On Neanderthals, watery comets, RIM, Hulu, NFC coins, DARPA, long term memories

SCIENCE

A Stanford professor of microbiology, recently presented findings that human neanderthal mating was crucial for our African ancestors to become resistant to colder European diseases. (http://bit.ly/jwdVBo). And to think of it, we tabooed inter-racial marriages upto a century ago (still taboo in many places). Another result of the finding is that 6% of European genes are from Neanderthals.

Continuing on water, water everywhere - Hartley 2 Comet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartley_2) has shown to be 'leaking' water. This is caused by the jet of CO2, caused by sun's heat, to spew off the surface and bring water-ice with them.

TECHNOLOGY

RIM missed its profit forecasts, and stock goes down 20%. Is this the real blow that Apple / Android have finally dealt to the Blackberry. Now do the BBM users still hang on to their past. (http://bbc.in/laSOqA).

Guess which company served up most of online video ads. Not YouTube, its Hulu. (http://bit.ly/mlcQRs). This is so because Hulu serves more ads per viewer than any other (note that YouTube still serves more videos, Hulu only serves the videos which viewers watch more and are willing to watch as for).

FUTURE

While we were talking about NFCs last time, talks about NFC coins. The Dutch government may be on to something. (http://bit.ly/lsGsxi). Also check out the hand held vacuum cleaner (http://on.mash.to/mN1Dz5).

Gamification, is the new thing these days. Salesforce CSO talks about how gamification can improve productivity. (http://rww.to/kbbqXZ) I think he has a point there. If you know how much fun Zynga employees have - a bunch of them are 'game testers' - you would see the point.

DARPA wants to remove restrictions it puts on scientists it funds. (http://bit.ly/jrxT0h). The aim is to produce 'bio factories' which can create living parts. This is a great way to foster innovation. Most grant applications struggle to balance 'sticking with whats proven' and 'doing something new'. Hopefully, efforts like these will help.

USC Biomedical Prof. announced an 'on-off' switch for the brain (http://bit.ly/mIu4ZA). on their experiments on rats, they have hacked a process which converts short term memories into long term ones. They implanted a small prosthetic which mimicked the function of this process and the rats could remember forgotten memories. Cures to dementia, as claimed in the release may still be far, but this is an important step towards understanding the brain.

Of black holes, mercury, NFC, Pandora and evolution

SCIENCE

European Space Agency's Herschel telescope recently found a star spewing water into space. (http://bit.ly/kYhc1h). That is the first time I have heard of anything like this. Imagine the scope of life around the star (once the radiation goes away that is:)). The additional astonishing discovery is that such a process may be common with many (all?) stars and thus water water maybe everywhere.

Continuing on astronomy, a new mystery surfaced about Mercury. (http://reut.rs/jNUlFo). Given the planet is so close to the Sun, we expected that all the volatile light elements (those which vaporize quickly) will not be present either on the surface, or for that matter in the core. (imagine Mercury in its early days, a molten blob of lava circling the sun - whatever could have vaporized, would have). However, the Messenger spacecraft, which is the first to orbit Mercury, found sulphur (sulfur?) on the surface, which challenges the previous supposition. There is no current reasonable explanation. Exciting stuff!

Another astronomy news is the discovery of a black hole shredding a star. The poor star (and any planets?) got too close to a black hole and got sucked in. Imagine the blistering nuclear fusion which got funneled into a dark ominous end. To be noted is that this wasnt "seen" per say but implied from the kind of gamma ray bursts that such an event is expected to radiate. So, in simple terms, there was a weird gamma ray burst, the scientists thought of up various scenarios, the one with a star gobbling black one fit well and voila - BBC news flash!

TECHNOLOGY

Near Field Communications anyone? Swiping your phones at the checkout instead of your credit cards. Protecting your phones like your wallets (guess iPhone users already do that). Sony is readying their Ericsson phone lines for NFC soon. (http://bit.ly/lrZoSQ)

Researchers at Harvard revealed swarm robots. All of us science fiction fans have heard of the nano-disaster, where nanometer sized robots rapidly multiply and take over everything (even your breathing pipe). They are still science fiction and air viscosity effects might just 'blow' them away, so not to worry right now. But read this news (http://bit.ly/ly5jZh). The robot doesnt look ominous, but the poor guy is almost all battery. Power sources are still hard to miniaturize. Dont expect iPhones which dont need recharging for days just yet.

Speaking of power problems, how about a nuclear power plant at your home. British scientists are talking about just that (http://bit.ly/lqsXev). It is very interesting, but as I have found with so many of these 'firsts', all of them claim to wean the world off coal in 5-10 years, and that never happens. Hopefully, this is different. And if it is everywhere, maybe we all will eventually become radiation resistant power hungry mutants.

Pandora plunged back to its IPO price and lower on the second day of trading. 'Bubble' talk anyone? or maybe a overly aggressive correction. (http://reut.rs/lcftko). Already people are suspecting the Groupon model (http://bit.ly/irkjug). Well I think there is more pessimism than that demanded by a bubble.

FUTURE

On the a prescient phenomena. A PhD student from Emory University showed evidence that as people moved from hunter gatherers to farmers (around 10,000 years ago), they became shorter. (http://bit.ly/ilTI91). Which makes sense given the difference in physical requirements of the two professions. What does it say about us sitting in front of computer screens all day :)

Of lunar eclipses, black holes, social news and oil giants

Tonight is the total lunar eclipse (http://huff.to/jq955z). However, it is not visible from North America. The link above describes how you can watch it on SWAN (Sky Watchers Association of North Bengal) or youtube it. The eclipse begins at 1:24pm EDT (it is over by the time of this writing).

