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| Termite-Inspired Air Conditioning | | | |
The TERMES project, organized by Rupert Soar of Loughborough University, is digitally scanning termite mounds to map the three dimensional architecture in a level of detail never achieved before. This computer model will help scientists understand exactly how the tunnels and air conduits manage to exchange gases, maintain temperature, and regulate humidities. The designs may provide a blueprint for self-regulating human buildings.
An Afghan schoolgirl serves during a volleyball tournament in Herat province, the first there since the overthrow of the Taleban in 2001. [source]
In India, a businessman looking for a chauffeur might ask his friend, who might ask his chauffeur. Such connections provide a kind of quality control. The friend's chauffeur, for instance, will not recommend a hoodlum, for fear of losing his own job.
To re-create this dynamic online, Babajob pays people to be "connectors" between employer and employee. In the example above, the businessman's friend and his chauffeur would each earn the equivalent of $2.50 if they connected the businessman with someone he liked.
The model is gaining attention, and praise. A Bangalore venture capitalist, when told of Babajob, immediately asked to be put in touch with Mr. Blagsvedt. And Steve Pogorzelski, president of the international division of Monster.com, the American jobs site, said, "Wow" when told of the company. "It is an important innovation because it opens up the marketplace to people of socioeconomic levels who may not have the widest array of jobs available to them."
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In fact, Japan produces so many unusual inventions that it even has a word for them: chindogu, or "queer tools." The term was popularized by Kenji Kawakami, whose hundreds of intentionally impractical and humorous inventions have won him international attention as Japan's answer to Rube Goldberg. His creations, which he calls "unuseless," include a roll of toilet paper attached to the head for easy reach in hay fever season, and tiny mops for a cat's feet that polish the floor as the cat prowls.
[NYT]
In 2006, Henrik Christensen, founder of the European Robotics Research Network, predicted that people will be having sex with robots within five years, and Levy thinks that's quite likely. There are companies that already sell realistic sex dolls, "and it's just a matter of adding some electronics to them to add some vibration," he said, or endowing the robots with a few audio responses. "That's fairly primitive in terms of robotics, but the technology is already there."
My Brain running wild
If this became very common wouldn't you rather have this machine as a partner and not go through all the pains that you need to go through to make a relationship work. What if it is the pain that makes the relationship that much more special. Well then we could always go back. Its not as if these robots can take us over. So the software running on them has to clearly be some form of AI thing. So each of these machines will develop their own character. We could have small boxes like iPods called the "iSoul" which would carry the entire personality of the wife robot. We would have to buy new bodies for these Souls every new Year or so. You could take your wife's iSoul and plug it in your car. Maybe not, that sounds a bit too weird. The wireless technologies should be strong enough to access my iSoul which is docked from anywhere in the globe. So then I dont have to baby-sit and control all that iSoul does.
Hell if someone hacks into my iSoul ?? But whats the fun if I completely control the experiences that iSoul is exposed to. Maybe iSould should be able to connect to something like 2ndLifee and enrich her own experiences.
The new life form will depend for its ability to replicate itself and metabolise on the molecular machinery of the cell into which it has been injected, and in that sense it will not be a wholly synthetic life form. However, its DNA will be artificial, and it is the DNA that controls the cell and is credited with being the building block of life. [ ..Guardian article]
While rape has always been a weapon of war, researchers say they fear that Congo's problem has metastasized into a wider social phenomenon.
"It's gone beyond the conflict," said Alexandra Bilak, who has studied various armed groups around Bukavu, on the shores of Lake Kivu. She said that the number of women abused and even killed by their husbands seemed to be going up and that brutality toward women had become "almost normal."
The last common ancestor of humans and chimps lived perhaps as
recently as 5 million years ago, definitely more recelntly than the
comon ancestor of chimps and orang-utans, and perhaps 30 million
years more recently than the common ancestor of chimps and monkeys.
Chimpanzees and we share moere than 99% of our genes. If, in various
forgotten islands around the world, survivors of all intermediated
back to the chimp/human common ancestor were discovered, who can
doubt that our laws and our moral conventions would be profoundly
affected, expecially as there would presumably be some interbreeding
along the spectrum? Either the whole spectrum would have to be
granted full human rights (Votes for Chimps), or there would have to
be an elaborate apartheid-like system of discriminatory laws, with
courts deciding whether particular individuals were legally 'chimps'
or legally 'humans' ; and people would fret about their daughter's
desire to marry one of 'them;. I supose the world is already too well
explored for us to hope that this chastening fantasy will ever come
true. But anybody who thinks that there is something obvious and self-
evident about human 'rights' should reflect that it is sheer luck
that these embarrassing intermediates happen not to have survived.
Alternatively, maybe even if chimps hadn't been discovered until
today they would be seen as the embarrassing intermediates.
Rajan >> The idea being explored is that if we consider some non-
humans with common ancestors as humans, as cousins then why apply a
separate moral code for them.
