OK so it’s not a new gadget or consumer electronic but so what? Something pretty incredible happened to Jupiter between 3 and 9am PST on July 20th (OK.. I can’t help but think of this as “something wonderful” right now – yes, I’m a 2001/2010 fan). A new dark “scar” appeared near the south polar region which appears to have been caused by some sort of object impacting on Jupiter.

The scar was first noticed by amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, who then notified NASA about the finding. The above picture was taken using NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii,

And yes.. there’s a part of me that can’t help but think of thousands and thousands of monoliths…

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: NASA, Jupiter impact

Happy Earth Day everyone! Do something green today?

In commemoration of this day, NASA released the results of a week long online voting survey of the top accomplishments the agency has performed with Earth observations from space. The overall winner with 3280 votes? “Finding your way with GPS”. Here’s NASA’s description of this accomplishment:

“Behind the power of today’s GPS units to get you where you need to go is a huge body of scientific knowledge about our spinning, shifting Earth. We live on an active planet where every piece of real estate moves relative to each other. Precise navigation with GPS satellites would be impossible without ultra-precise knowledge of Earth’s shape and how it rotates. NASA pioneered much of this work with a global network of laser ranging satellites and super-charged GPS receivers to monitor daily changes in Earth’s surface. Oh, and there are side benefits like tracking the movement of tectonic faults, measuring sea level rise, and making air travel safer.”

The above picture is of the Laser Geodynamics Satellite (LAGEOS I), which was launched back in 1976.

The other winners (ordered by votes) were:

2. Diagnosing Our Ailing Ozone Layer (2408)
3. From Storm-Spotting to Next Week’s Weather (2313)
4. Warming and Rising Seas (1443)
5. Global Reach of Air Pollution (1321)
6. Ice Sheets on the Move (1151)
7. It’s a Big Green World (1102)
8. Predicting Feast or Famine (856)
9. A Lively Water World (631)
10. Ultimate Home Energy Audit (543)

[Check it out via News.com]

Technorati Tags: NASA, Earth Day

Sigh.. every time I hear or read the words “Intel Science Talent Search”, I can’t help but think back to my old high school days in New York City and how nearly every one of us felt compelled to enter the competition (which was known back then as the Westinghouse Science Talent Search). Of course most of us decided to go this route simply to prop up our extracurricular activities in the hopes of getting into a good college of some sort. I lasted all of 3 months in my HS research program before deciding that I’d rather play HS baseball than do some research project for a competition I didn’t think I had a chance of winning or even placing… Ahhh the memories.

Oh yes.. why am I even writing about the Talent Search you might ask? Intel officially announced the Science Talent Search 2009 winners today with the top prize (a $100,000 scholarship) going to Eric Larson of Eugene, Oregon, who won with a research project on “classifying mathematical objects called fusion categories” (um.. yeah ok).

The other top honors are as follows (via Intel press release):

“Second Place: William Sun, 17, of Chesterfield, Mo., received a $75,000 scholarship for his biochemistry project that studied the effects of a recently discovered molecule that could potentially help efforts to treat bacterial infections or prevent neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease.

Third Place: Philip Streich, 18, of Platteville, Wis., received a $50,000 scholarship for his chemistry project on carbon nanotubes that may lead to the development of ultra-strong materials and ultra-fast nano-electronics. Philip’s work has resulted in five provisional patent filings.

Fourth Place: Narendra Tallapragada, 17, of Burke, Va., received a $25,000 scholarship for his project to find ways to simplify complex models of atomic and molecular interactions. His goal is to one day create “mini-computers” that can be used, for instance, to create automatic insulin pumps inside diabetic patients or intelligent clothing that responds to temperature.

Fifth Place: Chelsea Jurman, 17, of Roslyn, N.Y., received a $25,000 scholarship for studying underage drinking behavior and how it is tied to teen perceptions of parental drinking and parenting behaviors.

Sixth Place: Noah Arbesfeld, 17, of Lexington, Mass., received a $25,000 scholarship for his work seeking to understand a fundamental structure underlying all of algebra, with potential impact for string theory.

