Category: Technology

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

Ask Jeeves about science

Here’s a top listing of questions that bring readers to sciencebase from the Ask Jeeves search engine. We cannot promise to answer them all here, but search the site and you may find enlightenment or at the very least some factlets of even more interest.

How old was Einstein when he wrote his papers on relativity?
When were the largest glaciers in history?
Where can I find some wow facts about sodium?
When Mars will look as large as the full Moon to the naked eye?
How much does the Japanese government spend on computers?
What planet is most like Earth?
How many barrels of oil do Americans use every day?
What is the width of a dime?
Why can’t frogs smoke?
How far is Sedna from the sun?
How do humans recognize faces?
What killed Otzi the iceman?
Where is the Earth’s crust thickest?

Chitika

No doubt I’ll get round to creating a Chitika stream for my readers viewing pleasure. But, first, just check out the blurb with which they try to entice bloggers:

“Chitika eMiniMalls bring life to product promotion on the web. With eMiniMalls you can hand-select specific products (or product categories) targeted to the content of your webpage, and provides your users with robust comparative shopping information to make an informed buying decision – before they leave your site. As users click, you make money.”

Unfortunately for a science blog and its readership, they don’t yet have a minimall for silica gel TLC plates and test-tubes, maybe one day.

Periodic Post

Periodic table of sex

Mosts chemists get to see some wacky periodic tables during their careers – circular ones, spiral ones, ones that rearrange all the elements etc etc. Then there are the foody ones and then there are the giant periodic tables, the arty farty ones, the online version, the flash table.

And, then there’s the periodic table of sex.

I didn’t think it was real at first, but several sciencebase visitors have been searching for this incredible object during the last few days, so I thought I’d uncover the truth. Apparently, just such a PT exists, its elementary in the most lewd way, but is available from Amazon. Apparently, allposters.com have stopped selling it, so I’d grab one while you can: Periodic table of sex

It’s not every post I get to categorise as chemistry, sex and geek all at the same time, but this one was simply begging for it. I hate to think what good-ole Dmitri Mendeleev would have made of it though, but surely it’d make the perfect gift for the chemistry student in your life. Wouldn’t it?

Natural power for TV

A posting about telemarketing on digg reminded me how a teacher friend used to mess with the heads of cold callers, asking them obviously dumb questions.

One of the less subtle was to ask the telemarketer from British Gas, which now also offer electricity as well as natural gas to UK customers, whether he’d be able to run his TV from the gas supply.

They caller would politely tell him no, but become increasingly frustrated as my friend continued his line of enquiry embellishing his questions all the while with thermodynamic gobbledegook and nonsense about improved efficiency. He could keep them hanging on for hours…

Of course, the irony is that once we all have methane-fed fuel cells in our homes, we will indeed be running our TVs off natural gas!

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.