with the public's concerns in order to get their support, not only through charitable donations but also in Parliament in supporting their MPs."

Dolly the sheep - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"The sheep named Dolly (July 5, 1996 - February 14, 2003) was the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from an adult cell. She was created at the Roslin Institute in Scotland and lived there until her death nearly seven years later. Scientists did not announce her birth until February 22, 1997, however.

The name 'Dolly' came from a suggestion by the stockmen who helped in the process, in honour of Dolly Parton, (parton) because the cloned cell was a mammary cell [1] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_769000/769915.stm). The particular technique that was made famous by her birth, is somatic cell nuclear transfer, in which the nucleus from one of the donor's non-reproductive cells, is placed into a de-nucleated embryonic cell (which is then coaxed into developing into a fetus). When Dolly was cloned in 1996 from a cell taken from a 6 year old ewe, she became the centre of a controversy that still continues today.

On April 9, 2003 her stuffed remains were placed in state at Edinburgh's Royal Museum of Scotland."

BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Teleporting' over the internet

BBC NEWS | Technology | 'Teleporting' over the internet: "Professors Todd Mowry and Seth Goldstein of Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania think that, within a human generation, we might be able to replicate three-dimensional objects out of a mass of material made up of small synthetic 'atoms'.

Cameras would capture the movement of an object or person and then this data would be fed to the atoms, which would then assemble themselves to make up an exact likeness of the object.

They came up with the idea based on 'claytronics,' the animation technique which involves slightly moving a model per frame to animate it."

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Teleportation goes long distance

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Teleportation goes long distance: "Physicists have carried out successful teleportation with particles of light over a distance of 600m across the River Danube in Austria.

Long distance teleportation is crucial if dreams of superfast quantum computing are to be realised.

When physicists say 'teleportation', they are describing the transfer of key properties from one particle to another without a physical link.

The team has published its findings in the academic journal Nature." [furled]

Dictionary.com/SILVER BULLET

Dictionary.com/SILVER BULLET: "silver bullet
n.

1. An infallible means of attack or defense.
2. A simple remedy for a difficult or intractable problem: “There is no single silver bullet or panacea that will solve all the problems of Bay Area schools” (San Francisco Chronicle).
"

Pak player eyeing India

Pak player eyeing India: "MOHAMMED ESSA is considered the finest talent Pakistan football has seen in recent years, but the 22-year-old striker is not happy with the tag of being the number one footballer in the country. 'I am no doubt the team's top player, but am still an unknown face in Pakistan sports,' says Essa with a wry smile.

"

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Oxfam pays $1m tsunami aid duty

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Oxfam pays $1m tsunami aid duty: "British charity Oxfam has had to pay the Sri Lankan government $1m in import duty for vehicles used in tsunami reconstruction work.

Paperwork had kept the 25 four-wheel drive vehicles idle in the capital, Colombo, for a month.

The Sri Lankan government told the BBC News website the aid had been duty-free until the end of April but was now needed to prevent 'market distortions'."

German words in English

German words in English: "To my surprise an encreasing number of German words find their way into the English language (both in Britain and the US). So the German language still has some vitality in that it has coined terms which are more precise than those in the lingua franca English." [furled]

China chipmaking to explode through '08 | CNET News.com

With so much capacity in China, design centers in India can look at fabless IC development.

China chipmaking to explode through '08 | CNET News.com: "Twenty new chip-fabrication facilities will be built in China between now and the end of 2008, according to a report, a situation that will be good for semiconductor equipment manufacturers but may create problems for chipmakers.

At this rate, China will likely increase its output of chips faster in relative terms than other nations, according to the report from the Semiconductor Equipment and Materials Institute, a trade group representing equipment manufacturers."

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The most talked about economic conference ever?

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The most talked about economic conference ever?: "Since G8 first met the blog world, in 2003, the blog's influence has spread: from Oxfam, whose Generation Why blog intersperses news on Make Poverty History with scintillating titbits like the survey which tells us that 'young people today want to be 'ethical' rather than 'chavvy', right through to the capitalist think tank the Adam Smith Institute, which has been blogging with little faith in either Live 8 musicians or G8 politicians, and with even less hope that their own recommendations become part of the debate:

"

BBC NEWS | Business | 'Son-of-Concorde' plans unveiled

BBC NEWS | Business | 'Son-of-Concorde' plans unveiled: "Japan and France are to work together to develop a successor to the retired supersonic jet aircraft Concorde.

Companies from the countries will split an investment of $1.84m (£1.01m) a year for research over the next three years, Japan's trade ministry said."

AMD Details Early Quad-Core Plans

AMD Details Early Quad-Core Plans: "Going forward, AMD executives said the company's progress will be defined by metrics such as 'throughput per watts per dollars,' backed by specific technologies that it will try to establish as industry standards rather than following rival Intel Corp.'s lead.

'We believe the purpose of our company is to reinvent the dynamics of the microprocessor industry,' said Hector Ruiz, president, chairman and CEO of Advanced Micro Devices Inc."

Eponymous adjectives in English

List of eponymous adjectives in English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "An eponymous adjective is an adjective which has been derived from a the name of a person, real or fictional. Persons from whose name the adjectives have been derived are called eponyms.

Following is a list of eponymous adjectives in English.


* Christian — Jesus Christ
* Dickensian — Charles Dickens
* Draconian — Draco
* Elizabethan — Queen Elizabeth I
* Faustian — The character Faust, written about by Goethe and others"

Chanakya

Encyclopedia: Chanakya: "Chanakya (c.350 - c.275 BC) also known as Kautilya is one of the earliest known political thinkers and king makers in the literal sense of the word. Seeking revenge for being thrown out of the court of the ruler of Magadha, Chanakya took a promising young boy of ten (Chandragupta Maurya) from the streets and brought him up to become one of the greatest emperors of India, which at that time was divided into several states and kingdoms."