Readings/Viewings for Exploration 9 research/next week

Links on acid attacks and innocent civilians

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/03/world/asia/pakistan-acid-attack

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/25/opinion/sheppard-malala-schools/index.html

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/22/acid.attacks/index.html?iref=allsearch

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/02/world/meast/cnnheroes-jan-afghan-school/index.html?iref=allsearch

Links on the lingering effects of war on one veteran

http://mediastorm.com/publication/the-marlboro-marine

James Blake Miller and his wife


 

NEXT: Our readings for next Monday, centered around the death this semester of internet activist Aaron Swartz.

The second  one is written by Tim Wu and all the articles have different angles, although they share some common themes.  Notice as you read these the differences between straight journalism, editorial, blogs, friends' sites, and official sources.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/15/tech/web/aaron-swartz-internet

http://mashable.com/2013/03/09/ythey-knew-aaron-swartz/

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/01/everyone-interesting-is-a-felon.html

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/15/opinion/weinberger-aaron-swartz

http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/14/technology/swartz-suicide-depression/index.html

http://www.rememberaaronsw.com/

Reddit founder Aaron Swartz.

Aaron Craft article from ESPN the Magazine

http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball/story/_/id/9014023/ohio-state-point-guard-aaron-craft-earns-wrath-fans-michigan-espn-magazine

Here's the link for those who missed class.

All best,

Mike

Can Wind, Water and Sunlight Power New York by 2050?

from https://dotearth.blogs.nytime.com/

A group of scientists and energy analysts has laid out a path under which New York State could, in theory, eliminate its use of fossil fuels and nuclear power — including for transportation — by 2050. The graph above charts the contributions played by improved efficiency and adoption of renewable electricity sources as well as hydrogen fuel cells (with the hydrogen generated with renewable energy).

According to the researchers’ calculations, New York’s 2030 power demand for all sectors (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, industry) could be met by:

4,020 onshore 5-megawatt wind turbines

12,770 offshore 5-megawatt wind turbines

387 100-megawatt concentrated solar plants

828 50-megawatt photovoltaic power plants

5 million 5-kilowatt residential rooftop photovoltaic systems

500,000 100-kilowatt commercial/government rooftop photovoltaic systems

36 100-megawatt geothermal plants

1,910 0.75-megawatt wave devices

2,600 1-megawatt tidal turbines

7 1,300-megawatt hydroelectric power plants, of which most exist

 If would like to watch a long video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRXDYC3TnG4

short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdNcKwPoALA

 Can Wind, Water and Sunlight Power New York by 2050?

Big Data Is Opening Doors, but Maybe Too Many

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/24/technology/big-data-and-a-renewed-debate-over-privacy.html?ref=technology&_r=0


                        
                                                 

This article talks about the future of technology in regards to data. with the way technology is evolving its hard to keep our personal information private. They talk about in the future putting tags on certain kinds of code that mainly would deal with personal information that would all have to be registered and  all violation of that would be punnished. i think this is a great idea because with technology advancing so quickly its going to be hard to protect yourself against theft unless you yourself keep up with cutting edge technology.

Dashboard Phone Mount

"A Sticky Dashboard Mount That Holds Any Phone"

This article is about a device meant to be placed on the dashboard of a car to hold a smart phone and keep it from flying around while the car is moving. I find this kind of device amusing in the same way that the hush-a-phone from our book was amusing. It is probably a useful device but seems silly. I typically keep my phone in my purse while driving, some people keep them in their pockets, and most cars have nifty little nooks and crannies around the radio and temperature controls which work well for holding cellphones. I disagree with the articles statement the device is "as simple as simple can be" because my boyfriend has an item with a similar purpose which is definitely more simple. On his dashboard is an approximately index-card sized rectangle of rubber that he simply sits his phone on when he drives. I have included below a picture of the most similar device I could find in Google Images. (Does anyone else recognize the amusingly outdated phone in the picture?) However, even this one is fancier and larger than the one in my boyfriend's car.

food for thought

Here is the link







Ever think about the movie eagle and how the computer can think like a human? Do you wonder how close we really are to this technology? Well we have made another step closer to this goal. Henry Markram and his team have been dumping data into a supercomputer the size of four vending machines. in this machine all the microchips are connected to each other simulating around 10,000 neurons just like the human brain. The project Blue Brain was awarded a grant of 1.3 billion dollars and given ten years to research and perfect this science. its gonna help considering the super computer costs 10 million.