Seventh Place: Alexander Kim, 17, of Fairfax, Va., received a $20,000 scholarship for researching the variation and diversification in populations of the Giant American River Prawn, the largest freshwater invertebrate in North America. His research furthers understanding of how species evolve and has implications for the future of ecosystems.

Eighth Place: Preya Shah, 17, of Setauket, N.Y., received a $20,000 scholarship for designing and synthesizing a tumor-targeting drug for cancer treatment that represents a new approach to delivery of chemotherapy agents and possibly treatment of multi-drug resistant cancer without causing significant side effects.

Ninth Place: Nilesh Tripuraneni, 18, of Fresno, Calif., received a $20,000 scholarship for formulating a set of hydrodynamic equations that may provide a potential method to better understand the first movements of the universe and could aid in the development of a quantum theory of gravity.

Tenth Place: Gabriela Farfan, 18, of Madison, Wis., received a $20,000 scholarship for her project investigating Oregon Sunstones, which contain one of the most common rock forming minerals in the world. She determined that these sunstones have unique micro-inclusions that allow them to look one color from one angle and another from a different angle. “

30 other finalists each received $5000 scholarships as well as new laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo on the inside. Not bad! Congrats to these kids – they’ve achieved a great thing and they’ve also sealed their tickets to some top 20 university as a result.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Intel Science Talent Search 2009

The crash created a debris field of between 200 and 300 objects. However, Russia’s space agency stated that the debris field posed no threat to the International Space Station which orbits at around 220 miles above the Earth. An upcoming shuttle mission to the space station will also not be affected by this incident. However, NASA is concerned with the Earth Observing Satellites which orbit closer to the crash zone at an altitude of 439 miles.

Iridium, which uses 66 satellites to provide wireless phone and data services, stated that customers might experience “limited disruptions” as a result of the collision in space. The company will replace the satellite in 30 days with a spare that is already in orbit.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Space, Satellite collision, Iridium satellite

Want to be the next CSI? Take a step in that direction by arming yourself with a USB microscope. This 200x microscope connects to your computer’s USB port and provides a resolution of up to 1600 x 1200. You can record videos in AVI format and capture still images in either JPG or BMP file formats. If you’re interested in it, go ahead and pick one up at www.iwantoneofthose.com for £49.95 (or around $92 U.S. dollars).

[Check it out via TechFresh]

Technorati Tags: USB Microscope

It took a bit longer this morning for me to get out of bed but alas.. I’m here at the Los Angeles Convention Center for Day Three of the Microsoft PDC. It looks like today is a focus on Microsoft Research with Rick Rashid giving the keynote,

We’re about to start… again forgive the initial typos. I’m typing as I listen to the keynote here.

So we have Rick Rashid who’s the Senior VP of Microsoft Research. The keynote starts with a video overview of the Microsoft Research division from all the world. Here’s an interesting statistic – there are roughly 850 PhD researchers working at Microsoft.

Rick’s own background is in developing operating systems, programming languages etc. He talks about some of his own accomplishments through the years – as well as noting that if you do use the Mac or the iPhone (and he thinks you really shouldn’t – as the crowd chuckles), you are using code that he helped develop years ago at CMU. Another tidbit – Rick is also the only Microsoft Exec to ever have the same job for such a long period of time (17 years).

For those that are curious, here is the mission statement for Microsoft Research (MSR)

• Expand the state of the art in each of the areas in which we do research
• Rapidly transfer innovative technologies into Microsoft products
• Ensure that Microsoft products have a future

MSR organization details

• Run as a university organizational model
• Open research environment
• Strong ties to University Research

Additional notes about MSR:

• Offices in Cambridge MA, Silicon Valley CA, Redmond WA, Cambridge UK, Bangalore India, and Beijing China. Bejing is the second largest MSR facility to Redmond.
• MSR has published over 4000 papers over the last 17 years.
• MSR works closely with the academic community. 20 percent of the graduates coming out of CS research programs probably work at MSR at some point in their career.

