Technology – Page 19 – David Bradley

Rush Natural Science

Rush natural science, photo by David Bradley Earlier this week, I went to see “one” of my childhood musical heroes, progressively rocking Canadian three piece Rush. The band was on top form as ever and the crowd jostled to the music almost in synchrony like so many atoms in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) as the band raised the energy levels. They played most of their latest album, covering themes of humanism and faith without religion as well as resurrecting some stonkers from their vast back catalogue including the epic Natural Science from 1980 album Permanent Waves.

It was just before that album came out, 78-79, that I first got into Rush, perhaps it’s no coincidence, that the technicality of their music appealed to my early noodlings on the guitar while the content of their lyrics, which aren’t so much sword and sorcery as science and nature, appealed to my inner geek. Not the more usual sex, and drugs, and rock & roll for the maturing Rush of late 1970s, more the cynical take on our place in the world, with tracks such as the aforementioned Natural Science discussing the balance between the natural and the synthetic world and how integrity of purpose could allow us to reach an equilibrium between control and understanding through science.

Science and Rush were always a likely match. They did a song called Chemistry, after all, and a two-part conceptual epic spread over two albums about the black hole Cygnus X-1, and guitarist Alex Lifeson is on record as being quite a science fan. I’m quite proud of the sheer coincidence that not long after I published an article about earthshine, drummer and lyricist Neil Peart saw fit to write about that very subject as an allegory of the public perception of our inner selves. But, it’s no coincidence that Rush generally top the ubergeek’s playlist.

In fact, just for fun here’s a few other scientifically minded fans of the band: Paul May, chemist, Bristol Uni, creator of MotM, Steve Sain, statistician, unfortunately also confesses to having seen Billy Joel in concert, Mark Lewney, physicist, and rock doctor (think Einstein meets Hendrix), Nicole Biamonte, Iowa University music theorist, David Muir, educational computing guy, Arvind Gopu, lead systems analyst for the Open Science Grid Operations group at Indiana University, Anthony Francis, artificial intelligence researcher and science fiction author, Jon Price, geotechnogeek at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Let me know if you want to add your name and link to the list.

Now, tell me what is the biophysics behind post-gig ringing in the ears?

How Not to Grab the Blogosphere

The Blogosphere

This week I, and a dozen or so other science writers and bloggers, got spammed with a single email by a public relations company hoping to get us to write about the “next big thing” from their client. Nothing shocking there, we all get PR puff blown at us every day of the week. One of the frustrating things about this particular pitch though was that it was about some science news that had already appeared in many of the mainstream magazines and a few of the less mainstream outlets by the time the campaign reached our inboxes.

More irritating than that was that the email was cc’ed to us, not bcc’ed, so all of us who know each other anyway saw that we had all received this “alleged” news. There were several variations on contact addresses for some of us, including at least four different cc’s to one particular popular magazine, so they were effectively spammed repeatedly with the same email. Not professional. Possibly inadvertent and maybe just a result of naivete, but not professional. Although that said, it should also be pointed out that the PR person never divulged who their client actually was despite being asked by the cc group. Such a “lack of transparency is a particularly bad tactic when dealing with bloggers,” one of the group remarked to me in a personal email.

The upshot of this PR campaign was that all of us who had been cc’ed, ended up chatting about it because we all hit “reply all” when we responded in-kind to the sender. At least one of the cc’ed group described this kind of email as “depressing” another said they could imagine it happening at their own company because there is “a fundamental misapprehension about the way the web [and the blogosphere] works”. Another was incredulous that the sender thought that bloggers are so gullible that they would reprint anything that’s set in front of them. Personally, I thought nothing more of the incident than that it lended itself to its own blog post on the subject of how not to get journalists on-side. And, so here we are.

By sheer coincidence this week, Amit Agarwal (who wasn’t cc’ed on that email) was discussing a new code of conduct for publication relations companies hoping to ingratiate themselves with the blogosphere and the mainstream media. Ironically, the guidelines were written by another PR company in consultation with bloggers, which presumably involved a lot of cc’ing too.

I’m perfectly happy to receive press releases from pertinent sci-tech sources, but these guidelines could save a lot of heartache on both sides of the fence, as well as reducing corrosion of the interweb’s pipes through all those wasted electrons being sent to and fro.