 To me this technology it crazy. I'm an engineering student and know how hard programing can be i can only imagine the process for this computer. But its cool to think think that this technology could help us understand how the mind works. It also scares me to think what this information could be used for.  
    

Cell Therapy Shows Promise for Acute Type of Leukemia

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/health/altered-t-cell-therapy-shows-promise-for-acute-leukemia.html?ref=science

 



This picture is of Emma Whitehead, a 7-year-old girl that had the new form of treatment. Emma is now in remission, or in other words a temporary recovery. This is an amazing feat considering her condition was nearly fatal before the new treatment. Emma is just one example of the amazing result/recovery from this new form of treatment.  

                                           

This article explains a new form of treatment for acute types of Leukemia. It genetically alters a person's white blood cells and so far has been affective on the handful of patients that have gone through the procedure. The article states, "The treatment uses patients’ own T-cells, a type of white blood cell that normally fights viruses and cancer. The patient’s blood is run through a machine that extracts T-cells and returns the rest of the blood to the body. Researchers then do some genetic engineering: they use a disabled virus as a “vector” to carry new genetic material into the T cells, which reprograms them to recognize and kill any cell that carries a particular protein on its surface." This article goes on to explain a few others stories and about the treatment itself. 

This article is very exciting to me. To think that new forms of treatment and procedures to help people fight leukemia, or any form of cancer, is being developed or tested, is a great stride in medical history. This story really hits home because a family that is very close to my family has a daughter that beat leukemia. Hunter was diagnosed on March 2, 2006 and had her last chemotherapy treatment on Mother's Day of 2008. She will be a 5 year survivor this May. She has been an inspiration to my family, as well as our entire community. 

Test Tube Burgers

      The article I looked up was about an idea to grow meat in laboratories. There has been thought over this for many years and the scientific technology has advanced enough for it to become a possibility now.There are many issues brought up with it though. A few are the moral aspects, some people do not believe we should take that step forward and make our selves "Godlike". They think it would be almost as bad as creating life. Other things people are concerned about are that they do not know if the meat could protect itself from viruses, etc. that animals immune system can do, so people could easily get diseases. If scientists used chemicals to stop the harmful aspects, then people are also concerned that those also could also be harmful, if not more harmful.
        Some people also think that it would be healthier though because the meat would not be exposed to as many things as animals are in their environment.Another aspect going for "in vitro" meat, (made in a petri dish) is that it would get rid of the need of slaughter houses and killing animals for meat. Many animals are abused and killed inhumanely for the sake of making a profit because their is a high demand for meat.
       I think this would be interesting to try. I am all for stopping slaughter, but the thing I would be concerned about is whether it tastes the same. I love the taste of meat, like chicken nuggets and steak, so I hope they could prefect the taste, or maybe make it even better.

Heres the Link:  http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_specter

Exploration 8 Alec Martin-Drones

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/18/for-civilian-drones-the-sky-is-the-limit/

        In this article its all about drones and how something so small can be so useful. Drones are unman aircrafts and they are usually ranging from 7feet to as small as 3inches. They also come in many different forms, such as quadhelicopter, helicopter and planes. Each day people are learning more and more about drones after see them all over the news. The main focus  of this article was to show how drones can make most jobs easier and cut costs in modern world problems. I picked this article because i have always wanted a quadcoper and think they will be really important in the future because of there many uses.  

I saw this video a while back, but it shows you how advance drones are becoming. 

