Category: Technology

Tech Talk – Miscellaneous discussion of gadgets, industry, computer science, social media, AI

Science Movies

Science in the movies was the subject of a a feature I wrote for the now sunk HMSBeagle (on BioMedNet.com), but the world of cinema has moved on apace since then with dozens more feature films that are less science fiction than what my good buddy Carl Djerassi (well, I’ve met him twice!) refers to as science in fiction as well as more impressibley many that are purely science non-fiction.

Here’s just a list of a few currently available on DVD I’d recommend, they’re available on amazon of course but seem to be cheaper at a new site, “DVD ideas”, which has a whole section dedicated to movies about science. Thanks to the guys at DVD Ideas for alerting me to this.

Me & Isaac Newton –
$17.99 on Amazon, $13.99 on DVD ideas – Seven scientists explore the scientific ethos without getting tangled in the technical details of their important work. The film concentrates on how these scientists come up with their ideas and uncovers fascinating contrasts in their biographies and their thinking.

SolarMax – $19.99 on Amazon, $12.99 on DVD ideas – This mind-boggling presentation, originally presented in IMAX theaters, goes to great lengths to explore to far-reaching power and significance of our closest star. From ancient Earth to orbiting spacecraft, explore what the power of the sun means to humankind

Breaking Vegas – $21.99 on Amazon, $16.97 on DVD ideas – Based on Ben Mizrich’s bestselling book, Breaking Las Vegas tells the true story of six college students from MIT – including Mizrich himself – who used their math skills to win millions of dollars at Las Vegas casinos.

Theremin – $12.99 on Amazon, $9.89 on DVD ideas – A documentary about the inventor of one of the first electronic instruments, the eponymous theremin (the sound of which quickly became cliched in science fiction films as the accompaniment to shots of flying saucers as well as providing the eerie ooooooh-eeeeeh-ooooooh sounds in The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations.

For All Mankind – $35.99 on Amazon, $29.96 on DVD ideas – Shot between December 1968 and November 1972, in the heyday of the space program, FOR ALL MANKIND tells the true story of the 24 men who travelled to the moon as the entire US, and indeed the rest of the world, watched in awe.

If you’re looking for science movies of a more technical or perhaps educational nature, then check out the Sciencebase science movies page. That page has various video links, as well as a few sample science clips.

Search engine bias

Search engines are not biased toward popular and highly linked websites, researchers report, in this week’s PNAS.

The internet is enormous, vast, gigantic, big and complex, search engines have taken on an increased role in guiding users to their destinations (community forums and blogs aside). But there are concerns that search engines, by means of their subjective ranking algorithms, could be creating positive feedback loops wherein popular sites that receive the most hits become more popular and so on. Eventually, this cycle shouldresult in a small subset of websites monopolizing a majority of traffic.

However, according to Santo Fortunato, Alessandro Flammini, Filippo Menczer, and Alessandro Vespignani this doesn’t actually happen. They collected data from various search engines and found that the popularity bias of search engines was weak. Search engines were found to direct less traffic to popular websites compared with a scenario where there were no search engines and all traffic was generated by web surfing.

The key reason for this apparent lack in search engine bias, the researchers note, is the wide diversity and specificity of information sought by internet users, which mitigates the ranking bias of the engine and creates balanced results. “We reconcile theoretical arguments with empirical evidence showing that the combination of retrieval by search engines and search behavior by users mitigates the attraction of popular pages, directing more traffic toward less popular sites, even in comparison to what would be expected from users randomly surfing the Web,” says the team.

So, where does this leave those seeking to tweak their position in the SERPs (search engine results pages) through SEO (search engine optimization) techniques? Your answers are most welcome…

You can read the preprint paper here and at PNAS (once it’s published) here

Jewelry Made with Molecules

Molecular jewelryPrecious jewelry is usually made with metals rather than molecules, although there is plenty of costume jewelry made with polymers and other materials which are of course composed of molecules. But, that’s not really a concern for madewithmolecules.com who are touting a chemically aware range of chokers, keychains, necklaces, charm bracelets, and even boxer shorts, sporting your favourite molecule.

So, for the chemist in your life, how about a serotonin necklace, or a pair of testosterone boxers, perhaps. A dopamine keychain tells the world you’re into love and pleasure (or that you’re on medication, perhaps) while acetylcholine earrings really show your neurones are firing on all four!

Then there are the estrogen items, for women who want to rejoice in their hormonal surges or for guys hoping to reveal their feminine side.

There are even glucose and oxytocin baby suits. Glucose being the key sugar molecule we all need right from birth and oxytocin being the feel-good hormone that completes the breast feeding cycle.