Oh, by the way, science story was, as I said, all over the blogosphere a few weeks back and was covered by at least a handful of those guys cc’ed in the original email several days before the PR puff blew up. It involved a serendipitous discovery in some laboratory or other that seems to contravene at least one law of nature. These kinds of email often do, it seems.

This Sciencebase blog post from December 2004 shows that these kinds of claim are nothing new, in it I discussed the issue of burning water

What Will You Make with Your 3D Printer

3D Printer

Fancy a new vase or some unbreakable crockery for that camping trip, but haven’t got time to go shopping? What about a replacement for the broken spoke on your spectacles or an individually designed heads for your golf clubs? Or, how about a scale model of that new sports car your kids designed or a mini objet d’art created from photos of a Henry Moore sculpture? The possibilities for 3D printing are limited only by your imagination and what someone could come up with in a 3D drawing package or with CAD software.

3D printing, rapid prototyping, as it is often known, is not new. I first heard about 3D printing sometime in late 1980s while still a student. However, these devices, which have featured in TV shows such as CSI, could soon be coming to a workshop near you and may represent the biggest shift in commerce and manufacturing in decades. The Fab@Home wiki has more information on the technology, but 3D printing, essentially, turns a digitized representation of a solid object, which you might download, email, or create, into a real solid object. It using a vat of uncooked starting material (plastic, metal or alloy) and a laser, or other device, controlled by computer holding the digitized information to build up the object layer by layer.

There are numerous commercial 3D printers, known in some circles as fabbers, being used by the military for creating battle components in the field, in design studios for prototyping, and more recently for creating just about anything you care to name. However, once the killer app emerges, these machines will quickly enter the mainstream.

There are several videos of 3D printers in action on Youtube. But, I was brainstorming with my wife today, while walking the dog, to see if we could think of that killer app…clothes, disposable diapers or nappies, plastic paperclips, teacups, and buckets, were my first few suggestions. But, I blush to tell you what her first suggestion was…sex toys. Moreover, it’s our silicon wedding anniversary today, and all I could think was that she was trying to tell me something.

But, then it occurred to me, how 3D printing might rapidly move into the mainstream, and no, I’m not thinking of rubbery objects for the bedroom, but virtual gifts!

With the advent of social networking and web 2.0 communities there are often occasions when you might wish to reward or surprise someone you meet or interact with in such virtual spaces. Being sent a link to an interesting site, image, or music file as a gift is nice. But, what if you could send someone a solid object without actually having to buy it, package it up (discretely in some cases), and ship it out? A 3D printer suddenly becomes a way to spread the lurv in polymer resin. And, if you’re getting really close to that certain someone you met online, then you could always take on my wife’s original idea, and spread more than a little lurv, although I don’t a 3D printer exists yet that can produce 1.5 volt batteries.

What will you make with your 3D printer?

Taking the P

Toilet

Sciencebase readers of a certain age will know exactly what I’m talking about if I were to ask, “Can I have a P, please, Bob?” The Bob in question being host of a TV game show for teens too long ago into my past for me to admit when. The Bob in question was almost marginally embarrassed by the question and mildly amused, although it referred only to the choice of letter.

Taking the P of course is a standard British pastime, although I’m not 100% certain about a couple of research papers published today in a special issue of the International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management on composting of solid waste and whether the P remains firmly in place or not.

One of the co-authors on the first paper (Post-composting techniques of digested household waste) is based at the WTO, and no, before you ask that’s not the World Trade Organization it is the World Toilet Organization in Singapore. Honestly. Apparently, the organization has a Toilet Entertainment link on its website (http://www.worldtoilet.org) and says that November 19th is World Toilet Day. Hmmm. Makes you wonder…that’s also the week of Thanksgiving in the US…

The second paper is entitled “Experience in improving fertilizer value of compost by enriching with urine” . The researchers say that “ecological sanitation concepts are closing the loop of nutrients contained in wastewater with agriculture.” Nice…

Personally, I’ve been taking the P to our compost heap for years. My wife, unfortunately, thinks it nothing more than an excuse to indulge in a little back garden naturism. It’s the phosphate and nitrogen content, I tell, her, they are good for the cucumbers! It is to no avail, of course, and the neighbours have told me they prefer theirs with dressing.

