Could you pass it?

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Entrance Examination, 1869-70

Do they even give entrance exams anymore?

For more info see: How the SAT works

There is a really interesting article in The Economist called:

Ethanol, schmethanol

The problem with ethanol is that it has a lot of problems as a fuel: It absorbs water (and therefore can cause corrosion), it contains significantly less energy per gallon compared to gasoline, etc. The article therefore asks a good question: “So why is ethanol suddenly back in fashion? That is the question many biotechnologists in America have recently asked themselves. The obvious answer is that, being derived from plants, ethanol is “green”. The carbon dioxide produced by burning it was recently in the atmosphere. Putting that CO2 back into the air can therefore have no adverse effect on the climate. But although that is true, the real reason ethanol has become the preferred green substitute for petrol is that people know how to make it—that, and the subsidies now available to America’s maize farmers to produce the necessary feedstock. Yet such things do not stop ethanol from being a lousy fuel. To solve that, the biotechnologists argue, you need to make a better fuel that is equally green. Which is what they are trying to do.”

The article then goes on to discuss and explain several green alternatives to ethanol that would be better fuels:

• biobutanol
• octanol
• biopetrol
• isoprenoids
• fatty acids
• biocrude

If you are interested in learning about a range of biofuels, it is an interesting article to use as a starting point.

See also: How AC FOX works

Some friends and I were talking about AT&T yesterday at lunch, and this video came up:

This little 2-minute video gives a very nice introduction to how a space elevator will work:

But before it can be built, we need to develop all of the technology necessary. That’s what the Elevator 2010 competition is all about:

elevator2010.org

The date this year is October 19 in Salt Lake City. Here’s a typical event from last year, showing the University of Saskatchewan Space Design Team’s robotic climber:

They all do the same thing, approximately, but it is amazing how many different forms bridges can take:

32 Amazing Bridges from Around the World

See also: How Bridges Work

Have you ever been in one of those “I’M GONNA DIE!!!” situations and felt like your brain is speeding up? In that kind of situation, the world around you appears to be moving in slow motion.

But is this feeling for real, or is it an illusion? It turns out, it may be for real:

That video came from Physicist Michio Kaku’s four-part documentary on “Time”. If you would like to get a better look at Michio Kaku, watch this interview with him from Screen Savers:

First there was Roomba to vacuum the carpet. Then there was Scooba to wash the linoleum. This week iRobot has released two new robots.

The first is Looj, which will clean out gutters. But no one really cares about that. The robot that is getting all the press is the iRobot ConnectR Virtual Visiting Robot. You can read all about it here:

iRobot® ConnectR™ Virtual Visiting Robot

Its tag line: “Stay close to those you love – no matter where you are!” iRobot lists these possible uses:

• Participate in family moments even though you’re working late
• On a business trip? Read your kids a story and see their faces light up
• Join the fun from near or far
• Throw a party from a thousand miles away
• Tell Fido he’s a “good boy” even while you’re on vacation

That’s pretty warm and fuzzy. But really, if you think about it, you can do a lot of this with a normal telephone, or with a webcam and a free copy of NetMeeting or something similar. The fact is that the ConnectR is a remotely piloted web cam on wheels, and that has a lot of people wondering if the real purpose for this robot is a little more sinister. Like spying. Take, for example, this article:

New robots aid social connection - or spying - from afar

Further enhancing this “spying” impression is the fact that the ConnectR does not have a screen - just a camera. The operator of the ConnectR can see everything, but the people looking at the ConnectR cannot see the operator. So, if you are looking for a spy robot that you can drive around your house while you aren’t home, the ConnectR is just the thing you need.

What’s more interesting is to think about where this “telepresence” technology is heading. In Japan these telepresence robots are often packaged more like stuffed animals. The idea of visiting a musem in another country through telepresence is intriguing. Doctors have been using telepresence for several years to visit patients in hospitals. People working from home could use them to have a “presence” in the office. The idea of showing up for a meeting and finding it filled with telepresence robots is thought-provoking… but we will probably all switch over to Second Life before that happens.