This post might look like an ad, but they didn’t pay me a dime for the privilege, I just had to tell sciencebase readers, many of whom are chemists.

Deaf to warnings of mp3 player risk

Are you deaf to the risks of hearing loss from mp3 player aural satisfaction?

According to a survey published today by Deafness Research UK, more than half of 16-24 year olds listen to their MP3 player for more than an hour a day, with almost 20% using for 21 hours a week. Trouble is, 68% of them don’t realise that listening to their MP3 player at loud volume can permanently damage their hearing.

It’s not exactly a new message, as a teenager, I heard the same calls for quiet when the first wave of Walkman cassette players were around and I’m sure generations of wind-up 78 gramophone flappers were told not to put the needle on the record too often or stick their ear too close to that brass cone. It’s a sensible message though, as I am sure many a deaf middle-aged rocker will testify.

Deafness could strike mp3 users 30 years earlier than their parents, the survey says. At least compared with those parents who didn’t overdo it with their Walkmans, one must assume. The survey results are published to mark the launch of a partnership between Specsavers Hearcare and Deafness Research UK to help fund deafness research.

Apparently, 14% of people spend up to “a staggering” 28 hours a week listening to their personal music player. I’m pretty sure some people watch more TV than that and if you go clubbing for five hours three times a week and listen to music on the other days that would quickly add up to far more than any “staggering” 28 hours. More than a third of people who have experienced ringing in their ears after listening to loud music, listen to their MP3 player every day. The news release doesn’t say whether these two facts are actually connected. Every youngster has experience temporary tinnitus after a music gig that usually lasts a day and I suspect that most gig goers listen to their mp3 players fairly frequently too. It would be hard to separate the two issues. Gig tinnitus or mp3 loudness…

Vivienne Michael, Chief Executive of Deafness Research UK, says: ‘Many young people are regularly using MP3 players for long periods of time and are frighteningly unaware of the fact that loud noise can permanently damage your hearing.

‘More than three quarters of people own a personal music player and sophisticated sound systems in their car and homes, which allow them to blast out music day and night. We also spend more time today in bars and clubs where the noise is so loud we can barely hear the person opposite us and few people — particularly the 16-34 year old age group – are aware of the damaging effect all this can have on their hearing.’

This kind of quote appears to be so out of touch that it’s simply unbelievable, “we also spend more time in bars and clubs…”? Really, when I were a lad, we used to spend at least three nights a week clubbing or at gigs where “we could barely hear each other drink”. And, yes maybe it is having an effect on my hearing, but it really is nothing new and yes we used to “blast out” music from our stereos (unsophisticated or otherwise) and play electric guitars too loud and all the rest. Nothing new under the sun, madam I’m afraid.

Meanwhile, there is a serious message underpinning this Deafness press release hidden among the fogeyness: Vivienne Michael continues: ‘Hearing loss can make life unbearable. It cuts people off from their family and friends and makes everyday communication extremely difficult. We want people to realise that their hearing is as important as their sight and protect their ears against any potential damage.’

Fair enough. Stop playing it at “11” and you might just be okay. Oh, and don’t stay out too late, and remember to say please and thank you and look both ways before you cross the road…

Windows admin protection

Here’s a neat little tip I picked up from Webmasterworld.com. If you’re worried about catching an infection from a contaminated website, then create a new user on your Windows XP machine that doesn’t have administrator rights.

Start-Control Panel-User Accounts
Create a new account (JaneDoes, frinstance)
Set as “Limited” user

Then, when you plan on visiting suspect sites, logoff from your admin account and logon as JaneDoe. Now, most rogue installers that the suspect site tries to set in motion will not be installable because JaneDoe’s account doesn’t have install rights.

Please don’t rely on this for full protection. Get Spybot S&D (the genuine one) and use its Immunize function to protect your browser. Or, join 15% of US net users who have adopted Firefox as their browser of choice and make sure you keep a tight rein on sites that you allow to install software.

Top 5 scientist blogs

technorati ranking

I suspect some scientists, like some science writers, you might say, have toooo much time on their hands. Nature’s Declan Butler trawled the Technorati blog directory for blogs written by scientists and found that of the 45 million or so blogs it lists at least five scientists’ blogs that make it into the top 3,500.

“There is little agreement about how to rank blogs,” Butler says, “no method is perfect.” He adds that given the huge number of blogs, there will no doubt be omissions. The exercise is, he says, best viewed as “a rough snapshot”. Nevertheless, the results demonstrate (somehow, the press release doesn’t say) that there has been a rapid increase in popularity of scientists’ blogs, and reveal several lessons for science bloggers hoping to get noticed.

