Some accumulated articles I read between sessions

The coming-of-age of 3D cinema - This one is, in fact relevant to one of the sessions I attended on the issues involved in generating cost-effective 3D versions of movies (such as Beowulf). There was, in fact, a full portion of the conference devoted to 3D cinema.

Nanonails go from hydrophobic to wettable at the flick of a switch - I covered this briefly a while ago. The surface is made up of nanoscopic "nails" that are normally upright so liquids roll right over them. Introduce a charge and the nails bend, allowing liquids to reach the surface. They plan to use them for self-cleaning surfaces and to extend battery life.

Gecko glue may let robots climb walls - The glue works in this way: as more lateral force is applied, more of the fibres make contact with the surface, increasing the cohesive force. Pull straight back and the fibres let go easily. The trick is that bending the fibres increases their attraction to the surface, but straightening them causes them to let go.

Just in time for the next solar cycle... cuts to UK space weather program - Major cuts to astronomy and physics are expected to make it difficult for UK scientist to handle solar storms that can wreak havoc on satellite-based systems such as GPS, communications systems, and remote sensing. This just as the next solar cycle appears to be warming up to unleash a barrage of solar storms.

Pope warns that science can be seductive - Specifically, he is concerned that our science-oriented culture will forget to respect humanity in it's drive toward progress.

Caffiene can boost sugar levels in diabetics - The study found that caffiene can disrupt the glucose metabolic cycle, throwing glucose levels out of whack. For most of us that is not a huge problem, but for diabetics it can make it difficult for them to properly control their glucose levels.


Time to go into the next session: 3D rendering of the solar system

Another update

I have been accepted to the American Control Conference in Seattle, WA, which rounds out a very full spring of travel and presentations. It's considered a tough conference to get into (I've been there once before to present my Master's work), and each full paper is reviewed by three people in a related field. The comments were pretty good, so I should be able to fine-tune the submitted paper to address the problems they noted.

I will be sick of travel by the end of June.

Found on Warren Ellis's blog

One gets the impression that Shirley Phelps-Roper dislikes Canadians:

“Canada is like the United States, a filthy, perverted, immoral, nation. America is doomed. The Bible prophesied all of this, the end time. God chose America to show the way, the Christian principles, but it’s over, America is collapsing from within. Canada is doomed, too. I was so thankful to get out of your sick country. It has no hope.”

The article was originally printed in the 29 January issue of the Ottawa Sun.

They visited Canada once, back in 1999, to protest the then-impending gay marriage bill. They even staged a protest in which they planned to burn the Canadian flag. A mountie (RCMP officer) by the name of Kirkland had to show them how to do it properly them because he was afraid they would hurt themselves or someone else if they didn't set the flag on fire properly. A very Canadian response.

More accumulated articles

The LAN turns 30 - We've come a long way since 2.5 Mb/sec ARCNet was developed by Datapoint Corp. Incidentally, the name of the project was "Internet", but they decided not to call it that because they considered the name to be too "frivolous".  ARCNet eventually lost out to Ethernet (developed, incidentally, by Xerox a year before ARCNet).

Scientists accidentally find way to improve memory using deep-brain stimulation - They were originally trying to treat an obese patient who was unable to curb his appetite. His eating problem remained, but he recalled memories form 30 years earlier, then went on to experience gradual memory improvement.

Two new DNA "letters" developed - Thanks to d2leddy for pointing this one out. The scientists started out with 3600 base pairs generated randomly, then screened them to find those that would react with a polymerase enzyme. Only two, dubbed dSICS and dMMO2, worked with only a bit of tweaking to work the bugs out. The new bases can be used to build unique DNA combinations, such as for tagging DNA segments.

Sperm "tap" makes vasectomies reversible - Australian scientists propose a radio-controlled implant that would block sperm until an appropriate remote signal is received. How many ways can this go wrong?