MSR also drives technologies into products. They have a focused technology transfer effort. Many of today’s products have come out of MSR including DirectX, Windows Media, Tablet PC, the Surface etc. Researchers are on product incubation advisory boards.

Some recent research announcements:

• Robochamps (www.robochamps.com) – MSR working with NASA to allow people to program their own Mars lander.

• CCR and DSS Toolkit 2008 now available on the MSR website.

Other notes about MSR:

• MSR generates around 25% of the MSFT patents and generally MSR patents are more “fundamental”
• MSR helps Microsoft in solving problems and also giving the company an early warning system to new technologies.

Finally, why do research at all? It gives you the ability to survive when things go wrong. It gives you agility. It allows Microsoft to quickly respond to change. Research provides new technologies, new competitors and of course, new business models.

“Basic Research gives Microsoft the ability to change quickly.”

9am now..

Here’s something interesting – the “Terminator” project. MSR is working on ways to prove that applications/programs terminate which is a classic CS problem. They now have a new set of methods that in fact can determine if a program has halted. Terminator itself is best described as a termination/liveness prover for C programs – a first of its kind and they’re working to get this into future products.

Research in software engineering

• - CHESS
• - Code Contracts
• - Pex
• - Z3
• Church’s thesis proven – 70 year old problem

Now a focus on energy efficient computing. Rick invites Feng Zhao, principle researcher at MSFT, to talk about of all things, sensors and how it can be used to make computing more energy efficient.

Feng describes ways we can be more energy efficient:

• Computers can be made more energy efficient
• Computing itself can be used to improve energy efficiency of other tasks and objects/devices.
  • use sensors to sense the environment for better conservation

As an example, Feng displays a handheld sensor deivce that can monitor an area’s temperature and humidity and then send this information back to the cloud. In fact, the hall that we’re all in is littered with sensors located on the ceiling (we can’t see them in the dark here). These sensors help map and monitor temperature changes in the room over time.

He shows an animation of the hall starting at 5am yesterday before the keynote started.

As people start rolling in, the cooling system kicks in (in the blue) and tries to compensate for the rise in temperatures. Then as the keynote starts and proceeds, you see the temperature rise in the hall. This gives building personnel insight into how well the cooling is working in a given area – thus helping someone to be more energy efficient – cooling less when its not needed and cooling more when it is needed in an area.

Approximately 100 MB of data a day is collected to the cloud environment.

Feng now shows how sensors are used in Microsoft’s own datacenters today. Here’s a picture of the temperature readings on a set of racks – front of the rack on top and the back on the bottom.

Data Center Genome Project – combines sensor data on a datacenter and computing operations being performed in the datacenter.  An attempt to see how computational work, hardware load, and sensors can be  used together to gain better insight into the datacenter environment.

Sensors are great for businesses but they’re also great for the environment. Feng shows how sensors can be used in the wild to monitor temperature and humidity changes. There’s the SenseWeb platform – a wikipedia of sensors

• Allows sharing of deployed instrumentation and data for communities of scientists and hobbyists. It allows people to share sensors and share data. SensorMap as the portal – http://atom.research.microsoft.com/sensormap

SensorMap is also being used to monitor glaciers in Alaska. Through the website, you can pan and tilt through the terrain and look at the readings of the sensors.

Now back to Rick:

MSR is actively working in the healthcare industry – looking to fight HIV/AIDS through Machine Learning Techniques.

Now switch to Education.

Some of the research performed by MSR in the areas of education include:

• Tablet PC technologies to help students and teacher to learn
• Robotics work in the CS Classroom
• World Wide Telescope release (this was a follow on to sky server) – 24/7 virtual observatory. Now has 1.5 million active users
  • as of today, Microsoft is releasing the Equinox release of the World Wide Telescope. Now a demo of the new version:

Some of the new features in the Equinox WWT beta:

• 3D view of the solar system
• See orbital locations of planets in past present and future
• Right click on a star and see their location
• Move to the star and the constellations change
• Double the total number of data in initial release
• 55 new panoramic images
• See new image sets from various telescopes
• New sky surveys
• New animations and hyperlinks added into the program
• You can zoom out and actually view the known universe

21 giga-parsecs of data and a view of the universe. Half a million galaxies in the program.

