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NASA is funding a 3D food printer, and it'll start with pizza
I cannot resist this. I will make up some reason why it is the most important digital advance of the year later. I just think you should know that NASA wants to be able to print pizza, and that there is a basic diagram of how to do this now, in the world, and that is where we live.NASA is funding research into 3D-printed food. Mechanical engineer Anjan Contractor received a $125,000 grant from the agency to build a prototype 3D printer with the aim of automating food…
7 Things Libraries Can Do with Google Glass - OEDB.org
Every technology’s good and bad points are mirrors of one another, because both come from our use rather than from the gear.Google Glass has been getting a lot of attention lately. It was recently demoâd at the SXSW conference and it just finished up its Explorer Edition contest which challenged would-be early adopters willing to pay $1,500 &
The Groundbreaking Technology Set To Revolutionize Privacy and Terrify Governments
For the past few months, some of the world
Man Leaves Internet; Is Still Himself – Whatever
John Scalzi, writer and long-term blogger, turns out to be very much the same person without the Internet. Um. Yes.
"When Raine started doing brain scans of murderers in American prisons, he was among the first researchers to apply the evolving science of brain imaging to violent criminality. His most comprehensive study, in 1994, was still, necessarily, a small sample. He conducted PET [positron emission tomography] scans of 41 convicted killers and paired them with a “normal” control group of 41 people of similar age and profile. However limited the control, the colour images, which showed metabolic activity in different parts of the brain, appeared striking in comparison. In particular, the murderers’ brains showed what appeared to be a significant reduction in the development of the prefrontal cortex, “the executive function” of the brain, compared with the control group."
On genes possibly playing a role in identity and brain formation - which might mean, again, that the concern about digital technology and brain formation is over-egged.
"Unfortunately, researchers have found that it’s incredibly easy to reverse-engineer the communication protocol (PDF) of these radio transmissions and use that information to hack the [pacemaker] implant."
Via arstechnica.
Twitter Acquires Big Data Visualization Startup Lucky Sort, Service To Shutter In Months Ahead | TechCrunch
Big Data continues to flourish in the commercial mainstream.Lucky Sort, a Portland, Oregon-based startup behind a visualization and navigation engine called TopicWatch that helped to discover patterns in live data streams, has been acquired by Twitter. Terms of the deal were not immediately available, but the company has announced via its website that it..
Let's Fight Big Pharma's Crusade to Turn Eccentricity Into Illness | Wired Opinion | Wired.com
Re DSM-5 and diagnostic hyperinflation, but also Ken Robinson on creativity.We are homogenizing our crops and homogenizing our people. And Big Pharma seems intent on pursuing a parallel attempt to create its own brand of human monoculture. With an assist from an overly ambitious psychiatry — given tomorrow’s impending release of the DSM-5 — all human difference is being transmuted into chemical imbalance meant to be treated with a handy pill. Turning difference into illness was among the great strokes of marketing genius accomplished in our time.
To encourage creativity, Mr Gove, you must first understand what it is
In case you haven’t already seen it, here’s a link to Ken Robinson’s superb RSAnimate… We have to start making policy based on modern understandings. For example: we know that smart crowds make great decisions, but can be horribly polluted by team voting. So why do we continue to allow a whip system in parliament?Ken Robinson: The education secretary’s new national curriculum is a dead hand on the creative pulse of teachers and students alike
This looks like business as usual: policy-based evidence-making on the part of a government minister. Except, I suppose, that he doesn’t seem to be bothering with making evidence, just forging ahead with a policy based on opinion which no shares (2).
3-D Printed Ear Made From Calf Cells and Nanoparticles 'Hears' Radio Frequencies | Wired Design | Wired.com
I keep seeing this stuff and thinking that about two years ago I’d have guessed it was ten years out, if not more.Nanotechnology engineers from Princeton have 3-D printed an ear from calf cells and silver nanoparticles that picks up radio signals at frequencies beyond human capacity. The creation is part of their greater plan to one day build spare parts for human cyborgs.
More from Salena Godden.
Springfield Road: a good morning poem: The Whale in the Cherry Blossom
The Whale in the Cherry Blossom We start work at 4am down dark dream mines, around the back of the internet, blossom snowing, pink slush in the gutter, the dawn sky, the grey-colour of a whales smile in a deep sea duvet. It is going to be a magnificent day, I… Poet Salena Godden touches on social media.
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DSM-5 threatens to turn the current diagnostic inflation into future hyper-inflation.
My advice — the best protection against wild over-diagnosis is to ignore DSM-5. It is not official. It is not well done. It is not safe. Don’t buy it. Don’t use it. Don’t teach it.
"(Allen Frances is a professor emeritus at Duke University and was the chairman of the DSM-IV task force.)
From Huffington Post.
DSM-5 is the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual to acknowledge “Internet Addiction” - a condition I’m deeply uncertain about for reasons I’ve already discussed elsewhere. So I was very interested by this latest salvo in the debate about medicalisation and diagnostic hyperinflation - which also brings to mind Sir Ken Robinson’s wonderful RSAnimate talk about education, in which he touches gently on treating kids as patients.
Brain-to-brain interface lets rats share information via internet
Just in case you hadn’t entirely hoisted on board that we live in a world of insane possibility: this is the first serious experiment I know of to demonstrate direct brain-to-brain networking. And I will admit, I did not see that one coming. If you’d asked me last year, I would have said “2030” and made a hopeful face.Rats thousands of miles apart collaborate on simple tasks with their brains connected through the internet