By the way, the Bob in question – Bob Holness – of BBC TV’s Blockbusters fame was the first radio broadcast actor to play James Bond.

Camera Courses

photo coupons lily For those of you who are interested in knowing a bit about my personal life, I’ve spent daytimes this week on a digital photography course (evenings and early mornings have been blogging and work as usual, which makes for a rather tiring week).

I’ve been taking photos for almost two decades and have acted as picture editor and image source for dozens of articles over the years, but I hoped to gain a few new insights into the process of photo composition from international press photographer Malcolm Clarke, who was running the course at my local community education centre.

It was the first time the centre had run the week long course as part of its internationally famous summer school. We had a great group of enthusiastic photographers and rattled through several hundred snaps each over the course of the week. The range of skills among the students was initially very diverse and the biggest improvements were seen among those fresher to photography than any of those who might have already had some claim to being old hands. Even those students with the simplest of compact digital cameras were producing quite excellent shots and certainly demonstrated that having an eye for a shot is far more important than having the right kit.

That said, some of the most detailed macro close-ups of insects and flowers on the final day, taken at Cambridge’s stunning Botanical Gardens, were mindblowing, especially one students shot of a common darter (a type of dragonfly, that is not a ruddy darter) and another’s image of a honeybee coming into land. Brilliant stuff.

As it’s Saturday, I’m pointing you to the imaging and photography links page. Anyone on the course who wants to see some of my pre-course snaps from the recent Fen Edge Family Festival held in Cottenham in June they can check out my Imaging Storm website).

Six degrees of privacy

Worried about keeping your private details private on Facebook? Do you know what information Google stores on each and every search you do? What about your bank, do they track your online purchases and send that information to direct marketing agencies? These are all questions each and every one of us should know and want the answers to, but privacy issues are not clearcut. As more and more social interaction takes place on the Internet they have to be addressed. But, who, when, and how?

There is currently no common framework for communicating and discussing privacy issues, according to Nicholas Harkiolakis of the information technology department, Hellenic American University, in Greece. He hopes to change all that and has introduced the concept of an Information Privacy Unit (IPU). But, why should we worry about something so seemingly esoteric?

Well, Professor Harkiolakis has been involved in software development for a quarter of a century and has focused on applications in business and academic settings where issues of privacy are paramount. With the advent of the internet, we have seen an explosion in social interaction that crosses borders and allows people to communicate in ways that were undreamt perhaps as recently as when Harkiolakis began his career in IT. Social structure is changing from the level of the individual to corporations and to governments. “We have seen a major shift in power regarding control of personal data from the individual to public organisations and public bureaucracies,” Harkiolakis says.

He points out that companies that hold databases of personal information from our banks and clubs to internet service providers, websites and search engines are monitoring us all with very little regulation, and that is not taking into account the illicit monitoring of organisations of which we may not even be aware, such as those that infiltrate our computers with spyware and other nasties. “Other forms of monitoring could eventually be used to discriminate against individuals,” adds Harkiolakis, “not because of their past but because of statistical expectations about their future.” In particular, he says, we are simply unaware of what personal data has been captured and how it might be manipulated and used against us in some shape or form. If we, says Harkiolakis, we would never allow that data to be captured in the first place.

Writing in the International Journal of Technology Transfer and Commercialisation (2007, vol 6, 56-63) in a special issue on data protection, trust and technology, Harkiolakis explains the possible ways of addressing privacy concerns. He suggests that there six angles, or dimensions, to privacy that basically follow the journalistic mantra of What, When, Who, Where, Why and How. By taking this six-dimensional approach to privacy, Harkiolakis explains that it becomes possible to define strict guidelines for implementing privacy policies, specifically within software that will act as mediators (in web browsers, for instance) or as representatives (in other programs and on computer servers) between you, the user, and the proverbial them.