It seems like a simple question, and you would think that there would be a simple answer. But apparently this is still up in the air:

Earth’s water brewed at home, not in space

The current working theory is that water came from comets that bombarded the earth billions of years ago. See, for example, this NASA blurb that describes the role of comets: “Life on Earth began at the end of a period called the late heavy bombardment, some 3.8 billion years ago. Before this time, the influx of interplanetary debris that formed the Earth was so strong that the proto-Earth was far too hot for life to have formed. Under this heavy bombardment of asteroids and comets, the early Earth’s oceans vaporized and the fragile carbon-based molecules, upon which life is based, could not have survived. The earliest known fossils on Earth date from 3.5 billion years ago and there is evidence that biological activity took place even earlier - just at the end of the period of late heavy bombardment.”

Several years ago there was a theory that snow comets were still hitting the earth at a rapid rate. This article says, “The small comet theory, developed in 1986 with UI research scientist John Sigwarth from data gathered using the Dynamics Explorer 1 satellite, holds that about 20 snow comets weighing 20 to 40 tons each disintegrate in the Earth’s atmosphere every minute. Over the lifetime of our planet, the comets would have accounted for virtually all of the Earth’s water. The small comet theory has been controversial almost from the beginning, with some scientists suggesting that images identified as small snow comets actually result from electronic noise on satellite sensors and other researchers asserting that the images represent a real phenomenon. In 1997, Frank revealed a series of photographs taken by Visible Imaging System (VIS) cameras designed by Frank and Sigwarth and carried aboard NASA’s Polar spacecraft as further proof of the existence of the small snow comets.” There are several problems with this theory, however. One of the biggest is the fact that we’ve never actually seen one of these 20-ton comets.

The development of a new theory is always interesting because it creates waves in the scientific community and forces people to re-think the data. We’ll see how this one pans out.

For more info see: How the earth works

Back in the 90s, long before the technology was available to support its full vision, Apple released the Newton. It was supposed to be a portable, handheld computer, but it was too big, pretty clunky and did not work very well.

Then Palm came out with the Palm Pilot and created a runaway hit. The reason the palm did so well is because it was compact, simple, and it solved the handwriting problem in a very elegant way. There was no way that portable processors and software of the day could deal with real handwriting recognition as was attempted on the Newton, so it didn’t work very well. The Palm Pilot limited your “handwritng” to a single letter at a time in a single spot on the screen using a simplified alphabet, and everything came together. The Palm Pilot was a perfect fit with the technology of the day, and also of real value for its users.

Now Apple is thinking about redeeming itself:

Up next for Apple: the return of the Newton

If you look at the mockup in the article, you can see that Apple’s palmtop is bigger than the iPhone. This allows a real screen, with 720×480 pixels. According to the article: “More broadly characterized as Apple’s answer to the ultra-mobile PC, the next-gen device is believed to be tracking for a release sometime in the first half of 2008. Assuming the project remains clear of roadblocks, sources believe it could make an inaugural appearance during Jobs’ Macworld keynote in January alongside some new Mac offerings.”

Releasing a new product like this seems like a good idea. No one has really nailed the palmtop/super-mobile PC thing. Apple seems like it could. But why stop there? Why not a GPS? Garmin is making a killing with GPSs (just look at Garmin’s recent stock price). I have a Nuvi 350 and I love it. Could Apple do a GPS? An acquaintance of mine is on the record saying, “If Apple made an HDTV, I’d buy it in an instant.” Dell does HDTV - Could Apple do HDTV? And what about a toaster? If Apple made a really cool toaster and charged $200 for it, I know a lot of people who would buy one instantly.

Why hasn’t Apple gone the way of Sony, producing products in dozens of categories? Anyone know?

This article is fascinating on at least four different levels:

Satellite Searches Could Spot Bigfoot, Loch Ness Monster

The article is talking about the search for Steve Fossett. One tool they are using is satellite images, as described here:

Adventurer Steve Fossett went missing Sept. 3 about 70 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada, in a small plane. He left no flight plan, and searchers have combed tens of thousands of square miles of Nevada and California. After weeks of fruitless searches, and with the survival window closing, Web users were enlisted to help in Fossett’s rescue, from the comfort of their own homes.

Using a program called Mechanical Turk, high-resolution satellite imagery of the search area was collected and analyzed. Participants were shown a single satellite image and asked to note any objects or wreckage that could be a plane or its debris.