Rick now shows a picture of his two sons and how one of his sons (age 9) is now learning how to program in C# within Visual Studio 2008. He’s currently developing a game for his brother! However, he also points out that this possible because of the fact that both parents happen to be CS majors. Unfortunately most kids don’t have parents that have CS degrees – hence learning to program or learning anything about computing needs to be simpler.

Hence.. they are introducing Boku. Boku is best described as lightweight programming for kids. He brings out Matt MacLaurin to talk about Boku – a system for allowing kids to learn and program on their own.

All programming is performed using an Xbox 360 controller – there is no keyboard involved here. You simply move a cursor around and select objects to build rules.

Matt shows the equivalent of creating a Boku hello world program. The design goal of Boku is to keep programming constructs simple and visual.

Boku is all about creating programming rules that are designed for objects to follow. The kid uses pictures to help construct these rules. Once the rules are created, you can watch the character move about the world performing the rules. All rules are evaluated and performed at the same time. Notice that there’s no mention of variables or constructs etc. Things are kept simple. Here the character is roaming around collecting apples.

The application is coming out next year. Boku can be used to design games. You can program the game to respond to movements of the controller.

You can program practically everything in the world – even the cloud.

Boku provides kids a way to learn how to program AND make it fun. Examples of what people can do with Boku

Pretty cool stuff..

Back to Rick:

Finally Rick brings the focus to surface computing, He starts things off by showing what the Microsoft Surface looked like in the prototype days of the project.

This leads us into Rick talking about a new project underway at Microsoft called SecondLight.

Stevce Hodges comes out to talk about SecondLight. SecondLight is about figuring out new ways of interacting with displays and computers – extending the reach of surface computing. SecondLight is in a stage similar to where the Surface was in the protype days.

The begin by showing a demo of SecondLight.

They show that SecondLight supports all the things that the Surface supports – moving objects around, using gesture and multi-touch to interact and resize objects.

But SecondLight isn’t just about interacting with the surface – it’s about interacting with the area above the surface.

The demo-er than waves a simple piece of tracing paper above the display to reveal additional information about the object. He waves the paper over a star map to reveal star names and constellation information.

He waves a paper above a street map to reveal additional information about the streets

And he shows a picture of a cow.. and as he hovers over the cow, textual information about the cow is revealed (sorry no pictures of the inside of the cow are shown here)

In fact, he can use any cheap piece of plastic to place above the display. A scroll is pulled across the display to reveal additional hidden information.

So how does this work exactly?

There are actually two displays being projected within this system. An electric charge applied against a display can reveal a hidden underlying image that’s also being projected underneath the screen. When the display is diffuse, one projection is shown. When the display is transparent, a secondary projection is revealed.

Here’s a demo of SecondLight with a magic display that’s being waved above the surface.  You can also interact with the secondary display with support for gestures and multi-touch capabilities – just like the primary display.

For the first time they have integrated this technology into surface computing. Bringing the display out of the computer. Enabling secondary displays on external displays above the surface. You can read more about SecondLight in the whitepaper here.

that’s a wrap!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft PDC, Day Three, Microsoft Research Keynote

According to Mitchell, the “deception began after the alleged alien landing in Roswell, N.M., in 1947. Mitchell states “Unfortunately, you the press show no interest whatsoever. The giggle factor has been too high. But the science behind it and the research behind it, among the people I know, is accepted. It’s real,”

Now whether I believe him or not – it certainly does not matter. I think it’s important for us to continue exploring.. to wonder what is both here on Earth and what is out there.. and to be open about what we find. It’s also important to consider.. that perhaps… just perhaps.. we are not alone out there and that we’re not as important as we think we are.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Edgar Mitchell

If you or your kids are into astronomy, then you’ll definitely want to check out the new public beta of Microsoft’s WorldWide Telescope web application. WorldWide Telescope stitches images together from a variety of sources including the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory Center, the Spitzer Space Telescope and others. Users can even choose which telescope they want to look through! The application itself utilizes Microsoft’s Visual Experience Engine which provides “seamless panning and zooming around the heavens with rich image environments.” 

