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Weblog for April 2002

25 April, 2002

Earliest Known Ancestor of Placental Mammals Discovered [permanent link]: National Geographic News has this article on the discovery of possibly the earliest known ancestor to placental mammals. It is a 125-million year old shrew-like creature that shares the characteristics of placental mammals.

24 April, 2002

Stackable Storage Systems [permanent link]: EETimes has an interesting article about an attempt by IBM to produce a stackable storage system. Each 'brick' contains a storage system that can be stacked together like Lego bricks into a cube-like structure. Adding or removing bricks (plus fault-tolerance) would be dynamic and users would just see a single file-system.
Access Google Search via email [permanent link]: An interesting application, resulting from Google opening up a SOAP interface to their search engine is the ability to search Google via email. Send mail to [email protected] with your search items in the subject line and you get back a list of links. Probably not useful if you have direct access to Google but if you are using a mobile phone or a PDA, you could use this to do search and save your results until you have full internet access.

23 April, 2002

Digging for Computer Dirt [permanent link]: What do you do to when you discover that you have precious computer data stored on that old Apple ][ floppy? As this Salon article points out, there are people out there who can retrieve such data; for a price.

18 April, 2002

Red, Green, Blue and Other Sounds [permanent link]: This Wired News article talks experiments being conducted on using sound to 'see'. One experiment involves "seeing" with sound; the other involves "seeing" with the region of the brain that processes sound. Both show that the brain is a very adaptable piece of equipment and points to ways to let blind people 'see' the world around them.
Damon Knight: 1922-2002 [permanent link]: Damon Knight, a well known SF writer passed away recently. "To Serve Man" is among one of his more famous works. You can read an obiturary for Knight to find out more about this writer.
Thousands of Incan Mummies Excavated [permanent link]: National Geographic News has a story about a National Geographic Society excavation of thousands of Incan mummies. This was done to preserve them as a growing human population in a town above the burial site threatens to damage the mummies buried underneath.

11 April, 2002

Exotic star made entirely of quarks [permanent link]: New Scientist has an story about a possible discovery of a star made entirely of quarks. Quarks are the basic building blocks of protons and neutrons. The pressure found in these strange stars is apparently so great that the neutrons that make up the star has 'dissolved' into their constituent quarks, making this a new state of matter. The discovery still needs to be confirmed but observing the stars could offer insights into the behaviour of quarks, which currently cannot be produced in experiments.

10 April, 2002

How the Magna Doodle and Seatbelt Work [permanent link]: How Stuff Works looks at how the Magna Doodle works. The Magna Doodle is an erasable drawing tool/toy (depending on whether an adult or child is using it) that has delighted and entertained many people. Also, check out how seatbelts work.
Growing Artificial Bone [permanent link]: MIT Technology Review has an article on growing artificial bones using electricity distributed via carbon nanotubes. This prevents bones from growing around electrodes only. The technique is still experimental but it could allow entire bones to be re-grown or to replace damaged bones.

9 April, 2002

Virtual Endoscopy [permanent link]: This Scientific American article looks at virtual endoscopy, a technique which allows doctors to look at the insides of patients bodies without actually using an endoscope. Many computer-aided tomography, or CT, scans are combined together using a computer the give the doctor a virtual look at the inside of the patient.
SLiP: a "Sorta Like Python" shorthand for XML [permanent link]: Python is my current favourite programming language. But what SLiP does is interesting. It uses Python's syntax and a 'wrapper' to produce XML output. This means that you can use a standard editor that understands Python's syntax and use it to produce XML output. Probably not useful if you are used to producing XML directly but still an interestion option for those used to Python's syntax.
The Linux etx3 Jounalling Filesystem [permanent link]: The standard file system used under the Linux OS is known as ext2. While it was good, it wasn't a 'journalling filesystem'. A journalling filesystem is one that keeps a log of changes that will be made to a filesystem. If there is a power failure, this journal can be used to quickly recover the filesystem. This LinuxPlanet report looks at ext3, the journalling filesystem successor to ext2 that is backward compatible to ext2, and why you may want to consider switching to it if you are using ext2.
ARM Core Dominates Mobile Market [permanent link]: You may not hear much about the ARM Processor, but it is a microprocessor that is often use in the mobile market. Chances are, if you own a mobile phone, an ARM processor is inside it, operating the phone. This AsiaBizTech article looks at the strength and weaknesses of the ARM processor in various technological markets and what may be the future trends for it and its competitors.