The first fascinating thing is the idea of enlisting volunteers to analyse satellite images. This could give a whole new meaning to “community watch” if applied in a broader way.

The second fascinating thing is the fact that several other wrecks “dating back to the 1950s” have been discovered.

The third fascinating thing is that they STILL haven’t found Steve.

And finally…

the fourth fascinating thing comes out of the blue: “It may finally verify the existence of large, mysterious creatures reputed to inhabit the globe. Unknown animals such as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster, for example, might be easily located and captured—if indeed they exist.”

For more info see: How Bigfoot Works

PS - Could this technology help us find Osama? Could it be used to track insurgents in Iraq?

Global warming may be about to spiral out of control, if it gets warm enough to melt the permafrost:

500 Billion Tons of Prehistoric Organic Matter May Massively Accelerate ‘Global Warming’

From the article:

thousands of years animal waste, and other organic matter left behind on the Arctic tundra, have been sealed off from the environment by permafrost. Now climate change is melting the permafrost and freeing mass quantities of prehistoric “ooze” from its state of suspended animation…

“The deposits of organic matter in these soils are so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves,” Zimov said. U.S. government statistics show mankind emits about 7 billion tons of carbon a year.”Permafrost areas hold 500 billion tons of carbon, which can fast turn into greenhouse gases,” Zimov added. “If you don’t stop emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere … the Kyoto Protocol (an international pact aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions) will seem like childish prattle.”

The idea is that if the permafrost melts just a little, it releases enough carbon to melt some more, and so on.

I’m not sure which is more amazing: the fact that there is 500 billion tons of carbon trapped in the permafrost, or the fact that we are already emitting 7 billion tons a year. Seven billion tons is a staggering number.

It also makes you wonder if there is any way to turn the permafrot ooze into fuel of some sort, and burn it in a powerplant that sequesters the carbon.

For more info see: How Global Warming Works

Remember about a month ago we were talking about the world’s largest spider web? At that point, no one knew where the web had come from. Now they do:

Scientists untangle mystery of giant web

From the article: “A variety of spider species built on one another’s work to create a sprawling web that blanketed hundreds of yards of trees and shrubs at a North Texas park, according to entomologists who studied the unusual formation.” Normally spiders don’t cooperate, but there was so much food available at the site that they decided to work together.

For more info see: How Spiders Work

One look at the photos and videos on this page and you will see what I mean:

The WAM-V: EcoGeeky Spider Boat

There is something so simple and elegant about the design of this little stove…

Cool Little Miniature Stove! - More amazing videos are a click away

In case you are wondering, Heet is nothing but methanol. People add it to their gas tanks to get water out of the tank in the winter.

If so, this cheat sheet can help:

The Interviewing Cheat Sheet: 100 Resources for Interviewers and Candidates

Want to try something unorthadox in your next interview?

The Button

The Author’s premise is that you have as much to learn from an interview as your potential employer does. The way you learn is by getting your interviewer to talk. He puts it this way, “Like meetings, there are different personalities that are going to walk into the interview, and each person has a Button. When you press this button, they’re going to be compelled to talk. Some personalities hide their buttons better than others, but most people have at least one.”

For more info see: How Hiring Works

If you have read How the hydrogen economy works, you know that the idea of a hydrogen economy is popular because it would be much better for the environment. However, there are two problems that need to be solved: 1) how to efficiently produce hydrogen, and 2) How to efficiently store hydrogen.

One obvious way to make hydrogen is to use electricity to split water. The problem is that you have to make the electricity. If you use a coal-fired power plant, you are defeating the purpose. Many people don’t like nuclear. And solar panels are still pretty expensive.

What if you could skip the solar panels and go directly from sunlight to hydrogen? That is the idea discussed in this article:

Splitting Water with Sunlight

According to the article: “Hydrogen is one of the most important fuels of the future, and the sun will be one of our most important sources of energy. Why not combine the two to produce hydrogen directly from solar energy without any detours involving electrical current? Why not use a process similar to the photosynthesis used by plants to convert sunlight directly into chemical energy?”