I asked Butler about his motive for assessing science blogs in this way, “My idea was really just to get some idea of where science blogs stood in the blogosphere, and also draw attention to the issue of blogging in science,” he told me.

Anyway, here are the Top 5 Science Blogs according to Butler’s Technorati analysis:

179th Pharyngula http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula

1,647th The Panda’s Thumb http://www.pandasthumb.org

1,884th RealClimate http://www.realclimate.org

2,174th Cosmic Variance http://cosmicvariance.com

3,429th The Scientific Activist http://scienceblogs.com/scientificactivist

Intriguingly, at least two of those Top 5 science blogs is aimed at quashing the pseudoscience claptrap spouted by the extremists in the intelligent design, creationist and reactionary religious movements. All five of those discussed appear to provide a sensible view of various issues with which science is concerned and provide beacons that might see us out of the dark ages of the present anti-science stance many bloggers are taking today.

(Just for the record your very own sciencebase.com comes in at a rather respectable 852nd, although it was about 605th a couple of weeks ago, so not sure how valid their trackback algo really is, to be honest).

Scientific Rock Band

Regular readers may have noticed I’m in a list-making mood these last few days, with the NMR acronyms feature and “what scientists are known for” posts…well over on The Island of Doubt, fellow science writer James Hrynyshyn is discussing the issue of the scientific ethic in rock and mentions the likes of Talking Heads, Rush, and Thomas Dolby as being hot on science.

Well, it got me thinking about actual artist names that betray a hint of the technophile or the science-minded among the muso crowd, so here’s a short list…in no particular order:

Chemical Brothers (chem)
We are Scientists (gen)
Cure (med)
EMF (tech)
X-ray Spex (tech)
AC/DC (tech)
Spock’s Beard (sci-fi)
Bio-Com (bio)
Medicine Head (med)
Television (tech)
10cc (bio)
UFO (sci-fi)
TLC (chem)
Atomic Kitten (phys/bio)
Atomic Rooster (phys/bio)
Transister (tech)
Quantum Jump (phys)
William Orbit (astro)
Oxide and Neutrino (chem/phys)
Suzanne Vega (astro)
Quake (geo)
Tenth Planet (astro)
Mercury Rev (chem/astro)
Electronic (tech)
Quartz (geo)
Electric Light Orchestra (tech)
Neil Diamond (geo)
Multi Purpose Chemical (chem)
The Dead Science (formerly The Sweet Science) (gen)
Electric Soft Parade (tech)
Death Comet Crew (astro)
Nuclear Rabbit (phys)
Electric Prunes (tech)
The Mars Volta (astro)
Radiohead (tech)
Van Der Graaf Generator (tech)
My Chemical Romance (chem)
Chemical People (chem)
Electric Six (tech)
Mind Science of the Mind (gen)
Flux Information Sciences (info)
Skin (derma)
Scientist (gen)
Eat Static (tech)
Echo and the Bunnymen (audio)

Noesy Spectroscopists

Who says chemists don’t have a sense of humour, if you haven’t already seen Paul May’s Silly Molecules site check that out right now, but in the meantime some genuine acronyms from the world of spectroscopy

Insensitive Nuclei Enhanced by Polarization Transfer (INEPT)

Combined Rotation And Multiple Pulse Spectroscopy (CRAMPS)

HOmonucleaR ROtary Resonance (HORROR)

Nuclear Overhauser Effect SpectroscopY (NOESY)

COrrelation SpectroscopY (COSY)

Slice Interleaved Depth Resolved Surface Coil Spectroscopy (SLITDRESS)

Proton Enhanced Nuclear Induction Spectroscopy (P…you got it), which is often hyphenated with the next technique in the style of separations scientists who couple HPLC with ESI/MS and LC with DAD. Do I have to spell it out? We’d have P-V or V-P for that matter, depending on which technique came first.

Variably Adjusted Gamma Inhibiting Nuclear Association Spectroscopy (Okay, I made that one up, but I’m sure a spectroscopists somewhere is working on something similar), Hyphenated 2D versions of either this or the previous proton technique would be P-P and V-V.

There are many others including, CYCLOPS, HOHAHA, ROESY, SECSY, PASADENA, EXORCYCLE, DANTE, TOSS, INADEQUATE, ENDOR, FOCSY, HERPECS, DEPT, feel free to use the acronym search tool to validate the more suspect ones if you don’t trust me. Enter the acronym or abbreviation of interest in the yellow box on the right of that page and hit the GO button next to the phrase “Science Acronyms”.