Cyberspace is vast, the amount personal information “out there” is enormous, just look at the rapidly growing number of web pages, ecommerce sites, Facebook and MySpace users, Diggers, bloggers and others. This growth has multiplied our abilities to manipulate and aggregate information beyond imagination, terabyte upon terabyte of data oscillates across the wires. Now that exchanging data across these wires, fibre optics, and satellite connections is entirely the norm and so privacy is a significant issue. The six-dimensional approach to privacy proposed by Harkiolakis looks at the manipulation of data from six different angles: Personal data (What) would have been collected with a variety of methods (How) by different entities (Who) at different times (When), at different websites or servers (Where) and for different purposes (Why). In a dispute, legal or otherwise, an investigation of each of these points in the transaction or use of data would allow both parties to examine whether any breaches of privacy, trust, or the law was made.

A breach at any of those six points would represent a breach however you look at it. Conversely, by developing software that can analyse and assess each of these individual dimensions and how they mesh together during a transaction it might one day be possible to produce a program, a browser plugin, for example, that monitors your activity on the Internet for you and warns you much more effectively than displaying a locked padlock in the status bar when a transaction is about to compromise your privacy.

Bad motor scooter

Scooter computer

I received an intriguing press release the other day. It arrived with a photo of someone on a pink motor scooter touting a new service: London-based Scooter Computer. At first, I thought the release was alluding to a new built-in gadget for sexually ambivalent bikers, but it turns out not to be anything of the sort. So, forgive me for having such a politically incorrect thought.

In fact, the press release is about a UK startup company who ride to the rescue of those bewildered by IT problems at home, in the office, or SOHO. According to the release, the high-tech scooter cavalry come to the rescue on “quirky pink scooters” and will help fix your computer, install software, sort out your digital camera and even set you up on Facebook or help you download from iTunes and other sites if you are unsure as to how to go about that. Now, there have always been peripatetic quick fix tech people around almost since the moment the first person had a PC delivered to their home and discovered they couldn’t figure out which wire went where and broke their coffee cup holder on day one.

So, what makes the pink scooter computer guys any different, apart from the fact that they ride gaudy bikes? I figured that any technically inclined assistant charging a plumber’s rate could help set up a silver surfer with a Facebook account just as easily as shove a big chunk of RAM into a bored housewife’s computer…without getting bogged down in small talk.

Apparently, unlike plumbers and cable guys, the Scooter Computer mob will save you money on tech support lines and will talk you through what they are doing to fix or setup your gadget or computer so that you have the information to hand for future reference. I suspect this means that you would not need to call them out again for the same problem, again, very unlike a plumbing problem. Mark Dixon, a spokesman for Scooter Computer, says this is “the ideal service for anyone with IT/Tech/gadget problems.”

I have to admit, one thing I never do if I have a problem with a computer or gadget is call the technical support line, which should I call and expensive toll number and essentially pay the manufacturer to fix something that shouldn’t have been broken in the first place. The next thing I don’t do is take it back to the point of purchase, if that happens not to be an e-shop.

Finally, the last thing I do is not to read the manual. A much quicker solution is simply to Google the problem and if that doesn’t produce an answer, then there is always the manufacturer’s press office. But, then that’s probably not accessible to most users outside the world of journalism. But, it often helps, as regular readers who remember my Dell Inspiron laptop problem, the ntl netguard issue, and the VirginMedia OpenDNS debacle will recall.

One thing I almost always do when I figure out what’s wrong with a gadget, computer, or website is to blog it on Sciencetext.com, that way I have a record of what I did to rectify the situation for future reference. Moreover, since many of the problems I come across and ultimately solve turn out to be quite common, Sciencetext.com also acts as a repository for other people who may suffer from tech fallout too.

Scooter Computer founder Will Foot said: “We spotted that people did not have the knowledge or the time to get the most out of their computers and gadgets. With iPods, Blackberrys, digital cameras and millions of home computers it was clear that there was a demand for reliable IT support in the home.”

The team offer computer testing, installation of parental controls, virus protection advice, data backup and general troubleshooting. They will also sort out your digital photo needs, iPod storage questions and even offer training in your own home. It’s likely that the idea if it is truly successful will be hijacked by other companies. Foot adds that big American companies and large retailers are looking to move in on this area of business and he’s happy for the competition, having found a way to bring the helpdesk right to your home or SOHO with no traffic or parking problems, a deliberate lack of jargon, all on seriously gaudy motor scooters.