Exploration 8

After viewing these sites (dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com and nytimes.com), I found an interesting article called Good News Beats Bad on Social Networks. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/science/good-news-spreads-faster-on-twitter-and-facebook.html?ref=science&_r=0 This article disusses how the negative news on murders, wars, and plagues were once the most talked about and popular news offered. "BAD NEWS SELLS. If it bleeds, it leads. No news is good news, and good news is no news." The article transitions to the question of does more positive news travels farther and faster than negative news in social networks and suggests that maybe people talk about more positve news with face-to-face interactions because they have more positive news than negative news that they experience. To address this question, Dr. Berger researched people on the New York Times website and found some interesting facts.  He found that people visited the Science section more than the nonscience section. He states that these articles "aroused feelings of awe and made Times readers want to share this positive emotion with others." Dr. Berger also found that people preferred to share good news more than bad news. They enjoyed articles that were funny and excitind and that aroused emotions even that of anxietyand anger but not articles that left the reader feeling sad. Also regarding what kind of news spreads the fastest, Dr. Falk found that people spread news on what they felt would intrigue the other person, not necessarily what intrigues them personally. In conclusion, it is not the sad, "bloody" news that leaves you feeling depressed that gets the most coverage all the time. The coverage depends on positive news that does not leave you in an awful state of feeling and news that you feel others want to hear.

Men's falling income

Study of Men’s Falling Income Cites Single Parents.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/21/business/economy/as-men-lose-economic-ground-clues-in-the-family.html?hp

 

This article talks about the loss of manufacturing jobs over the last decade for men. The loss of manufacturing jobs combined with the modern day need for a college degree has left men more susceptible to unemployment or lower wages, suggest this study. The study also suggest that women have answered to a job market that is crying out for more educated workers, by enrolling in masses at universities and community colleges. Their counterparts, men , have not responded as quickly and decisive.

 Because of the lower wages men in modern day are making and their lack of education, women are not finding them as attractive as they have been in recent decades; thus, women have opted to raise children on their own.

The logic intertwined into this article is easily understandable and very rational. Manufacturing jobs have decreased significantly, especially in my generation. You have to have seniority and tenure now a days in manufacturing jobs to receive decent pay.

Also, it could be argued that men are more prideful than women that has held them back from enrolling in college during their middle age.  Decades ago, men could provide for their families with a factory job but that is not the case. A college degree is a must in Modern day America.

 

 

 

 

Bringing a Virtual Brain to Life

         In 2006, scientist Dr. Markram has been trying to bring a virtual brain to life. Dr. Markram and his colleges have created a "brain" out of four vending-machine-sized boxes that each house thousands of microchips that are programmed to act like a brain. Instead of cells carrying information to and from the brain, the scientists used many cables. They named their creation "Blue Brain" and it has 10,000 virtual neurons that send signals across the cables. This January, the neuroscience project team received a grant of up to $1.3 billion to perfect this idea of a supercomputer-like virtual brain. With this grant, over 150 institutions will have the resources to enable them to further our education about the brain. It would give us insight into illnesses, disorders, and so many other mysterious things that people do not yet fully understand.

link

Digital Etiquette

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/etiquette-redefined-in-the-digital-age/

It's often hard in today's digital age to know what is polite and what is just unnecessary. That's what Nick Bilton's article is about. There is often an understanding by the generation of "digital natives" that sometimes there is such a thing as over-communication. Nowadays many would prefer a text over a voice mail or an email. This is because the lack of formality required can save everyone time. Another preference is that people find their own information whenever possible. Why bother someone with an email or text when the information your looking for can be found on the same device you are contacting them on? I tend to agree with some of this thinking, but I still understand when this request is not heeded. When asking for an address to navigate with results in a lengthy, take a left at the traffic circle and go over the bridge, I will still smile and nod. Then I'll ask nicely again for the street address.

Artificial Brain

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/science/bringing-a-virtual-brain-to-life.html?ref=technology&_r=0

This article is about research that has been going on for a few years now that can have potentially life-saving results. The research is being done by Henry Markram who has been fascinated by the brain ever since he was about fourteen years old. His interest was sparked when he realized that there might be molecular explanations to mental illnesses and could therefore be cured by drugs. Once he got to med school he decided to drop out so that he could understand the brain more, which he thought would help advance drugs that could cure mental illnesses.
His main research now consists of a supercomputer that has nearly ten thousand microchips that act as neruons and can replicate the brain to a decent extent. He has received over one billion dollars in funding for his research and hopes that his developments in replicating the brain will allow for more effective drugs and for a better understanding of the brain.