Scientists are using titanium disilicide. With the help of sunlight, this semiconductor will catalytically split hydrogen and oxygen. Titanium disilicide has the advantage of being inexpensive.

We will see where this leads. For more info in the meantime see: How the hydrogen economy works

PS - another nice article here: Four energy technologies on the brink

Given the amount of time that American culture spends talking about sex, writing about sex, singing about sex, publishing magazines and filming movies soaked in sex, etc., wouldn’t you expect America to be the sexiest country in the world? If so, you would be wrong:

U.S. adults spend less time having sex

Through a large-scale poll of 26,000 people in 26 countries, it has been discovered that Americans are well behind other nationalities. According to the article: “On average, the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey found, Americans have sex just 85 times a year — about once every 4.3 days — well below the global pace of 103 times or about once every 3.5 days. They also spend an average of about 57 minutes per week having sex — about 14 minutes below the global average, the survey learned.”

The obvious question: Why? Is it because:
- Americans spend too much time working?
- Americans spend too much time playing video games and watching TV?
- Americans are getting so much vicarious sex that the real thing is less necessary?
- Americans are growing more and more obese?
- Something else?

For more info see How Sex Works

Students at MIT have a long history of pranks (AKA Hacks). Here is one of the latest:

John P. Harvard goes Halo

There is a hack gallery here:

MIT Hack Gallery

Strangely, the hack gallery is missing the recent episode a Logan airport:

Boston Airport Bomb Scare Should Scare Scientists

According to the article:

For those unfamiliar with the story, the student is Star Simpson, a 19-year-old MIT sophomore. On Friday, she went to meet a friend at Boston’s Logan Airport, but made the mistake of wearing her Career Day outfit: a sweatshirt to which she’d attached a circuit board, light and battery. On the back of the sweatshirt she wrote, in reference to her dual electrical engineering and computer science major, “Socket to me” and Course VI.”

The rest of the article goes on to point out that Star was surrounded my machine-gun-armed state police, and that this episode may indicate that we are losing our minds.

But are these pranks really cutting edge? Putting a helmet on a statue - is that worthy of gallery status? Where are the new ideas in prank technology here in the 21st century?

There is at least one person pushing the envelope on pranks, and he has managed to get himself banned from K-mart in the process. The list of pranks contains some that are so bizarre… they further demonstrate how the line between genius and madness is often a blurry one. Nonetheless, it is an interesting read:

How to get banned from K-mart

The thing he missed was taping these events. If he had taped them and put them on YouTube, he might have his own TV show by now. This is probably how “Candid Camera” got started.

Have you ever wondered how a doctor sews a finger back on after it gets cut off? Here’s a nice, non-gross overview of the process:

Replantation of digits

Here’s another one from the American academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons:

Replantation

It answers questions like “How is the procedure done?” and “What kind of recovery can I expect?”

First there was Second Life, which now reportedly has something like 8 million members:

Second Life Trailer

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Then Sony made the decision to get into the mix, with its soon-to-be-released Playstation Home:

And now Google is making noises:

Google eyeing its own ‘Second Life?’

According to the article: “For some time now, we here at CNET News.com have been hearing whispers that Google might be looking to get into the virtual world space, particularly in light of the increasing interest of existing environments like Second Life, and the success of Google Earth and the search giant’s purchase of the Sketchup technology. Well, now we might finally be on to something. According to TechCrunch, Google may already be testing its own 3D virtual world technology, in a secret experiment at Arizona State University.” (see also this article)

No word from Google yet on what will happen.

Speaking of Second Life, this was a really interesting experiment:

Coldwell Banker Puts Real House on Second Life Block

They took a real house that is for sale in the real world for $3 million and they recreated it in Second Life so people could experience it virtually.

And there is this report on AI in Second Life:

Online worlds to be AI incubators

According to the article, virtual worlds can be a big help to researchers: “Robots have a lot of disadvantages, we have not solved all the problems of getting them to move around and see the world,” he said. “It’s a lot more practical to control virtual robots in simulated worlds than real robots.”