Open Access Science

John Wilbanks, executive director of the Science Commons, and his colleagues are now focusing on access to the literature, obtaining materials, and sharing data. Science Commons recently introduced a set of tools to allow authors greater control over papers published in scientific journals.

This week, they have launched the Neurocommons project, an open-source research platform for brain studies. This system uses text-mining tools and analysis software to annotate millions of neurology papers, so that researchers worldwide can find relevant information in a matter of minutes. Other sciences will follow. Wilbanks spoke with Popular Science magazine about his vision for open access science.

Blogging tips

For readers who don’t already know, I thought I’d let you into a little secret, I’ve been unfaithful to the Sciencebase Blog. While bringing you a regular daily dose of science news and views on Sciencebase I’ve also been running around with a frisky little site that goes by the name of Significant Figures. Here’s a summary of what I’ve been getting up to with that site lately:

Boost Your RSS Subscribers With Easter Eggs
The Internet Duct Tape site offers blogging, programming, technology, and lifehacks as does Significant Figures, but IDT is way ahead of the game when it comes to attracting RSS subscribers. One of the neat little ideas the site describes is how to create a secret Easter eggs page for your blog’s…
Click an Orange, Feed the World
Ever wondered what those little orange icons that litter blogs and websites are all about? If you have, where have you been, those little oranges are the key to the amazing world of newsfeeds.With this post we’re launching Click an Orange Day with the slogan – Click an orange and feed the world,…
Season of Compliments

Just a few recent comments from our regular readers for your delectation:Great work with this one, nicely done!Your site is very interesting, very calming effect just reading it. Will spend more time with certain areas. Well done and good luck with your work.Hello everyone. Nice to meet you here!The…
Accepting Comment Spam

In the past, you have focused on avoiding comment spam on your blog using tools like Bad Behavior and Akismet. These coupled with wary moderation allow you to stave off the cr*p flood of phentermine, tramadol, lager breast, and bigger member spams that hit your comment queue in a regular tsunami of…
Feedburner Competition
Now that Google has acquired Feedburner and we can all use MyBrand for free, I would like to open up a little competition for Significant Figures readers who have their own blog running a Feedburner feed.Here’s the deal. Look up your Feedburner subscriber number and leave a link to the counter…
Dump the Blogroll
Wayne Smallman over on the technology news site BlahBlahTech dumped his blogroll this week. He had several very good reasons, not least was that a lack of context for all those links to external sites means the blogroll has had its day and is no longer providing a service to readers. Shame, he tells…
Converting a WordPress Blog into a Static Site

Some time ago, I built a simple little website for UK hydroseeding company CDTS Ltd. Cambridge Direct Tree Seeding convert brownfield and other sites into lush landscaped areas.Initially, I suggested to the company that there would be several advantages to running their site as a blog, allowing them…
How to Boost Your Feed Readers

Recently, I left a comment on a fellow blogger’s site suggesting he add a small link to a ‘What is RSS?’ post close to his feed subscription button. My rationale was based on my experience with Sciencebase subscriber numbers and some insider knowledge on web surfing habits and how these might…

Digital Cameras and Imaging

Advanced Imaging subscription

If you’re in North America, you can sign up for a free subscription to Advanced Imaging. The magazine is published monthly and provides some 55,000 imaging professionals in industry, science, medicine, the arts, broadcasting, and the media with the latest news on imaging hardware, software and peripherals (digital cameras, CCD etc) that are used in capturing, displaying, manipulating and storing images.

According to the magazine’s blurb, if you are working on a daily basis with all forms of digital imaging for various applications, on any computer platform, then you can get a free subscription and find out about the available imaging tools and techniques used by fellow professionals in their work.

For more freebies and offers, grab the Sciencebase Science Newsfeed where you can gain access to additional offers, including invites to web 2.0 sites, such as Pownce (Twitter on steroids) and Joost TV, as well as the chance to get a free text link on Sciencebase.com Be sure to add the newsfeed to your reader ASAP and check back for updates to the Sciencebase secret subscribers’ page.