In his genetics laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, Vilain's findings have pushed the field toward not only improved technical understanding but more thoughtful treatment as well. "What really matters is what people feel they are in terms of gender, not what their family or doctors think they should be," Vilain says. Genital ambiguity occurs in an estimated one in 4,500 births, and problems such as undescended testes happen in one in 100.
If a nation is to be an amalgamation of various cultural communities, does it then have to rely on a nationalism as the only source of a common identity for its citizens. Is that a strong enough identity to pull people together even during times of peace ? <http://www.khaleejtimes.com/ColumnistHomeNew.asp?section=noamchomsky&col=yes>
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This is not yet another film on Kashmir. It does not highlight gun-toting terrorists, those pretty green gardens, the breathtaking Dal Lake, houseboats and chinar trees.
It digs deep into the "real problems" of food, shelter and economics of the local people living in areas beyond the Dal Lake.
The places that were never shown in films claiming to be on Kashmir and its problems, joys and sorrows. And these are the places where displaced and frightened Kashmiris actually live. [http://hindujobs.com/thehindu/fr/2005/07/22/stories/2005072202720300.htm ]
My 2 cents :The situation of people in Kashmir is so similar to the situation of people in West-Bank or Gaza, isn't it? A father wants to provide for his family. A kid wants a normal upbringing where he plays Cricket or Football and not "throw stones at the Jew". Young people want to fall in love and live freely. All these thoughts and desires are muffled by the rat-a-tat of the guns and the extreme calls of various religions. Complex human societies where people specialized, elected governments looked out for broader good, laws were agreed upon for convenience on an average, also seem to beget parasites who exploit the workings of the system to maximize personal benefits of very few. Did stricter enforcement of laws in settings of organized religion intend to prevent this corruption of the members? I don't think so. Most of them seem to evolve as solutions to personal well-being rather than as solutions to societal problems.
What if, with the help of technology we can evolve a society where all information is very very easily accessible in the most convenient and easy to use formats ? Would this push societies to evolve in directions where violent transgressions are penalized, because ultimately it does not benefit the human race and thus the majority of the world.
I didnt know this fact about Anklesaria being his wife's maiden name .... I think it is amusing. I was a regular reader of his ToI column in India. Also the fact that he is Mani Shankar Aiyar's brother.
Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar is a noted Indian economist and journalist. An alumnus of The Doon School and St Stephen's College, he is currently consulting editor of The Economic Times, India's leading financial daily that is part of Bennett, Coleman & Co, the same company that owns The Times Of India. Swaminathan Aiyar also writes a popular column titled, "Swaminomics" in the Times of India where he discusses economic issues pertaining to India and the world. Mr Aiyar is also a consultant with the World Bank and has published several papers with Bank officials. He was also, for many years, the India correspondent of The Economist.
Anklesaria is Mr Aiyar's second wife's maiden name and he claims to have taken on this name to exhibit some sort of equality where men will take on their wives names if wives take on their husbands. His wife, Shahnaz, is a Parsi.
Mr Aiyar hails from Tamil Nadu and is a Brahmin Iyer. However he is an Atheist by faith. Mr Aiyar's elder brother, Mani Shankar Aiyar is a politician and serves as Minister for Panchayati Raj in the Indian government. Mr Aiyar has 3 children, Pallavi, Shekhar and Rustom.
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swaminathan_Aiyar ]
mmediately after an amoeba turned right, it was twice as likely to turn left as right again, and vice versa, they told a meeting of the American Physical Society meeting in Denver, Colorado, last week. This suggests that the cells have a rudimentary memory, being able to remember the last direction they had just turned in, says Robert Austin, a biophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the study.
Such memories might be laid down because of the way the cell moves. To turn, an amoeba extends part of its body in the preferred direction, which creates a scar made of protein down that side of the cell. The scar might make the cell temporarily more likely to move in the opposite direction. For the amoeba, the pay-off is that it avoids travelling in circles and hence can search a larger area.
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Nowhere was solitude more available than on a long drive, especially at night; and it seems to me that my generation was defined by the open road, and the accompanying hope that a promise lay at the end of it. The almost trance-like experience of driving down the soft tunnel of a dark highway at night was something I relished. At most, there would be the distant red lights of a car far ahead, and always the murmur of the glowing radio, the hiss of the tires and, at a certain speed on narrower roads, the fizzing past of telephone poles with their rhythmic whiplash.
Late at night, in most places I knew, there was almost no traffic and driving, a meditative activity, could cast a spell. Behind the wheel, gliding along, I was keenly aware of being an American in America, on a road that was also metaphorical, making my way through life, unhindered, developing ideas, making decisions, liberated by the flight through this darkness and silence. With less light pollution, the night sky was different, too — starrier, more daunting, more beautiful.
[.. NYT]Thanks [Andy Sullivan ]
