Peanuts

A group of scientists at the University of Georgia have began to develop genetically modified peanuts that may not trigger severe allergic reactions which kill around 50 Americans a year.  The new peanuts are genetically modified not to contain two specific sets of proteins which are known to cause severe allergic reactions in some people.  I just wonder how the new peanuts might actually taste.

  http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/peanuts-with-le.html

“TweakUI” for Vista…

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Windows-Vista-Tweak,6637.html

For those who don’t know, TweakUI is a PowerToy that was available for Windows XP that allowed end-users to highly tweak the operating sytem. Unfortunately, until now, converters to Vista have not had a tool to help with this tweaking. Now there is Ultimate Windows Tweaker, built specifically for Vista. Security and usability tweaks are supported in this version as well as other categories. Take a look at this tool if you are a Vista user and would like to make personalized tweaks to your PC.

Extreme HCI

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1890957

This Guitar Hero player has created a modified “drum set” that allows him to play the guitar notes using a drum set. Although this was built specifically for one video game, it shows the capabilities of creating input devices to be used by all types of people in any given situation. Not to mention that this guy is crazy freakish on the drum set. Get this guy a gold medal!

Making Books Digital

Random House Inc. reported Monday that they were going to make thousands of books digital.  Presently there are 8,000 books in the library and they plan on expanding it to about 15,000.  In 2008, the amount of people buying digital books has tripled.  They will soon run into the same issues as the music industry as to who owns it and people illegally downloading it.  I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t want to sit infront of a computer screen for hours reading a book, I would prefer the analog verision.

Macy’s day parade gets “Rickrolled” by Rick himself

The annual Macy’s day parade is an annual celebration for thanksgiving. You may catch it waking up, but not really watching the rest of the day. My family prefers the awesome combination between turkey, family, and some football. But if you were able to watch it or forced to. You would have gotten a very nice surprise. One of the floats featuing a puppet performance of a cartoon on Cartoon Network. All of the sudden the synthesized beats of “Never gonna give you up” hit the background and out comes the skinny redheaded rick singing his beloved song. Its funny how we went over “rick rolling” in class and a week later he pops up. So I hope everybody enjoyed their break and ill see you back in class.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-10109517-36.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0

Vertical Farming

The following article discusses a new method of farming. This new method may be an ingenious way to solve the world’s problems of diminishing agricultural lands. This new idea demonstrates the concept of informatics being “problem-solving using IT.” Using hydroponics, crops are cultivated in nutrient rich water, and therefore can be grown inside and basically stacked on top of each other, meaning many rows of crops vertically aligned in a building. With cities growing by the minute, crops are being shipped from farther and farther places, and therefore having the ability to grow local crops indoors is very desirable. Researchers are currently communicating with officials in China and the Middle East, where fresh vegetables are harder to come by and multistory indoor farms will possibly be implemented. Combining hydroponics and multistory buildings is an exciting example of divergent thinking that can and hopefully will solve a problem we encounter today. Unfortunately these indoor farms would be expensive to make, but they would help minimize the shipping of produce and sanitization of that produce. 

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/11/21/urban.agriculture.ap/index.html

R.R.L. – The Rocket Racing League

Auto-racing not cutting it anymore for you? Lets take it to the sky.  Thats what Granger Whitelaw and Dr. Peter Diamindis were thinking when they spawned this out-of-this world idea in 2005.  The RRL uses rocket-powerd planes called Rocket Racers to race in a 5 mile long 3D course in the sky.  The website talks of exhibition races in 2008, it sounds to me like there may have been some delays and those races have been postponed.  There is also talk of the first actual race being held in 2010, i doubt it will be this soon but keep an eye out for the RRL.

Currently there are 6 teams, owned and opperated by people of varying backgrounds in the aeronautical and business worlds.  They say the rocket racers will be powered by some popular pilots like Sean Tucker and Len Fox, not sure how you become a famous pilot but the RRL has ‘em.  Spectators can watch live on huge screens depicting the 3D course in the sky, or at home via satellite cameras and plane mounted cameras. 

We have seen cartoons and crazy racing leagues like this have been thought of for years, it is cool to see one finally being developed.  Im a little disappointed we skipped the “Speed Racer” leagues and went straight for flying vehicles though…    RRL

Broadband Satellite

The internet has made leaps and bounds in its life, going public, then highspeed cable and dsl, wireless and even satellite delivered internet.  The next major step i see coming for the internet is that being taken by JAXA (kind of like the NASA of Japan).  They launched a broadband satellite named Kizuna a little less than a year ago with the goal of providing remote areas of their country with highspeed internet access. 

The internet service provided has connection speeds up to 1.2 GB per second.  I cannot even fathom the speed of this internet!  We all have complained about dial-up, we even get antsy when our highspeed connections dont load a page in under 4 seconds.  The Kizuna satellite from JAXA has elimenated this wait time completely with their speed averaging 500x that of an american users.  This leaves me thinking if i blink i wont see my page load.  Say goodbye to your webpage load icon for soon we will really know the meaning of HIGHspeed internet.  MORE INFO

Freeware

This website is a bunch of freeware that i stumbleupon stumbled on…it looks like it has some fairly useful apps so i thought that i would share it with you all.  Audacity is on the list of programs, as well as a useful unzipping program called “7zip”, but there are many more useful programs on there, all for free

http://mintywhite.com/tech/freeware/12/

If water could bounce…

Engineers at GE created a waterproof surface so resistant to the H2O it actually causes it to bounce back.  This “superhydrophobic”(Popular Sciences word not mine) surface repels water so well that during the initial contact the water drops will break apart into tiny droplets and be proplled back up, often they hold the drop shape and continue bouncing.  I can’t wait to have boots, or a coat so waterproof that the water actually bounces off of the material and goes flying in the opposite direction. PopSci on bouncing water