I took the application for a spin and I must say, it’s a pretty nifty app. I loved the Guided Tours section of the application which as the name implies provides a guided visual learning experience of the heavens above. Perhaps the best part is simply taking the application for a spin on your own. Pan across the sky, zoom in on a section of space and discover what’s there.

Also – make sure to check out Ars Technica’s first look at the WorldWide Telescope application here on their website. They had this to say:

The greatly expanded catalog of objects to look at, along with the guided tours, makes the WorldWide Telescope much more along the lines of what I was looking for in a Google Earth/Virtual Earth equivalent of the entire universe. Kudos to Microsoft Research for a compelling product.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, WorldWide Telescope,

Know anyone really into astronomy? You might want to show them Living World’s 3D model of our very own Milky Way Galaxy. Yes.. this is our very own galaxy “suspended” in a glass cube. Around 80,000 stars were etched using a laser based off of three-dimensional data collected by Japan’s National Astronomical Observatory.

The cube measures 12 cm square and is available for 80,000 Yen. Very cool stuff if you ask me.. and certain to raise eyebrows if it’s sitting on your desk.

[Check it out via DVICE.com]

Technorati Tags: Living World, Milky Way Galaxy

This is absolutely ridiculous (and hilarious at  the same time). Researchers at  Gyeongsang National University in South Korea have managed to create cats that glow. Yes.. glow. You heard me right. As if cats weren’t already evil enough.. now they have to glow in the dark too!! (Ok.. cats aren’t truly evil.. I just think they are!)

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Glowing Cats, Cats

The discovery was made after Lawrence Rudnick, Shea Brown, and Liliya Williams were examining a cold spot uncovered by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe Satellite. Astronomers already knew the area had a different property to it (being colder than the rest)  thanks to a survey of the Cosmic Microwave Background – the faint radio buzz supposedly left behind by the Big Bang.

It’ll be interesting to see if scientists and astronomers can explain this patch of nothingness – so much nothingness that supposedly dark matter doesn’t even exist. Dark matter cannot be seen directly but is usually inferred by measuring gravitational forces in the area.

[Check it out]

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At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, scientists have developed a lightweight and flexible battery that resembles a sheet of black paper. The resembelance is not simply an accident, as the device is largely made from cellulose, a primary component in paper. After infusing the paper with aligned carbon nanotubes, the paper gains the ability to conduct electricity.

By soaking the paper battery in an ionic liquid, to serve as the electrolyte, the nanocomposite paper can then function as both a lithium-ion battery and a supercapacitor. Since the ionic liquid used contains no water, there is nothing that can freeze or evaporate, allowing the paper battery to withstand extreme temperatures.

Additionally, the paper battery can be cut, folded, and twisted with no loss of efficiency. And by stacking sheets of paper batteries, the total power output can be increased.

The paper battery is also bio-compatible due to its design, and may eventually serve as power supplies for devices implanted in the body. Rather than using an ionic liquid as an electrolyte, the abundance of natural electrolytes such as human sweat, blood, and urine, can be used to activate the device. It seems it won’t be long before we start using people as batteries…

More at EurekAlert.

Technorati Tags: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, RPI, nanocomposite paper, battery

Phoenix blasted off this morning from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, on a Delta II rocket at 5:26am EST. If all goes well, Phoenix will land on Mars in May of 2008. Phoenix will use a 2 meter long robotic arm to collect and analyze soils samples. Scientists expect to find water ice buried just a few centimeters beneath the surface.

Read more about this mission at the New Scientist.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: NASA, Phoenix, Mars

So who here wants a floating globe? I sure do.. but are you willing to spend $140 dollars for this electromagnetic globe? Yeah.. I’m not sure I would either. Nevertheless, it’s a pretty cool little globe that floats in the air. Now if elementary school science class was this cool.. I might have stayed awake a little longer.

[Check it out via Geekologie]

Technorati Tags: Electromagnetic Floating Planet Earth Globe, Globae