While we are up in the sky, another near and dear topic. Astronomers discover what may be the oldest black hole(s) ever detected. (http://bloom.bg/knpCF2). These black holes are 13 billion years old. Given that the universe itself is 13.4 billion years old, these are pretty old ones out there. Time and again there are older artifacts, gamma rays, stars and black holes found, but none more than the magical 13.4 billion number. I have always been a bit critical of the big bang - that the universe came out of a small point. But all this evidence is startling.

The advent of social networking in all aspects of our life is evident from (http://tcrn.ch/miL2v0). Now news from social media has become mainstream. Reddit, a community new website, hit 1.2 billion monthly pageviews. This is when venture capitalists drool and there are hints of a new paradigm. We have had social networking eat over email (see slide 37 of the presentation by Mary Meeker - a tech analyst turned VC) - (http://slidesha.re/9V9gh4). News, games, phones, texting are next in line.

If we are all sick of Internet ads, picture this (slide 25 of the same presentation). On an apples to apples basis, there is still a $50BN ad opportunity to be had in the Internet. We may not realise it but we spend a lot of time viewing TV ads than we do Internet ads. Another interesting Internet versus TV article is (http://rww.to/m1shiT). Very interesting graphics.

Continuing on the online reputation idea from yesterday, Google has jumped into the fray (http://bit.ly/iofJWn). This tool launched by Google, will help people monitor online mention of their names and take action to protect their reputation.

Finally, a fore bearer of things to come. Total, the fossil fuels giant brought a majority stake in SunPower, a manufacturer of solar panels and systems for $1.3BN (http://on.wsj.com/jSzula). This is significant as the total venture capital and private equity investment in the field was around $7.7BN in 2010 (not including this deal). I guess the oil barons need to get a foot in the future.

3D printing, smart vehicles, fizzling sun, robots and flying machines

Of the various new items today, the following were interesting and somewhat prescient:

How to Build a Working Replica Jet Engine With a 3D Printer (http://bit.ly/iKe5gv). 3D printing will become mainstream. Cheap 3D printers are available and small print jobs can be done at home. Imagine all the spare parts and simple household items being 3D printed. Maybe enterprises will be the first ones to adopt them, or FedEx Kinko's like places to print little gifts, trinkets or modern art forms.

Another article from MIT talks about inter vehicle communication (http://bit.ly/kDWsEp). Combine this with (http://bit.ly/lg9lLD) where the article talks about bicycles will utilize a little laser to project a signal in front of them. This will indicate to other traffic where the bicysle is headed and hopefully avoid collisions of the type where the bike is squeezed between a large vehicle and the curb. Given technologies like these, we can visualize a decent path forward to a future where vehicles talk to each other and avoid collisions and maintain high traffic throughput. Japanese engineers have already tested out similar technology before (http://1.usa.gov/kvvFqR)

On astronomy, I found some dramatic sounding news about our sun. (http://bit.ly/m778t5). When you go through the details, they talk about the sun become 'lazy' in the future due to the subsistence of solar cycles - no worries about fizzling out. we got 4 billion more years.

Continuing on astronomy, the Chinese engineers have done it again. After they wrested the fastest supercomputer away from the US (http://engt.co/btzezj), its time for the biggest baddest radio telescope. (http://bit.ly/l21G9r). The telescope, named FAST, will be functional in 2016 and will be able to detect radio transmissions from a distance of upto 1,000 light years. That is the distance the Star Trek Enterprise will travel in 8 months on warp 9 (http://bit.ly/9ermRD). Not bad I would say.

Implementation of 4G networks finally sees some competitive urgency. (http://bit.ly/mTTrsD). This article talks about Verizon and AT&Ts battle for highest 4G coverage ('there's a 4G map for that'). This I believe will be very important for the future of high speed network access.

Also check out the following news about robot tactility (http://bit.ly/lOTqk8). This article talks about development of a robotic hand which can pick up messy gel material better than a human hand would. Technologies like this will be small steps towards a smart, dexterous robot 'assistant'. I wouldn't go into the moralities of the 'assistant' label here, but goes without saying that research will bring the physical robot closer (and better maybe) to the physical human. On the mental side, we know about the recent IBM Watson jeopardy game (http://bit.ly/hfeStH), although it had another brother in the medical field - the Isabel Healthcare program (http://bit.ly/lj8spy).

Airbus revealed a sneak peek at a future aircraft. Looks very interesting - advance bookings anyone (http://bit.ly/j5KcNM). Talking of flying, here is another prototype (http://cnet.co/mxryUq). This is one of the first that I have come across which looks real enough and cheap enough and easy (maybe?) enough to fly. At $40,000, I am tempted to start saving.

Another topic I have been musing about is the future of reputation. I first read about a reputation stock market in the novel Accelerando (http://bit.ly/hX0TmB). With companies like reputation defender and klout, that will be a big market in future.

Finally, an interesting article on iPhone passwords (http://bit.ly/iHjX6w). Are you going to change yours now?

Introduction

Hello All: This blog will be focusing on the latest science and technology news and their effects on our future. I welcome your comments!