What happens when you take common germs from earth and send them to the space station? Sometimes they get a lot deadlier:

Germs taken to space come back deadlier

From the article: “The germ: Salmonella, best known as a culprit of food poisoning. The trip: Space Shuttle STS-115, September 2006. The reason: Scientists wanted to see how space travel affects germs, so they took some along — carefully wrapped — for the ride. The result: Mice fed the space germs were three times more likely to get sick and died quicker than others fed identical germs that had remained behind on Earth.”

What happened? 167 genes mutated. What caused the mutations? Not sure yet.

For more info see How DNA Works

Due out next year, Batman: The Dark Knight is filming right now. Apparently, while testing a shot with the Batmobile, there was an accident:

Batman special effects man killed

Warner Brothers released a statement: “Warner Bros Pictures and the entire cast and crew of The Dark Knight are deeply saddened by this tragedy, and their hearts and prayers go out to the family and loved ones of the deceased.”

Here is the teaser trailer for the movie: Dark Knight trailer

More info on the Batmobile: How the Batmobile Works

It started with this article:

Mobile Urban Architecture: From Portable Housing to Temporary Hotel Rooms

It mentions cargo container housing, which leads to a Google search. That search yields all kinds of stuff, including this:

Slideshow: Home Is Where the Cargo Was

Quik House

Container Bay

This video has a nice overview of the phenomenon:

57 years ago, a man named Hugh Everett suggested the possibility of parallel universes. The idea was that every moment in our universe spawned other universes with alternate configurations. It turns out, he may have been right:

Parallel universes exist

According to the article: “In Everett’s ‘many worlds’ universe, every time a new physical possibility is explored, the universe splits. Given a number of possible alternative outcomes, each one is played out - in its own universe.”

Parallel universes make quantum sense

David Deutsch at the University of Oxford and colleagues have shown that key equations of quantum mechanics arise from the mathematics of parallel universes. “This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science,” says Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis. In one parallel universe, at least, it will - whether it does in our one remains to be seen.

Probably because it costs too much to set one up, and then not that many people use it. At least that’s what this article says:

US cities’ Wi-Fi dreams fading fast

The problem seems to be the fact that a wi-fi hot spot has very little power. This means that a city has to set up lots of hot spots, and even then the signals don’t make it very far into buildings. That makes it really hard to “cover a city”. Also in the article:

In San Francisco, Google was preparing to back a citywide Wi-Fi program with Earthlink that would be free for users who agree to view online ads, with paying customers getting an ad-free version. But the city was unable to come to terms with Earthlink before the firm pulled out and announced a massive reorganization on August 28.

Chicago officials announced August 31 they would “re-evaluate” their plan after two potential partners failed to come up with a suitable plan because a network required “extraordinary financial support” from the city.

The next big thing is WiMax, which has a longer range per hot spot. A WiMax network would look a lot like a cell phone network in a city and would be much easier to set up. See How WiMax Works for details.

Have you ever wondered what’s available out there in the open source universe? Here is a nice summary of 480 apps nicely categorized for easy reference:

480+ open source applications and resources

The list includes categories for accounting, content management, CRM, desktop environments, email clients, ripping, ERP, File sharing, graphics and modeling, media players, messengers, PDF tools, PIM, poject management, reporting tools, RSS, system utilities, Office, web browsers and other.

You have to watch carefully, but you can see that John Force, along with his safety cage and the rear tires, end up on the right side of the track, while the front of his car goes left.

So what happened? According to this article, he blew out a rear tire and it totally destabilized the car, breaking it into two parts.

Here’s a new prefab house that claims to use zero energy:

Zero energy prefab

Lots of photos in the article. The house has a “living roof”, solar panels, greywater system, LED lighting, etc., etc. This page offers more detail and some video.

See also How houses work

So the XYZ company has released the newest, sexiest high-tech gadget. Should you buy it? Good article from the WSJ:

When to Hold Off on Latest Gadget

The recommendation:

Generally, six months after a product is released is a safe bet. Tech products have a lifecycle of up to a year before the “something-cooler-is-on-the-horizon price drop” kicks in, says Ms. Arar. Plus, most of the bugs associated with the launch of a new technology will have been fixed at that point.

For more info see How the iphone works

An oldie but goodie - the truth about “Rewetting drops” for contact lenses:

World’s Biggest Ripoff Exposed! - The most amazing videos are a click away

The question would be, why is this kind of rip-off allowed in the first place?