This is a picture of neurons and you can see how

these could resemble connections in a computer with the long bands

 (wires in a computer)  all connecting to one another (would be the microchip, where they all connect).

 

This advancement and research, to me, is important because it can potentially affect millions of people who suffer from illnesses that we barely understand. One part of the article talked about how Dr. Markram learned that his son had autism and even though he has quite an extensive knowledge of the brain, being that he is a neruoscientist, he could do nothing for his son. I think that every scientist's ultimate goal should be not to just merely write a stack of papers in his life but to try and improve the life of as many people as they can. Dr Markram is a great example of how new science advancements can improve many people's lives if they succeed and even if only a small percentage of research actually yields results that could improve people's lives, it is still worth it. Beyond the fact of the impact of this research it is truly an extraordinary feat to accomplish as the brain has more than 10 trillion connections in it and creating a model of this is extremely meticulous. Maybe this research will spark other ideas or even give more motivation to create more powerful computers like quantum computing. This tech could even be used for other things like more advanced drones that could even be more human-like.

EA

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/technology/electronic-arts-chief-resigns-sending-stock-up.html?ref=technology&_r=0
Electronic Arts Chief Resigns by DAVID STREITFELD.
This article explains that  the EA cheif executive,John Riccitiello, resigned this past Monday. He was cheif for 6 years.Then he goes on to say how video gaming hasn't had the same revenues since customers have been able to get less time-consuming and less expensive games on their smartphones.The chariman said, “E.A.’s strategy and future are rock solid.”But the company simultaneously sid it was less optimistic this quarter than last.
    I think that the cheif resigning is saying that he doesn't think they'll be doing as well in the future, but maybe not, maybe he just wanted to retire. i think EA is still doing really well and they can find a way to still make money. I think facebook is another discouraging factor for video gaming, because it offers a lot of games for free as well as apps..Another thing the author mentioned was that their newwest SimCity game had really high profits but alot of customers had problems contecting online through it. They blamed this on it's unseen popularity and it overloaded their servers. If they want to keep customers they probably want to be better prepared but I still believe video gaming will stay strong for a long time.

EA resignation

          This article is basically about how the Head of Electronic Arts resigned recently, and it talks more about what the company is and expects to become. He says the gaming industry has become taken over more by the independent companies and that they were the figure head of the games. It then talks about a replacement for the Chief and how EA's recent game did, ( which was poorly).
                                               
              A lot of this article is complete garbage except for the end where they talk about the failure of the new Sim's game. EA was never the head of the gaming company and, "independent companies" are doing better because they don't put out half made games for unreasonable prices. An example of what I'm talking about would be the most recent Dead Space games or Battlefield 3. They sell the games for 60$ and limit the amount people can do because they release more parts of the game and expect people to purchase dlc or (downloadable content)for more money. The dlc being more maps, additions on to the game's story line or even the ability to play online. (I mean really????? I've already paid for the game and I have to pay 50$ a year to play online and now EA charges 10$ in order to play their game online on top of it.)                                                                                                                     With the amount of greedy choices they've made recently I wouldn't be surprised with other companies passing them.

Click here for article

Smart Watch?

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/samsung-speaks-up-first-about-a-smart-watch/

Samsung has announced that they are working on a smart watch. This could be a great invention that will take the technology level up to a new standard but as you look at the watch now you might think why would any one need a smart watch when we have our cell phone, laptops, and iPads? But then again we must start somewhere if we wish to advance to new things. Just like cell phones, we started with car phones and slowly advanced to flip cell phones and made our way to the great smart phone. So if this watch is a hit and advances rapidly maybe just maybe we wont have to carry a cell phone any more and we can have a nice watch that can handle all of the abuse that we give our cell phones today. In this article however it states how Samsung and Apple have been in a long running battle and the media thinks that and thing Apple does Samsung just duplicates and does not think of it first. This time however is unique because Samsung has stated that they are in fact working on a watch when Apple has not admitted to working on one, there are just rumors floating around about the Apple watch. I personal don't like to wear watches, i believe they just get in the way when working on cars and other things.... However so does my phone. If this were to come out relatively cheap with good reviews i wouldn't mind giving it a try to see what kind of difference it could make in my life.