Category Archives: Uncategorized

Team unearths what may be secret weapon against antibiotic resistance

A fungus living in the soils of Nova Scotia could offer new hope in the pressing battle against drug-resistant germs that kill tens of thousands of people every year, including one considered a serious global threat. via Team unearths what … Continue reading

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Hazing: How to hide in nearly plain sight | Student Science

A new invisibility cloak can hide objects in semi-plain sight — sometimes. Unlike earlier cloaking devices, this one can conceal things from light of any color and coming from any direction. But that flexibility comes at a price: This cloak … Continue reading

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Thirst for water moves and shakes California | Student Science

California’s thirst for water is creating unrest. During the dry season, tiny earthquakes rattle the state. And its mountains have begun creeping higher, bit by bit. Scientists have just linked the two phenomena to the heavy pumping of water from … Continue reading

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Digital displays get flexible | Student Science

Wrap-around smartphones and roll-up computer tablets could soon be coming to a store near you. A British electronics firm has created a plastic transistor. That could make possible a host of devices with flexible electronic displays. To illustrate the possibilities, … Continue reading

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The fuel cell for home – Research News June 2014 – Topic 2

It converts chemical energy directly into electrical energy. Still, there hadn’t been a market breakthrough for the fuel cell. The systems were too complex. Now, Fraunhofer and Vaillant have developed a simple device for home use. via The fuel cell … Continue reading

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Modernising Research Monitoring in Europe | Center for the Science of Science & Innovation Policy

The tracking of the use of research has become central to the measurement of research impact.  While historically this tracking has meant using citations to published papers, the results are old, biased, and inaccessible – and stakeholders need current data … Continue reading

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SERIOUS WONDER | The Future of Technology Isn’t Just a Rich Man’s Game – SERIOUS WONDER

I get that many believe that the amazing technologies of tomorrow will only be available to the rich and powerful, while the poor and working class suffer with nothing, but what I can’t comprehend anymore is why they believe that … Continue reading

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Message found in a gravity wave : Article : Nature Physics

Nature Physics offers a unique mix of news and reviews alongside top-quality research papers. Published monthly, in print and online, the journal reflects the entire spectrum of physics, pure and applied. Message found in a gravity wave : Article : … Continue reading

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The Science of Storytelling: Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains

A good story can make or break a presentation, article, or conversation. But why is that? When Buffer co-founder Leo Widrich started to market his product through stories instead of benefits and bullet points, sign-ups went through the roof. Here … Continue reading

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Spiders know the meaning of web music | University of Oxford

Spider silk transmits vibrations across a wide range of frequencies so that, when plucked like a guitar string, its sound carries information about prey, mates, and even the structural integrity of a web.The discovery was made by researchers from the … Continue reading

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Matter of Mind

A new way of thinking about consciousness is sweeping through science like wildfire. Now physicists are using it to formulate the problem of consciousness in concrete mathematical terms for the first time Continue reading

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Synthetic biology gets reborn as an aesthetic dream

SYNTHETIC biology is not like other sciences. At its first big conference, held just 10 years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the startling initial premise was that life is simply too complicated for biotechnologists to easily modify and that it would be better if engineers rebuilt life from scratch so the created organisms did exactly what was required.

The youthful enthusiasm that powered the field, and brought together engineers, biologists, computer scientists, physicists and biohackers, persists today. There have been a few major achievements, most notably last month’s creation of a computer-designed yeast chromosome. And before that, the creation of the first synthetic cell. Continue reading

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Public Books — Stop Defending the Humanities

Those who matter most to the humanities fall, I think, into two classes. The most important is that relatively small group of 18-year-olds (disproportionately few from poorer families) who are inclined to study the humanities. Our immediate future rests primarily … Continue reading

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Mesmerizing Magnet

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What caused a 10-year winter starting in 536?

A winter that lasts years isn\’t just a problem in Game of Thrones. Roughly 1500 years ago, our world was turned upsidown by a winter that witnesses say \”never ended.\” Now there is scientific evidence that there really was a … Continue reading

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Nick Veasey: Exposing the invisible | Video on TED.com

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The Dangers of AI

Described in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

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After Setbacks, Online Courses Are Rethought – NYTimes.com

After Setbacks, Online Courses Are Rethought – NYTimes.com.

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Right and left are fading away in politics – Steve Fuller – Aeon

Right and Left are fading away. The real question in politics will be: do you look to the earth or aspire to the skies? via Right and left are fading away in politics – Steve Fuller – Aeon.

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A Wizard of Oz Moment for the Web: Pull back the Curtains

Lightbeam, a download produced by Mozilla, the US free software community behind the popular Firefox browser, claims to be a “watershed” moment in the battle for web transparency. Everyone who browses the Internet leaves a digital trail used by advertisers … Continue reading

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Scenes from another academic conference

In Binghampton, NY for ‘Making Possible Futures in Research: Working Across the Disciplines’. I don’t seem to know how to make this rap more popular. I’ve been thinking about this for 25 years. I think it’s right, or at least … Continue reading

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How can we do interdisciplinarity if disciplines dont exist?

Disciplines have little or no epistemic basis: they are managerial entities, congeries of skills collected together at some point to address one or another problem, which then became ossified into institutional housings called departments. Disciplines mainly exist in textbooks taught … Continue reading

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New Book by Robert Frodeman: Sustainable Knowledge

What is the future of the university? The modern university system, created in the late 19th century and developed across the 20th century, was built upon the notion of disciplinarity. Today the social, epistemological, and technological conditions that supported the … Continue reading

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TableTalk. A call for submissions

For those this may engage: A fellow student from Reed College and I would like to introduce you to a new journal that will be coming out February 2014. Welcome to TableTalk. TableTalk will be a space that will bring … Continue reading

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The Metaphysics of the Shutdown

In all the commentary about the government shutdown and the impending breaching of the debt ceiling, no one has yet noted that we are witnessing a clash of metaphysics. Andrew Sullivan calls it a “cognitive abyss:” “That’s where we are. … Continue reading

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