5 April, 2002

Introduction to Distributed Computing [permanent link]: ExtremeTech has an article that gives an introduction to Distributed Computing. It looks at what distributed computing is, how it works, what are the current distributed computing applications and the challenges to it.
Optik: a new Python Command-line Parser [permanent link]: Programmers usually have to write (or re-write) a command-line parser. Optik promises to make that easier for Python programmers by providing a command-line parsing library that does the job quite automatically.
Making a Long Bet [permanent link]: Wired News has an interesting story about some visionaries and scientist thinking about the long term and putting their money on their predictions. The Long Bets organisation was set up to take socially or technologically interesting bets and predictions by people (minimum amount for a bet is USD1000). The idea is for people to discover what the long term future may hold for us and possibly improve on long-term thinking. You can also read a fuller account of their bets and the organisation in this May 2002 Wired Magazine article.

4 April, 2002

My Pet Neutron Star [permanent link]: Science@NASA News has a story about how experimental physicists may be able to study neutron stars and supernovas by experimenting with Bose-Einstein Condensates (BEC) which have been found to have similar properties despite the enormous differences in densities (neutron stars are very dense; BCEs are not) and temperature (millions of degrees for neutron stars, barely above absolute zero for BCEs). Another example of how studies in one area of science (cold-matter physics) may be related to another are (astrophysics).
Gene Therapy treats 'Bubble Boy' [permanent link]: This BBC News story talks about how doctors have used gene therapy to treat a 'Bubble Boy', a young boy suffering from severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). Bone marrow was taken from the boy and a virus was used to insert a new version of a gene into immune cells in the marrow, allowing the boy's immune system to function properly.
Five Planets line up at the end of April [permanent link]: BBC News has this article on a planetary alignment of five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) at the end of April. The best time to see it is about half-an-hour after sunset in the west. I hope to be able to catch such an unsual sight.

3 April, 2002

Eleven Great Unanswered Questions of Physics [permanent link]: This Discover Magazine article looks at the eleven great unanswered questions of physics. They range from Cosmology ('missing dark matter') to quantum physics ('proton decay'). Answering these questions may bring us closer to making a 'great leap' in our understanding of the universe.
The Quest for the 'Perfect Lens' [permanent link]: Discover Magazine has an interesting article on the properties of material with 'negative indices of refraction'. The result is surprising: lenses made with such material can resolve images with features smaller than the wavelength of light or focus light to a much smaller region. The results currently only work for microwaves but future research may yield materials that can work with optical wavelenghts.
Freeze-drying Blood Platelets [permanent link]: Another interesting Wired News story about researchers that have managed to freeze-dry blood platelets, preserving them for up to a year instead of the usual five days. This allows hospitals to store them for much longer and reduce the amount of wasted platelets.
New Zealand as a Animal Biotechnology Centre [permanent link]: Wired News has a story on why New Zealand is set to become a manjor animal biotechnology centre. Its isolation (thousand of kilometres of water surround it) means that it does not have major animal diseases like foot-and-mouth or mad-cow making its animals ideal for making drugs without the risks of accidentally putting those diseases into the drugs.

2 April, 2002

The Push for News [permanent link]: Wired News has an article titled "The Push for News" which talks about two new websites set up to automatically search news sites for news using different methods. They are Newsblaster and NewsInEssence which uses, quote, "natural language processing techniques to summarize top headlines." They may compete with the (Beta) Google News engine.
The Technicolour Digital Camera [permanent link]: Wired News has an article on a technicolour camera that was accidentally created when Farrell Eaves dropped his digital camera into water. After drying it out and trying it, he discovered that is produces strange streaks and colors on his images that may make his photos into works of art. You can see more examples at Bruce Dale's photo site.
Lioness adopts another baby antelope [permanent link]: This BBCNews story tells the continuing saga of a lioness in Kenya who has adopted yet another baby oryx (her third). The oryx is normally lion's prey but this lioness is allowing the baby oryx's mother to feed her baby everyday while protecting it from other predators. Some people have commented that the adoptions have, so far, taken place on significant dates: Christmas, Valentine's Day and Good Friday.

1 April, 2002

Death of Britain's Queen Mother [permanent link]: Over the weekend, the news came in of the death of Britain Queen's Mother. Take a look at this In Depth BBC News Report for more information on the Queen Mother.
IP Tables Tutorial [permanent link]: Those using Linux are probably aware that the OS has built-in capabilities to filter incoming and outgoing internet packets (iptables). This tutorial should help you to understand how iptables work and how to customise it for your particular network.

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